"A" IS FOR "ART"

Rejecting the notion that people come with a predestined life purpose, Anton LaVey once said; “people don’t ‘find’ themselves, they ‘create’ themselves.” His corollary of course, might have been that if they don’t create themselves, someone else will do the creating for them. There is considerable truth in this. All human concepts and cultures are manufactured, pre-packaged, and sold to children who put them on and wear them as if they natural to the human condition. But most of the things we blindly assume are innate and natural are in fact inventions and fictions, no more or less valid than the inventions and fictions of other peoples. It is unfortunate that so few people realize this fact, because the first step towards enlightenment and liberation is the recognition that truth is entirely relative.

When you get right down to it, all Truth is Art, and I mean this in the most basic sense of the word, as something manufactured, “artifice” and “artificial.” Truth—to shamelessly paraphrase a wonderful line in True Blood--like “morality” and “money” exists only in the human brain. This is neither to say that it is worthless nor in some way not real. Rather, it hints at the great secret of the human condition. If we say with the 12th century Isma’ili mystic Hassan-i Sabbah, “nothing is true, everything is permitted,” we are not necessarily being nihilists as much as grasping the concept that each and every life is a completely blank slate, an unwritten book, an undiscovered country. The purpose of human existence, if there is such a thing, is Art; the process of imbuing experience and sensation with “meaning.”

This is as natural to people as breathing. Consider children lying on their backs looking up at a summer sky. In the clouds they see horses and elephants, great castles and leering faces. What they are doing in fact is taking an experience—in this case, a mass of water vapor—and given it meaning and definition. This is the human condition in a nutshell. The world around us may in fact be a swirling cloud of minute particles, but we ourselves shape it into trees, and mountains, and microwave dinners.

To my mind, the key difference between science and tradition is that the former understands this fact and the latter denies it. Science is well aware that its truths are artificial and temporary, which is why when new data or experiences come along it is able to revise itself and change. Tradition—and I include religion in this category—makes the mistake of assuming the truths it clings to have any intrinsic reality, weight, or value. They may of course be meaningful or beautiful to the individual, but they are not half as universal as one might wish to believe.

Take for example the notion that women are subservient to men, and that their place is in the home, raising children. For countless generations this was assumed as fact, but all along, of course, it was merely “fashion,” like thin neckties or disco. But where disco, despite all of ABBA’s best efforts, was never forced upon children as Truth, the inequality of the sexes was. And this is especially apt when it comes to religion. The differences between Christ, Allah, the Buddha, or Krishna are all of the same character as those between jazz, hip-hop, the blues, and classical music. The only difference being that the parents do not raise children to believe 70s Easy Listening is the One True Music.

I can think of nothing more profound or important as this fact. That humans create their gods, taboos, laws, rules, and fashions, that all these things are transitory and artificial, is the single most powerful notion any person can grasp. Where traditionalists may see this as nihilism, I see it rather as license to create ex nihilo. By recognizing the essential meaninglessness of existence, one is given permission to create meaning that has real value for them. It is to be given the conscious choice of being the artist or the consumer, rather than simply being forced into the latter category.

WICCA....THE OTHER WHITE MEAT

I ran into a witch the other day. Not the broom-stick riding, cauldron-stirring, poison-apple kind; she was the Goddess-worshipping, matriarchy, earth-power variety. In short, a Wiccan.

I’ve always had something of a love-hate relationship with Wicca, a modern religion with somewhat nebulous ties to traditional witchcraft. My affection is based on its core assumption, that each of us possesses the power “…to initiate change. This recognition of ‘power within’ moves us from mass passivity to personal responsible action. We are co-creators and must act with knowledge and responsibility…” (Carl Llewellyn Weschcke, Foreward, The Grimoire of Lady Sheba But this notion is common in most so-called occult traditions, which in general prefer magic (the concept that ritual action can allow the individual to affect the outcome of events) to prayer (the concept that ritual action can beseech higher powers to intervene in events). Wicca is hardly unique, therefore, in shifting focus from priests, ministers, and prophets to the individual person. But where my affection for Wicca ends is in its constant attempts to gain mainstream acceptance, forcing it to adopt more and more traits of conventional religions like Christianity or Judaism, and to “tone down” elements that might make the suburban middle class uncomfortable.

