Political ideologies explained!

Posted on May 3, 2013 by Brendan

Consider this a work in progress.

Democracy:
– The government takes some of everyone’s money and puts it in a great big pile.
– Then we all vote on who gets to be in charge of the pile.
– Those who want to be in charge describe what they’ll do with it.
– If they get elected, sometimes they do what they promise, sometimes they don’t do what they promise, and sometimes they can’t do what they promise.
– If the people don’t like what is done by those in charge of the pile, then they vote for someone else to be in charge of the pile.

Aristocracy
– The government takes some of everyone’s money and puts it in a great big pile.
– A group of rich male landowners, who inherited their lands and wealth from their male ancestors, decide what to do with the pile.
– The rich male landowners sometimes do and sometimes don’t use the pile to benefit the people, but they always use it to benefit themselves.
– If the people don’t like what is done by those in charge of the pile, that’s too bad for the people. Their only real choice is to grin and bear it, or die.

Theocracy
– A church takes some of everyone’s money and puts it in a great big pile.
– A group of priests, bishops, rabbis, imams, monks, or whatever, decide what to do with the pile.
– The religious leaders sometimes do and sometimes don’t use the pile to benefit the people, but they always use it to benefit themselves.
– If the people don’t like what is done by those in charge of the pile, that’s too bad for the people. Their only real choice is to grin and bear it, or burn in hell forever.

Mercantilism
– The government takes some of everyone’s money and puts it in a great big pile.
– The businessmen tell everyone that they put the largest share of the money into the pile (whether that’s true or not) and therefore say that they should decide what to do with the pile.
– The government uses the pile to give the businessmen exclusive monopolies on the trade of certain strategically important commodities.
– The businessmen sometimes do and sometimes don’t use their monopolies to benefit the people, but they always use it to benefit themselves.
– If the people don’t like what is done by those in charge of the pile, that’s too bad for the people. Their only real choice is to grin and bear it, or go live somewhere else. Or die.

Soviet Communism
– The government takes almost all of everyone’s stuff and puts it in a great big pile.
– The government then re-distributes the pile to everyone in accord with how enthusiastically each person acted like a cheerleader for the Soviet system.
– The people also vote for who gets to be in charge of the pile, but the only people allowed to run are the cheerleaders.
– And only the cheerleaders get to vote for the Head Of All Cheerleaders.
– If the people don’t like what the cheerleaders do with the pile, that’s too bad for the people. Their only real choice is to grin and bear it, or go to “political re-education”. In a work camp. In Siberia.

North Korean Communism
– The government takes almost all of everyone’s stuff and puts it in a great big pile.
– The people vote for who gets to be in charge of the pile, but the only person allowed to run is Kim Il-sung. Yes, I know he’s dead. You can vote for his grandson instead.

Ideal Marxism
– The government takes a lot of everyone’s money and puts it in a great big pile.
– The government then re-distributes the pile to everyone in proportion to each person’s actual contributions and actual needs.
– The people also vote for who gets to be in charge of the pile, although people who believe in a political ideology other than ideal communism are normally not allowed to run.
– If the people don’t like what is done by those in charge of the pile, then they vote for someone else.
– Those who say “this is all well and good in theory but it will never work in practice” are told that it’s never been tried in practice so therefore nobody knows whether it will work in theory.

Democratic Socialism
– The government takes some of your money (more than in regular democracy, but less than in communism) and puts it in a great big pile.
– The people then vote for who gets to be in charge of the pile.
– Constitutional laws are enacted to ensure that the people in charge of the pile use that pile for the benefit of the people.
– If the people in charge of the pile break those laws, then the Supreme Court and/or the Head of State stops them from doing it. And the people vote for someone else.
– Those who say “this is all well and good in theory but it will never work in practice” enjoy their free public education and health care.

Democratic Capitalism
– The government takes some of your money (usually less than in regular democracy) and puts it in a great big pile.
– The people then vote for who gets to be in charge of the pile.
– Anyone can run to be in charge of the pile. But those who are cheerleaders for big corporations are much more likely to win.
– The big corporations tell everyone that what benefits them also somehow benefits everyone (whether it’s true or not), and therefore their voice influences the people in charge of the pile the most.
– If the people don’t like what is done by those in charge of the pile, they vote for someone else.
– If the people don’t like what is done by the big corporations, they can spend their money on the products of some other big corporation. If they have any money to spend.

Fascism
– The government takes some of your money and puts it in a great big pile.
– The people then vote for who gets to be in charge of the pile. But those who are racist, sexist, class-ist, war-mongering, scapegoating, half-paranoid, violence-obsessed thugs are much more likely to win.
– The people in charge of the pile then hand the pile over to the thugs anyway, and those thugs use the pile to benefit mostly themselves.
– But to be fair, the thugs also build some big and awesome-looking monuments.
– If the people don’t like what the thugs do, that’s too bad for the people. Their only real choice is to grin and bear it, or go have a shower. In Auschwitz.

Classical Libertarianism
– The government takes some of everyone’s money and puts it in a big pile, but the government is careful to take as little as possible.
– The people then vote for who gets to be in charge of the pile.
– The government then spends the pile on a small number of social necessities. If the people have problems or needs they can’t handle on their own, the government offers them a little bit of help, but not much, because the people are expected to be as self-reliant as possible.
– The government also works to stop people whose personal piles are really big from exploiting or oppressing people whose personal piles are really small.
– If the people don’t like what is done by those in charge of the pile, they vote for someone else.

