(Now that Jól is past I have had time to reflect on what the holiday means to me. I have also had time to reflect on various environmental issues. There is a symmetry that exists for Pagan peoples where religion and environment are concerned that is perhaps missing for some, and this article is meant to address one particular aspect of that symmetry. My goal here is to offer food for thought, rather than solutions – Hrafnkell)

People like fireplaces and wood burning stoves – not to mention a good bonfire. Not only for the warmth they provide, but for aesthetic reasons, particular on a cold winter’s day. Few will disagree that the sight and sound of flames licking at wood is a recipe for contentment.

But for Heathens, a wood fire can have religious connotations that might be lacking for those who follow other religious paths (the idea of the Yule log is not unique to Germanic Paganism).

No doubt there are few who have not heard of the Yule log. Fewer are probably aware of its Pagan antecedents.  For a Heathen, the Twelve Days are unimaginable without a decorated tree (the decorations were originally gifts to the tree) and a burning log in the fireplace.

We cannot always get oak, but we can get wood – actual wood rather than Duraflame’s napalm-like qualities, or the logs made out of coffee grounds. But wood, after many millennia, is becoming a politically incorrect and environmentally inexpedient commodity.

People have become aware of the polluting qualities of burning wood. We live in environmentally conscious times, and we are daily bombarded with studies revealing the origins and causes of various forms of pollution.

I first encountered the idea of particulate pollution when I moved (briefly) to Florida. Florida, I learned at the time has (or had) a problem with particulate matter floating around in the air and this was a cause of concern, given my allergies. I knew that stuff wasn’t good for you.

The U.S. Department of Energy has identified some of the problems related to wood-burning fireplaces – they emit various nasty substances, including the above-mentioned particulate matter, but also nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, and organic gases. That a wood-fire can therefore be harmful to a person’s health scarcely needs saying. It is particularly bad for people who already suffer from various health problems or whose health is precarious because of age or pregnancy.

There is the added issue of fireplaces serving as a means of escape for heat – thus leading to increased energy consumption to keep your home warm. For this please see the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Savers Blog.

Clean Air Revival informs us about the dangers of particulate pollution:

Burning solid fuel yields particulate pollution – solid particles smaller than a red blood cell which have been implicated in 30,000 deaths in the US and 2.1 million deaths world wide per year. .  “Particulate pollution is the most important contaminant in our air. …we know that when particle levels go up, people die¹. ” Indeed, wood smoke is chemically active in the body 40 times longer than tobacco².

1. Joel Schwartz, Ph.D., Harvard School of Public Health, E Magazine, Sept./Oct. 2002

2. Wm. A Pryor, Persistent Free Radicals in Woodsmoke: An ESR Spin Trapping Study, Free Radical Biology and Medicine 1989, 7(1): 17-21

Perhaps unsurprisingly, wood smoke can contribute to the risk of cancer: A  July 11, 2005 study published in Chest informs us that exposure to wood smoke may increase the risk of lung cancer via a mechanism similar to that of tobacco: “… our findings demonstrate that wood smoke could produce similar effects on p53, phospho-p53, and MDM2 protein expression as tobacco.… It is important to consider wood smoke exposure as a possible risk factor for the development of lung cancer in nonsmoker subjects.”

Not a pretty picture by any means. I learned long ago that grandma made me sick by using wood cutting boards and preparing raw meat and veggies on the same surface; now I learn than her fireplace was giving me cancer!(For more on the dangers of wood smoke see Clean Air Revival and Wisconsin Department of Health Services.)

The situation is so serious (or at least, perceived to be – there are critics of the measures) that some parts of the country are placing limits on burning wood. Planetizen.com reports that “Five years ago, the Central Valley became the first area of California to ban indoor wood burning when an ‘alert’ was called by the air district; other air districts followed in 2008.” On October 17, 2008, “Regulators in the Bay Area Air Quality Management District are clamping down on wood burning between November and February as a way to meet a new federal law limiting the amount of breathable, fine particles.” On March 9, 2009, the Connecticut Legislature considers HB6616 An Act Establishing Wood Smoke to be a Public Nuisance (!) On December 29, 2009, it was reported that Bay Area inspectors in California caught 47 fireplace violators on Jól day.

Ouch. Happy Jól, folks.

In many cases you can only have a fire if you have the proper type of wood stove. In others, no fires at all.

What’s a conscientious but devout Heathen to do?