In its early stages, from its emergence in the 50s up until its explosion in the 80s, Wicca was charmingly loopy, making absurb claims and littered with a colorful cast of characters. It was more likely to just call itself Witchcraft in those days, and as a new faith worked overtime to suggest it was in fact an ancient tradition handed down in secret from ancient times. But we can hardly fault Wicca for this; all religions at the start concoct colorfully absurd origin stories. In the early days of Gerald Gardner, Alexander Sanders, Sybil Leek, and Lady Sheba, nobody seemed to be content to “just” be a witch, they had to be “kings and queens of the witches,” boasting that their families had been practicing the Craft in secret for generations and carrying out shouting matches and character assassinations against others with identical claims. As silly as this was, the tabloid spectacle of it all was still more amusing than what came later, as humorless feminists and crystal-clutching New Agers got their mitts on Witchcraft and made it painfully bland. Early on, one might catch witches dancing naked around a bonfire, howling at the moon on a spring night. Later on, they were far more likely to be in their jeans and t-shirts, sitting around a lump of quartz in the living room, holding hands and honoring “womyn power.” The TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer pefectly summed up the 90s witch-scene in the fourth season episodeHush;

Buffy: (to Willow, who has just come from her first college witch circle meeting) “So, not stellar, huh?”

Willow “Talk, all talk. Blah, blah, blah Gaia. Blah, blah, blah moon. Menstrual life-force power thingy.”

Buffy: “No actual witches in your witch group?”

Willow: No. Bunch of blessedwannabes. You know, nowadays, every girl with a henna tattoo and a spice rack thinks she’s a sister to the dark ones.”

It was largely the mass-marketing of Wicca that leeched it of any color it once had. Where in the beginning you needed to seek out a coven and hand-copy their ritual book, the post-80s scene saw bookshelves groaning under the weight of self-help witch books, all of which had carefully exorcised “questionable” elements. It wasn’t enough to be about casting spells; Wicca needed to be feminist, politically correct, and environmentally conscious to sell. As it down-played spell-casting, backed away from practicing rituals in the buff, and did away with hiearchy and degrees, Wicca became acceptable to shy, mild-mannered boys and girls who wanted to be “different” without actually being different at all.

Despite the concessions it had to make (or more likely because of them), Wicca did succeed, far better than any other occult tradition could claim. It’s slow metamorphosis from lunatic fringe to pop phenomenon mirrored the journey of early Christianity (“Gee, if you guys could get rid of all those uncomfortable Jewish elements I’m sure the Romans would buy it”). Soon, with practioners estimated in the millions (high or low millions depending on who you ask), Wicca was head and-shoulders above similar alternatives to mainstream faith, and those others could not fail but take notice. In blatant imitation of Wicca’s success, Aleister Crowley’s own Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.) has been restructuring and repackaging itself as a “Church,” with priests, bishops, and masses (ironic considering Crowley’s dim view of Christianity). Pointing out the fact that in his Magick Without Tears Crowley had disapproved of calling his philosophical system a “religion,” an O.T.O, member replied to me without blinking “but its more acceptable to the public if we call it that.” Had he not been cremated, ole’ Aleister would be rolling in his grave. It’s getting to be these days that the only occult traditions out there still willing to be politically incorrect, anti-consumerism, and unapologetically antagonistic towards conventional religions are Anton LaVey’s Satanists and the chaos magicians, God bless ‘em.

In short, I suppose I like my alternative religions alternative. I’m kind of crazy that way. While I have fond memories of my adventures in Wicca (dancing all night on May Eve, high in the Adirondacks, wearing nothing but a loin cloth and blue spirals all over my skin springs to mind), the bulk of the tradition has become something so tame and tidy it leaves me cold. To my mind, the whole point of magic is to steal fire from the gods, so an alternative religion based on worship and prayer hardly seems worth leaving mainstream faith for. To each is own, of course, but as even alternative religions go mainstream, I find myself being pushed further out into the fringe.