Ayn Rand Libertarianism
– Some of the people voluntarily take some of their own money, as much or as little as they wish, and put it in a little pile.
– The people then vote for who gets to be in charge of the pile. Anyone can run, but it really helps if your personal pile is bigger than most other people’s personal piles.
– The government then spends the pile on a small number of social necessities. If the people have problems or needs they can’t handle on their own, that’s too damn bad.
– Those whose personal piles are biggest are allowed to use their personal piles to exploit, manipulate, control, lie to, steal from, and pretty much oppress anyone with a smaller pile, in any way short of outright slavery: this is somehow called “freedom”.
– If the people don’t like what is done by those in charge of the pile, they had better get a damn good lawyer.
– And if the people don’t like what is done by those who’s personal pile is bigger than theirs, it’s their own fault.

Westeros Feudalism
– The government takes some of everyone’s money and puts it in a great big pile.
– Anyone who wants to be in charge of the pile declares himself king, and tries to kill anyone else who wants to be in charge of the pile.
– If the people — wait a minute. The people? Who are they?

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Walking in a Winter Wonderland

Posted on March 9, 2013 by Brendan

I used to go walking in the Gatineau Hills National Park almost every day, in the summer and fall. Since the snow fell, and since I was raised to full-time at the college again, I haven’t been in it much. But it’s March Break, so I took an afternoon off my writing and my course prep to follow my “traditional” hiking path. It’s about 12 kilometers in all, perhaps more: and it takes me to Pink Lake and back. In the winter it’s much more difficult, as some of it has snow up to my waist and I don’t have snowshoes to stop me from sinking into it. I got my cardiovascular workout today!

Back when I was walking it more regularly, I gave names to some of the landmarks on the way: “the First Hill”, “the Shining Ridge”, “the Black Water”, “the Rock of Ages”, “the Three Brothers and the Motherstone”, and “Cyrodill” – the latter is actually named for a fictitious landscape in a video game which resembles an area which I regularly pass through. I also like to give myself “missions” of a sort, as if I’m one of those Celtic heroes on an eachtra (adventure, exploration). Sometimes the mission is to climb one of the rock formations. Sometimes it’s to leave an apple as an offering to Herself somewhere. Sometimes it’s to go a little further than I went before, or explore a new side-path. Sometimes it’s to shoot a photo of a certain landmark. And sometimes it’s to hike the route while avoiding people as much as possible. Thus does a landscape become one’s own. Some might say I’m too old to be making up names and stories for such places, but my pet dragon says those people are idiots anyway.

I thought you might like to see some before-and-after photos of a few spots on the trail.

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Finally, the place on the shore of Pink Lake where I shot the front cover of Hallowstone…

Hallowstone cover

…now looks like this!

IMG_0855

Happy springtime everyone!

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Too many people, or too much misanthropy?

Posted on February 23, 2013 by Brendan

Back in 1968, Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb. In a chapter called “A Dying Planet” he listed a number of threats to the stability and diversity of global ecosystems, and then concluded that:

the causal chain of the deterioration is easily followed to its source. Too many cars, too many factories, too much detergent, too much pesticide, multiplying contrails [from aircraft], inadequate sewage treatment plants, too little water, too much carbon dioxide – all can be traced easily to too many people.

Then in 1986 Arne Naess and George Sessions published their eight “Platform Principles” of Deep Ecology, the fourth of which says: “The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease.”

And in 1991, Dave Foreman, founder of Earth First!, wrote sixteen principles of ecological activism which included statements like these: “A placing of Earth first in all decisions, even ahead of human welfare if necessary”, “An enthusiastic embracing of the philosophy of Deep Ecology or biocentrism”, and “A recognition that there are far too many human beings on earth.”

These are not the only examples, of course; but they are the examples which stand out in my mind. And I have heard them repeated by lots of well-meaning, serious people who care about the environment, as much as I do. But it’s nothing but misanthropy.

Now it’s certainly true that the human population is growing. A prediction made in 2005 said that there will be 8.9 billion of us by the year 2050, and most of this population growth will be in the world’s poorest countries. (1) A report issued by the World Wildlife Federation in 2002 suggested that by 2050 the world’s ecosystems will no longer be able to support this population growth. (2) But the idea that curbing or reversing population growth, is all we have to do to fix global warming, species extinction, and climate change, is pure misanthropy. It is as if we don’t want to think about the serious subtleties and complexities of a problem as big as global warming, and the “prisoner’s dilemma” forces at work within economics which created it. It’s as if we don’t want to fix our system: we just want to kill or sterilize lots of other people to make the problem go away, and thus other people will have fixed our problem for us.

In the argument that population growth is the source of our environmental crisis, the doubts about the value of civilization which began with writers like Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Aldo Leopold, had blossomed into undisguised misanthropy. But who shall we sterilize in order to prevent humanity from growing? Poor people in poor countries, where the population growth is predicted to be highest? And who shall decide who to sterilize? The governments of rich countries? There is a hidden element of race and class privilege inherent in this kind of thinking, and I don’t like it.

Moreover, the problem with population as it is normally described assumes that every human being consumes the same volume of resources and energy, but that assumption is simply false. Our situation is such that one country, the United States, with 10% of the world’s population, consumes around 25% of all the world’s available energy. Another block of countries with around the same fraction of the world’s population, the European Union, consumes around 20% of all the world’s energy. So the problem is not how many of us there are; the problem is the way consumer demand is unjustly distributed. Thus if the world’s population was much smaller, but there were a few countries whose demand for consumer goods was very high, then we could have a worse environmental problem, not a solved problem. The real problem with pollution and resource depletion is the nature and the distribution of economic demand. To reduce it down to the stupidly simplistic problem of population is to dress up a hatred of humanity in the fine clothes of environmental care.

