This final section is where I think the bigger picture of how a Pagan perspective helps the modern world better address its problems comes together. Look below the fold if you like political theory…<\/p>\n
But for the same reasons liberalism as a philosophy of equal rights is Let me give an example. <\/span>You are arguing with your lover. <\/span>In anger you say an epithet, and your You Liberal rights are good guides for As primal If liberalism’s approach to rights is how The old Pagan principle of respect is the fundamental relationship. <\/span>(Here I trun to an insight that is far older than Greece and Rome.) Respect for the Gods, respect for the This I think this We need to relate to the world appropriately with respect, but not This Pagan view is In short, This final section is where I think the bigger picture of how a Pagan perspective helps the modern world better address its problems comes together. Look below the fold if you like political theory…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112,106,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-pagan-culture","category-social-and-political-theory"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nLiberalism’s
\nemphasis on equal rights applies to every human being equally. <\/span>This means it is an ethic for
\ninteracting with strangers. <\/span>It
\nenables them to treat one another with respect, and with an assumption that
\nrelations will be peaceful. <\/span>In
\ndoing so liberalism has enlarged the circle of cooperation, weakened tribalism,
\nand so done great good for people as a whole.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n
\nan insufficient philosophy for human relations as a whole. <\/span>Because it works so well when applied
\nto everybody, it works less well when applied to relationships which are not
\nbetween relative strangers. <\/span><\/p>\n
\npartner responds “You have no right to talk to me that way.” <\/span><\/p>\n
\nanswer “I have a right to freedom of speech, don’t I?” <\/span>Your soon-to-be ex-partner answers
\n“Yes,” and walks out the door. <\/span><\/p>\n
\nestablishing peaceful relations between strangers, but bad guides to
\nmaintaining any kind of intimacy because they do not depend on any personal
\nknowledge of another, nor do they give good guidelines in such situations. <\/span>They are bad guides to parenting. <\/span>They are bad guides to friendship. <\/span>They are not foundations to relationships
\nonce relationships have formed, tbut they are a good jumping off place because
\n(and I think this is vital) they are the form respect takes with strangers,
\nwith people with whom we are not close. <\/span>And here we return to Paganism – or at least
\nthose forms of Paganism with sensitivity to our living in a more-than-human
\nworld. <\/span><\/p>\n
\npeoples have recognized for millennia, the proper way to relate to a living
\nworld is with respect – and the kind of relationship we have with something
\ndetermines the kind of respect we should show. <\/span><\/p>\n
\nwe relate most appropriately to strangers whom we do no know, the it adds an
\nessential ethical insight that makes it possibly to vastly enlarge the sphere
\nof human cooperation, while at the same time clearly not being a foundation for
\nethics as a whole.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n
\nearth, respect for the other-than-human, respect for strangers, respect for
\nparents, siblings, children, and friends.
\n<\/span>Depending on the relationships we have, the form of respect changes, but
\nits core does not. <\/span>We recognize
\nthe independent value and worth of another. <\/span>They can never be appropriately treated as simply our
\ntools. <\/span>We owe others consideration
\nappropriate to the kind sof relations we have with them, but we always owe some
\nkind of respect. <\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n
\nvenerable Pagan perspective, with its roots to hunting and gathering peoples,
\nreturns liberalism to the world.
\n<\/span>Once we realize that individuals are within the world this is a
\nnecessary task. <\/span>When
\nliberalism is simply a (very important) illustration of a deeper principle, it
\nalso integrates it with the world’s genuine spiritual traditions. Respect is
\nharmonious with love, care, and compassion, but asks less of us than that. <\/span>Respect can exist without these latter
\nqualities, but they cannot exist without there being also respect. <\/span><\/p>\n
\nPagan perspective helps root liberalism more strongly in the more-than-human
\nworld and frees liberalism from the two greatest drawbacks of its having
\ninitially been formulated in a society that had outlawed non-Abrahamic
\nperspectives for millennia: that we are isolated from one another and that the
\nworld is nothing more than a fund of resources. <\/span>We are always in relationship and are ourselves created from
\nrelationships. <\/span>The respect we are
\ndue is mirrored by the respect to which everthing with which we relate is
\ndue. <\/span>Therefore the liberal idea
\nthat the world is a fund of resources is simply wrong. <\/span>Completely and totally wrong. <\/span>But that is a belief connected to
\ntranscendental monopolistic monotheism, not to liberalism. Liberals have only really explored ethics in the human world, and taken for granted the view they inherited from dominant forms of Western Christianity that the rest of the world s of value only to th degree it serves us. (The Orthodox are a thousand times better than Western Christianity on this issue.)
\n<\/span><\/p>\n
\nbecause that means we will have more resources in the future. <\/span>That is a side benefit, like the
\nusefulness of friends being a side benefit of friendship. <\/span>If you are friends with someone only
\nbecause they are useful to you, you are not a friend. <\/span>The same applies to dealing with the rest of the world. <\/span>For myself, for example, at every meal
\nI thank what I consume, and not just the Goddess (though I thank Her to). <\/span><\/p>\n
\none which I think is implicit in one way or another in any vision of Sacred
\nImmanence. <\/span>It is not only in
\nharmony with the best of modernity’s attempts to understand the human world, it
\nheals its greatest weakness that grew from its having arisen in a society
\ndominated by a religion of monopolistic transcendental monotheism. <\/span><\/p>\n
\nPagan insights deepen, strengthen, and improve the core political perspectives
\nof both conservatism and liberalism.
\n<\/span>They strengthen the foundations of a free society, and the arenas in
\nwhich, in a democracy, people try and discover what is most desirable. <\/span>Equally importantly, I think this Pagan
\nperspective shows how both are essential aspects of any complex society, but
\nwithout reducing one to the other.
\n<\/span>We need liberalism to apply the moral impetus of helping make the world
\na better place for people. <\/span>At the
\nsame time, we need the conservative cautions to remind us we do not fully
\nunderstand even the human world.
\n<\/span>And we need a Pagan or other Immanentalist spiritual perspective to
\nputthose human <\/span>concerns in a
\ncontext bigger than they.
\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"