How would you Pagans respond to this?

[GabrielWithoutWings]

Might as well come out swinging.

In another forum I post on (Gnostic-oriented), there's an older thread that asks about Mother Nature (the post itself concerns the Gaia Hypothesis). One of the posters responds with:

AAAAAARGH! Here we go again!

Gaia is worse than the Demiurge because she is completely amoral. Who wants to be associated with that sociopathic [edit]? The only reason we love nature is because we have subdued her.

Let's throw some Gaia lover in the middle of an African jungle for a few days without tools granted by the psyche, with divine and holy leopards, malaria, vampiric insects and quicksand; and then we'll see what their attitude is. Take that Circle of Life!

and

When humans and nature live in balance, humans get the short end of the stick and probably would become extinct if they didn't invent better things than sticks to fight back.

I stand by all of my points. Nature has no love for me, but I do care for it just as I care for all living things. Am I better? Probably. If I had the power of Gaia, I wouldn't be eternally be the poster child for Chaos Theory. The stray cat I rescued or wolf I'm helping to save because of donations will never thank me, nor do I want their appreciation (probably eat me if they had the chance). I want them to live well. Matthew Chapter 6 with the Circle of Life in it.

Again, our modern existence brings unbalance. To return to balance would mean higher children mortality rates, lower life expectancy, famine or just periods of hunger, being at the mercy of the elements and diseases, and so forth. If you want to help Malkuth that way, that's fine. Good luck. I'm not giving up Newton, Socrates or Louis Pasteur!

Source (though I doubt it's able to be read without being logged in)

Do you Pagan-folk agree with this sentiment? Do you think it's a bit heavy-handed or unfair? Or do you agree that Gaia/Nature (whatever) is indeed amoral and that's part of the lure?

[Dez]

Re: How would you Pagans respond to this?

I don't worship Gaia, so I have no frame of reference for that question...closest I've dealt with is Freyr, and he's a god of agriculture, so obviously it's not the same. You're going to find that you will get as many individual answers on here as there are pagans(and not everyone who responds might consider themselves pagan).

One thing I will point out, though, given the first post you referenced, is that a healthy respect for nature doesn't mean someone is about to rush out and embrace everything *in* nature. Gaia is only one of many personifications of the earth, some of which have very different personalities from each other. That means that implying that all pagans are some sort of naive hippy tree-hugger, who would be eaten alive in a "real wilderness", is even more of a broad brush tactic then saying that the *only* face of the Christian God the Father are atrocities he commits on behalf of the Children of Israel in the Old Testament.

[Medusa]

Re: How would you Pagans respond to this?

This sounds like some on line vidya game dribble to be quite honest.

[GabrielWithoutWings]

Re: How would you Pagans respond to this?

This sounds like some on line vidya game dribble to be quite honest.

?

How do you figure that? I've been involved with plenty of online vidja games, and none of them talked about the struggle of human vs nature.

[Dez]

Re: How would you Pagans respond to this?

WoW does...it's just placed in a fantasy setting.


/devil's advocate

Anywho, moving on...

[Clive]

Re: How would you Pagans respond to this?

Well, I've never said that nature is love. Love is a natural feeling, but nature as a whole is not love, and Gaia is not an embodiment of love. And whoever said that love is always joyful? Gaia loved her children and herself and was tired of being raped by her husband, and her children loved their mother enough to lie in wait and cut off their father Uranus's junk to keep him from attacking Gaia. From his blood sprang the nymphs. Clearly love is not always a stroll on a moonlit beach - sometimes it's a metaphorical bloodbath.

Some people choose to see nature/the earth as an enemy, and as a philosophy I respect their beliefs. It's only when humans try to dominate the earth to Her and our own detriment that I have a problem. Gaia can take care of herself, even if it means ridding herself of the humans who harm her, washing them away like a bad case of fleas.

[GabrielWithoutWings]

Re: How would you Pagans respond to this?

