Good Order or Chaos

It is a simple matter-- mythic ideas structure our culture-world, with the aim of keeping Chaos, from without and within, from overwhelming us. Hopefully, they give the world we live in, the lives we live, meaning, make us feel connected to the whole of life, structure our ways of life to good order.

We know that our mythic ideas have faded, or have failed us. Foremostly, we live in an order that is believed to create the best order possible to actually-existing humans, but which in reality is a chaotic order which doesn't in fact do this, and most importantly, is destroying the Biosphere as part of its normal operations. Many people now accept this assessment as true, but also accept the way things are as necessary to good order, and in any case inevitable. Which is completely mad.

In such a process of decline and fall of a civilization, you would expect to find bizarre decadence everywhere, as is standard in depictions of that classic example of decline and fall, the Roman Empire-- think of Nero, Caligula. But we have become inured to decadent entertainments readily available in the media, and we know that what could be described as decadent behaviors have become a commonplace over the civilized world. But we don't even use the word 'decadent' anymore, as we don't use 'evil'. What we have achieved, really, is a kind of liberal nihilism which supports individual freedom, human rights, humanitarian concern, but at the same time doesn't actually believe in morality as a 'privileged discourse'. Which is completely mad. Yes, we live in a mad world, where black is the new white, where everything is likely to be quite different from how it is presented and how it appears to be, where people are swamped with information and yet most of them don't seem to have a clue. It's the prevalent condition.

I have myself developed in the culture, so I know how disorienting and corrupting it can be, even if early-on I saw and felt much of the very wrongness of it. As far as I can tell, during my lifetime-- and I am 60 years old now-- the expectations we had when I was young, that the world was, would become, a better place, have not been borne out. Yet there have been improvements in some areas, mainly as a consequence of the cultural revolution of the Sixties. But the reality seems to be like 'with one hand we deal out good, while our other hand deals out ill'.

I don't have the solution to this ultimately annihilating dilemma, but I think the place to start, the one hope, is for people to disengage psychically from this toxic, deranging world civilization, even if they have only limited means to withdraw from it in terms of the means of making a living and of determining their material way of life. This means that we must, as best we can, put up a barrier between what tends toward Good Order and what tends toward Chaos, and we must determine, as much as possible, to live on the right side of it, psychically and behaviorally-- to live for Good Order and shun Chaos-- something like with the early Christians (horrors! cries my pagan soul). But that's what it will take-- a kind of saintly heroism that takes on the actually-existing world and presents a radical, fundamental, shocking alternative-- a culture of Ecological Wisdom structured by the necessary mythic ideas, which may sound, and certainly will be called, extreme, fanatical, crazy, witless, and be presented as a threat to all that is good and holy! This is it-- 'Life fighting for All Life'-- what has been missing, what has been ignored, overridden, kept down. But it is the ultimate sanity and must be bold in the face of a decadent, corrupt world-- Ecology.

Alfur Faring Between Two Worlds

(word-help beneath)

Alfur fares athwer the two worlds. In the Edhli-menning he goes as his true self, in his shaggy Alf-hame. But where there is that of the Searuvel, this Shadge becomes unseen. And when he overthwerts into the Storborg, which is wealded by the Searuvel, this Alf-hame is hid beneath a Skrurk-fell, a Heoloth-fell, of Drygand-scale, a Byrnie-sark of which nothing of the Searuvel will stick or slice or seep. And so the Alfur fares into the Searuvel and he is warded from its Sidden, and unseen as who he is, so he can do his good work for the Menning. And when he thwers back into the Menning, this Snake-skin easily sheds showing the true Shadge again.

Alfur= the personified collective Alf.
athwer= across.
Edhli-menning= the ecological culture-civilization.
Hame (OE/ON hama)= skin, garment, identity (shapeshifting), snake-skin.
Searuvel= Evil Machine. Storborg= the City of Man, the Megamachine.
weald= to rule.
Skrurk= deception. Heoloth= invisibility. Fell= skin, hide.
Byrnie-sark= armor-shirt.
Sidden= magic influence.

New Age

The faux-naivete of paganism-animism-shamanism is at odds with biology-ecology, which must come first. Pagan-indigenous lore can provide material from which to create alternative mythoi, but ecological religion is a New Religious Movement, and must be directly relevant to the present ecological catastrophe, so it must be founded in ecological biology. Nostalgic Romantic spirituality just isn't in itself enough. So while ecological religion has pagan roots, it is not Pagan, but New Age-- and the New Age can only be the Age of Ecology (Edhlifrith Aldur).

The Absolute Necessity of Eco-religion

John Seed has said that the tendency for humans to split-apart from Nature must be very strong, as is seen in the central role of the emphasis on human interconnectedness with Nature in long-sustained aboriginal cultures. This emphasis seems due to the recognition that there's a fundamental flaw in human nature requiring extraordinary care and diligence, as if it is an 'innate depravity' of Man. Therefore the myth of the eternal battle of Good Order against Chaotic Disorder, which must be extremely ancient and still prevails, has often placed humans in the role of chaotic agents, if also in that of good agents.

In civilizations, however, it is organized religion, in the division of function characteristic of civilizations, that has the especial concern to preserve Good Order against Chaos, however that be framed, but with the consequent weakening of the integration and holistic focus of simpler societies. Yet as long as civilization dominates the world, it is still religion which must be the strong force for humanity's sense of interconnection with Nature. And yet over much of this world now, religion is no longer a determining strong force, and even so, it is only marginally concerned, if that, with maintaining the good order of Nature against the misbehavior of humanity. Yet at this time, as many now know, this misbehavior is destroying Nature at a rate that threatens the survival of humanity, and of the Biosphere itself, and it is this that is the crisis of our era. Given this massive crisis, it simply stands to reason that a religious concern with the battle of Good Order against (human) Chaos must dominate (yes, dominate) all other religious or any other concerns. An ecological reframing of this myth in global eco-religion must have priority for world civilization, because only religion is a strong enough force to inexorably transform human hearts and minds and the ethos, ideals, worldview, lifeways, and essential structures of civilization, and this is absolutely required to preserve a functioning Biosphere and thus human survival. It is really that simple. It is the precondition for acting decisively to save the Earth and our species.