I’m trying to come up with a Pagan political theory. But how can this be helpful in solving the problems of humanity?
As I acknowledged in my last posting, the world isn’t in very good shape right now. The American people have split into two bitterly antagonistic factions, as a result of which functional governance is a lost cause in the United States and our democratic system is in the gravest danger. Trump is a symptom of our malaise, not the cause of it. Democracies around the globe are facing the same stresses and strains and are likewise eroding, and the world is fatally threatened by civilizational clashes, extreme economic imbalances, and looming environmental catastrophe.
This doesn’t seem to be a time for philosophical musings.
In fact, as I also intimated last time, philosophy is a less innocuous pursuit than the unenlightened may presume. If people can be led to alter their mental perspectives, solutions might appear that otherwise wouldn’t be perceived. Could a political theory grounded in Pagan spirituality be the key to saving the world?
Alas, no. The first rule of Pagan politics is this: the world can’t be saved – and any serious attempt to do it, would likely make things even worse.
Notice, please, I didn’t say the world can’t be improved. There are any number of political ways to do that. Corrupt practices can be detected and prosecuted; entrenched interest groups can be dislodged by an aroused public; colonized peoples can be freed from foreign domination; slaves can be liberated; the bail system can be made fairer to poor defendants; an endangered species can be protected from industrial pollution – the list could obviously go on and on. We can always join politically with our compatriots to correct inequities and advance the common good.
What we can’t do is save the world – if “save” means transforming it – turning it from a vale of tears into a place of peace and justice for all. That, I’m sorry to say, will never transpire. Whatever we do, hatred, oppression, bigotry, tyranny, cruelty, greed – and especially all the manifestations of conflict – wars, revolutions, riots, and terroristic violence – will remain in the world, to more or less the same extent as they’re around today, and were in times past. It can’t be helped.
That’s the Pagan point of view, at least.
The ancient chroniclers regarded history as a cyclical process. Empires rose and fell, republics flourished and decayed, battles were won and lost, tribes migrated from one place to another – yet the more things changed, the more they seemed to remain the same. Some variation was acknowledged: some periods were tranquil and prosperous, others were troubled by barbarian incursions, famines, and plagues. The fundamental nature of human affairs was, however, constant through it all, and the Pagan historians didn’t expect that these things would ever change.
Which doesn’t mean they saw public life as meaningless or futile. Indeed, their main motive for writing their accounts was to rescue from oblivion the deeds of great men and women who governed nations astutely, founded cities, advocated good laws, fought bravely for the freedom of their homelands, and otherwise benefitted humanity by taking part in community affairs. Such persons merited remembrance and praise, as tyrants deserved to be held up to scorn.
Regrettably, those constructive political achievements don’t accumulate to make the world perfect. Specific social evils can be identified and eliminated through politics, but even as these are done away with, new evils materialize. Technology, society, the economy, the environment – all are changing and mutating, creating opportunities for new structures of power capable of exploiting the commonalty in novel ways – abuses that future generations must confront. It’s a never-ending struggle – but, of course, the struggle is always worthwhile.
I’m with the old-time Pagans. I don’t exactly believe in progress. I know there’s been progress in science, technology, engineering, medical care, stuff like that. But in politics and morals, not so much. We’ve become more humane in some ways, in the contemporary world, but are we wiser on the whole? We seem to be exhibiting the same behaviors and making the same mistakes as the autocrats, barbarians, and lawless mobs of antiquity, and I’d guess we’re subject to the same cycles of history that undid them.
A Pagan political theory isn’t likely to offer much hope that the issues currently facing America and the world can be resolved without much pain, contention, sacrifice, and (probably) bloodshed. But such a theory could possibly explain the crisis, suggest ways to mitigate the worst, and immunize us against slick demagogues and visionaries shouting simplistic slogans and peddling utopian schemes.
Some folks may consider my message here to be a bit of a downer. What’s the point of political action, they might ask, if discord and iniquity are always bound to be in the world? Pagans, however, will toss back a question of their own: even if a partial result is all we can achieve, why not do whatever good we can? Nothing I’ve said is a valid excuse for apathy or cynicism. Yet if we forego the alluring dream of the absolute triumph of righteousness, and reconcile ourselves to a complicated world, this certainly will affect the way we go about taking part in politics.
We’ll be (politically) Pagan.
Blessed be.
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