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flamingsword) wrote2006-10-25 02:06 am
oooh - deep thoughts
Council of the Magickal Arts needs a ritual for the Beltane event on the importance of Public Displays of Affection and how to let your guard down and experience the world firsthand. The pagan community is supposed to know better than to experience the world through filters so much of the time: reality TV, soft indoor living, white lies, skipping the hand-shakes, every kind of living vicariously and separating yourself from what's real. I heard people out there complaining about PDA and they didn't mean electronics. Grr. If you don't want to see it, you don't want to acknowledge it, and where love and the validity of others is concerned, that means you're falling back on denial and emotional distance as tools to deal with people and the reality of the complexity of interactions between us all. Fucking deal, people.
It also needs several more people attending who are known to me, because nobody from the Dallas area was there this time, but there were frickin' FOURTEEN people from Houston at the polyamoury society meeting. And half of Camp Kallisti were in other countries or something. DAMMIT. Dinora is going to take Rainbow Camp into her velvet-gloved fist, and I'm going to help. There will be discipline of the naughty kind until everyone gets back in gear for next event. I may even bring my Aunt and some of my friends if I can drag, beg, or blackmail them into going.
Entertainment: CUBE was a great movie, and I wish I'd been exposed to it earlier, when the concept would have been more subversive to me. It's getting harder to horrify me, lately. Everything seems ideologically necessary, and it's hard to be caught up in fright when you're also in wonder and intrigue and bemusement and idle speculation. After too much exposure, your mind comes to resemble the world itself, hence even the choice of movies leads back to my original thought on how experiential religions need to get out there and experience.
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Actually, I think I may have been the only Kallisti in another country. :-) Could be wrong though.
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Concerning public displays of "affection":
It really depends on what you define as a PDA. Holding hands or walking with an arm around a friend or significant other is generally considered (in our current society) to be "affection." Tonsil-diving or groping is usually considered "foreplay," and many people consider that to be intimate -- which is to imply private, not something that you do in public. People are taught (here in the West) that it is rude to watch people making out, and doing it in the general public's view forces them to either leave or break one of their personal social boundaries.
There are a great many Islamic people that aren't comfortable with people using the "hug" emoticons on deviantArt. My family considered any physical contact to be intimate, hugs and hand-holding included. And I've had total strangers get bent out of shape when I had problems with them trying to reach into my pants in public. To insist that everyone's definition of "intimate" or "affectionate" should coincide with your own, and that they should just "Fucking deal" is myopic, inconsiderate, and just plain rude. We err on the side of caution -- also known as "manners" -- if we want to co-exist well with others.
This isn't about denial, it isn't about "emotional distance", and it isn't about "love and the validity of others" as far as I can see. If something is considered rude in the surroundings you happen to find yourself in, you abide by the rules of courtesy, or you offend people. To expect society to bend to your definitions, your worldview, and your particular set of ethics/morals/manners/beliefs is narcissistic to a very high degree. I strongly feel that there's a difference between gently pushing boundaries, and getting one's panties in a wad when the world doesn't work the way you think it should.
It's also vain to think that every pagan should approach the world in the same way that you do. Some people really are more reserved and observational, and to disrespect that doesn't seem like sound thinking to me.
[/rant]
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-- E. M. Cioran
I respect that other people can not hold hands in public. It doesn't offend me to see someone sitting apart from other people. If two lovers don't kiss it doesn't annoy me. If family members don't hug it is totally alright with me. It doesn't set me at odds with them. It doesn't puff me into a huff over the 'rightness' of the world or the 'decency' of existence or the 'truth' of human behavior. I extend that courtesy to those around me. If this is truly an argument about courtesy, then it would be me who has been done a dis-justice. For, indeed, when I do stand too close to me beloved in public, when I do kiss her because it touches me at the time that I love her and should let her know, when I decide to hug a man in the open, or converse on any number of topics in earshot of other living, thinking things, it is they who become willing to clash over my expression of will, and they are the ones to incite argument, dispense derangement, and incur verbal pain. The allowance of freedom, and the leisure to live happily in peace is not something I restrict, out of courtesy. It IS something others wish to restrict in me. I don't expect others to bend to my definitions, but others expect me to bend to theirs.
People become annoyed with these things because they don't want to be on an even-footing with eachother. Inside them, they build up a complex heirarchy of judged standing in the realms of correctness, justness, and truth. From this, I do think, stem all the illusions in the game of life. Isn't it just as wrong to ask some to step outside of their boundaries as it is to ask others to step into boundaries that aren't theirs?
It is my understanding that pagan beliefs are supposed to tell us that we are all one with eachother, one with our higher selves, and even deity itself. It is my understanding that the beliefs of paganism itself teach is that the body is holy, no matter what it is doing, and that it can be used for many more things than most mundane people think it can be used for. I think Heidi is only trying to get people to realize that when they put walls up to separate themselves physically from others, they also put walls up mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. That's not what CMA is supposed to be about! Too often in the communities of pagans that gather the focus is NOT on unity, but on separation. People in a religion that would ideally enable a person to be more united with the universe and their inner natures all too often use that power so simply subdivide themselves further, place others farther away, and sanction the sections of everything all the more heavily........
