Complex Gods & Spirits

“Gods are not separate disembodied ideals, but are instead the emergent agencies from the vast networks of ancient entanglements within which we are embedded…” – Mathieu Thiem, from “Interanimism”

(Image from Here)

Hello again folks!

I am working on a lot of different facets of a deeper dive into my animism right now. I apologize if it seems like I am all over the place, but I swear there will be a cohesion to all of this when I am done. My recent manuscript on animism has really got me thinking, and I want to dive deeper into all of complexity and nuance of how I understand animism. Who knows, it all may be the foundation of another book. *shifty eyes*

So, let’s jump right in it today. Some time ago, I wrote about all the various social and scientific theories I bring into my animism. Systems theory, complex systems, cybernetics, actor-network theory, and agential realism. There is a lot there if you care to (re)visit it.

But today, I want to dive a little deeper into how all that informs my animistic views of the world, and especially gods and spirits. My animism is built on relationships among persons. This can be be human persons, as well as non-human persons. My worldview is more than big enough for the beings we call spirits as well as gods.

You see, my animism is a complex one that allows me to look at ecological systems in the same way I look at civilizations and technological systems. It allows for a nuanced, systemic, and holistic view that covers ever aspect of the human and non-human beings on this planet, and off into the great Cosmos. Yes, it even allows me to contemplate those beings we might call gods.

It starts with the idea that the world is made up of complex systems. These systems make up our own bodies, with atoms in molecules, molecules in cells, cells in organs, and eventually the emergence that is ourselves. Emergence is a real foundation to my understanding of gods and spirits. The idea being that once you get enough “parts” in a network, new properties and characteristics emerge. We are more than the sum of our cells, more than our DNA, and the gods are more than just stories on a page.

They are emergent agencies that result from complex systems. Now, those systems can take a variety of forms, ecological as well as cultural. I will be exploring that all more in a moment, but for now there is a few other things I want to set up before we dive deeper.

There are complex systems around us all the time, from cities, to the human brain, and to the universe as a whole. Our cells are nested within our bodies, and we as human beings emerge from the relationships of trillions of cells. In the same way, are we the “cells” of the gods and spirits. To put this another way, we are the “components” that make up their complex systems. We are the cells in their collective agencies.

Now agency is a pretty simple concept, as it is the capacity of an actor to to act in a given environment. Atoms are agents, cells are agents, we are agents, and the gods are transpersonal agents. We are the cells in their multicellular being.

On top of this, complex systems (such as planets, cities, gods), have a form of what we might call a memory. Like an archaeologist digging into the layers of the Earth, the history of past civilizations are recorded in the memory of the planet. Layer by layer, we can see the story of what is remembered. The same is true in our own bodies, as our DNA contains layers and layers, some from our deep mammalian past, and deeper into the origin of life on this planet. If you dig even deeper, the elements in our DNA connects us to the very beginnings of the universe. That is what a complex memory looks like. Just as importantly, it gives us a sense of time. Systems can contain the history of past arrangements, a past, a present, and eventually a future.

If it is not clearly spelled out, this can happen at a variety of levels, and scales of being. That is why I think the basic concept behind orders of magnitude is a useful way to organize my thoughts on this.

Orders of Magnitude

(Order of Magnitude Image from here. It’s a huge and oblong image, please click on it.)

The image above is a big one, with a lot going on. This is a scale that considers the Order of Magnitude of the whole universe. In short, it is looking at reality from different levels of scale, grouped in powers of ten based on size. At the 1 meter scale we find a human being, in this case a small one. That is because this is the “center point” for this scale, one meter, or about 3 1/3 feet.

In orders of magnitude above and below humanity, we increase or decrease in scale. If we jump up a power of ten, we get to the 10 meter scale, which here is represented by a dinosaur. If we jump down by a power of ten, we arrive at the 10mm scale, or about the size of a human fingerprint.

This scale is useful because it allows us to consider the entire cosmos at a variety of different scales, from the quantum to the cosmic. I just finished reading a book called The Zoomable Universe, that explores everything we know through different orders of magnitude. It has been fascinating to think about this through an animistic lens, and how I understand where I stand in relation to everything else.

