Pagan morality

[iambiguous]

Unfairness, however, from what point of view? Some insist it is clearly unfair to the unborn baby/clump of cells to abort it...to destroy it. While others insist it is clearly unfair to force women to give birth in a world where men never, ever have to confront their own unwanted pregnancies.

And, again, it's how you have come to think and to feel about this that I am still trying to understand. Though maybe I never will. Some here will fall back on Scripture...connecting the dots between that and God and Judgment Day. Others anchor their own set of assumptions in one or another deontological -- Kantian -- philosophical assessment. Some bring it all back to "biological imperatives" insisting that only the manner in which they understand Nature...counts?

Then those like me who are "fractured and fragmented"...drawn and quartered, tugged and pulled ambivalently in conflicting directions with respect to human morality.

I can only really judge what's fair, and what it isn't, based on my own feelings and instincts. Are these likely to be flawed in some way? Yes, absolutely, but I still think they're a far better guide than anything else available.

Indeed, and though some here might imagine I'm not being serious when stressing the part about finding a way up out of the hole I've dug myself down into, how could I not be? Would anyone else here like to belive that human existence is essentially meaningless and purposeless, that morality is fractured and fragmented, that death equals oblivion.

It goes without saying that there are many people who would dispute this, pointing to some ancient religious religious text as a more reliable source of wisdom, usually singling out just one among the many competing examples, and if this works for them, that's fine. I suppose it all boils down to individual temperament in the end.

It's fine for me too. On the other hand, it is anything but fine for those moral objectivists among us who anchor their own dogmas in "or else". In fact, that's the part I often come back to in regard to those like Satyr. I'm always after them to note how exactly people of color, women, gays, Jews, liberals etc., would fare in a community where they were in a position of power to enforce their own moral and political prejudices. As for temperament, where do "biological imperatives" end and "social constructs" begin?

Yes, that certainly seems reasonable to many. Unfortunately, for some of us, however, it doesn't make that part about oblivion go away. There's death philosophically and then there's death existentially. Then the part where each of us one by one embodies a set of circumstances such that death itself is either near or far. The closer we get to the abyss, in other words.

Think about it like this:

Suppose it was announced on the news that a huge asteroid had just been discovered. It will smash into the Earth and, if we can't divert it, it becomes the final extinction event of them all. Imagine then as we get closer and closer to the impact, we here at PN create a thread to discuss it. We are all going to die if the asteroid isn't stopped.

Imagine that discussion about death. We're all just a few months away from the impact. And the impact will kill each and every one of us. We're all in the same boat then, right? Whereas now some of us are considerably closer to it than others. And then those who wonder how on Earth someone can remain a Pagan when it is Nature itself that wipes out the human race.

I like to think that I would face it with calmness and dignity, and a sense of gratitude, even, for having been given the time I've already had. Well, that's what I *like* to think, anyway, but we never really know how we'll react to such a situation until it happens. I might be running around like a headless chicken instead, for all I know.

It's just that others here are able to sustain the belief that they would know precisely what to do: The Right Thing. And, more to the point [mine], it doesn't have to be the right thing at all. They merely have to believe that it is.

Until one day, for any number of profoundly problematic reasons, you don't like it anymore. Now, from my frame of mind [which may be entirely or largely incorrect], we are on the same page here in recognizing that, given the lives we live, any new experiences, new relationships and/or access to new information and knowledge can result in our changing our minds.

Just not about some things though, right? You are able to convince yourself "here and now" that there is a spiritual, natural, intuitive Intrinsic Self inside you that nothing can touch. The part, for those like me, deemed to be just one more psychological defense mechanism. It's less what some believe here, in my view, and more that they have been able to "comfort and console" themselves by at least being able to believe in something.

I think it's perfectly possible that I could change my opinions about anything, given time and changing circumstances. Perhaps extremely unlikely, though, for some things. But who knows what might happen? That's what makes life interesting.

Then it becomes a matter of any actual new experiences that you do have. Also, the existential parameters of any new relationships. And of course all the new information and knowledge you come upon. On the other hand, while this part can make life considerably more interesting, "contingency, chance and change" can sometimes spiral out of control and everything becomes very, very scary instead. Economic calamities, wars, pandemics, social upheavals, etc.

There's that old saying, "may you live in interesting times." On the other hand, how interesting?

So, what would seem crucial in any particular Pagan community is the extent to which "might makes right", "right makes might" or "moderation, negotiation and compromise" prevailed. In the Wicker Man it seemed [to me] to be a long-standing combination of a strong leader and a population that supported him...religiously?

Yes, all that would have to be decided by the founder of the community. Lord Summerisle, if you like, or rather, his grandfather, who set the whole thing up.

Of course, given my own set of philosophical assumptions, Lord Summerisle's value judgments are themselves no less rooted existentially in dasein.

Then this part:

"Summerisle explains that his grandfather developed strains of fruit trees that would prosper in Scotland's climate and encouraged the belief that the old gods would use the new strains to bring prosperity to the island among the pagan population. Due to the bountiful harvests, the island's other inhabitants gradually embraced paganism." wiki

Political economy in other words. Lord Summerisle, meet Karl Marx.

Of course, I can't say that I am. Though I suspect that were I born blind and lived my entire life unable to see, it wouldn't make the part about being "fractured and fragmented" go away. With all of us though there's the part where we are happy and then the part where we might be happier still. And of course, the thing about being around others is that what makes them happy might make us miserable.

Well, as you know, I'm very much a glass half full sort of person, and I don't believe I've ever suffered from what one might call depression, which is not to say that I've never been sad about anything, but that's a different thing altogether.

I used to be the glass half empty sort of person myself. Now, I'm the glass falling to the floor and shattering into a thousand pieces person. Philosophically, in other words. On the other hand, there are still many, many things I pursue with a passion in the interim. It's just that as the interim gets shorter and shorter, and oblivion looms larger and larger, it all becomes more and more "beyond my control".

I'm very familiar, however, with how it can affect people, some of the clients at work, for example, and it can be extremely debilitating. Sometimes I just want to shake them and tell them to snap out of it, but I don't actually do that, obviously. Instead I befriend them, and listen to them.

Not sure if we've discussed this before, but what exactly do you do "on the job"?

As for the extraordinary life of Helen Keller, I'm still blown away every time I watch the scene where for the first time she begins to grasp the connection between Annie Sullivan's finger signals and the world around her.

https://youtu.be/LTsRVYq9JOQ?si=VQxmNF3wwgamYqlp

Also, it makes me wonder how far we've come from the days of The Miracle Worker.

To be born deaf and blind in today's world...? Here's a thread about that at Quora:

https://www.quora.com/How-does-a-deaf-a ... -with-them

In any event, back to the part where you are still "out in the world" from day to day interacting with others. Back to the part, in other words, where as a result of this, you might bump into new experiences or relationships or points of view that do in fact put a few cracks -- dents -- in your moral philosophy.

Or, sure, maybe I will be the one going through all the changes. It's just that the more imploded your life becomes the less likelihood that can become a realistic option.

[Maia]

+++Then it becomes a matter of any actual new experiences that you do have. Also, the existential parameters of any new relationships. And of course all the new information and knowledge you come upon. On the other hand, while this part can make life considerably more interesting, "contingency, chance and change" can sometimes spiral out of control and everything becomes very, very scary instead. Economic calamities, wars, pandemics, social upheavals, etc.