For the sake of the earth, and for the sake of the flourishing of human life and culture too, we should do better.

.
Notes

1. “40% rise in world population by 2050” Associated Press 25 February 2005.

2. Mark Townsend and Jason Burke, “Earth will expire by 2050” The Observer 7 July 2002.

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Just for fun: Put a Pagan in the Papacy!

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Brendan

This morning, the news broke that Pope Benedict XIV is resigning, due to old age and poor health. Fair play to him for resolving what was, I am sure, a difficult decision.

After I heard the news, I posted the following on my Twitter feed, just for a laugh:

The College of Cardinals can vote for any baptized man to be the next #Pope. Therefore, I hereby announce my candidacy. #PopeResigns

Followed a short while later by this bit of improbable silliness:

Dear #CatholicChurch: If you would like me to renounce the Goddess and return to the Church, please elect me the next #Pope.

This prompted my good friend J.D. Hobbes, who for several years now has jokingly referred to himself as the Pagan Pope, to post this:

Hobbes / @jdhobbes
What the Vatican needs is a person who understands diversity and common sense. Vote for me: the Pagan Pope. #PutAPaganInThePapacy

Well I just loved the hashtag. And so whenever I had a spare minute or two during the work day, I posted some silly campaign tweets. Much to my surprise, they got a lot of attention, some of which from “interesting” directions. And so, in case you missed them, here they are:

Mead & steak instead of bread and wine! Saint Sophia & Mother Mary the equals of Christ! Evolution taught in schools!

Original blessing instead of original sin! Personal empowerment instead of perpetual penance! Love your gay neighbour!

A campaign to name & shame the privileged of the world, when they “grind the faces of the poor” (Isaiah 3:15)

Francis of Assisi and Teresa of Avila made official Second Christs! Westboro Baptist Church named official idiots!

By this time they were being spread on Twitter and FB rather more widely than my stuff normally gets spread. By chance I noticed an article on io9.com in which scientists observed flying squid, so I posted this tweet:

Scientists find squids can fly. Therefore, maybe I have a chance to be elected #Pope after all!

One mustn’t pass over such a thing in silence, you know.

At about this time, the comments included offers to design campaign badges for me, and some said they would wear those badges at Pantheacon. And my friend Celeste created this campaign poster for me:

bren pagan pope

And the campaign was in full swing!

And feeling emboldened, I started to deliberately include some barely veiled political commentary (as if I hadn’t been doing that all along)

Want female priests? Women’s reproductive rights affirmed? More comfortable benches in your church? Vote for me and #PutAPaganInThePapacy

Want a Church whose chief weapons are fear? Surprise? Ruthless efficiency? An almost fanatical devotion to-nevermind.

Drinking horns instead of brass chalices! The Bible in Theban Script! #PutAPaganInThePapacy and let’s build creepy gothic cathedrals again.

Doreen Valiente canonized a saint! Pascal’s Wager applied to hundreds of gods! Vote Brendan for the new #Pope, and #PutAPaganInThePapacy

Heal the sick. Feed the hungry. Shelter the poor. Love the earth. Dance the music! #PutAPaganInThePapacy Isaiah 58:6-8, Matt 25:34-40

Made in the Image of God (Genesis 1:26) Thou art God! Thou Art Goddess! (PaganTestament §63) Vote for me for #Pope and #PutAPaganInThePapacy

Let’s build a church across the road from the NYSE to remind them that usury and bearing false witness are still sins.

A tree in every garden! A chicken in every pot! A Buddy Jesus statue in every church! #PutAPaganInThePapacy, let’s make it happen!

When I am elected #Pope of the #CatholicChurch, I will hire Omnia to play at the inaguration. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKwVGqXM8u4

Yes, Jesus loves you. But Aphrodite loves you the way you really want to be loved.

I don’t seriously expected to be elected Pope. I would be hugely surprised if an actual Vatican official even noticed these at all. I am only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all. But if anyone more important than me did happen to notice them, I hope he or she would join in the fun. Cheers!

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The Will to Dwell in an Enchanted World

Posted on February 8, 2013 by Brendan

Let’s look upon the world with new eyes. Let’s listen to things with different ears. Let’s ask some unquestions and dig for nonanswers. We have learned that the worship of the gods is not what matters. But why did we go looking for the gods in the first place? Who were we hoping to meet? What were we hoping to learn? What treasures did we hope to find in the earth, and what mana did we hope to receive from heaven? And what offerings did we give, and what rituals did we enact, in the hope of buying such boons?

To put my question more precisely: why do so many sober and sensible people believe in magic, the gods, the afterlife, and so on? Why do such ideas continue to hold us? Well, they might hold us because they might be true. But the question is pressing because we now possess a veritable mountain of sound and solid ways to explain the world without recourse to the supernatural. In almost every historical disagreement between science and religion, science eventually won. But religion did not crawl away defeated. And that is what prompts my question.

Back in 2008 I published a book called “A Pagan Testament” which included a collection of wisdom teachings, which I gathered from an informal folklore survey that I conducted in the previous year. (And by the way, it’s still the largest collection of wisdom teachings in print, to this day.) Some of the wisdom teachings seemed to me to ‘hang together’ in a kind of extended discourse, like a ‘Charge’ in the style of the Charge of the Goddess. Here is one of them, having to do with the laws of magic:

§ 92. Knowledge is power.
§ 93. As above, so below.
§ 94. As within, so without.
§ 95. All things return to their source.
§ 96. For good or ill, all things return in threes.
§ 97. Like attracts like.
§ 98. All things entail their own opposite.
§ 99. Once connected, always connected.
§ 100. To name something is to know it, and to have power over it.
§ 101. Whatever is willed, will be.
§ 102. If it works, us it; if it works, it is true.

