It makes you want to scream

Monday, March 17th, 2008

Every single day the web of media, statistics, regulations, tax burdens, censorship, interfering busy-bodies, surveillance, celebrity obsession, talk of recession, financial constrictions, and other completely artificial but neverthless impactful phenomena grows tighter and tighter around us all. The question is, how do we respond to all this less-than-white noise? Do we run for the hills or are there other ways in which we can close our eyes and ears to it all?

Some people do run for the hills. They set up isolated communes and reject television, radio and even style and good taste in favour of a bleak and minimalist, sackcloth-and-ashes, dull-as-dishwater approach. Others try never to think, or find not thinking an easy thing to accomplish. Still more turn to orthodox, inherently restrictive religions, putting their faith in the next world having lost all faith in our own ability to ever create a community-minded paradise on Earth. The majority at times seem to have willingly wired themselves into the Matrix and, to mix my film references a little, prove time and time again that we don’t need intelligent and malevolent alien viruses to turn the population into pod people.

PR companies and media spin can, by forcefully being transmuted into public opinion, do as destructive a job as any sinister big-screen alien invaders.

The ice caps are melting faster than was ever predicted, genetically-modified food is constantly peddled to the masses with far more persistent energy and activism than protestors seem able to muster, helped by the fact that our leaders are on the side of the tinkerers. Global warming is a reality, oil and gas are running out, countries are getting tetchy with each other over dwindling resources, over a hundred are dead in Tibet just before the Olympics get underway in China… As the song by Janet and Michael Jackson says, it makes you want to scream.

So. What do you do? The only conclusion I can come to is that yes, it is easy to get depressed and despairing but we can only move forward in our own lives one small step at a time. We can prepare for the future without becoming thuggish survivalists like those crazies in bunkers in remote parts of America. We can focus on doing our best to maintain ourselves and bring our children up with minds keen to learn, healthy bodies, and respect for the lifestyles and opinions of others. We can become more self-sufficient if not entirely. We can attend classes in gardening, cookery, sewing, knitting, and countless other subjects with which our parents and grandparents were intimately familiar.

By switching to a love of learning, and hands-on practicality, away from passive consumerism, we can’t solve every problem, we can’t shut out all the noise, but we will be able to take comfort from the fact that we are not sheep. We need to recognise that nobody owns us. Not our employers, not our governments, not the people in our social and family circles. We own ourselves.

It’s this sense of being in charge of your own life, while keeping an eye on the concepts of fate and destiny, that makes Paganism an easy choice for me but not at all an easy path to follow, demanding as it does real action in one’s own back garden and the world at large, in infinite preference to knocking on front doors to hand out fliers warning of Hell for all eternity being the destination of all those who won’t subsume their essence to politico-religious constructs.

Paganism eschews heavy-handed, threatening evangelism in favour of life-loving enthusiasm.

My church is my family, my friends, my garden, the world. It has no walls. It has no rules applied to everyone irrespective of who they are and where they’re at. But it does have rules. Oh yes. You have to find out what those rules are for yourself. They may not apply to others. You have to cultivate the inner voice, the watchful eye, the listening ear. You have to take responsibility instead of allowing others to become responsible on your behalf.

But that’s Paganism, and it’s also me. It may not be you. So if you want to scream, as many of us do, why not do so? It’s best not to do it at night, it’s probably best not to make a habit of it, but if you stuff a hankie in your mouth and let rip, you won’t change anything external to you in doing so but you might—just might—feel a little better. After all, we seem to be past tears in our dominator culture—more people mock distress than want to do anything to help others—and so screaming certainly, at times, has more going for it.

Whatever you do, whatever your convictions and fears, ideas and perspectives, never give up. Never give in. Keep going forward, do all you can, in the expectation that, if enough of us rise to the challenge of becoming non-violent soldiers in the invisible war for the planet, we can at least transform our own lives and, maybe, just maybe, the lives of every creature on Earth as well. No alien viruses needed—just ideas, courage, and a shared determination to overcome, to learn, and to evolve.

categories: broomstick stuff, healthy planet, rattle bag