There's that old saying, "may you live in interesting times." On the other hand, how interesting?+++

The possibility that things might spiral out of control is a small price to pay, I think, compared to the alternative, a world in which nothing ever changes and there are no new experiences.

+++Of course, given my own set of philosophical assumptions, Lord Summerisle's value judgments are themselves no less rooted existentially in dasein.

Then this part:

"Summerisle explains that his grandfather developed strains of fruit trees that would prosper in Scotland's climate and encouraged the belief that the old gods would use the new strains to bring prosperity to the island among the pagan population. Due to the bountiful harvests, the island's other inhabitants gradually embraced paganism." wiki

Political economy in other words. Lord Summerisle, meet Karl Marx.+++

That's actually one of the cleverest parts about the film, in my opinion. They could so easily have gone down the lazy route of making the island a last hold out of ancient Paganism, surviving from pre-Christian times, but instead they explicitly made it a revival, just like the modern Pagan movement is in reality. And that's yet another aspect that was entirely lost on the makers of the Nick Cage version, in which, if I recall correctly, the women who ran the island were descended from a long line of witches who had migrated from England to Salem, Massachusetts, and then later from there to Washington State, or something like that.

+++I used to be the glass half empty sort of person myself. Now, I'm the glass falling to the floor and shattering into a thousand pieces person. Philosophically, in other words. On the other hand, there are still many, many things I pursue with a passion in the interim. It's just that as the interim gets shorter and shorter, and oblivion looms larger and larger, it all becomes more and more "beyond my control".+++

Well, to flog this metaphor just a little bit further, you need to get a new glass, and fill it up with a beverage of your choice.

+++Not sure if we've discussed this before, but what exactly do you do "on the job"?+++

I work for a company that's contracted by the local council to run an activity club for senior citizens at a leisure centre, which usually meets in the evening. One of the regular activities, for example, is wheelchair netball, and our job is to push the clients round the pitch, at their direction. Sometimes, when it's available, we're in the swimming pool, where we hold the clients up in the shallow end as they do exercises. Occasionally we have special events, such as last year when we had an all-day Christmas fun run, which involved pushing the clients round a 5km circuit of the local streets surrounding the leisure centre. There wasn't actually any running involved, though, just brisk walking, punctuated by stopping to cross roads. They always pair me with a sighted client, incidentally, for things like that, and the netball, though as I mentioned before, a lot of the clients, being elderly, are losing their sight. The most important part of what we do, however, is provide a reason for the clients to get out and socialise, and after the activities are done we always spend an hour or so in the cafe, chatting over a cup of tea and a bite to eat.

+++As for the extraordinary life of Helen Keller, I'm still blown away every time I watch the scene where for the first time she begins to grasp the connection between Annie Sullivan's finger signals and the world around her.

https://youtu.be/LTsRVYq9JOQ?si=VQxmNF3wwgamYqlp

Also, it makes me wonder how far we've come from the days of The Miracle Worker.

To be born deaf and blind in today's world...? Here's a thread about that at Quora:

https://www.quora.com/How-does-a-deaf-a ... -with-them+++

By all accounts Helen Keller had a very full and interesting life. Although we wouldn't be human if we didn't give a little instinctive shudder when thinking about that sort of thing, and I certainly wouldn't fault anybody for doing so, I can guarantee that that's not how she herself would have viewed it.

This actually leads onto an important issue. As I understand it, Helen Keller became blind and deaf as a result of meningitis when she was a baby. But let's imagine that her condition was congenital, and it was somehow diagnosed before she was born. Should she have been aborted? I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, my own condition was congenital, being born without functioning eyes and all, so should I have been aborted? You're a parent, so imagine a situation where you and your partner are told this, by the doctors at the hospital. What would you have done? Thankfully, in my case, bilateral anophthalmia is pretty difficult to detect with routine scans, so the question never arose, and so instead I presented my parents with a nice little surprise, that they definitely weren't expecting.

Anyway, sorry if that sounded a bit ranty. Just curious as to what you would have done. And just to lay my own cards on the table, if I was told that any child of mine was going to be born with some severe disability or abnormality, I would have to think very hard about what to do, despite my aversion to the idea of taking life, including abortion. And by severe disability I don't mean something like blindness, which, in my experience, is hardly a disability at all, and can best be described, at worst, as an occasional minor inconvenience.

+++In any event, back to the part where you are still "out in the world" from day to day interacting with others. Back to the part, in other words, where as a result of this, you might bump into new experiences or relationships or points of view that do in fact put a few cracks -- dents -- in your moral philosophy.

Or, sure, maybe I will be the one going through all the changes. It's just that the more imploded your life becomes the less likelihood that can become a realistic option.+++

Change is always possible, whatever one's circumstances. Change for the better.

[promethean75]

"I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, my own condition was congenital, being born without functioning eyes and all, so should I have been aborted?"

U had to drop that most dreadful of philosophical questions. One that's so heavy everyone avoids answering it because they're fucked no matter how they answer it. The nerve, Maia. Absolutely ruthless.

Okay fine. U wanna play it like that? I have a radical philosophical defense for anyone who would answer 'yes', then.

Saying that the early fetus Maia should be aborted to prevent a life of blindness makes the subject 'Maia' something different than the Maia here and now asking the question, and therefore, it can't be offensive. If somebody says 'Maia should have been aborted', they're talking about an old version that no longer exists, not the now living Maia asking the question. Taking offense to this reply would be illogical.

Additionally, one couldn't modify the question to be 'if u could go back in time and abort Maia' becuz that's one of those hypotheticals that could never happen.

So, it's too late for such questions, mate, and u will have to become a cute little old British lady one day draped by a wool scarf, drinking organic Wiccan tea, and telling stories about druid lore to a group of wide eyed but perfectly behaved fourth graders.

[Maia]

"I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, my own condition was congenital, being born without functioning eyes and all, so should I have been aborted?"

U had to drop that most dreadful of philosophical questions. One that's so heavy everyone avoids answering it because they're fucked no matter how they answer it. The nerve, Maia. Absolutely ruthless.

Okay fine. U wanna play it like that? I have a radical philosophical defense for anyone who would answer 'yes', then.

Saying that the early fetus Maia should be aborted to prevent a life of blindness makes the subject 'Maia' something different than the Maia here and now asking the question, and therefore, it can't be offensive. If somebody says 'Maia should have been aborted', they're talking about an old version that no longer exists, not the now living Maia asking the question. Taking offense to this reply would be illogical.

Additionally, one couldn't modify the question to be 'if u could go back in time and abort Maia' becuz that's one of those hypotheticals that could never happen.

So, it's too late for such questions, mate, and u will have to become a cute little old British lady one day draped by a wool scarf, drinking organic Wiccan tea, and telling stories about druid lore to a group of wide eyed but perfectly behaved fourth graders.

Hehe, yes, I was quite proud of that.

I think the point, though, is not so much about abortion, which is a whole issue in itself, but about what constitutes a disability severe enough to want to consider it. I don't really have the answers, and would certainly have to think very seriously about it, if I was ever in that position.

[promethean75]

That's the bitch about it: u can't fast forward through time and ask a blind person u allowed to exist by refusing to abort, whether or not they're enjoying life as an adult.