And here is another having to do with “The Mystery”

§ 63. Thou Art Goddess! Thou Art God!
§ 72. What a great miracle is Man!
§ 77. As man is now, so the gods once were. As the gods are now, so man may some day become.
§ 78. There is no part of you that is not of the gods
§ 84. If that which you seek, you find not within, you will never find it without.
§ 137. Goddess is alive! Magick is afoot!
§ 162. I am the Earth, and the Earth is Me.

And here’s one having to do with “The Path”:

§ 142. The path is not meant to be easy; the path is not for everyone; the path is for the few.
§ 143. Treat all experiences of hardship, frustration, and suffering as learning experiences. Learning is a form of healing.
§ 144. The path is a learning path, a healing path, and a magical path.
§ 145. The path is not a religion. It is a way of life.
§ 146. The path is the same for all, but each must walk it in her own way.
§ 147. There are many paths, but they all lead to the same destination.
§ 148. Pass on what you have learned; but always in accord with each person’s ability to understand.
§ 149. You can’t pour anything into a cup that is already full.
§ 150. Do not serve your best wine to drunkards.
§ 151. The Craft is a tough weed that will grow many strange flowers and bear strange fruits, so we must try and tolerate different ways of practicing it. Learn from what we see and if we cannot use it, let the others try, even if they eat bad fruit and go balls up! (Victor Anderson)
§ 152. The path is a style of love that demands treading very, very softly and kindly through life, because life is a precious, short, amazing gift. (Monica Becker)

The § numbers, by the way, refer to a referencing system I used in the book. I was rather hoping the system would become a kind of standard for other researchers besides myself, but the idea seems not to have caught on. Oh well.

Now what do these teachings really mean? Of course, on the surface, they mean exactly what they say they mean. Basic propositions can always be taken at face value. But to what world-view do they belong? What must one presuppose in order to find them acceptable? What more and what else might follow from those presuppositions? And does the world view they proclaim make sense? And if yes, then why? And if not, then why not?

Here’s the possibility which, this evening as I contemplate it, I find the most reasonable. In various ways, each of these teachings asserts the will to dwell in an enchanted world.

I’ll have to leave to another day a discussion of what I think it means to dwell in an enchanted world – tonight’s blog post is long enough. But I’m also curious to see whether others might reach a similar conclusion – or a different one. And I’m curious to see what the idea of an enchanted world might mean to others. Let’s start a dialogue about the things that truly matter, beyond the relativism of the pagan party line. Leave your comments in the space below, or on your own blog, or your favourite social network, and let’s talk!

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The worship of the gods is not what matters

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Brendan

“The sacred, I shall say, is that which acts as your partner in the search for the highest and deepest things: the real, the true, the good, and the beautiful.”
— Circles of Meaning, Labyrinths of Fear

I don’t normally see omens or other messages from the gods in the way many other pagans say they do. I’m not especially interested in ritual or magic or spellcraft. I do not sense auras, I do not feel the energies, I do not read tarot cards or cast the runes. In fact, around ten years ago or so, I hit upon one of the most liberating and life-changing propositions ever to have entered my mind, which is that the worship of the gods is not what matters. What, then, am I still doing in the pagan community? And if the worship of the gods isn’t what matters, then what does?

People and relationships matter. The earth matters. Life, yours and mine, matters. Art, music, culture, science, justice, knowledge, history, peace, and any other similar thing which enriches your relationships with the world and with people, also matter. The extent to which life is worth living matters. Death, yours and mine, matters. And thinking about these things is what matters too.

My path is the path of a philosopher, and it is a spiritual path. It’s about finding answers to the highest and deepest questions that face humankind, and finding those answers by means of my own intelligence. It’s about not waiting for the word to come down from anyone else, not society, not parents, not politicians or governments, not teachers, not religion, not even the gods. In that sense it is a humanist activity, but it is an activity which elevates ones humanity to the highest sphere. That is what matters. This was the path of all the greatest philosophers through history. It was the path of the great pagan predecessors like Hypatia and Diotima and Plato; and also the path of more recent predecessors like James Frazer and Robert Graves. This is the path of knowledge; and knowledge is enlightenment, and knowledge is power.

Some people, and some religious groups, might see that as hubris. But I see it as humanity’s true calling. I’ve been working for decades to create a philosophical world view which is rigorously rational but at the same time recognizably spiritual, uplifting, accessible to anyone, and genuinely helpful. If I have crafted it well, it will be my legacy. (Although I also want to buy land on which to build a temple. But that’s another story.)

This shouldn’t be controversial, but it is. Last year, a number of individuals made a very uncharitable interpretation of a throwaway comment of mine, and concluded that I was somehow disparaging them personally. Some even demanded my forcible removal from the pagan community. So let’s look again at the statement “the worship of the gods is not what matters”. It is not the same as the statement “the gods do not exist”. It says that whether the gods exist or do not exist, I shall have other primary concerns. For there are other things that matter too – and some of those other things matter more. And some of those other things which matter more are sacred things. And some of those sacred things which matter more are things to do with the human realm: such as friendship, justice, and integrity. Thus the path is a humanist path, yet also a spiritual path.