For example, we can consider gods on a very similar type of scale. I think of gods as emergences, arising out of complex systems of relationships. Some of these are solidly grounded in ecological (non-human) systems, and some are grounded in cultural (human) systems. It is useful to think of the ecological and the cultural as two points on a spectrum, and not as a dichotomy. Here, we can set up a whole range of god-like beings, from mountains to those like Odin, and anything in between. There is plenty of room for overlap here, or human – non-human combined systems. Gods in this way, can fall anywhere on the spectrum. More “wild” cultural gods like Skadi might fall somewhere in the middle or towards the ecological ends, where gods of civilization would be skewed more cultural. In this case, let’s use a god like Odin, who as chief of the Norse gods, is a pretty fair canidate for a “cultural” god. He embodies many aspects of Old Norse culture.

Why is this useful? Because on the whole it is all about the scale of a given system of relationship. Gods are generally considered as beings that are “greater” than ourselves, greater in scale and scope. That is where Orders of Magnitude become useful. Gods exist on “higher” scale than humanity, just like we as humans exist on a greater scale then the cells in our body. That is the principle of emergence, in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

So, if we jump up from humanity to the 10 meter scale, do we find gods here? This is the dinosaur level, and it might certainly be fair to consider dinosaurs as a type of gods. They are very dragon-esque, yes? That kind of scale comes with a certain kind of power.

At the same time, in a 10 meter space you can only fit a handful of (adult) humans. Maybe five to ten at the most, if they get cozy. Assuming around two meters of space per human, +/-. Yet, what might those ten humans do now that they have gotten cozy? Might they develop shared ideas and beliefs, common stories, and maybe even some sense of a small community? This is what a lot of pagans might consider a group spirit, which is fair to call a culture, even if a small one.

But what emerges from that tiny culture? Is the agential emergence of networked relationships of ten humans enough to make a god? Maybe, in the sense of egregores, a tiny one. The god of ten people in a complex system. A god at the scale of ten meters. Perhaps here, we can see the beginnings of what we would call apotheosis, in which a god is born. Obviously there is more complicated facets here, but let’s keep thing simple for now.

Cultural Gods & Spirits

(Social Network, from Wikipedia. Maybe our hypothetical village?)

Let’s go even bigger than that though. Let’s jump up another level, to the 1 kilometer level. How many humans can we fit in this kind of space? Well, if we figure two meters per adult human, we could probably fit up to five hundred people in this space. On the scale, this appears as the size of a meteor crater. Now, let’s assume a little bit less than five hundred people, so they have some space for things like houses and that kind of thing. So let’s halve the amount, and run with about 250 human people. A tribe shall we say?

Part of the reason I am using 250 is because this is the upper limit of Dunbar’s Number, which is the suggested cognitive limit of the number of stable relations a given human can maintain. In our little tribe, we are going to assume everyone knows everyone, and they get along reasonably well without being to factioned, and share a common set of beliefs and cultural ideas. They are, for our purposes, a fairly unified whole. Might be unrealistic, but stay with me.

Alright, so these people share a common culture; they have songs, stories, and dances. Shared works of art, and a common and language. They are also a pretty tight-knit community, and so they share meals together and sit around the fire at night weaving stories together. They also share rituals and ceremonies, and through all this they weave together the spirit of the village.

Or, shall we say a communal god at the scale of a kilometer? The god thus is the emergence of a complex series of networked relationships among the people of the village. Over time, this god changes and grows, and develops a history and set of stories associated with the people and their ancestors.

In even more time, those people continue to multiply and go on adventures to conquer new lands, or maybe even to convert people to the worship (and relational maintenance) of their god. In this way, we can scale this idea even further, to kingdoms, empires, and even nation-states. Yeah, I would suggest that things like cities as well as nations have collective spirits we might call gods.

Things like capitalism and socialism have communal god-spirits* of relationship too. The complex concepts might be considered incorporeal spirit-gods in their own right, as such ideas certainly have influence in our times.

Christianity for instance, has a billion people within it’s sphere. What kind of scale does God the Father, and Christ the son exist at in this context? It’s something certainly worth considering, and translates into a real social and cultural force. But that is well beyond the scope of this post. Let’s move on shall we?

Ecological Gods & Spirits

 

(Eco-cultural Island, my own design. Gods may be represented by the large colored circles. The small colored circles represent smaller scale beings in a network. Individual groves, water spirits, villages, that kind of thing.)

(Green = forest, Red = village, Blue = Water, Brown = Mountain. Notice the overlaps.)