You're evidence that living blind isn't so bad since u sound fine.

In today's world i think it's easier to choose to have a blind baby. A hundred years ago it would have been a much greater burden for both family and blind person... if only because living was so much more physically demanding.

[Maia]

That's the bitch about it: u can't fast forward through time and ask a blind person u allowed to exist by refusing to abort, whether or not they're enjoying life as an adult.

You're evidence that living blind isn't so bad since u sound fine.

In today's world i think it's easier to choose to have a blind baby. A hundred years ago it would have been a much greater burden for both family and blind person... if only because living was so much more physically demanding.

I knew a couple, both blind (in fact most blind people pair off with other blind people, since the community is so incestuous, and that's another reason I don't like it, but that's by the by), who insisted that they only wanted blind kids. I don't know if they would have gone so far as to abort a sighted one, and thankfully I don't think the technology is quite there yet to definitively confirm if a baby is blind or sighted in all cases, but even the thought that they might have done appalled me, to be honest, and I told them so. That's taking the idea of designer babies way beyond the pale, if it isn't already, and I wouldn't wish a disability, even a minor one, on anyone.

[promethean75]

Yes that couple would be overdramatizing the statement that it's okay to be blind and not only that, we want a blind child to show u just how possible and wonderful it can be, etc., etc.

It's too much. They're going overboard. While it may not be a terrible experience to be born blind, trying to birth a blind baby on purpose might be a little over the top.

[promethean75]

I mean it should be common sense that if you and your spouse will certainly give birth to a blind child due to genetic reasons, and you both still insist on having a child, you should adopt a foster child with help from the state.

There is nothing especially special about sharing DNA with your child. Sure, seeing a little version of yourself with similar looks and personality quirks and all that is cool, but the point of it all, the beauty of it, is that you are raising a child. Shouldn't be terribly important who's it is unless you're an aryan.

[Maia]

I mean it should be common sense that if you and your spouse will certainly give birth to a blind child due to genetic reasons, and you both still insist on having a child, you should adopt a foster child with help from the state.

There is nothing especially special about sharing DNA with your child. Sure, seeing a little version of yourself with similar looks and personality quirks and all that is cool, but the point of it all, the beauty of it, is that you are raising a child. Shouldn't be terribly important who's it is unless you're an aryan.

Thankfully, most cases of congenital blindness are not genetic in origin, and when they are, they are often accompanied by other conditions, of various sorts. Sometimes, no cause can be identified at all, either genetic or environmental. I have no reason to believe, for example, that any children of mine would be anything other than perfectly normal and healthy.

On a much more positive note, compared to the designer baby couple, there are quite a few blind couples who make a speciality of fostering blind kids.

[iambiguous]

Then it becomes a matter of any actual new experiences that you do have. Also, the existential parameters of any new relationships. And of course all the new information and knowledge you come upon. On the other hand, while this part can make life considerably more interesting, "contingency, chance and change" can sometimes spiral out of control and everything becomes very, very scary instead. Economic calamities, wars, pandemics, social upheavals, etc.

There's that old saying, "may you live in interesting times." On the other hand, how interesting?

The possibility that things might spiral out of control is a small price to pay, I think, compared to the alternative, a world in which nothing ever changes and there are no new experiences.

Of course, that often comes down to how far out of control things spin, and the options that are available to us in order to get things more or less back in order. That order being, in my view, our own moral and political prejudices derived from the life we lived existentially.

On the other hand, for others it is anything but that.

What I tend to focus in on are those changes that can profoundly challenge our frame of mind about [in particular] value judgments in the world around us. For me, it was Reverend Deardorf, then being drafted into the Army, then being sent to Vietnam, then Song Be, then meeting Danny and Mac, then going to college, then becoming a radical political activist, then Mary and John, then William Barrett's "rival goods", then Existentialism Versus Marxism by George Novack. then Supannika, then moral nihilism...and now godot.

Have things ever spiraled out of control for you? Have you ever gone through any truly dramatic life-altering experiences? That can make all the difference in the world...the extent to which your life has or has not been full of changes.

Of course, given my own set of philosophical assumptions, Lord Summerisle's value judgments are themselves no less rooted existentially in dasein.

Then this part:

"Summerisle explains that his grandfather developed strains of fruit trees that would prosper in Scotland's climate and encouraged the belief that the old gods would use the new strains to bring prosperity to the island among the pagan population. Due to the bountiful harvests, the island's other inhabitants gradually embraced paganism." wiki

Political economy in other words. Lord Summerisle, meet Karl Marx.

-That's actually one of the cleverest parts about the film, in my opinion. They could so easily have gone down the lazy route of making the island a last hold out of ancient Paganism, surviving from pre-Christian times, but instead they explicitly made it a revival, just like the modern Pagan movement is in reality.

Still, given all of the different assessments of Paganism down through the centuries, what exactly is being revived? What seems crucial [to some] given the historical reality of political economy is not what communities believe so much as the extent to which that belief revolves around might, or right or democracy and the rule of law. After all, what difference does it make how passionate your moral convictions are, if you have little or no economic and political power to enact and then to enforce your convictions.

I used to be the glass half empty sort of person myself. Now, I'm the glass falling to the floor and shattering into a thousand pieces person. Philosophically, in other words. On the other hand, there are still many, many things I pursue with a passion in the interim. It's just that as the interim gets shorter and shorter, and oblivion looms larger and larger, it all becomes more and more "beyond my control".

Well, to flog this metaphor just a little bit further, you need to get a new glass, and fill it up with a beverage of your choice.

Okay, I'll let you know how that goes. Well, if it ever becomes an option for me. Actually, it has less to do with the glass [for me] and more to do with all the hundreds and hundreds of additional glasses there are out there to choose from. So, what I really need to encounter here are those who might be able to defend their own half full [or even completely full] glass such that I'm enticed to get that new glass and fill it up with the beverage of their choice.

Not sure if we've discussed this before, but what exactly do you do "on the job"?

I

work for a company that's contracted by the local council to run an activity club for senior citizens at a leisure centre, which usually meets in the evening. One of the regular activities, for example, is wheelchair netball, and our job is to push the clients round the pitch, at their direction. Sometimes, when it's available, we're in the swimming pool, where we hold the clients up in the shallow end as they do exercises. Occasionally we have special events, such as last year when we had an all-day Christmas fun run, which involved pushing the clients round a 5km circuit of the local streets surrounding the leisure centre. There wasn't actually any running involved, though, just brisk walking, punctuated by stopping to cross roads. They always pair me with a sighted client, incidentally, for things like that, and the netball, though as I mentioned before, a lot of the clients, being elderly, are losing their sight. The most important part of what we do, however, is provide a reason for the clients to get out and socialise, and after the activities are done we always spend an hour or so in the cafe, chatting over a cup of tea and a bite to eat.

Thanks. I can actually imagine you there now. And you are helping others to live more fulfilling lives.

Does the fact of your own blindness ever become something you talk about with those who are themselves losing their sight? I'm sure they can't help but wonder what it might be like to have never seen anything at all...and from the day you are born. But then there you are among them week after week after week living your own life to the fullest. They have to notice that.

Unless, of course, my reaction here bears little resemblance to what you actually experience.