Suppose the gods do exist. Then relate to them the same way you might relate to anybody else. There’s a form of meditation that I still do once in a while, perhaps not often enough, in which I contemplate a certain Celtic goddess whom I shall not name here. My view of Herself is strongly pantheist, and as I see it speaking of Herself and speaking of the earth is almost the same thing. She also personifies certain moral values and certain relationships that I think are important. There’s a bowl on top of one of my bookshelves into which I pour an offering to Herself every time I have beer or wine in the house. And in turn, I like to imagine that She looks after me. But if you think about it, that’s a very minimalist kind of religious practice. There’s no casting of circles, no raising of energies, no chanting and no invocations. There’s just me, doing my thing, and talking to Herself once in a while.

But in my relationship with Herself, I do not bow. I do not obey. I do not ‘worship’. Perhaps this is one of the last remaining strands of my Catholic upbringing, but to me the word ‘worship’ means absolute unquestioning affirmation of the authority of the deity. I’ll not have that in my life. If you are wise, neither will you. The gods, if they exist, are just the people who happen to live on the other side. And they shall be friends to me, or strangers to me, the same as any of you.

I was initiated into the 1st degree of a certain lineage of Alexandrian Wicca. I’ve also followed the Druidic path, co-founded a Druidic community called The Order of the White Oak, and in 2001 I even followed the Druidic path back to Ireland. I have been a member of the pagan community for more than twenty years. So I’m not coming to this as a dilettante, or a dabbler. I was once offered my second degree but we never could find a time to do the ritual, and noting came of it. But that’s okay. Now all I really want to do in the pagan community is write books, talk about the ideas in them, play guitar, help out at events, and “dance sing feast make music and love” with good people. I want to help create a spiritual culture that is intellectually inquiring, artistically flourishing, environmentally aware, and socially just.

And that, also, is what matters.

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One of my best friends died today.

Posted on January 25, 2013 by Brendan

It is not the first time in my life that someone important to me has died. But for some reason, the news of the death of my friend Jane Estelle Tromblay is affecting me very deeply. Jane and I were lovers for a long time. We shared the healthiest, most empowering, fulfilling, fun, and most loving relationship of my life. It ended when I moved to Ottawa in 2009, in pursuit of a job opportunity (which turned out not to be real). She eventually married another man, and shortly after their wedding she was diagnosed with cancer. It occurred to me this year, not long after she told me about her cancer, that I was pulled away so that her husband could arrive – he is a medical professional with the Canadian Forces and therefore much better able to care for her than I could have been. I am sure he is feeling the loss much worse than I am. But Jane and I remained close and saw each other as often as we could. When she died, she was at home, with people who loved her nearby.

In one of the conversations we had this summer, she was describing another friend of hers who died around that time from a similar kind of cancer, and how much she did not want to hear the phrase “Your friend is in a better place now”. Paraphrasing from memory, this is what she said:

I hate it when people say “She’s in a better place now”. Because this world is the better place! Not some other world. This world, with is flowers and trees and mountains and things. This world, with all its people, living their lives, sharing friendship and love and happiness together. This is the world I want to live in! Not some abstract heaven. This world!”

I think some part of her soul was telling me how I should think of her now that she is dead. And, I think some part of Herself was telling me a home truth about what really matters.

Friends, go right now to the people you love and tell them you love them. Don’t wait until you are home from work. Get on the phone, get in your car, or board a bus or a train or whatever it takes. Don’t wait until the person you love most is buried and gone. That could happen as soon as tomorrow. So go and tell your friends and lovers what wonderful people they are, and do some work of generosity for them. Do it today. Do it now.

Jane and Bren
Photo: Myself and Jane at the Hamilton PPD after-party, 2008.

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Bren’s Adventures in Self Publishing

Posted on January 22, 2013 by Brendan

In January of last year, I decided that my “theme” for 2012 would be “the year that I re-invent myself.” And I decided to use self-publishing to do it.

Back in the last months of 2011, I re-opened a novel that I started writing back in 2004 and finished in 2006; by early 2012 it was in a shape that I felt comfortable showing to the world. And so, with the help and encouragement of a few friends, I published “Fellwater” – and I became a fiction writer. Then in October I published a sequel, called “Hallowstone”.

Also in 2011, I invented a social strategy game, for use as an exercise in a course on theories of social justice which I teach at the college. Most of my students really liked it, and some encouraged me to write it up and publish it. So in 2012 I wrote it up, created an expanded edition, hired an artist, and published it under the name “Iron Age – Council of the Clans”. I also published an essay on the philosophy of soft power gaming. And so I became a strategy game designer.

Those were fun projects. In some ways they brought me back to interests that I followed when I was a teenager, but which I set aside in my mid 20’s for lots of complicated reasons.

But those projects also showed me how time consuming and expensive self publishing can be. So for another self-publishing project, I turned to a web-based fundraising company called Kickstarter, and I raised almost $17,000 from more than 700 supporters to create “Clear and Present Thinking”, a college-level textbook in logic and critical reasoning. This project was also driven by the observation that college textbooks are way too expensive, and students just don’t have the money for them anymore. That project is now in post-production; and when it is released I’ll be able to add “logician” and “social media campaign manager” to my growing CV. And the final text will be offered to the world, electronically for free, and in print for the lowest possible price.

But I think the biggest lesson I learned from these self-publishing projects is this one. Self-publishing is giganormously time-consuming! And I am just one man, not a company, and I have a day job as a professor, so I have to work on these projects in my free time, of which I have very little (because I’m a professor, which means I’m at work basically all the time). And although these projects were very rewarding personally, they also involved a lot of material effort, for surprisingly little material return, so far.