As we jump up in scale, we come to the size of about 100km, or if we are following the scale about the size of a decent island. It is at this point that we have to consider all I have said in a wider animistic context. In previous sections, I talked about small groups of people, as well as a small village, but I confined myself to just human relationships.

As such, in an animistic worldview, I have left out a very important facet of the world; namely non-human persons. In the context of our small village, I have neglected the fact that these people are also in constant relationships with their environment; with the non-human and other-than-human world. They need food from the fields, timber from the forests, and waters from the river.

This expands greatly their web of relationships, and with the non-human persons of nature; plants, animals, rocks, waters, and air. These too, must be considered in an animistic context, because they are beings, spirits, and agencies in their own right. These persons, are also part of the same complex system and relational networks as the humans.

So while the god of the village is firmly planted in the cultural realm of the humans, the shaman of the village knows that other gods dwell just beyond the village as well. The shaman takes a deep trek into the woods, and here he finds the forest god. It emerges, just as the village god, from the complex networks of the forest. But this time, these are not human networks, but the complex ecosystem of fungi, bacteria, sun, air, water, trees, plants, and animals. This forest god, the shaman knows, is the god of an ecology.

Now, that may be an oversimplification on my part, but it sets up an example of the idea I have already discussed. That is, that some gods and spirits are the agencies of complex ecological systems and may well be distinct from cultural gods. Of course, there can be huge amounts of overlap. The idea of complex systems and animism more generally, is that we are connected to everything. At no point are ecological and cultural systems fully separated.

The reason I mention this is because it goes a long way towards explaining what in common parlance is often called Genius loci, or a spirit of place. Spirits are not necessarily dependent on the presence of humans to exist. They can be firmly grounded in ecosystems, whether or not humans are even in the area. Here we could further our distinction (as well as overlap) between ecological, and cultural god-spirits.

The collective, communal spirit of the tribe that lives on The Island is primarily a cultural god. It is the complex of human story telling, and human history. However, such a cultural god with also have strong overlaps with the ecology of The Island, and that too would become part of the spirit-system. Thereby we can see an enmeshed system at different scales, of human, ecological, and finally Island. At the scale of the Island, the Island spirit would thus include both the ecological as well as the cultural god-spirits at smaller scales. The whole, simply, is greater than the sum of the parts.

Global Gods & Spirits

Which means we can jump up another level, to the scale of 10,000 KM, which encompasses the scale of much of the planet. Here we are at the scale where all the ecological and cultural god-spirits start to blur together. While we can clearly see these beings at the scale of the village and even a bit at The Island, at the Planetary scale all ecological and cultural systems become part of the same whole. Which makes the Spirit of the Earth** something quite different in scale and scope.

It is fair I think to consider most pagan gods as cultural beings, and ones relatively small in scope. For example, when you consider that there are maybe a million or so pagans on the planet, and the Christian and Islamic gods alone can count a billion each towards their practice. Well, there is a noticeable difference in scale between Allah and Odin, if we consider worshippers as part of a given gods being/body/system. In this way, we are all part of the body of a god. We are all part of the complex community and system of worshippers that help to define those beings.

This is not to say that gods are “just” their worshippers, as they are greater than the sum of the parts. But just like in our own bodies, the parts matter, and contribute to the whole. That means, for say Odin, the complex mass of humans are part of that relationship. All the history, lore, UPG, SPG, and modern practices go into the “body” of Odin. The same is true of Christ and his Father.

In fact, with all the various traditions histories and (sometimes) conflicting narratives, we could ask the honest question of whether all Christs or Odins are the same, or if they are different beings with divergent systems? I mean, I have said before that I don’t think Comic Book Loki, MCU Hiddleston Loki, and Norse God Loki aren’t the same being, even if they share parts of a history and a name. Could there be a Baptist Christ, a Methodist Christ, and a Catholic Christ?

I don’t know, and that is well outside the scope of this piece. Less I get off on a tangent, I intend to stay on point. That point is, that Christ is probably bigger than Odin, as a measure of relative complexity and scale. At least when considered on human components of their being. Ecological non-human components would take a whole other essay.

But, in terms of collective complexity, the Planet exceeds them all, and indeed also contains them all within the complexity of the whole. Earth, as a god-spirit, is in this way “bigger” than all of our human gods, and bigger too than the forests, rivers, and oceans, that make it up. It is, in no small way, a whole organism.