As for the extraordinary life of Helen Keller, I'm still blown away every time I watch the scene where for the first time she begins to grasp the connection between Annie Sullivan's finger signals and the world around her.

https://youtu.be/LTsRVYq9JOQ?si=VQxmNF3wwgamYqlp

Also, it makes me wonder how far we've come from the days of The Miracle Worker.

To be born deaf and blind in today's world...? Here's a thread about that at Quora:

https://www.quora.com/How-does-a-deaf-a ... -with-them

By all accounts Helen Keller had a very full and interesting life. Although we wouldn't be human if we didn't give a little instinctive shudder when thinking about that sort of thing, and I certainly wouldn't fault anybody for doing so, I can guarantee that that's not how she herself would have viewed it.

Yes, she was a political activist who championed "woman's suffrage, birth control, and pacifism". And, in particular, among those of the working class. She became one of Eugene Deb's "Wooblies" as I recall.

This actually leads onto an important issue. As I understand it, Helen Keller became blind and deaf as a result of meningitis when she was a baby. But let's imagine that her condition was congenital, and it was somehow diagnosed before she was born. Should she have been aborted?

Yes, there is always that possibility. In fact, that's what makes abortion such an excruciating connumdrum in my view. Conflicting goods. Some insist it is inherently wrong to abort a baby just because it has one or another physical or mental affliction. But how does that make it any more right that women ought to forced to give birth against their will? In some jurisdictions, even in the case of rape, the mother either goves birth or, what, risks being arrested and charged with first degree murder?

Then the gears often shift here to capital punishment. Those who insist it is inherently immoral to abort babies but insist in turn that it is inherently okay for the state to execute full grown adults.

I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, my own condition was congenital, being born without functioning eyes and all, so should I have been aborted?

Again, however, my point is that different people, living different lives out in different worlds, will have many conflicting reactions to that. Most simply fall back on one or another Scripture. Others however fall back on one or another deontological moral philosophy. Or on one or another dogmatic assessment of "biological imperatives". I'm not arguing that no one here is right, only that "here and now" I haven't come upon a moral philosophy that convinces me to, if not abandon moral nihilism, to at least begin to question it more seriously.

You're a parent, so imagine a situation where you and your partner are told this, by the doctors at the hospital. What would you have done?

This all reminds me of relatives in my family telling me [when I was a boy] that my mother either aborted what would have been my older brother or she was afflicted with a stillbirth or a miscarriage. Whenever I tried to bring it up, however, my mother made it clear -- really clear -- this was not something she would talk about. Some things are just in God's hands. On the other hand, she never denied that something did happen. And as a result of it I lost my brother. Something truly out of the ordinary happened and it would pop into my head from time to time. How might my life have been different if I had an older brother. But each of us will react to something like this in different ways. And the point I keep coming back to is that there does not appear to be way for philosophers or ethicists to pin down how one ought to react. That's still rooted existentially in dasein from my frame of mind. But once you go there you start to fracture and fragment. Or, rather, I did.

Thankfully, in my case, bilateral anophthalmia is pretty difficult to detect with routine scans, so the question never arose, and so instead I presented my parents with a nice little surprise, that they definitely weren't expecting.

Suppose it had been easy to detect?

Anyway, sorry if that sounded a bit ranty. Just curious as to what you would have done.

With me, please feel free to rant as you see fit. After all, given my own understanding of the world around me "here and now", I more or less expect communication to break down over and again in regard to value judgments. Eventually. In other words, with me, the distinction is not between what we believe and what others believe but between those who insist that what they believe others are obligated to believe as well...or else.

Sooner or later, however, I'll note something about myself or about others that is just, well, too much for some.

And just to lay my own cards on the table, if I was told that any child of mine was going to be born with some severe disability or abnormality, I would have to think very hard about what to do, despite my aversion to the idea of taking life, including abortion.

And by severe disability I don't mean something like blindness, which, in my experience, is hardly a disability at all, and can best be described, at worst, as an occasional minor inconvenience.

Yes, of course. But that's my point. You have moral convictions. And you are able to embody them from day to day based on your own intimate, existential understanding of Nature. Of where you fit yourself into it "here and now". But [to me] you are not like others here who really do insist that "it's my way or the highway".

Anyway, that's how I have come to think about you. But: how I understand things like that is always problematic. Or, rather, so it has seemed to me over the past 15 to 20 years.

In any event, back to the part where you are still "out in the world" from day to day interacting with others. Back to the part, in other words, where as a result of this, you might bump into new experiences or relationships or points of view that do in fact put a few cracks -- dents -- in your moral philosophy.

Or, sure, maybe I will be the one going through all the changes. It's just that the more imploded your life becomes the less likelihood that can become a realistic option.

Change is always possible, whatever one's circumstances. Change for the better.

For better or for worse. There's just no getting around it in the lives most of us live. I just point out that for some here "better" is what they say it is. And only that. Or the part where a new government policy can be be embraced as better by some and by others as worse.

[Maia]

+++Of course, that often comes down to how far out of control things spin, and the options that are available to us in order to get things more or less back in order. That order being, in my view, our own moral and political prejudices derived from the life we lived existentially.

On the other hand, for others it is anything but that.

What I tend to focus in on are those changes that can profoundly challenge our frame of mind about [in particular] value judgments in the world around us. For me, it was Reverend Deardorf, then being drafted into the Army, then being sent to Vietnam, then Song Be, then meeting Danny and Mac, then going to college, then becoming a radical political activist, then Mary and John, then William Barrett's "rival goods", then Existentialism Versus Marxism by George Novack. then Supannika, then moral nihilism...and now godot.

Have things ever spiraled out of control for you? Have you ever gone through any truly dramatic life-altering experiences? That can make all the difference in the world...the extent to which your life has or has not been full of changes.+++

I've certainly had periods when I felt less in control than others, though I've never spiralled completely out of control. When that relationship ended, for example, that I mentioned before, I felt rather less in control than usual, for a few months, and I wasn't particularly happy with myself for that, until I made a conscious effort to do something about it. I don't think I've really had life-altering experiences that changed my whole set of opinions about things in the way that you describe, though I suppose the nearest equivalents would be, for example, being sent away to boarding school when I was 11. For the first few days I felt really lonely and isolated, but it gradually passed, over the next few weeks, and I came to really like the place. And it's not as if I never came back home, of course. The next big change was when I finally left, at 18. The major decision I had to make about that was whether to go to uni or not. In the end, after getting some work experience in my final year, I decided that's what I wanted to do, and so, a few months after returning home, I landed my current job. I do sometimes wonder if I should have gone to uni instead, but I suppose I still could. The next major life change was moving out of my parents' house to my current flat, nearly seven years ago. That was a bit scary, at first, but I knew I had to, at some point, and very much wanted to, and now I couldn't imagine living any other way, and very much value my own space. Again, it's not as if I never visit my parents, and they only live a ten minute walk away, while the leisure centre where I work is only twenty minutes in the other direction, so it's all worked out really well, I think.

+++Still, given all of the different assessments of Paganism down through the centuries, what exactly is being revived? What seems crucial [to some] given the historical reality of political economy is not what communities believe so much as the extent to which that belief revolves around might, or right or democracy and the rule of law. After all, what difference does it make how passionate your moral convictions are, if you have little or no economic and political power to enact and then to enforce your convictions.+++

Just like the actual modern Pagan movement, the Paganism in the Wicker Man is a chaotic mishmash of different practices and beliefs from a whole load of different periods and cultures, taken completely out of context and altered at whim. Not only was this a very clever decision by its makers, it also made their job infinitely easier, in that it shielded them from any accusations of inaccuracy and sloppy research, as they could pass it off as deliberate. In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that as clever as they were, they actually, almost by accident, ended up making an even better film than the one they intended.