WoW does...it's just placed in a fantasy setting.


/devil's advocate

Anywho, moving on...

Well, Earthen Ring and Moonglade notwithstanding.

[Ophidia]

Re: How would you Pagans respond to this?

I don't worship Gaia, so I have no frame of reference for that question...closest I've dealt with is Freyr, and he's a god of agriculture, so obviously it's not the same. You're going to find that you will get as many individual answers on here as there are pagans(and not everyone who responds might consider themselves pagan).

One thing I will point out, though, given the first post you referenced, is that a healthy respect for nature doesn't mean someone is about to rush out and embrace everything *in* nature. Gaia is only one of many personifications of the earth, some of which have very different personalities from each other. That means that implying that all pagans are some sort of naive hippy tree-hugger, who would be eaten alive in a "real wilderness", is even more of a broad brush tactic then saying that the *only* face of the Christian God the Father are atrocities he commits on behalf of the Children of Israel in the Old Testament.

Said more succinctly than I could myself.

I'm an urban Pagan. I like nature, I respect it, I can personify it into an ancient Goddess... but I still don't want nature on me. I'm not so urbanized that I can't survive in the wilderness. Me being able to survive in the wilderness is the main reason I don't want to - I prefer indoor plumbing and hot water.

Just because I'm a city dweller doesn't mean I feel that it's humankind against nature. We are as much a part of nature as anything else on the planet. Without nature, we wouldn't be here. We weren't fully-formed clones dropped off on this planet from some factory mothership - we evolved here. There seems to be a constant drive to place ourselves in some 'Other' category when it comes to biological entities (even swinging into calling ourselves and everything we do 'unnatural'), but we're as subject to our biological make-up and environmental pressures as anything else. Because we can use tools, though, our responses to those biological & environmental pressures tend to encroach on everything around us. Nature isn't out to get us, it's our perception of environmental pressures that make it seem like it is.

[GabrielWithoutWings]

Re: How would you Pagans respond to this?

Said more succinctly than I could myself.

I'm an urban Pagan. I like nature, I respect it, I can personify it into an ancient Goddess... but I still don't want nature on me. I'm not so urbanized that I can't survive in the wilderness. Me being able to survive in the wilderness is the main reason I don't want to - I prefer indoor plumbing and hot water.

Thank you for posting this as this was something I was thinking about the other day. Paganism seems to be wrapped up in so much love for nature that the thought of urban Paganism sort of throws me off-kilter when I think about it. I was wondering whether or not someone who views the Divine as multi-faceted or poly-whatever but doesn't really jive with nature that much is still a Pagan at the end or are they some tertium quid that isn't as easy to stick in a box.

I suppose I should stop being off-topic in my own thread.

[Ophidia]

Re: How would you Pagans respond to this?

Thank you for posting this as this was something I was thinking about the other day. Paganism seems to be wrapped up in so much love for nature that the thought of urban Paganism sort of throws me off-kilter when I think about it. I was wondering whether or not someone who views the Divine as multi-faceted or poly-whatever but doesn't really jive with nature that much is still a Pagan at the end or are they some tertium quid that isn't as easy to stick in a box.

I suppose I should stop being off-topic in my own thread.

People tend to forget that ancient cultures built & lived in everything from small villages to cities. Greeks, Romans, Aztecs, Egyptians, Phoenicians, etc. They had their rural folk, farmers, ranchers, that kind of thing, but for the most part people clustered together. Which meant that not only did their people live in urban centers, but usually had their temples as centerpieces.

[GabrielWithoutWings]

Re: How would you Pagans respond to this?

People tend to forget that ancient cultures built & lived in everything from small villages to cities. Greeks, Romans, Aztecs, Egyptians, Phoenicians, etc. They had their rural folk, farmers, ranchers, that kind of thing, but for the most part people clustered together. Which meant that not only did their people live in urban centers, but usually had their temples as centerpieces.