Cosmic Gods & Spirits

But the scalability of complex systems does not end here. We can take it all the way up to the Cosmos as a whole. Such a being, made up of all cultures, all planets, all stars, and perhaps more than one universe, is similar in many ways to Olaf Stapledon’s Star Maker. Such a being would be so far beyond my comprehension, I don’t even care to speculate. Perhaps a Cosmic Spirit, Great Spirit, Star Maker, might warrant the label of capital “G” God, and certainly there are those that would argue that point. Me, I don’t know.

Because after a certain level of complexity, it is beyond our cognitive capacities as individual humans to comprehend. I cannot fully understand the complex system that is my local city, much less that of the entire planet, and certainly not that of the entire cosmos. As much as I might try (and I will), I don’t have the faculties. It would take a being far greater than myself to be able to understand that kind of Cosmic Complexity. Maybe nothing short of a Cosmic spirit can understand such a thing.

I know this was a long one, and I applaud you for grinding through it. As I said at the beginning, this is part of a larger somewhat related series of posts, that is going to range from future worlds, to animism, to left-of-center politics. I’m working towards a synthesis of my animistic beliefs, and the future I would like to live in.

Thanks for reading!

Notes:

*I have used god and spirit somewhat interchangeably through this whole piece. That is because I view gods as basically “big spirits”, or spiritual beings at a higher level of complexity than humanity. Spirits, when I use the term, tends to refer to those at an approximately equal or “lower” scale of complexity. Gods are “greater”, spirits and ancestors are “equal to/less than”. It’s a matter of relative scale for me. IE, the spirit of an island I will probably call “god”. An individual oak tree, probably “spirit.”

** I personally prefer not to gender the planet, though it is often common for pagans and others to refer to the planet as “Mother Earth” “Gaia” or “Terra”. Even the name of Earth is actually a Anglo-germanic name for a goddess. I have trouble relating these concepts to the planet as a whole, because it is bigger and more complex than human genders, and includes countless species that don’t confine to these norms. Where I do use pronouns for the planet, I tend towards “they/them” because it is a complex pronoun that can speak of the planet in a singular way, a plural way, and a neutral way.

Sources/References;

https://fireiceandsteel.wordpress.com/2017/09/07/a-cybernetic-animism/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_system

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor%E2%80%93network_theory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Barad

https://wovensong.com/2017/05/23/interanimism-on-the-mutual-inspiration-of-a-dreaming-earth/

https://fireiceandsteel.wordpress.com/2017/04/19/the-spirit-networks-and-emergence/

https://fireiceandsteel.wordpress.com/2017/05/02/the-spirit-networks-and-emergence-part-2/

https://fireiceandsteel.wordpress.com/2017/05/30/the-spirit-networks-and-emergence-part-3/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agency_(philosophy)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_magnitude

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius_loci

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Shifting Narratives, Future Worlds

“We possess the power
If this should start to fall apart
To mend divides
To change the world
To reach the farthest star
If we should stay silent
If fear should win our hearts
Our light will have long diminished
Before it reaches the farthest star” VNV Nation – Farthest Star

 

Image from Here

Hello again folks!

There has been a lot on my mind recently, and I am struggling a bit in typing it all out for you. I hope you forgive me for not getting work out as often as I would like. All that aside, I would like to jump right into it today.

Recently, I have been diving deep into my summer reading list. There is a lot of good stuff on my list right now, and that gives me plenty to think and write about. Which is good news for you, as there is plenty of material for me to sort through for this blog.

At the current time, I am rereading two books. In the blue corner, I have Physics of the Future, by Michio Kaku. In red corner, I have The Long Descent, by John Michael Greer. I first read Kaku’s work when I was still in community college, and it had a big impact me on the time. Well, after over ten years I feel it is time to revisit it.

At the same time, I read The Long Descent more recently in 2016, and you can find my early thoughts previously on this blog.

In order to set up a foundation for future blogs, I would like to talk about these two books in a bit of dialectic fashion. That way, I can seek a kind of dialogue between the two books, and perhaps gleam a little bit of knowledge from each one in a sythetic kind of way. It’s kind of like idea-based alchemy!

Now, as a brief introduction, these both are very different books, yet both deal with ideas about the future. Even though they both are considered to be non-fiction, there are elements of any speculative work that fall into the fictional realm. The reason for this, of course, is because the future has not yet come to pass. Whenever we speculate about the future, it is inevitable that we will be sometimes be right, and often be wrong.