+++Okay, I'll let you know how that goes. Well, if it ever becomes an option for me. Actually, it has less to do with the glass [for me] and more to do with all the hundreds and hundreds of additional glasses there are out there to choose from. So, what I really need to encounter here are those who might be able to defend their own half full [or even completely full] glass such that I'm enticed to get that new glass and fill it up with the beverage of their choice.+++

Perhaps, in the interim, you should pop down to the charity shop and buy a collection of differently shaped glasses and other receptacles, such as a few cups, mugs and so on, then along to the supermarket for a selection of different drinks, and then try them out, in random combinations, at your leisure.

+++Thanks. I can actually imagine you there now. And you are helping others to live more fulfilling lives.

Does the fact of your own blindness ever become something you talk about with those who are themselves losing their sight? I'm sure they can't help but wonder what it might be like to have never seen anything at all...and from the day you are born. But then there you are among them week after week after week living your own life to the fullest. They have to notice that.

Unless, of course, my reaction here bears little resemblance to what you actually experience.+++

Yes, they're always asking me about it, and that's absolutely fine, of course. I am, after all, there to help them, and I'm more than happy to do so. In fact, I very strongly suspect that it was a big factor in why I was hired in the first place, though I wasn't specifically told this. In other words, I didn't get the job because of some idea of quotas or ticking boxes or whatever, but rather, being blind was actually an advantage, for the sort of work we do. That's what I like to think, anyway.

+++Yes, she was a political activist who championed "woman's suffrage, birth control, and pacifism". And, in particular, among those of the working class. She became one of Eugene Deb's "Wooblies" as I recall.+++

I hadn't heard of the Wooblies. We probably didn't have them, here.

+++Yes, there is always that possibility. In fact, that's what makes abortion such an excruciating connumdrum in my view. Conflicting goods. Some insist it is inherently wrong to abort a baby just because it has one or another physical or mental affliction. But how does that make it any more right that women ought to forced to give birth against their will? In some jurisdictions, even in the case of rape, the mother either goves birth or, what, risks being arrested and charged with first degree murder?

Then the gears often shift here to capital punishment. Those who insist it is inherently immoral to abort babies but insist in turn that it is inherently okay for the state to execute full grown adults.+++

Even where abortion is illegal, it's not usually treated with the same severity as murder, is it? I suppose it varies.

+++Again, however, my point is that different people, living different lives out in different worlds, will have many conflicting reactions to that. Most simply fall back on one or another Scripture. Others however fall back on one or another deontological moral philosophy. Or on one or another dogmatic assessment of "biological imperatives". I'm not arguing that no one here is right, only that "here and now" I haven't come upon a moral philosophy that convinces me to, if not abandon moral nihilism, to at least begin to question it more seriously.+++

Yes, it's a pretty divisive issue, in other words.

+++This all reminds me of relatives in my family telling me [when I was a boy] that my mother either aborted what would have been my older brother or she was afflicted with a stillbirth or a miscarriage. Whenever I tried to bring it up, however, my mother made it clear -- really clear -- this was not something she would talk about. Some things are just in God's hands. On the other hand, she never denied that something did happen. And as a result of it I lost my brother. Something truly out of the ordinary happened and it would pop into my head from time to time. How might my life have been different if I had an older brother. But each of us will react to something like this in different ways. And the point I keep coming back to is that there does not appear to be way for philosophers or ethicists to pin down how one ought to react. That's still rooted existentially in dasein from my frame of mind. But once you go there you start to fracture and fragment. Or, rather, I did.+++

Believe me, having an older brother isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Just kidding, of course.

+++Suppose it had been easy to detect?+++

I've asked my parents this a million times, especially when I was younger, but all they ever say is that they would had to have had a long, hard think about it. The same equivocal, non-committal response to the issue that everyone gives, in other words, including myself, above, and indeed, you too. They're not religious, so that wouldn't have been an influence in their decision. They have, of course, described to me at great length their initial shock, which you can probably imagine, and how they were told by the staff at the hospital that they were just at the beginning of a great emotional adventure, full of ups and downs, and that they would never, ever wish it were any other way. Whether that made them feel any better, at that moment, or they thought it was just the usual vacuous guff that people come out with in situations like that, is difficult to say.

+++With me, please feel free to rant as you see fit. After all, given my own understanding of the world around me "here and now", I more or less expect communication to break down over and again in regard to value judgments. Eventually. In other words, with me, the distinction is not between what we believe and what others believe but between those who insist that what they believe others are obligated to believe as well...or else.

Sooner or later, however, I'll note something about myself or about others that is just, well, too much for some.+++

I don't think I'm a ranty sort of person, in general. Which makes any occasional rant far more effective.

+++Yes, of course. But that's my point. You have moral convictions. And you are able to embody them from day to day based on your own intimate, existential understanding of Nature. Of where you fit yourself into it "here and now". But [to me] you are not like others here who really do insist that "it's my way or the highway".

Anyway, that's how I have come to think about you. But: how I understand things like that is always problematic. Or, rather, so it has seemed to me over the past 15 to 20 years.+++

Yes, I think that's right. I have no wish at all to force my opinions on others, and in my opinion, no one should ever be allowed to do that, ever.

+++For better or for worse. There's just no getting around it in the lives most of us live. I just point out that for some here "better" is what they say it is. And only that. Or the part where a new government policy can be be embraced as better by some and by others as worse.+++

Nothing is perfect, but that doesn't mean we can't at least try to improve things. I think history tells us that things do, over the long term, get better, despite all the setbacks and conflicts.

[promethean75]

What about service dogs? Have you ever had one, and if you wanted one, could you attend to one properly where you live, or would it be too much of a pain in the bollocks to look and clean up after and all that?

In other words, if you were offered a fully trained top shelf shepherd that was so well trained, you could bring him/her to work with you... would you take the doggo? One of the real smart ones that you can cruise down the street with. I think they're even trained to stop you if a car is approaching before crossing a road. The shepherd would have a strapped on pagan supply satchel with teas and herbs, deer antler dust and a few minor spell scrolls.

I don't imagine you brits even have 'yards' unless you live on a farm or in a castle.

[Maia]

What about service dogs? Have you ever had one, and if you wanted one, could you attend to one properly where you live, or would it be too much of a pain in the bollocks to look and clean up after and all that?

In other words, if you were offered a fully trained top shelf shepherd that was so well trained, you could bring him/her to work with you... would you take the doggo? One of the real smart ones that you can cruise down the street with. I think they're even trained to stop you if a car is approaching before crossing a road. The shepherd would have a strapped on pagan supply satchel with teas and herbs, deer antler dust and a few minor spell scrolls.

I don't imagine you brits even have 'yards' unless you live on a farm or in a castle.

I've never felt the need for a guide dog, to be honest, but I know quite a lot of people who do have one, and they are, indeed, extremely clever. Almost like mind readers, in fact, building up a rapport with their owners. We did some training with them at school, too.