Regarding the novels: I listed my book with Amazon’s KDP Select program, which allows me to create free giveaway events, and also offers me a royalty whenever readers “borrow” an e-book from their virtual lending library service. I ran a two-day freebie for Fellwater in the spring, and listed it on two websites which advertise such events. Around 12,000 people downloaded the book in 48 hours. I was thrilled! But the purpose of such freebie events is to hopefully generate reader reviews, and sales in the weeks to follow. Almost all the reviews which followed were positive, but a number of readers identified proofreading errors, and that hurt the book’s popularity.

In fact I did hire a proofreader to check both books for spelling and grammar errors, typos, and continuity errors. (These things appear easily enough when doing a lot of copy/pasting of text during the final editing phase.) But I gave the editing job to a fellow who offered to do it for $300 per book, and to return the text to me after less than a week. Which he did. But he did a seriously shoddy job: he even introduced new errors into the text! A ‘fixed’ version of Fellwater is now up on Amazon, although it still might have a few mistakes in it anyway because I did the second round of proofreading myself. And I am negotiating with a new editor to work on Hallowstone.

Furthermore, in the six weeks that followed, my royalties from actual sales of Fellwater amounted to about $250, and after eight weeks sales had dwindled to about nine or ten copies a month. In December, I ran a three-day freebie event for Hallowstone, and listed it on a dozen websites which publicize such events. But this time only around 3,300 people downloaded the book, and six weeks later my royalties for sales of both novels came to about $100. The reviews were very good, but again, it felt like a lot of work for very little material return.

The lesson: next time I do a self-publishing project, I won’t do it mostly alone, as I did these ones. I’ll assemble a team of friends to help me, especially with publicity. As mentioned, I’ve a really good day job, and I don’t have the time to do that publicity work alone. I could, I suppose, quit that day job, and do writing and promotions full time. But that would be a very big risk. I’ve seen what the job market is like for academics these days, and I’m convinced that if I quit my job as a professor, I’ll never work in the academy ever again.

Regarding “Clear and Present Thinking”: my biggest problem there occurred near the end of the production process when one of the people collaborating with me to write the text had to leave the project. I can’t hold it against him: he left because his wife was pregnant, and it is clearly morally right for him to care more about his wife and child than about my textbook. (They’ve had their baby now, by the way. A girl!) But the practical consequence for me was that I had to recruit new collaborators, and scale down the nature of the project somewhat. And it also made me late with the delivery of the rewards for my Kickstarter backers. I informed them of the situation as it developed, as honestly and as completely as I could. They have been very forgiving. 85% of KStart backer rewards are delivered late anyway, one of them told me. I am very grateful for their patience. But I still feel a little bit chagrined that the project didn’t turn out exactly as I had hoped. Next time, I will be much better able to estimate the time and the costs of a crowd-funded project.

After all these experiences, I am now convinced of the following: The self-published books which become hugely popular and which make millions of dollars for their authors are of two types:

– Books which are promoted for years by a professional publicity team hired by the author, and
– Books which get lucky.

Note that it has nothing to do with the book’s quality. Good books don’t sell themselves on quality alone. And bad books can be promoted widely and can get lucky too. I feel confident in the quality of my books, but when it’s late at night and I haven’t had a human conversation with anyone for a week, I end up worrying that they’re not selling because they suck. Maybe they do, and maybe they don’t; but in either case, self-publishing makes it harder to keep myself confident in my own skills!

Actually, that self-doubt also makes me work harder to produce better quality books. Writing philosophy, whether as fiction or nonfiction, is my calling, after all. You could say it’s my way of making love to Herself.

So, what have I planned for the future? I’ve got another strategy game in the works, and a third novel is planned for The Fellwater Tales. I’ll probably self publish those too, although I have been sending queries for my novels to literary agents who accept modern fantasy. (If you know one, or if you are one, let’s talk!)

I also have two nonfiction projects planned. One is very close to completion; the other is still a pile of handwritten notes. I will continue to work with Moon Books / John Hunt Publishing for my nonfiction.

And, I might assemble a team of people around me to help with the publicity. Because I don’t have enough money to hire a professional publicist. And even if I did quit my day job to be my own publicist full-time, it would be irrational to count on luck and my own effort alone. And I would want those team-mates to prosper as well, and to share in whatever rewards the effort returns. So watch this space. Plans are being planned. Schemes are being schemed. Opportunities may soon opportune. I’ve re-invented myself, and I’m about to do so again. Here we go!

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Review of Autumn Violets by Nuala Reilly.

Posted on January 19, 2013 by Brendan

“Autumn Violets” by Nuala Reilly is a romance novel about the long and measured courtship of Moira and Jack, the former a small bakery owner, and the latter an advertising designer. Both of them begin with cynical attitudes towards relationships. Moira’s most recent partner was unfaithful, and Jack seems to prefer short lived flings and one night stands. Yet both of them are also enduring a crisis in their private lives. In Moira’s case, the crisis is her sister Sloan’s upcoming wedding, and for much of the novel Sloan is a demanding Bridezilla who creates stress for everyone around her. Jack’s crisis is his father Kevin, who is suffering from cancer, and who may have only a few weeks to live. The story is about how Moira and Jack find in each other a rock of stability.

