I've been getting quite a lot of emails about my essay 'The Problems of Heathenry', which you can read here. Some are positive. And then some not so positive.
In some way people feel that my essay doesn't represent Heathenry accurately. The fact is that I talk little about Modern Heathenry: or at least, the comments never seem to adress the passages on Modern Heathenry.
I used two different words, that somehow might be unclear to people. On one side we have the pre-modern, pre-Christian PAGANS, who are the main subject of the essay. On the other side we have the modern, post-Christian NEO-HEATHENS.
What I did in the essay was compare what pagans did, sometimes why they did it, with what modern people do. I found there to be a wide gap: pagans did all sorts of cruel things, like kill each other (though that can be justified: kill or be killed), have slaves, raid completely innocent villagers, and many other things.
I decided to write the essay because I felt that this is a huge problem. Online you can read many stories about how great our ancestors were, how profound their insights into man and nature, how good their society was, etc.
I believe most of that to be true. But one should not act as if they were being nice to each other, or neighbouring peoples. So Modern Heathens should take a clear look at that, and say "Well, it wasn't all good." And think about their ethical code and what kind of system it had produced in the past (or what kind of system has produced that code). Then, it should be obvious that there should be some "adaption", and a clear rejection of historical reconstructionism, and perhaps even reconstructionism.
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4 comments:
my computer won't let me access the comments section, so i won't address them. however, i found your essay to be quite clear on the difference between pre-christian pagan & modern neo-heathens. i have avoided attempting to link with any of the neo-heathen groups i have found because they appear to so firmly entrenched in the idea that the NNV are sent down from the ancients & not only must be strictly adhered to due to their source, but must be followed as the ancients did. this is a major sticking point: the insistence on burying oneself in the past instead of living in the present & looking towards the future.
I really liked your article and congratulate you on tackling a subject which has been bugging me for a long time. I used to frequent a reconstructionist forum where the listowners were really rigid about certain ideas and practices being the "only valid Heathen ones" even though actually applying them was sometimes well nigh impossible in the modern day. Some of the concepts they wanted to revive and see amongst modern day Heathens were also down right dangerous in my opinion, since we've seen the consequences of such beliefs on a grand scale in Europe in WW2 (i'm thinking of the idea that anyone outside of your kin group is basically a nobody, not really worthy of pity or consideration - I think you touched on that). I don't think anyone there really considered the consequences of their beliefs in the long term, or their impact on a more massively centralised and organised society such as our own. Everyone seemed much more preoccupied with trying to prove how much more "Heathen than thou" they were (I certainly learned a lot about how sheeplike humans can be during my time there!). Dissent of any kind was knocked down with mockery of the "Well you're obviously just a new age fluff-bunny labouring under the residual Judeo-christian worldview you were raised in" kind. The casting off of this supposedly totally poisonous ethical and moral carbuncle was more of a concern to members than thinking about what was useful about it and worth keeping and blending with elder Heathen thinking to produce a workable whole in the now.
I remember arguing with one member on a few occasions about the issue of afterlife. He insisted that if I did not make the effort to believe, or at least act as if I believed, that my ancestors only lived on in their corpse and whatever "soul" was there would simply rot with the body it was tied to, then I could not call myself a Heathen.
Since we now know that there is no kind of detectable "life" left in a dead body, and people who are really dead do not tend to get up or move about unless they weren't actually dead to begin with (eg as in narcolepsy), and since some people who have technically "died" on the operating table etc and then come back through resuscitation report some kind of consciousness beyond the body (not to mention some of the apparently very accurate messages passed on via mediums from departed kin etc), then maybe we have to adjust our concepts of the Heathen afterlife. I'm actually not a believer in the vertical cosmological model but my concept of the burial mound as a metaphor for the dead perhaps living on in some unseen aspect of reality and remaining part of the world around us,close to the living, wasn't good enough for the "Heathen thought police" who patrolled the boards like so many virtual Gestapo ready and willing to pounce on unsuspecting newbies struggling with the dilemma of "what to believe?"
I just wonder "Is this what we've come to as Heathens, is this all we can offer potential newcomers to our religion - the the same sort of dogmatic, stifling, impractically idealistic fundamentalist religiosity that many folk have fled screaming from as soon as they were old enough to make a choice and decide for themselves?!" Pah! Oh I hope this subject can be tackled more openly and honestly, with people not getting all "full of it" and shouting whatever the Heathen equivalent of "blasphemer" or "infidel" is at each other! I fear for the future of Heathenry if we do not evolve and adapt to modern realities. Heathens in the past must have had to do this at some time or other, and in some ways maybe what we're going through now is rather like the conversion period in that we have a syncretic mixing of old and new ideas, beliefs and practices and people bickering over the rights and wrongs of it all. I really hope common sense will prevail!
I read your essay and I enjoyed it. Your article addresses similar ideas to problems I have raised in the recent past.
I've raised the very points you've raised regarding the NNV and ethics in general. It seems to me that those promoting the NNV, since it is a virtue ethic, have the obligation to develop it as such. I've pointed out that Aristotle would be their best reference since his ethics were virtue ethics.
My view is that we have to accept that we live in a different ethical and cosmological universe than our ancestors and adapt our views accordingly. Although we can appreciate their universe, I don't think that we can make it ours today without some significant differences. This has significant implications to heathenry. It seems that for too many heathens, their religion is more a fashion statement than a deeply motivating ethical system. Their ethic is merely a distinguishing characteristics of their in-group identification and it doesn't need to be fleshed out in any detail; it merely needs to be different. These are the people for whom it
is a "lifestyle choice." I don't find this acceptable. To me, the first implication is that Heathenry has to create benefit for its members in the modern world (other than being a fashion enhancement) and it cannot be an individual lifestyle choice. We must accept that it is a group phenomenon and adapt it to modern "ethical communities."
I guess we might ask ourselves: of the various kinds of ethical strategies, which of them best represents our interests: duty ethics, virtue ethics, consequential ethics etc. I guess
that the idea behind being Heathen would be to select an approach which is consistent with our historical/ancestral one (however much or little we might know about it) and to fashion something that is similar yet adaptive to the modern world (whatever the metric for "similar" is).
We might start by trying to answer that question: What is the good that we're trying to accomplish? Obviously, some aspect of historical accuracy seems important (without actually
being historically accurate). I think that another important aspect of modern Heathen ethics is that it must be relevant to our lives today. Another aspect is that it must be the ethic of a new community with different ends (and resulting in different and better
lifestyles).
But, if modern Heathenry is to survive and be meaningful in the modern world, it must adapt and address real ethical issues being addressed by other religions. We cannot allow our religion to be mere window dressing. We have to address issues that basic ethics addresses: i.e. what is "the good" that we're trying to accomplish. Also, what is the "common good"
that we seek to serve. If the extended family is not the focal point of the ethical system,
then what is?
Good work.
Cheers,
Ed L
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