There may be some issues at work, but that's something I haven't really considered.

I have both a front and back garden, at my flat, which is on the ground floor. They're not massive, admittedly, but fine for me.

[iambiguous]

Of course, that often comes down to how far out of control things spin, and the options that are available to us in order to get things more or less back in order. That order being, in my view, our own moral and political prejudices derived from the life we lived existentially.

On the other hand, for others it is anything but that.

What I tend to focus in on are those changes that can profoundly challenge our frame of mind about [in particular] value judgments in the world around us. For me, it was Reverend Deardorf, then being drafted into the Army, then being sent to Vietnam, then Song Be, then meeting Danny and Mac, then going to college, then becoming a radical political activist, then Mary and John, then William Barrett's "rival goods", then Existentialism Versus Marxism by George Novack, then Supannika, then moral nihilism...and now godot.

Have things ever spiraled out of control for you? Have you ever gone through any truly dramatic life-altering experiences? That can make all the difference in the world...the extent to which your life has or has not been full of changes.

I've certainly had periods when I felt less in control than others, though I've never spiralled completely out of control. When that relationship ended, for example, that I mentioned before, I felt rather less in control than usual, for a few months, and I wasn't particularly happy with myself for that, until I made a conscious effort to do something about it.

Yes, from time to time we all encounter turbulence in our lives. Personal relationships in particular can be tossed and turned every which way for many different reasons. I've always believed myself however that first and foremost we have to become our own best friend. I don't mean that in a narcissistic way though. It's just that for me, knowing I can always fall back on my own passions, my own interests, my own "thing", helps to put all the other stuff in perspective.

But, again, that's just me.

I don't think I've really had life-altering experiences that changed my whole set of opinions about things in the way that you describe, though I suppose the nearest equivalents would be, for example, being sent away to boarding school when I was 11. For the first few days I felt really lonely and isolated, but it gradually passed, over the next few weeks, and I came to really like the place. And it's not as if I never came back home, of course. The next big change was when I finally left, at 18. The major decision I had to make about that was whether to go to uni or not. In the end, after getting some work experience in my final year, I decided that's what I wanted to do, and so, a few months after returning home, I landed my current job. I do sometimes wonder if I should have gone to uni instead, but I suppose I still could.

If you'll recall from an earlier exchange, I had hoped that one day you would go down a path that allowed you to utilize that intelligence of yours. A teacher, perhaps, or an author.

Only these things "in reality" can get really complicated really fast. I myself was a philosophy major in college. But my lower back imploded [a long story] in my junior year and eventually I had to drop out of college, get an operation, and take the job that I eventually had for 27 years. A job I really enjoyed, but no where near the job I wanted to pursue.

The next major life change was moving out of my parents' house to my current flat, nearly seven years ago. That was a bit scary, at first, but I knew I had to, at some point, and very much wanted to, and now I couldn't imagine living any other way, and very much value my own space.

I hear that. Though I suppose what is particularly crucial is the extent to which you have family and friends to fall back on if things start to unravel. But ultimately it still comes down to "whatever works" to fulfill ourselves without at the same time making life more difficult for others.

Again, it's not as if I never visit my parents, and they only live a ten minute walk away, while the leisure centre where I work is only twenty minutes in the other direction, so it's all worked out really well, I think.

Things working out for us. That'll always be the bottom line, right? Especially when they are working out really well. And again especially if things can work out for you without it involving things not working out for others.

Still, given all of the different assessments of Paganism down through the centuries, what exactly is being revived? What seems crucial [to some] given the historical reality of political economy is not what communities believe so much as the extent to which that belief revolves around might, or right or democracy and the rule of law. After all, what difference does it make how passionate your moral convictions are, if you have little or no economic and political power to enact and then to enforce your convictions.

Just like the actual modern Pagan movement, the Paganism in the Wicker Man is a chaotic mishmash of different practices and beliefs from a whole load of different periods and cultures, taken completely out of context and altered at whim.

Well, from my frame of mind, that can result in very different consequences for very different people in very different sets of circumstances. If it's a mishmash then for all practical purposes each Pagan gets to basically sustain his or her own moral convictions derived from his or her understanding of Nature.

Here it always comes down [for me] to the extent to which someone either does or does not connect the dots being doing the right thing [spiritually, morally] on this side of the grave and the possibility of immorality and salvation on the other side.

If you're a Pagan who does believe in life after death then, as with other religious denominations, connections are often made between before and after the grave.

Pagans and Judgment Day? Most Pagans believe in reincarnation of some sort. But isn't that basically the same thing? If you want to come back as a "higher life form", aren't you expected to deserve to? But how is that determined? If there is such a thing as an Intrinsic Self and these Intrinsic Selves fall anywhere up and down the moral and political and spiritual spectrum...and there is no Judgment Day?

As with Pantheism and Buddhism, in other words, I just can't wrap my head around Paganism in regard to immortality, salvation and objective morality.

Not only was this a very clever decision by its makers, it also made their job infinitely easier, in that it shielded them from any accusations of inaccuracy and sloppy research, as they could pass it off as deliberate. In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that as clever as they were, they actually, almost by accident, ended up making an even better film than the one they intended.

That is one way to go about it, of course. But this is only because, in my view, there is no "one size fits all" Scripture for Pagans to fall back on. So, it's all the easier to align what any particular individual believes that it is "in their head" with their own moral and political prejudices. It's just for those like me, either way, it's also the embodiment of dasein.

Okay, I'll let you know how that goes. Well, if it ever becomes an option for me. Actually, it has less to do with the glass [for me] and more to do with all the hundreds and hundreds of additional glasses there are out there to choose from. So, what I really need to encounter here are those who might be able to defend their own half full [or even completely full] glass such that I'm enticed to get that new glass and fill it up with the beverage of their choice.

Perhaps, in the interim, you should pop down to the charity shop and buy a collection of differently shaped glasses and other receptacles, such as a few cups, mugs and so on, then along to the supermarket for a selection of different drinks, and then try them out, in random combinations, at your leisure.

I'll let you know how that goes too. Well, once I get started, of course.

Thanks. I can actually imagine you there now. And you are helping others to live more fulfilling lives.

Does the fact of your own blindness ever become something you talk about with those who are themselves losing their sight? I'm sure they can't help but wonder what it might be like to have never seen anything at all...and from the day you are born. But then there you are among them week after week after week living your own life to the fullest. They have to notice that.

Unless, of course, my reaction here bears little resemblance to what you actually experience.

Yes, they're always asking me about it, and that's absolutely fine, of course. I am, after all, there to help them, and I'm more than happy to do so.

On the other hand, as with so many other things, most of us go about the business of living our lives simply accepting what we think we know about things...when in fact we know very little at all about some of them. That's why it's important [to me] to be around as many different kinds of people as possible. Especially in regard to something as important as the relationship we forge between how we perceive the world around us and our five senses. Seeing and hearing in particular.

Then the part where, within a particular community, who then gets to decide how we ought to think about them? It's just that for those who have always been able to see and those who have never been able to see, the communication is more likely to require more commitment. But that's a good thing, right?

Unless, of course, for all practical purposes, I really have no idea what I am talking about here. Never having been blind myself.