The courtship is in many ways understated. There are few outstanding obstacles preventing Moira and Jack from getting together, other than their own hesitation. While they have reasons for hesitating, still those reasons didn’t have to do with each other: they have to do with doubts about the value of relationships in general. At times it seems as if the crisis in each of their lives drives them to seek each other out, in search of the love they’re not finding elsewhere. But at other times it appears as if the crisis in each of their lives is really happening to other people, not to them. Moira’s crisis is happening to her sister, and Jack’s crisis is happening to his father. Thus the tension in their lives is mainly with third parties, not with each other. For this reason the sub-plots about those tensions with third parties often became curiously more interesting than the main plot. That the two of them should eventually fall in love is almost a foregone conclusion. Jack is handsome, accomplished, and generous, but he’s no Mr. Darcy: he has rather few ambiguous features. Even his love for his dying father is uncomplicated: he is in need of healing, but he’s not in need of a change of attitude. And Moira, although criticized by her friends for her domineering streak, isn’t often seen dominating anyone. For the most part we see her at work in her bakery, where she enjoys complete life-fulfillment, and we also see her trying to stoically survive her sister’s egotism, or put away the pain from her previous relationship. Moira and Jack are already perfect for each other; they just take their time discovering that fact.

There’s a cinematic quality to the scenes in which our two heroes spend time together. For instance, when they first meet they accidentally spill coffee or baking ingredients on each other, and use those accidents as a starting place for a shared history. As their attraction to each other grows, the author paints pictures of the moment: but the descriptions of these moments are often minimalist, and it feels like the reader is asked to visualize the scene on their own. In one place, for instance, a scene is described as “like a Marx brothers movie”. (There are several places where it feels as if the author is writing a screenplay, not a novel.) And sometimes the author will describe in detail things that have little direct relation to the plot, such as the problems that resulted when Moira hired workers just after first opening her bakery. But at other times, when the two characters go out on a date together after a day of stress in their separate lives, its easy to fall into the feeling of the moment. There’s a lovemaking scene during a storm which is enjoyably steamy; and there’s a dialogue between Moira and Jack’s father which is perhaps the most artfully crafted scene in the whole novel. The only trouble is that the moments which are easiest to visualize are the ones having to do with the sub-plots.

Overall, there’s an honesty and a simplicity about Jack and Moira’s courtship which I think is admirable. Love happens to our protagonists as they slowly and almost timidly reveal their wounds to each other, and heal each other. I can’t think of a better way for love to grow.

And here’s a last comment for the trivia buffs out there. Author Nuala Reilly is my sister, and the events of “Autumn Violets” take place in the same town where I set the action of my novels. We just disguise the town under different names. Let the literary tours begin!

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Some thoughts about Chief Theresa Spence

Posted on January 4, 2013 by Brendan

People do not go on hunger strikes for fun. Keep that in mind as you read the following.

Today I visited Victoria Island, in the Ottawa River. That is the place where Chief Theresa Spence, of the Attawapiskat First Nation, is holding a hunger strike to protest against a huge long list of ways that the government has neglected and harmed her people over many decades. As you may know, Spence has stated she will end her strike if Prime Minister Stephen Harper, or Governor General David Johnston, comes to meet her to discuss Aboriginal people’s various grievances.

This morning, a friend of mine sent me a list of material things that they needed: food, water, fuel, warm winter clothes, and the like: so I packed a shopping bag with some winter clothes I wasn’t using anyway, and bought some food, and some tobacco for offerings, and set out for the island. It’s only seven kilometres from my apartment, so I can’t make the excuse that it’s too far away. Curiously, the route to get there from my house takes me past our national Parliament and the Supreme Court – symbols of my country which I usually admire, but which today looked strange to me.

I have to admit to feeling a little bit of nervousness, for I’m told that Victoria Island is Anishnabe territory (In whole or in part, I’m not sure) so going there felt a little bit like visiting a place which is – how shall I put it? – part of my country, but not my land. I’ve entered First Nations reserves before and often had that feeling, but given the political event taking place on the island, I was feeling it more so today. Still, I had read a lot on the internet about Chief Spence’s hunger strike, and although I was sure that most of what I read was factual, still I suspected that there was more to the story. For any event like this, there’s always four or five points of view. So I wanted to find out for myself.

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When I arrived, a tall Native gentleman at the gate told me it’s okay to just walk in. I found myself in a wide area enclosed by a wooden snow fence, containing two tents, a lean-to, and a wooden shed. Two fires were burning, to offer warmth: one for the community in general, and a sacred fire for the elders and those who wanted to pray. Around forty people were milling about, including four television crews: one from Sun TV, one from APTN, and two cameras from CTV. I got the impression that everyone was waiting for the arrival of some dignitary, at which time a press conference would follow. That’s why, I think, nobody said hello to me. It’s also likely that no one said hello because no one had any idea who I was. I eventually asked someone where I could bring my donations, and how to offer my tobacco to Chief Spence. I did not expect to meet her in person, of course; eventually I was directed to a gentleman who agreed to take my offering to her on my behalf.

In all, I stayed for about an hour and a half, and although I would like to have spoken with more people, I’m glad that I did something more than just share slogans on the internet.

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Hunger striking is a difficult kind of protest, not just for the obvious reason that it threatens the health of the person on strike. It only works when the person being protested against can be induced to feel shame. Can the Prime Minister be induced to feel shame? I don’t know. At the moment, I suspect Harper is betting that she will give up. He is perhaps thinking to himself that Spence has made her own choice to go on a hunger strike, and that choice has nothing to do with him. Which I think is only half-true: Spence certainly made her own choice, but I think she felt that she had no other remaining choice before her, apart from giving up. (More about that point below.) And additionally, Harper is, after all, the leader of my country, and aside from the Queen he’s ultimately responsible for the treaty relations between Aboriginal people and Canada.