It does not bring equilibrium to say that the 'rules of society' should be dependent on 'the behavior that annoys the fewest people'. People are irritable things, and everything anyone does potentially annoys someone else. And, in fact, it does. There is perpetual annoyance on both sides of every coin, but in this case one side feels the need to force and persecute, and the other side doesn't. Heidi is not the radical antagonist here, she is the one who wants to have reconciliation and synthesis. That sounds reasonable and polite to me.....
By your leave, Sir or Madam, might I simply exist???? It's hilarious, insane, terrible, and stupid!
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The main reason I disagreed with the original post (aside from my compulsion to play devil's advocate) was the implication that people should not be offended or irritated by something they find socially improper, and that they are somehow inferior if they are. If you are doing something that is technically not wrong but socially "iffy," you will have to be prepared for the consequences, especially if you do it knowing there will be consequences.
Not having been present for the initial event that prompted her post, I can't say definitively. But the words, "Fucking cope" do not, nor have they ever, engendered images of "reconciliation and synthesis" in my mind. It is not a request for understanding nor a plea to view the world from a different perspective -- regardless of her intent. It is a challenge, a demand, and a browbeating. To be shocked when someone pushes back in an equal and opposite direction defies the laws of physics and social interaction.
I've been thinking and discussing with others the topic of politeness for a while recently. What I've observed is that society is a non-Newtonian dynamic: It responds to slow, gradual coaxing but forms a rigid opposition to sudden or violent attempts to move it. Railing against people and calling them stupid because they don't agree with you? My reply to
I was not trying to imply that we should all operate in terror of the unfavorable viewpoints of others. We should, however, be gentle, understanding and aware of how our actions effect others when we Shake The Tree. The response I would have suggested in that situation would have been a quiet, rational discourse about why PDA's bothered some people, and why you thought they shouldn't. Then maybe both sides could have come to a middle-ground consensus that would have been progress for both sides.
As for the last line of your reply? I'll chalk up the "insane, terrible, and stupid" part to you fending off a potential threat to your "lifemate." The other part? I'm frankly insulted that you would think of me in that manner.
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The rest of it was pretty much explaining why some people got offended, and why it's unfair to expect them to do or watch things that bother them without some kind of repercussions, good or ill. A better (though more extreme by a couple of orders of magnitude) analogy would be when people do drugs in my home. To them, they're just doing their thing. To me, they're not only breaking the law (which is their choice), but they are forcing me to break the law, too.
Regarding CMA... yes, it's probably a bit disappointing to run into that sort of thing there. Just try to bear in mind that CMA is a gathering of people with similar, not necessarily identical, views. To ask a Dianic, a Wyrd, a Llewellyn and a Follower of Crowley to have the same opinions and beliefs is similar to asking a Catholic, a Baptist, a Lutherin and a Pentecostal to see things the same. The common ground is a great starting point, but it's by no means a surefire catch-all. Heck, even Athiests can't see eye-to-eye on a lot of things.
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I have watched CMA transform over the years into an ever-increasingly anti-fun place for me to be. It has changed not because of a polite and honest discourse wherein all parties express their views and everyone comes to a happy median. It has changed because the more conservative of individuals attempt to force their will and habits on the rest of the people out there -- and the rest of the poeple out there, being peaceful, fun-loving types, simply leave or ignore them, thinking (wrongly) all their bitching will result in nothing. I have seen that, in life, it is the forcing approach that wins results. Women's rights, black rights, gay rights -- I've never heard of any group of people who "earned" their right to exist who didn't have to push, and so some extent, bang people on the head and tell them to "fucking deal, because we're not going anywhere". To me, this is acceptable behavior -- you can bet that anyone who wishes to stand up and has an opinion 'differeing from the norm' will find that they themselves will suffer a relentless beating on the head by the parties of the norm. Beating on the head seems to be the general order of discourse in such things......
Believe it or not, I actually agree with you. I have often wished that the world worked in such a dignified, rational, and enlightened way as you describe. Through most of my life, I've tried to be polite to others -- to wait my turn in discussions, to state my opinions simply and cooly, and to address group issues with some degree of wanting to find a solution everyone can be happy with. I have found that people don't give place to those who don't simply take it. I have found that people don't like change, and even the most respectful submission of a personal issue with something can easily erupt in violent argumentation. This has been a big lesson in the last five years of my life. The place in conversation is awarded to the loudest, the most self-repeating, and annoyingly outspoken people. Only through artificial legislation can everyone respectfully have their say -- those places only exist (even partially) in council rooms, court, and congress. Sadly, not in the world.
The only time that quiet, gradual actions cause change is when large groups of people don't pay attention to what you're doing. The moment they find out, there is always inevitably war of some kind. Freedom is not without price, and personal liberty does not come without diligence. Someone has to stand their ground so that horrible mindless people don't take over the whole face of this planet. I think Heidi and I are realizing that, well, that someone must be us. So, yes, I suppose I am on a bit of a war path.......but I'm tired of being walked on or pushed over just because someone else was naturally so unrefined as to mow me down.
I admit, though, that I don't yet know the best way to do that.........