In fact, I very strongly suspect that it was a big factor in why I was hired in the first place, though I wasn't specifically told this. In other words, I didn't get the job because of some idea of quotas or ticking boxes or whatever, but rather, being blind was actually an advantage, for the sort of work we do. That's what I like to think, anyway.

Have you ever considered writing about this? Perhaps putting your own experiences "out there" for others to ponder? Clarifying what you believe others might be misunderstanding regarding interactions between the sighted and the unsighted world?

This reminds me somewhat of the character Sarah Norman from the film Children of a Lessor God. She was born deaf. And because of how some in the hearing world treated her -- as, among other things, a sex object, a hole -- she imploded into her own little world. She worked as a janitor at the school for the deaf. But basically we learn that she really wants to be like the Marion Loessor character. She too was born deaf but she did whatever she had to do to get out into the world that intertwined silence and sound.

Yes, there is always that possibility. In fact, that's what makes abortion such an excruciating conundrum in my view. Conflicting goods. Some insist it is inherently wrong to abort a baby just because it has one or another physical or mental affliction. But how does that make it any more right that women ought to forced to give birth against their will? In some jurisdictions, even in the case of rape, the mother either gives birth or, what, risks being arrested and charged with first degree murder?

Then the gears often shift here to capital punishment. Those who insist it is inherently immoral to abort babies but insist in turn that it is inherently okay for the state to execute full grown adults.

Even where abortion is illegal, it's not usually treated with the same severity as murder, is it? I suppose it varies.

More to the point, some anti-abortionists insist, it ought to be considered first degree murder. Why? Becasue, they argue, both the pregnant women who have an abortion and the doctors who perform them are deliberately killing an unborn human being. Even in the case of rape, the baby itself is always innocent, they say.

In other words, even in regard to whether a zygote or an emnryo or a fetus is a human being, the battles rage on all up and down the moral spectrum.

Again, however, my point is that different people, living different lives out in different worlds, will have many conflicting reactions to that. Most simply fall back on one or another Scripture. Others however fall back on one or another deontological moral philosophy. Or on one or another dogmatic assessment of "biological imperatives". I'm not arguing that no one here is right, only that "here and now" I haven't come upon a moral philosophy that convinces me to, if not abandon moral nihilism, to at least begin to question it more seriously.

Yes, it's a pretty divisive issue, in other words.

Still, from my frame of mind, it's one thing contemplating it philosophically, and another thing altogether dealing with an actual unwanted pregnancy "in reality". One day, perhaps, when your commitment with the Goddess to stay celibate is in the rear-view mirror there's the possibility that you may actually be confronted with the "real deal". And that's always the distinction I make. Sex and unwanted pregnancies and abortions explored here and then the part where, given any number of complex sets of circumstances, you are smack dab in the middle of this most ferocious of conflicting goods.

Suppose it had been easy to detect?

I've asked my parents this a million times, especially when I was younger, but all they ever say is that they would had to have had a long, hard think about it.

Wow, I'm trying to imagine what that must have been like. Which is ultimately futile? You're around now and they love you, but...but had they known you'd come into the world blind, you might not be around now? I suspect that some of us would handle that sort of "what if?" quandary considerably better than others.

The same equivocal, non-committal response to the issue that everyone gives, in other words, including myself, above, and indeed, you too. They're not religious, so that wouldn't have been an influence in their decision.

Unless, perhaps, not being religious was the factor that, uh, "saved" you? For some, when it does all come back to God, abortion is a sin. Have one or perform one and you're going to hell. Though it's still rather fuzzy what the fate of the aborted baby will be on "the other side". Not to mention all those millions of miscarriages and still births. Suppose your parents had been particularly devout Catholics?

Or am I still basically far removed from understanding this "as it really was"?

They have, of course, described to me at great length their initial shock, which you can probably imagine, and how they were told by the staff at the hospital that they were just at the beginning of a great emotional adventure, full of ups and downs, and that they would never, ever wish it were any other way. Whether that made them feel any better, at that moment, or they thought it was just the usual vacuous guff that people come out with in situations like that, is difficult to say.

I recall you noting [at least I think I recall you noting] the first time they explained to you that you were blind. How upset you were attempting actually to grapple with what on Earth "for all practical purposes" that meant. But then, again, there's the part where you had no way of knowing what you were without because you had never not been without it.

Again, the part where there's no getting around how problematic something like this might be when you are trying to understand something about someone that you can only make a more or less educated guess regarding. Some things get nailed down easier than other things. And some things never do.

With me, please feel free to rant as you see fit. After all, given my own understanding of the world around me "here and now", I more or less expect communication to break down over and again in regard to value judgments. Eventually. In other words, with me, the distinction is not between what we believe and what others believe but between those who insist that what they believe others are obligated to believe as well...or else.

Sooner or later, however, I'll note something about myself or about others that is just, well, too much for some.

I don't think I'm a ranty sort of person, in general. Which makes any occasional rant far more effective.

Okay, I'll see if I can spot one.

Yes, of course. But that's my point. You have moral convictions. And you are able to embody them from day to day based on your own intimate, existential understanding of Nature. Of where you fit yourself into it "here and now". But [to me] you are not like others here who really do insist that "it's my way or the highway".

Anyway, that's how I have come to think about you. But: how I understand things like that is always problematic. Or, rather, so it has seemed to me over the past 15 to 20 years.

Yes, I think that's right. I have no wish at all to force my opinions on others, and in my opinion, no one should ever be allowed to do that, ever.

Well, that gets more problematic with kids of course. We have to teach them some way to understand the world around us, right? Why not the way we do.

[Maia]

+++Yes, from time to time we all encounter turbulence in our lives. Personal relationships in particular can be tossed and turned every which way for many different reasons. I've always believed myself however that first and foremost we have to become our own best friend. I don't mean that in a narcissistic way though. It's just that for me, knowing I can always fall back on my own passions, my own interests, my own "thing", helps to put all the other stuff in perspective.

But, again, that's just me.+++

I think I'm exactly the same in that regard. I've always known how to rely on myself.

+++If you'll recall from an earlier exchange, I had hoped that one day you would go down a path that allowed you to utilize that intelligence of yours. A teacher, perhaps, or an author.

Only these things "in reality" can get really complicated really fast. I myself was a philosophy major in college. But my lower back imploded [a long story] in my junior year and eventually I had to drop out of college, get an operation, and take the job that I eventually had for 27 years. A job I really enjoyed, but no where near the job I wanted to pursue.+++

Yes, it's difficult. I really like my current job, and I know I'm doing a lot of good there, but who knows what might happen? At one point I wanted to go to uni and study archaeology, and even went on a few digs. As for teaching, well, my parents are both teachers, but I'm not sure if it's right for me.

+++I hear that. Though I suppose what is particularly crucial is the extent to which you have family and friends to fall back on if things start to unravel. But ultimately it still comes down to "whatever works" to fulfill ourselves without at the same time making life more difficult for others.+++

Family and friends are very important to me.

+++Things working out for us. That'll always be the bottom line, right? Especially when they are working out really well. And again especially if things can work out for you without it involving things not working out for others.+++

I certainly wouldn't want to achieve anything at the expense of somebody else.

+++Well, from my frame of mind, that can result in very different consequences for very different people in very different sets of circumstances. If it's a mishmash then for all practical purposes each Pagan gets to basically sustain his or her own moral convictions derived from his or her understanding of Nature.

