+++True, but some of us have more options than others in being able experience certain things. My own in regard to exploring the existence of ghosts, ufo and strange entities is particularly limited. So basically I can only rely on those who do share their experiences and are able to provide me [and others] with an actual accumulation of evidence able to demonstrate that these things exist.+++
To be honest, I doubt if there’s anything that anyone could say that would convince you.
+++Well, my question is how certain can you be about Paganism when recognizing that there was always the possibility it would never have been a part of your life at all; and in recognizing that new experiences might convince you to abandon it altogether? You can think that it has made you a “moral person” but there are many, many people who are on completely different paths – hundreds of them – who are just as adamant that it is their path which makes someone a moral person.+++
I’m not sure what you mean by how certain I am about Paganism. I’m as certain about Paganism as I am about anything else that my senses tell me. Paganism is not a belief system, but rather, a way of interacting with the world.
+++And that with Paganism, it’s the same Mother Nature [and maybe the same God/Goddess] resulting in moral convictions that can be very much in conflict. I just have trouble wrapping my head around how you acquire a strong sense of moral rectitude when there are so many variables out there that could have led you, can lead you, might lead you to so many different paths instead.+++
While Paganism has certainly influenced my morality I like to think that I would be a pretty moral person anyway. Paganism is not an essential factor in making someone a good person, and probably isn’t even sufficient to do so.
+++I can only react to your posts as I do. I don’t think that I am consciously attempting to be antagonistic and accusatory. But there it is: my own spontaneous, subjective reaction to what I construe to be answers from you that don’t seem [to me] to be nearly as thought out as I was hoping for.
Though, sure, if you sincerely believe that my reactions to you is the actual problem here [and it may well be], we may be not be able to move beyond that. Lots of people here have problems with my posts so, yeah, I may well be the obstacle to better communication. But I am also inclined to think that the reaction of others here to a philosophy like mine revolves in turn around their discomfort that my “I” in the is/ought world, may be applicable to them as well.+++
While I wouldn’t want to speak for anyone else, I can assure you that I’m not in the least bit disturbed by the idea that I might come round to your way of thinking, because I know it’s not going to happen.
+++“In your nature” in the manner in which, say, Satyr might encompass it. That, in fact, genes trump memes and those that do become moral nihilists are somehow contradicting the “natural order of things”?
Is there some genetic predisposition that particular individuals have to eschew nihilism. It’s in your genetic code not to be?
That for you it is simply not possible that new experiences, new relationships or access to new information and knowledge can ever alter the deep down inside Real You?
In other words, you just know this in the same way that you just know that your own personal experience with nature makes you a “moral person”.
Okay, there is certainly no way in which I can argue [let alone demonstrate] that this is not correct. Only the future itself will either bear or not bear this out.+++
Well, from a strictly scientific point of view, yes, a person’s genetic make up can indeed decide whether they are predisposed to all sorts of character traits, including, one must assume, optimism and pessimism. And again, I think I would be a moral person anyway, regardless of my connection to nature.
+++…“I” am not anchored to one or another moral font such that I am obligated to ever and always do “the right thing” or risk offending my God or Goddess or guru or comrades or mates or anyone else who is said to show me “the way”. The one true path either to enlightenment on this of the grave or to immortality and salvation on the other side of it.+++
I’m not either. I do what I think is right because I want to, not because I feel obliged to.
+++And I’m “stuck” in my flat for health reasons that are “beyond my control”. And quite the contrary, the things that I do here are hardly “never doing anything”. The things that I do – philosophy, watching films, listening to music, reading books, exchanging emails with my virtual friends etc. – bring me enormous satisfaction.
Someone might just as well say that you are “stuck being blind”.+++
Someone might indeed say that, if they didn’t know me. Being “stuck” with being blind makes it sound like I’m somehow unhappy with it.
I think this is the first time, however, that you’ve mentioned that you have health issues, at least as far as I recall. May I ask what they are?
+++Okay, I hope it doesn’t come to that. I just know from vast experience over the years that my own philosophy of life often does disturb people. It’s not so much what I believe about identity, value judgments and political economy at particular existential junctures, as it is the concern that they might come to believe the same thing about their own now fully anchored Self. I meeting “I” for the first time and beginning to have doubts about just how solid their own sense of reality is.+++
I suspect it’s not your philosophy that annoys people, but your apparent over riding desire to convert them to it. That’s how it comes across, anyway.