I'd do well to remember this. I know good and well that the Romans were as Pagan as they come but they founded a huge empire with some progressive technology, as well. I think my problem is that there's always Wicca floating around in the back of my mind to the point that it becomes the silent standard to measure Pagan, etc, belief systems by.

[MaskedOne]

Re: How would you Pagans respond to this?

I don't worship Gaia, so I have no frame of reference for that question...closest I've dealt with is Freyr, and he's a god of agriculture, so obviously it's not the same. You're going to find that you will get as many individual answers on here as there are pagans(and not everyone who responds might consider themselves pagan).

Backing this. It's a varied issue. That said, I don't worship Gaia (or any other Earth mother variant) and don't really plan to. Nature exists. I acknowledge it, respect its power and move on with life. At most, I'm mildly protective of portions of it because it's generally harder to repair damage than it is to cause it. I do have three issues with the posts quoted in the OP

1) I am more than capable of admiring destructive power without forgetting minor facts like "fire burns". Assuming otherwise about people says more about the commentor's intellect than anyone else.

2) Humanity has tamed nature?!
Hubris is still a sin, right? Humanity has some level of influence in certain areas over small segments of nature. If we widescale and start tossing respectably sized rocks at Earth then that influence shrinks really fast.

3) There's an assumption that we're in conflict with nature. Ignoring the fact I prefer not to declare myself as an enemy to the side that can throw the respectably sized rocks mentioned above, the mildly entertaining bodies that permit interaction on this level of reality function through natural processes. I'm so not in the mood to give mine up as a way of expressing my displeasure about how nature on a grand scale reserves the right not to care about me. Human beings are part of nature. The science and technology we use is based in understanding natural laws. The consequences if we use our knowledge and power without care will be delivered quite remorselessly through natural processes. I don't see a point in trying to divorce ourselves from reality.

Disclaimer: Yes I do think there is more reality than we know how to perceive. Yes I do think that human beings exist in ways that transcend physical reality. No those points will not avert reality from very physically applying a boot to our collective ass if we get too big for our britches.

[Dez]

Re: How would you Pagans respond to this?

Masked makes an excellent point about the hubris in that statement. I believe this is pertinent. Life has existed on earth in all sorts of conditions, and will continue to do so after we've most likely made it uninhabitable for ourselves.

[Medusa]

Re: How would you Pagans respond to this?

As a Satanist, I believe in nature. Not as some symbol with a woman's name to co-notate whatever it is humans do with female names (I assume nurturing and what not). And I don't attribute a male name to the harsher winter or darker or night or whatever other side of it either. I do not ascribe to it morals nor retributions. I see nature as a set of laws all creatures who live within it follow...or not. Humans are merely another, all be it at the top of the food chain, animal.

[kijani]

Re: How would you Pagans respond to this?

Im going to agree with something Dez said in the beginning. Having and practicing a healthy respect for nature and incorporating that into your life doesn't mean that all of us are going to like... toss away our clothing and join a commune in the middle of a jungle somewhere. It sounds to me like the poster is a little ill-informed and took that aspect of worship a little too literally for me. Pagans are a group of people with a very broad set of beliefs. Not a one of us in this thread have the same beliefs, even concerning nature (although many of the older cultures from which some of our religious views come from did seem to co-exist well with nature).

You have to remember that this is the modern day and age. Technology and evolution in geneeral (as well as population explosion) have made the older type of lifestyle pretty much obsolete. I have a very high respect for nature. I have a very high respect for the animals and plants and everything else within it. I have enough sense to know that certain things need to be left alone. However, as Dez said, just because one practices a respect for nature doesn't mean they're going to run off to the jungle and try to befriend the local wildlife. Personally? I love to camp. I love being out -in- nature. I love to hike and appreciate nature when I can. However, I wouldn't lump myself into the group that your OP there described at all, and I don't think I know anyone who really would, as I think that's a bit...extreme lol. Does that make sense? It's kinda late here and I tend to ramble sometimes.