Still, I think there is something to be learned by setting this two books in dialogue with one another. This is because Kaku’s work is fairly optimistic, and talks about a future where our civilization has progressed a great deal in many ways. On the other hands,. Greer’s book sets up a future where civilization is in decline because of factors such as peak oil. Following the course of past civilizations, Greer envisions a Long Descent into a post-civilization world.

I think it is fair that we set up Kaku’s work on the utopian end of the speculative scale, and Greer’s work on the dystopian end, even if it is a slow motion dystopia. Let’s examine both in more depth shall we?

John Michael Greer, The Long Descent

Greer’s work is well written and well researched, and then extrapolates that research into a grim future. His argument is based on the trajectory of some past civilizations, such as the collapse of the Western Roman Empire or the Mayan civilization.

The bulk of The Long Descent sets up a future based upon the implications of peak oil. Greer covers the facts behind the Hubbert Curve, and other aspects that sooner or later, the oil that drives our civilization is going to run out, and that process will precipitate the long slow decline of our civilization.

In addition, Greer sees no way we can get around this fact, calling peak oil a predicament to which there is no solution. Alternative energy will not save us, nor will anything also. Our best bet, is to prepare for the inevitable decline, which none of us will live to see.

It is a grim future indeed, that reads a lot like a dystopian novel.

“Map the likely results of current trends onto a scale of human lifetimes and a compelling image of the future emerges. Imagine an American woman born in the 1960’s. She sees the gas lines of the 1970’s, the short term political gimmicks that papered over the crisis in the 1980’s and 1990’s, and the renewed trouble in the following decades…

Her great-grandson, born in 2040, manages to avoid the smorgasbord of diseases, the pervasive violence, and the pandemic alcohol and drug use that claim a quarter of his generation before age 30. A lucky break gets him into a technical career, safe from military service in endless overseas wars, or “pacification actions” against separatist guerrillas at home. His technical knowledge consists mostly of rules of thumb for effective scavenging…

For his great-granddaughter, born in 2120, the great crises are mostly things of the past. She grows up amid a ring of villages that were once suburbs, but now they surround an abandoned core of rusting skyscrapers that are visited only by salvage crews who mine them for raw materials. Local wars sputter, the oceans are still rising, and famines and epidemics come through every decade or so, but with global population less than half of what it was in 2000 and still declining, humanity and nature are moving towards balance…

This process I’ve named The Long Descent – the declining arc of industrial civilization’s trajectory through time.” Pg 32.

This is not to say some aspects of TLD are without value, and the whole thing should be dismissed out of hand. There are a lot of great recommendations on community building, resilience, and energy efficiency that I think are important. I will expand on this in a future post, when I examine both these books individually.

Michio Kaku, Physics of the Future

This transition is perhaps the greatest transition in history, marking a sharp departure from all civilizations of the past…

Every headline that dominates the news reflects, in some way, the birth pangs of the planetary civilization” – Michio Kaku

It must be admitted that there is some truth in all the dystopian narratives that surround us. We very well could screw things up and slip into some Long Descent type future. As I’ve point out in my post on that topic, that scenario does a very good job of setting up the problems of peak oil. Still, as with most dystopia, I think it best serves as a warning rather than a prophecy. The Long Descent, is the kind of future best avoided, and if we play our cards right, I think it can be. That is where Kaku’s book comes in

In fact, Kaku’s book agrees on some of the point on the chapter concerning the future of energy. Kaku follows many of the same avenues as Greer, as he discusses the Hubbert curve, and our dependence on fossil fuels. If we have not peaked already, we will soon.

“This means that in the near future, we may be entering a period of irreversible decline” – Michio Kaku.

This fact alone has huge implications for the future; from political volatility, to conflicts over oil supplies, and a high confidence in the fact that oil prices will surely rise. There are huge implications for our economy as well as the world political organizations. If we follow the trajectory of The Long Descent, the decline of oil will be a centuries long decline in our civilization.

But…. And this is a huge but.

Kaku agrees with many of the implications, but his trajectory into the future is very different. Where Greer sees a decline in civilization that takes centuries to hit rock bottom, Kaku sees a transition to a truly planetary civilization. With a rise in renewable energy in the short term, and fusion and other sources in the long term. He sees the rise in oil prices as the means that will make renewables even more viable and economical, and quickly jump in to replace our oil based infrastructure.