+++Again, that’s your assessment of what I am doing here. My own assessment is considerably more complex and convoluted. And certainly more ambiguous. My “win/win” approach to these exchanges always takes into consideration both sides. Me coming up out of the hole because of something you convey to me or you coming down into it because of something I convey to you. Same with all the others here at ILP that I respect the intelligence of. Those like Bob and Felix and phyllo and pood and peter and zoots and Mr. Reasonable and Ierrellus.
Polemics aside of course.+++
Has your approach ever worked?
+++No, not at all. And certainly not here at ILP. As I note over and again, my interest in philosophy – and ILP is a philosophy venue – revolves around…
1] the question, “how ought one to live [morally] in a world awash in both conflicting goods and contingency, chance and change”?
2] connecting the dots between “morality here and now” and “immortality there and then”
3] the truly mysterious “Big Questions”: why something instead of nothing? why this something and not something else? Also things like determinism, solipsism, sim worlds, dream worlds, the actual possibility of a Matrix reality.
Okay, I try to imagine taking “correct” to all of the members of the community, and then noting how “for all practical purposes” their community could sustain itself in regard to all of the many, many moral issues in which each member on his or her own personal path comes to completely conflicting ethical convictions.
Again, what was crucial in the Wicker Man was us against him. What if it becomes us against us?+++
There is no unity of purpose in Paganism, and it is riven with countless factions all arguing against each other, but these arguments hardly ever centre around the sort of moral questions you are bringing up here. Probably because morality is regarded very much as a matter for the individual. As for connecting morality to the afterlife, I can safely say that I’ve never heard any Pagan talk in this way, nor read anything written by Pagans that mention it. A lot of Pagans (though probably a minority) don’t even believe in an afterlife, and of those that do, most would probably say that we can’t know for sure about it. Many accept the idea of reincarnation in some form, though it’s not regarded as something that needs to be escaped from, as in the Hindu or Buddhist concept of it, but rather, as a joyful thing. Your third point, about the nature and purpose of reality, is probably discussed a bit more than the others, but I’ve never heard anyone being dogmatic about it or arguing about it.
+++Okay, would you recommend one. Are you involved with one. That way I could come to them through you…and not as just someone out of the blue.
On the other hand, I’d probably feel uncomfortable interacting with them virtually only in order to question their beliefs. That’s not what most such communities form for. Many are like families and the last thing they want is an interloper among them.+++
It’s been some time since I’ve bothered with any of the Pagan networking forums and much prefer practicing on my own these days.
+++From my frame of mind there is not a human community on the face of the Earth that doesn’t deal with conflicting ethical opinions. And that is because conflicting ethical opinions often lead to conflicting behaviors that bring about very real consequences. To suggest that with Pagans this is somehow different doesn’t really answer my specific question of how this can even be possible.+++
It’s possible because Paganism is not an organised community. All of those issues are dealt with at group level, if at all.
+++They have to deal with situations in which members on their own personal paths with nature might come to opposite moral convictions in regard to abortion or gun ownership or gender roles or animal rights or the use of drugs or what constitutes criminal behavior or all the issues that revolve around human sexuality or what to teach kids or capitalism/socialism or where the individual stops and the community begins or issues of immigration…and all of the other moral and political conflagrations we hear about “on the news”.+++
Yes, as I said before, every group will have its own way of dealing with all these issues, including the option of not dealing with them. The leader of the Wiccan group I used to be in had strong views about abortion, for example. Gun ownership isn’t an issue in the UK, though. Gender roles are pretty important in many Pagan traditions, but not in others. Most Pagans would probably support the idea of animal welfare (to varying degrees), and while vegetarianism is more prevalent among Pagans than the general population, it certainly isn’t universal. Most Pagans have a relaxed attitude to soft drugs like cannabis, and smoking it is very common indeed at almost all Pagan events. I’ve tried it myself a couple of times but it did nothing for me except induce coughing fits. Some Pagans, however, are against the use of any artificial stimulants. As for sexuality, lesbian, gay and bisexual people are represented in Paganism to a greater degree than the general population, possibly because of the more accepting attitude of Pagans to that sort of thing. On the other hand, political issues such as capitalism or socialism are hardly ever touched upon. Most Pagans are probably fairly liberal, though there are also some far right groups too.
+++It would not seem [to me] that Pagans are exempt from the potential for turmoil of this sort.+++
One of the reasons I became disillusioned with going to Pagan events was because of all the gossip and backbiting. Pagans are people, and are not immune to acting like everyone else in the world. But the arguments don’t usually involve the issues you’ve brought up.