Which is good. I like it there.

IMAGINATION AND THE END OF HISTORY

Deprived of the hawk’s keen eyesight, the wolf’s olfactory prowess, or the tiger’s teeth and claws, the human animal was compensated with superior problem-solving capabilities instead. Put a chimpanzee in a room with two sturdy boxes and a banana dangling from the ceiling just out of reach, it will never occur to our monkey friend to stack the boxes and stand on them to get the fruit. A three-year-old human will.

What this means is a uniquely human capacity to conceive of things not as they currentlyare, but as they might be. We call this faculty “imagination,” and it very likely our greatest gift. Without the ability to first imagine, invention and problem solving cannot occur. Instead we are stuck with things as they are, reacting to our environments but not consciously acting upon them. Imagination is the single root of religion, art, and science (for despite the popular conception of scientists as unimaginative technicians, it’s frankly impossibly to hypothesize unless you can imagine what might be). Humanity owes practically everything it has to imagination.

Ironically, then, imagination is something we are quick to stifle in children and remain suspicious of as adults. Past a certain age, being a “dreamer” takes on negative connotations, and we push our adolescents to grow up and live in the “real world.” Public educational systems (at least the ones I have had experience of in America and Japan) seem far more content to focus on memorization and repitition than the active encouragement of creativity. Too often, even when schools do include art, literature, and music in their curriculums (such programs are nearly always the first to go when budgets get tight), they emphazise established art forms and encourage imitation of them. I am sure we all recall being told the “correct way” to interpret Shakespeare, “why” Mozart was a genius, and “what” makes Monet gifted. Far less time is given on activities that encourage students to imagine their own forms of self-expression.

This is not a criticism of teachers. The old addage about “those who can, do, and those who can’t, teach” is not only crap, it demonstrates the misplaced value society places on being the worker bee rather than the thinker. Teachers—particularly when they are young and new to the profession—seem hell-bent on encouraging imagination and creativity in students. It is not until the strictures of the system crush this out of them that they give up and start teaching by rote. Public education is ultimately in the hands of politicians, and this, frankly, is what is wrong with it. It is easy to assign blame to the teachers for failing schools, but we are quick to forget they are bound by rules and policies born out of re-election campaigns and not any real interest in nuturing minds. Invariably this is why alternative schools—allowed to break the rules—perform better.

Both in the United States and Japan there is tremendous anxiety over falling test scores and schools that seem to be in decline. But my suspicion is that there really has been no change in the school systems at all…and that itself is the problem. American public education was designed to create factory workers, people with basic skills who could work in the mills and assembly lines. Japanese public education—pre-war—followed the German model, which focused more on making soldiers (you see remnants of this in the military style school uniforms). After the war, it imitated the American model of producing workers. These systems are wonderful for industrialized nations and establishing economies…but what happens after? What happens when you have a populace trained to be obidient and compotent, but not imaginative or creative? Once the factories have all been manned and built, the world moves on but the educational system does not. It may be that neither of these school systems are in decline…they simply are not designed to deal with a post-Industrial world.

The horrible truth may be that what we know of human history is slowly coming to an end. For thousands of years, societies have required large populations of obedient workers who do what they are told and don’t ask questions. Creativity and imagination could safely be in the hands of the few. But when a single farmer can now harvest a field with the right machine—as opposed to requiring hundreds of hands—or when a factory line can be entirely automated, educating the populace not to think, dream, or ask questions is suddenly a liability. It was back in the late 1960s that Anton LaVey noted we were entering a new era in which one child who could create was infinitely more valuable that one hundred that could “believe” or “obey.” Unfortunately, societies have not caught up with him.

The rules have all changed, and I say, "viva la Apocalypse."