This will be combined with a transition towards fully electric transportation, which of course will be powered renewably, by wind, solar, and other forms of energy, In fact, we can already see this transition in process. Project Drawdown bases its projection on the year 2050, as does The Solutions Project. The UN Sustainable Development Goals, which include the transition to clean energy, are based on meeting the goals by 2030.

At every level of human society, we are seeing the transition take place in real time. Local, regional, national and global. Entire nations are already planning their phase out of the Oil Age, and pushing renewable energies as well as electric transportation.

Towards Synthesis

So where do we end up with these two distinct views of the future? The truth, is likely found in the interplay between the two. At the current time in our history, it is pretty hard to see the future as bright and shiny as Kaku, as we face a lot of serious challenges to our existence. Peak Oil and Climate change chief among them.

At the same time, it is hard for me to agree with the doom and gloom that permeates Greer’s book. I don’t see peak oil as the end of the world, though it may certainly drastically change our the form of our civilization. I think the Long Descent should serve as a warning, and something we can absolutely mitigate. Contrary to many of Greer’s claims, the future is not inevitable.

As such, reading between the two options of Greer and Kaku, a few ideas can be synthesized. That the future is not likely a straight shot of progress towards a gleaming utopia, nor a long descent into some kind of post-civilization dystopia. Most importantly, we are making the choices right now that are going to shape what that future looks like.

We have a lot of choices and actions that can be done today, and many of them are in fact already in process. The old world, the Oil Age, is passing away, and we can already sense the stirrings of the next world to come. Birthing is not a clean process, and sometimes it is even messy and bloody. But I think we can survive it, and not only survive, but flourish.

As such, in the coming posts I want to examine both the Long Descent and Kaku’s Future in a little more depth.

Thanks for reading!

Sources/References;

Michio Kaku, Physics of the Future. 2011

John Michael Greer, The Long Descent. 2008

https://fireiceandsteel.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/some-thoughts-on-the-long-descent/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopian_and_dystopian_fiction

Updates 5/17/18

Hello again folks!

I’m working on wrapping up a lot of different projects right now. So here are a few updates, as I try to get moving here again.

The Indiegogo campaign I ran for my most recent novel was a success. Even though I did not reach my full goal, I raised enough money to fund cover art and design, which is the largest expense of my books at the moment. In addition, I reached THOUSANDS of people, and that is a wider network than I could have imagined. It is really exciting to see my potential audience being that large, as it I never expected I could reach that many people.

In addition to the novel, I have also finished with a full manuscript on animism. Yes, I will have a book coming out about animism, though it may be a year or two down the road at this moment. It will encompass a lot of the ground I cover here at this blog, as well as a lot of new territory too. I am really excited about it, and hope to be able to talk more about it soon.

On top of all of that, I am hoping to return to more regular blogging on this platform. My manuscript on animism has really broken my head open, and there are a lot of threads I want to chase down. Many of these threads are outside the scope of that manuscript. In many ways, my recent manuscript is a “101 – 201” type of animism for a general audience. I have spent the last 6 years or so on this blog developing that kind of material.

I may even start to synthesize some sort of “101” level posts for this blog, in order to help clean up some of my earlier work. It is always amazing to me how much my thoughts have grown and developed since I first began this blog. With my recent work, I really think there is a lot of potential, and I have perhaps outgrown some earlier posts. We are all always learning and growing, right?

So, for some forthcoming blogs, I am hoping to dive a little deeper into what my animism really looks like. Maybe 301 – 401 level stuff, eh? My rough goal of course is to not only dig deeper, but to integrate more ideas into the greater whole. I also want to return to my blog series on the UN sustainable development goals, as well as my Walking with the Ancestors series. Those projects have lain dormant for a bit.

There is a lot of work on the horizon, so I am hoping you all will join me as I move forward this year.

 

Indiegogo Update. 7 Days to Go!

Hello folks!

This is the last update for my current Indiegogo. We are down to just 7 days to go, and we are just over 50% of our goal. If you’ve been holding back, waiting for the right time, now is the right time!

It’d really be great if we could get closer to that goal here in the last week, so please chip in if you can!

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/liminal-worlds-a-new-novel-by-nicholas-haney#/

Once the campaign is done, we will return to your regularly scheduled posting!

Campaign Update!

