{"id":371,"date":"2009-09-15T18:34:14","date_gmt":"2009-09-15T18:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/apagansblog\/2009\/09\/liberalism-a-pagan-perspective-part-ii.html"},"modified":"2009-09-15T18:34:14","modified_gmt":"2009-09-15T18:34:14","slug":"liberalism-a-pagan-perspective-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2009\/09\/liberalism-a-pagan-perspective-part-ii.html","title":{"rendered":"Liberalism: A Pagan Perspective, Part II."},"content":{"rendered":"

Liberals have often been accused of relying on an overly individualistic idea of who we are.  Liberals answer they are well aware we have social sides, but they (and their ritics) rarely question the nature of the individual self.  I think the Christian concept of a unitary self influenced by its environment but fundamentally distinct from it has colored and confused most all liberal thought.
          <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n


\nI think our selves are like a
\nphoton in one interesting respect.  <\/span>They appear to be a
\nparticle when asked some questions, and a wave spread out over space when other
\nquestions are asked.  <\/span>This fits a
\nPagan view much better than the self as little atom view does.       <\/span><\/p>\n

Here is a
\nthought experiment.  <\/span>Think of
\nyourself.  <\/span>Now remove one of your
\nidentifying external traits and replace it with a different one.  <\/span>Your family life is very different,
\nwith different siblings and perhaps parents who divorced if they didn’t, or
\ndidn’t if they did.  <\/span>Your
\nprofession is different. 
\n<\/span>Whatever.    
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

You still can easily think of yourself as being the ‘same’ person, but
\nwith a difference.  <\/span>Yet the longer
\nyou live the greater difference that divergence will have on who you are. In
\nsome sense you would still be you, 
\n<\/span>but in another sense you’d be different.   <\/span>    <\/span><\/p>\n

Now, what would be the case if every one of
\nthose external dimensions of who you are changed? You were adopted by a
\ndifferent family into a different culture, speaking a different language and
\npracticing a different religion, and so on.  <\/span>When every external detail changes, ‘you’ no longer
\nexist.  <\/span>Yet what is ‘you’ is most
\nimportantly yur inner sense of self and inner character.  <\/span>Internal and external are not really
\nseparate.           
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

You are what you are because you are a central node in an extraordinarily
\ncomplex array of relationships.           <\/span><\/p>\n

Every
\nrelationship manifests a quality of existence.  <\/span>As the African proverb states, “I am because we are” but the
\n“we” goes beyond even the human community.  <\/span>It includes our ancestors, our evolutionary history, in a
\nsense, it includes the world.  <\/span>I
\nthink it’s relationships, “all the way down.”           <\/span><\/p>\n

To me,
\nthis perspective does not make the individual disappear or decline in moral
\nvalue.  <\/span>I think it ennobles the
\nindividual and increases his or her intrinsic worth as a truly unique
\nexpression of the ways in which complex value manifests in the world.  <\/span>Months ago during National Poetry Week
\nI offered a fragment from a poem<\/a> by Yevgeny Yevtushenko as the poem that most
\ninfluenced how I view the world.  Yevtushenko
\nprobably describes this image I am trying to communicate better than any thing
\nI can write.  <\/span>Each of us is a
\ncreator and manifestation of a world of experience, of a quality of life.        
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

In an alive universe of Sacred Immanence such as I have experienced –
\nand I think is most in harmony with a Pagan outlook –  <\/span>anything conceivable has some degree of existece, some
\ndegree of awareness.  <\/span>When many
\ncome together they form a greater gestalt that is a ‘self,’ from the
\ndown-and-out guy asking for donations, to the richest CEO and wisest Elder.           <\/span><\/p>\n

The
\nmore connected we are to any given quality the more we are linked with other
\nmanifestations of it.  <\/span>I suspect
\nthis is why those who obsess the most abut the failings of others so often seem
\nto show the same failings themselves. I suspect this is also why an injustice
\nto any sends its own vibrations throughout existence. I sometimes think that
\nthe universal spiritual emphasis, at least among genuine religious traditions,
\nof centering, quieting the heart, love, forgiveness, peace – the terms are
\nmanifold – enable us to act as dampeners on the damage these acts do.  <\/span>(It is also why I find writing a blog
\nwhere I need to post almost every day, and know more about politics than most
\nother things so I write on it, spiritually a very challenging task.)            <\/p>\n

<\/span>Equally, it is why growing peace in our own heart send out its own
\nimpact elsewhere.           
\n<\/span>So by virtue of the links with others that taken collectively make us
\nwho we are, we are linked with everything else.  <\/span>We are beads in Indra’s net<\/a>, <\/a>
\nbut often without the self-awareness to notice the net, or the reflections in
\nwho we are.  <\/span>And some beads are
\ncloser than others, even if everything is reflected in them all.           <\/span><\/p>\n

So I
\nthink a Pagan perspective can enrich liberalism, and free it decisively from
\nits Christian rooted disconnect with the world and with other people.             
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

The next part of this mini-essay will explore how a Pagan perspective
\nheals the separation of people from the world.  <\/span>I’ll discuss Baruch’s point he made in Part I as well.  <\/span>
\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Liberals have often been accused of relying on an overly individualistic idea of who we are.  Liberals answer they are well aware we have social sides, but they (and their ritics) rarely question the nature of the individual self.  I think the Christian concept of a unitary self influenced by its environment but fundamentally distinct…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-and-political-theory"],"yoast_head":"\nLiberalism: A Pagan Perspective, Part II. - A Pagan's Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2009\/09\/liberalism-a-pagan-perspective-part-ii.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Liberalism: A Pagan Perspective, Part II. - 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