THE REAL WORLD

I overheard two mothers at a PTA meeting this week. One of them was discussing her son. A student of mine, he is bright, articulate, and inquisitive. He comes at problems from odd angles and his quirkiness is much appreciated in my class. His mother, however, was expressing concern over the fact that he reads so much. He enjoys novels, comics, etc. And like all kids his age he also enjoys video games, particularly the story-oriented role-playing ones. She told her friend—who nodded with great sympathy—that she wished her son would put away his books and live “in the real world.”

I have definite opinions about this. By the “real world” I can only assume she means the one in which he studies for the required exams, gets into the right schools, lands the correct job and makes a lot of money, all while paying his taxes and being a good little member of society. The only problem with this is that all of that—tests, schools, careers, and money—are just as fictitious as the novels he reads. They were invented by people too.

If there is a “real world,” it is the one of nature. The one where people eat, sleep, make babies and die. All the rest of it is, as Shakespeare observed, a man-made theatrical production in which we are all conditioned to play our parts. Politics, economics, borders, marriage licenses, and property are rules of a game we invented, dreaming it all up in our little human brains. They are no more intrinsically real than Middle-earth, Narnia, or Never-Neverland.

Much like “good” and “evil,” “real” is a damn tricky word. In a sense, we could define it as “physical things, things we can all see, hear, feel, taste, and touch.” Of course this excludes economics, politics, mathematics, and a million other things we generally accept as “real.” We could define it as “something we all agree exists,” but this is equally problematic. If the entire population of planet Earth suddenly decided we had two suns in the sky, there still would be only one. And perhaps the best definition, “something that is useful,” opens the door to all sorts of issues. Useful to whom? Useful why? Although, given the etymology of the world (“real” means “property,” as in “real estate”), this slightly sinister definition is probably the most accurate. Surely this is what the mother meant when she spoke of her son. She wants him to be useful.

People generally expect me to be an atheist, since I am so against fundamentalist religions. The thing is, I think the atheists are deluding themselves as well. I do believe in God, and Allah, an Vishnu, and Thor, and Santa Claus, and fairies out in the garden. I believe in them as ideas, which exist just as surely as quantum physics and geometry. I tend to think there are different levels of reality, by which I mean “categories” and not necessarily metaphysical planes. The stone in my garden may be “real” on a concrete level, but something like Santa Claus or God, which touches the lives of millions and motivates all sorts of human behavior, is definitely more “real” in the other sense. I tend to think that our private, inner universes are just as “real” as the outer one we all bumble around in together. Thus, if someone accepts Jesus as a personal reality, I have no issue at all with that. The trouble I have is with those who try to force him to be part of my personal reality as well. Where I take on the role of Adversary is when someone expects others to play by the rules of their own reality, and it doesn’t matter to me if that person is Pat Robertson, the Pope, Osama bin-Laden, Richard Dawkins, or a mother urging her son to live in the “real world.” The arrogance of thinking the nonsense you believe is better than someone else’s nonsense just gets under my skin.

And we all believe in a lot of nonsense. Some of us are just willing to admit it.

I do live in the “real world.” I pay taxes, rent, and teach little Japanese kiddies some skills I hope will serve them well down the line. But I have always found this “real world” dull in comparison to the landscapes that exist in my imagination. Whether it is a good novel, Second Life, a film or my writing, I spend a considerable amount of time getting out of the “real world” and feel no shame in it. This “real world” was, after all, invented by other people to box me in, confine me, and make sure I play by their rules. How could I not prefer to spend time in domains where the rules are mine?

There’s a pair of old esoteric terms that applies here; macrocosm, or the “big universe,” andmicrocosm which is the “little universe.” I believe in the big universe, in gravity, magnetism, electricity, and strong and weak nuclear forces. I believe in DNA and biological drives. But if you think your politics and economics, your religions and your rules are also part of the big universe, you are dead wrong. They are all features of our own inner little universes that mistakenly get lumped in with aspects of the big universe, but they are no more real than any fiction or personal belief.

They’re just more useful to someone else.