Hello again folks!

There are 21 days left on my Indiegogo campaign to fund my next novel. As of right now we have raised 27% of our goal, $175 dollars. Thank you all who have chipped in so far!

I have reached out to my cover artist and gotten the ball rolling. Cover art is by far the most expensive part of this campaign, and may be as much as $400 out of the $650 I am asking for.

I have hundreds of followers here, through WordPress and by email. If only 100 of you chip in at the $5 dollar level, I will have met my goal. Consider helping me out, and you would have my eternal thanks!

Find the campaign here!

https://igg.me/at/LiminalNovel/x/18051611

New Novel, New Campaign!

Hello folks,

I wanted to stop in and tell you I am working my sixth novel towards publication, and I just launched my Indiegogo campaign to help fund it!

This is by far my largest platform, and I’m asking for a modest amount of $650 dollars. If everyone here chipped in a dollar, I’d have met my goal!

Consider donating today, and really help me bring this project alive!

https://igg.me/at/LiminalNovel/x/18051611

A Solarpunk Paganism?

(Image Source: Zearz on Deviantart)

Hello folks!

This is an update blog and a bit of stream of conciousness, so bear with me if this doesn’t seem fully fleshed out. I am really just checking in and telling you I have not forgotten about you, but that I have been really, really busy.

Right now, I am working away on an animism manuscript, which is my first real foyer into non-fiction writing. There has been at least one other attempt as a manuscript, but we don’t talk about that project anymore. It has really been a fun ride so far, and a very spiritual exercise. Some of the topics I am writing about have left me light headed and inspired. I am hoping the book when it is finished does the same for my readers.

I am also working my latest project towards publication, and am in the artwork stage right now; getting cover art (and hopefully more) done to really bring the project to life. I am really excited about this project, as it combines element of animism, shamanism, cyberpunk, and solarpunk.

Which brings us to what I really want to talk about it today. What is that whole solarpunk thing? If you know me at all, you know I have been kind of obsessing over it lately. It is a relatively new literary genre. It got it’s start on Tumblr in 2014, and has really took off in 2017. The moment I started to read about it my eyes went wide, and I knew I had found something amazing.

I’ve made no secret on this blog about where I stand on environment issues as well as humanitarian ones. As an animist, environmentalism and humanitarianism are part and parcel of my spiritual belief. I have written a fair bit about renewable energy and sustainable cities.

So the moment I heard about solarpunk, I had to know more.

I have written recently over at Pagan Bloggers a little about this already, but I wanted to expand on it more. As I said, maybe, sorta, mostly, kinda obsessed at this point.

What is Solarpunk?

I recently finished reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140 novel, and have just now started on the Mars Trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars) Some have called New York 2140 solarpunk, with it’s renewable energy, airships, sky villages, even within a world that has been flooded by climate change.

One source describes solarpunk as;

“Solarpunk is the first creative movement consciously and positively responding to the Anthropocene. When no place on Earth is free from humanity’s hedonism, Solarpunk proposes that humans can learn to live in harmony with the planet once again.

Solarpunk is a literary movement, a hashtag, a flag, and a statement of intent about the future we hope to create. It is an imagining wherein all humans live in balance with our finite environment, where local communities thrive, diversity is embraced, and the world is a beautiful green utopia.”

It is so much more than this too. It is an optimistic look at the future that doesn’t fall into our current cultural obsession with apocalypse and dystopia. More than this, I think it might contain ideas that a lot of pagans like me might embrace. As Adam Flynn points out here; 

“In short, solarpunk is a reaction to climate change, inequality, and our cultural obsession with dystopian futures. Its followers… want a world where people thrive through energy independence, local resilience, and sound infrastructure.

The vision is not about back-to-the-earth survivalism, Flynn says, because solarpunks embrace the responsible use of new technologies like synthetic biology and sensor networks. And it’s not utopian, he says, because the solarpunk future is one that is both high-tech and gritty, and — more importantly — one that we can actually achieve.”

Most of you know me here as a cautiously optimistic sort. I also have a fair bit of pragmatism in my mix. I think we face a lot of challenges in the days ahead, but I think that if we work together we can find a way through. As both an animist and a science fiction writer, I think it is possible for the future to be both sustainable as well as technological. I think we can build a renewable civilization and weave nature and culture back together.

A Pagan Statement on the Environment, A solarpunk paganism?