Harper may also be betting that if he agrees to meet Chief Spence, a wave of other hunger-strikers will demand his attention, and he will end up having to cater to all of them. An impossible situation, to be sure: but notice the logic of the slippery slope fallacy here.

Of course, I don’t really know what Harper is thinking, but the line of thought I’ve just described tends to be favoured by those against whom a hunger strike is mounted. So I think it’s a reasonable guess.

The point is that Chief Spence will win if Harper can be induced to feel shame, and if that sense of shame overcomes whatever other reasons he may have for refusing to visit her – before Chief Spence succumbs to starvation.

This visit to Victoria Island also got me thinking about the virtue of courage again. Is Chief Spence’s protest courageous? I have only a partial idea of what courage means to Aboriginal people; but in my own spiritual and philosophical tradition, a thing is courageous when it involves facing danger for the sake of a noble cause. So, I’ll speak to that understanding. Is her protest dangerous? It’s clear the answer is yes: she’s facing extremely cold nights (it was -25C last night) in a tent, public derision and ridicule and racist hate-speech in the media, and obviously she’s facing her own death from starvation. I think there’s likely to be no disagreement on that point.

Is her cause noble? That is the big question, because I think that if the answer is ‘yes’, then other people may be honour-bound to support her.

Some may say her cause is not noble, because her Nation was given $90 million for development, and she and others in her community benefit financially from government spending quite generously. (Info here.) That’s a talking-point regularly repeated by government spokespersons. She should be satisfied with that. Actually, her community did not receive that much money at all, and here’s the proof (link here.) An associate of mine, who was an eyewitness to this fact, told me that when the housing crisis was first proclaimed in Attawapiskat in 2010, Chief Spence gave up her own house to other families in need, and lived in a tent just like hundreds of other needy people in her community.

Some may say her cause is not noble because the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs has offered to meet her in Harper’s stead, and furthermore Harper already met prominent Aboriginal leaders last year in an unprecedented conference, and that should be good enough. Actually, Spence already met the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs a few months ago, with no result, and the aforementioned conference also produced absolutely no results either.

What else could Chief Spence have done other than go on a hunger strike? And the answer is, nothing that she had not already tried. She’s had meetings of every kind with all sorts of government people. She’s had media conferences all along as well – which are mostly ignored, because the mass media tends to marginalize Aboriginal people and their problems. She’s had the authority to run her community’s budget forcibly taken away from her (that’s what the third-party manager business was all about) for what turned out to be improper reasons. (link here.)

It’s also worth noting that Attawapiskat gets almost nothing from that nearby diamond mine: this independent documentary film presented the evidence. (Trailer on YouTube here.)

The deeper you dig, the more you learn that she’s done every peaceful and non-confrontational act available to her. I won’t claim to read her mind, but I think it’s safe to say that she now thinks that this hunger strike is the only remaining choice open to her – again, other than giving up in despair.

People do not go on hunger strikes for fun. And now she has around 72 hours left.

A noble cause is a cause which aims to achieve intrinsically worthwhile goals – goals that reach beyond personal self-interest and which benefit and uplift everyone affected, regardless of who they are. The goal Chief Spence is aiming for is social justice. Far too many reserves in Canada are effectively shantytowns – I have seen this with my own eyes – and this, it seems to me, is outrageously unjust, given that Canada is one of the richest nations in the world. Indeed the litany of injustices heaped upon First Nations people is so long it’s embarrassing. But the current list injustices which Chief Spence is emphasizing, to be short about them, have to do with recent Acts of Parliament which infringe upon Aboriginal treaty rights, without consultations with First Nations people.

Surely social justice is an intrinsically worthwhile goal! Social justice, when it’s done right, benefits and uplifts everyone. And if someone says it’s not, well, what can be said in reply?

Of course, I know there’s lots of disagreement about what exactly social justice is. But surely you get the point. Let’s not miss the haystack as we go looking for needles.

Why give treaty-based precedence the First Nations, then, instead of any other ethnic group in Canada’s multicultural world? Here’s what I think. Of all the many social groups which comprise Canada’s social fabric, the First Nations, the Metis and the Inuit have a special place in our identity. They gave to “us”, the visitors on this land and their descendants, a gift so precious and so valuable it’s likely that nothing we could give them in return could possibly compensate them. That gift was the land on which this country was built. Without one or two other ethnic groups in our history, we would have a different country, for better or worse; without the First Nations, we would have no country at all. Therefore, Canada has special responsibility, it seems to me, partly arising from the various treaties which the Crown signed with the First Nations, but also arising from the ‘economy of honour’ that surrounds gifts of that magnitude. Canada’s moral obligation, at minimum, to ensure that the living standards of First Nations people are at least as good as that of the average middle-class non-native Canadian person – and that’s not impossible, and that’s perhaps only the least of what Canada should do.

To achieve that standard of living for your nation, when it has been systematically denied your nation, seems to me an obviously noble cause.

As a final comment, may I speak to my companions in the modern pagan movement. Can any of you imagine any modern pagan leader who would risk his or her health and life for a similarly noble cause? I don’t just mean the comparatively abstract things like the right to worship whatever god you wish, in whatever way you wish. I mean the comparatively basic things like the right to eat, to drink clean water, or to dwell in a safe and warm home. What are the undeniably noble causes for which we could stand up and be courageous? Not just the causes which might benefit ourselves – but the ones which might benefit everyone. And who among us could show such courage? Does our community have sufficient moral unity to act with the kind of courage that Chief Spence is demonstrating today? I’m not asking this rhetorically. I really want to know. To that last question, I want the answer to be ‘yes’. But I fear the answer might be ‘no’. What do you think? And what are you going to do?

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