Here it always comes down [for me] to the extent to which someone either does or does not connect the dots being doing the right thing [spiritually, morally] on this side of the grave and the possibility of immorality and salvation on the other side.

If you're a Pagan who does believe in life after death then, as with other religious denominations, connections are often made between before and after the grave.

Pagans and Judgment Day? Most Pagans believe in reincarnation of some sort. But isn't that basically the same thing? If you want to come back as a "higher life form", aren't you expected to deserve to? But how is that determined? If there is such a thing as an Intrinsic Self and these Intrinsic Selves fall anywhere up and down the moral and political and spiritual spectrum...and there is no Judgment Day?

As with Pantheism and Buddhism, in other words, I just can't wrap my head around Paganism in regard to immortality, salvation and objective morality.+++

Pagan views on this sort of thing tend to be pretty diverse. A lot of Pagans, perhaps most, accept the idea of reincarnation, though I'm not sure how popular the idea of being punished in the next life for something you did in this life is. Wiccans, for example, often say they believe in something called the Threefold Law, by which, whatever you do, good or bad, comes back to you, with three times the force. But, as I understand it, this is generally thought to be the case within this life, rather than the next. And, in any case, I have my doubts that the majority of Wiccans believe it literally, anyway. Personally, I do indeed believe, from experience, that what you do comes back to you, but I wouldn't put a numerical value on it, and it's not a hard and fast rule, either, just a tendency. In other words, it's just common sense. Smile, and the whole world laughs at you, or something like that.

+++That is one way to go about it, of course. But this is only because, in my view, there is no "one size fits all" Scripture for Pagans to fall back on. So, it's all the easier to align what any particular individual believes that it is "in their head" with their own moral and political prejudices. It's just for those like me, either way, it's also the embodiment of dasein.+++

The lack of any authority, scriptural or otherwise, in Paganism is its greatest strength. And weakness.

+++On the other hand, as with so many other things, most of us go about the business of living our lives simply accepting what we think we know about things...when in fact we know very little at all about some of them. That's why it's important [to me] to be around as many different kinds of people as possible. Especially in regard to something as important as the relationship we forge between how we perceive the world around us and our five senses. Seeing and hearing in particular.

Then the part where, within a particular community, who then gets to decide how we ought to think about them? It's just that for those who have always been able to see and those who have never been able to see, the communication is more likely to require more commitment. But that's a good thing, right?

Unless, of course, for all practical purposes, I really have no idea what I am talking about here. Never having been blind myself.+++

I can certainly relate to that because, after leaving school, I decided that I wanted to be around sighted people, having spent years being around blind people. Sighted people are far more interesting, in general.

+++Have you ever considered writing about this? Perhaps putting your own experiences "out there" for others to ponder? Clarifying what you believe others might be misunderstanding regarding interactions between the sighted and the unsighted world?

This reminds me somewhat of the character Sarah Norman from the film Children of a Lessor God. She was born deaf. And because of how some in the hearing world treated her -- as, among other things, a sex object, a hole -- she imploded into her own little world. She worked as a janitor at the school for the deaf. But basically we learn that she really wants to be like the Marion Loessor character. She too was born deaf but she did whatever she had to do to get out into the world that intertwined silence and sound.+++

I've never really considered the idea of writing something like that. Most of it would probably be pretty boring, to be honest. This is not to say that I've never considered the idea of writing something, though, because I very much have. Specifically, I'm currently thinking about a young adult fantasy novel, about an elf who gets lost in the woods, and a bunch of teenagers have to help her find her way home. It probably sounds a bit juvenile, described like that, but that's exactly the intended audience.

+++More to the point, some anti-abortionists insist, it ought to be considered first degree murder. Why? Becasue, they argue, both the pregnant women who have an abortion and the doctors who perform them are deliberately killing an unborn human being. Even in the case of rape, the baby itself is always innocent, they say.

In other words, even in regard to whether a zygote or an emnryo or a fetus is a human being, the battles rage on all up and down the moral spectrum.+++

Even now, my own views on this are evolving. I can certainly imagine situations where abortion is necessary.

+++Still, from my frame of mind, it's one thing contemplating it philosophically, and another thing altogether dealing with an actual unwanted pregnancy "in reality". One day, perhaps, when your commitment with the Goddess to stay celibate is in the rear-view mirror there's the possibility that you may actually be confronted with the "real deal". And that's always the distinction I make. Sex and unwanted pregnancies and abortions explored here and then the part where, given any number of complex sets of circumstances, you are smack dab in the middle of this most ferocious of conflicting goods.+++

If I'm lucky enough to meet the right person to settle down with and raise a family, I'll know it.

+++Wow, I'm trying to imagine what that must have been like. Which is ultimately futile? You're around now and they love you, but...but had they known you'd come into the world blind, you might not be around now? I suspect that some of us would handle that sort of "what if?" quandary considerably better than others.+++

The problem, of course, is that my parents knew almost nothing about blindness, or blind people. They certainly had no direct personal experience, anyway. So they were probably full of all the usual ignorance and prejudice that sighted people often have, whether they care to admit it or not.

And that wasn't the beginnings of a rant, by the way. One thing that I can't stand, and is just one of the many reasons why I don't like the blind community, is the unspoken assumption that the sighted world owes us something.

Maybe that last bit was the beginnings of a rant...

+++Unless, perhaps, not being religious was the factor that, uh, "saved" you? For some, when it does all come back to God, abortion is a sin. Have one or perform one and you're going to hell. Though it's still rather fuzzy what the fate of the aborted baby will be on "the other side". Not to mention all those millions of miscarriages and still births. Suppose your parents had been particularly devout Catholics?

Or am I still basically far removed from understanding this "as it really was"?+++

I'm no expert on Catholic theology, but they do seem to get themselves into quite a few muddles over questions like this.

My parents are lifelong agnostics. I suspect, though, on balance, that they would not have terminated me, but no one can say for certain, least of all them.

+++I recall you noting [at least I think I recall you noting] the first time they explained to you that you were blind. How upset you were attempting actually to grapple with what on Earth "for all practical purposes" that meant. But then, again, there's the part where you had no way of knowing what you were without because you had never not been without it.

Again, the part where there's no getting around how problematic something like this might be when you are trying to understand something about someone that you can only make a more or less educated guess regarding. Some things get nailed down easier than other things. And some things never do.+++

I definitely had quite a few temper tantrums about it when I was little. You know how kids are, with their very finely tuned sense of what's fair, and what isn't. Especially when my brother, who's only a bit older than me (two and a half years), can see perfectly well and used this fact mercilessly to get the better of me in fights, for example. He's all apologetic about it now, of course, and we're very close. And I certainly don't wish to give the impression that I had an unhappy childhood, because I definitely didn't. I don't remember one specific first time, though, when my parents sat down and explained to me that I'm blind, because I always knew that I lacked something that everyone else had, though I do remember quite a few times when they told me that there's nothing that anyone can ever do about it, which was a bit upsetting, I must admit, and made me pretty furious. I also, incidentally, had an annoying habit of taking my eyes out in front of family guests, to freak them out. In short, I was a naughty, spoilt brat, and I'm very glad I grew out of all that.

+++Well, that gets more problematic with kids of course. We have to teach them some way to understand the world around us, right? Why not the way we do.+++

Hopefully I'll find out one day.