More than this, I think paganism is tailor-made to be a great fit with solarpunk. Folks, this is what we were made for. Solarpunk is about building a radically new world, from the ground up. This may well be part of our pagan frontier, and with the depth of our creative energies, maybe this is something we should embrace.

When it first came out in 2015, I signed onto A Pagan Statement on the environment, which can be found here. If you want to be specific, I am signee #2148. That’s me, the animist.

Just looking at A Pagan Statement on the Environment, it is solarpunk as hell;

“There are certain actions we can take now. It is important for each individual, community, and nation to take stock of what that means for the betterment of the whole. Technical solutions can never move forward without political will, and the necessary political will requires a shift in our most deeply held values, in our very definitions of what it means to be human, and in how humanity relates to the world. We recognize this shift as a spiritual imperative.”

We need change, and we need change bad. In order to build a truly sustainable world, it is all hands on deck. We need investment, and we need to be to keep the pressure on our leaders. If they can’t cut it, then we need new ones. This is part and parcel of my spirituality.

“Rather, building a truly sustainable culture means transforming the systems of domination and exploitation that threaten our future into systems of symbiotic partnership that support our ecosystem. We must be clear about our agenda, which includes promoting sustainable, local economies, reforming our food systems, distributing resources in a more just and humane fashion, and ensuring that our human populations are below the carrying capacity of our planet through access to voluntary birth control, and equal access to education and work for women.”

Local economies, reformed foods systems, equality and sustainability. More than that, is it the idea of local resilience and renewable energy.

“Any economic or political system which encourages the exploitation of Earth and people must be dismantled or substantially reformed. This includes any system based on endless growth. We should be operating in a closed loop system, not a linear one. This means moving away from disposable development and culture, and moving toward renewable development and culture wherein all products are intended for longevity, repairability, and easy recycling or composting at the end of their use. The sustainable economy of the future will be one with the shortest distances between production, consumption and recycling of byproducts.”

This is exactly what I think solarpunk is talking about. We need changes, big changes, from the roots up. Radical changes, in infrastructure and in economics. Capitalism is dangerously exploitative to humans as well as the environment, all in the search of greater profit. Infinite growth on a finite planet is not sustainable. We need a better vision and better stories than that.

A Practical, Possible World.

I have written a great deal about Drawdown, renewable energy, and sustainable cities.

I want to build a sustainable world in accordance with my spiritual beliefs, and I want to do that in a way that doesn’t involve given up or “running into the forest”. I want to see humanity spread to other planets, and I want to see technology used with wisdom and in a sustainable way.

It should come as know surprise that I may be taking to solarpunk like a fish to water. It combines all these things in a way that is both radical, practical, and future looking.

Three of the top ten solutions to climate change from Drawdown are form of solar or wind power; Onshore Wind Turbines, Solar Farms, and Rooftop Solar.

This isn’t just the realm of fantasy or fiction either. As Drawdown clearly lays out, this is a future we could build. This could be a reality. National Geographic and The Solutions Project also have detailed plans for a renewable, sustainable, and carbon free future.

Solarpunk in this sense is not just speculation, but a possible future we could actually create. We can take solutions from Drawdown and other places, and create a solarpunk world. Building a green infrastructure from the ground up is one of the most radical things we can do. It is also good for both humanity and the environment, and as an animist this pleases me to no end.

As pagans. I think it is well past time we start telling stories about what that future might look like. I am pretty excited that my new novel falls into this genre. I didn’t even do it on purpose, and that’s even more fantastic!

As always, thanks for reading!

Sources/References;

http://ecopagan.com/

http://paganbloggers.com/wolftracks/2018/02/19/what-world-shall-we-create/

http://www.ozy.com/fast-forward/sci-fi-doesnt-have-to-be-depressing-welcome-to-solarpunk/82586

http://theconversation.com/explainer-solarpunk-or-how-to-be-an-optimistic-radical-80275

https://solarpunkanarchists.com/2016/05/27/what-is-solarpunk/

http://www.hopesandfears.com/hopes/city/life/215749-solarpunk

http://www.drawdown.org/

https://grist.org/business-technology/this-sci-fi-enthusiast-wants-to-make-solarpunk-happen/

https://fireiceandsteel.wordpress.com/2017/12/17/shaping-a-living-world-part-11/

https://fireiceandsteel.wordpress.com/shaping-a-living-world/