Will the day come when across the fifty states we are barred from burning a Yule log? And should a religious waver be possible?  A spokesman for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District does not offer an encouraging answer: “We know a lot of people like to burn on this holiday, but it’s our duty to protect public health,” said Ralph Borrmann, the spokesman.

While the dangers of wood smoke cannot be denied, it seems hypocritical that those who cause the worst levels of pollution – big corporations – proceed with doing untold harm to our environment with hardly a comment directed at them. You can watch their chimneys belch smoke into the sky but you can’t burn a Yule log for your gods?

Still, legal and regulatory hypocrisies aside, it’s a bit of an ethical conundrum. If Paganism is nature-based religion, how does one reconcile concern for the environment with concern for showing proper devotion to one’s gods?

I would argue for one obvious (and partial) solution: that even where bans do not exist, one solution might be to burn less frequently. Obviously, a person could choose to burn wood only for religious reasons and on religious occasions. Most of us do not require the use of a wood fireplace to heat our homes (not that the heat we obtain via the power company comes pollution free!). For most of us, aesthetics are at the heart of a fire.

A simulated fire is obviously inadequate. This would amount to pretending to toss a pinch of incense on a flame or pretending to pray. It is the cultic act that has significance. Faux piety is no piety at all.

Wood pellets are offered as an environmentally safe option when burning wood. They produce less soot and ash (and no creosote – the stuff that causes chimney fires)  and they are made from wood that would otherwise go into a landfill. See Treehugger.com. But while wood pellets produce far less pollution, burning wood pellets does not have the same effect as a log. While aesthetic considerations might be set aside in the normal course of events, religious reasons render this a far less attractive solution.

For those who are interested in both the ethics and the environmental issues involved, please see Burnwise, a partnership program of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Yes, Virginia, there is a world without soul-destroying alien sky gods, and it is grand. I’m talking about Pandora. It’s not a real world, but for three hours it can be yours, and you can revel in it and enjoy the seething disapproval of conservative Christians at the idea of a fulfilling religion without their god.

It is chock full of spirituality – ethnic spirituality – in other words, Paganism – religion of the place and its inhabitants are truly people of the place. The people are called the Na’vi. And you find them in James Cameron’s Avatar.

It’s exciting. A people so much a part of their environment, and a spirituality so much a part of both. We can imagine that early Paganism was like this, being a religion of the place, shaped by but also shaping the people, shaped by the environment but also shaping understanding of the environment. Organic. It belongs. It belongs in a sense an imposed alien sky religion never can.

You can probably assume that the bulk of the human mercenaries working for the exploiters of the planet are Christian – or at least monotheistic – that would be logical given the balance of the world’s religion is monotheistic. But it’s not even implied. In fact, it’s never mentioned.

The spirituality reminded me of the spirituality of Dances with Wolves. It was, perhaps, even discussed a bit more in this film. The goddess of the natives is a “she” – Eywa - and if you want you can take away from the film the explanation is that the “goddess creator” thing is a spiritual understanding of a scientific explanation mentioned in the film or you can take away the opposite understanding. It doesn’t really matter because what’s important is the spirituality so beautifully expressed.

It was very refreshing. Very beautiful. Very pure. Very much the religion of a world filled with the divine.

The spirituality is so organic to the place that you are transported. And Heathens will not walk away without images of the World Tree – Yggdrasil, in their heads.

Ross Douthat’s 12/21 column in the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/opinion/21douthat1.html exemplifies the “offended” attitude. For Douthat, pantheism can never be more than a poor replacement for a real religion with a real Jesus to lift folks out of the “mundane” world.  He felt threatened by the Force too, in Star Wars. I almost responded on the 21st to Douthat’s column, but I wanted a chance to see the film for myself first.

And now I have.

By no means did all Christian reviewers condemn the movie for its non-Christian spirituality. For example, Christian Spotlight on Entertainment gives it an morality “offensive” rating http://christiananswers.net/spotlight/movies/2009/avatar2009.html but this is for language and misuse of “God’s” name rather than the nature of the film’s spiritual message. Similarly, I have to give credit to Christianity Today’s review as well http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/movies/reviews/2009/avatar.html

It’s also been pointed out that though Disney’s new Princess and the Frog has voodoo but no Christianity. But why should it? The argument I’ve seen raised that because the New Orleans of the era was an in your face Christian city doesn’t mean that there weren’t parts and people in New Orleans that weren’t.

Why should every movie made have a Christian theme, or even a Christian in it, as though Christians are the only people on the planet?

One reviewer  http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/12/18/conservative-christians-dont-crown-princess-and-the-frog/ actually has the temerity to say, “Not so much for the 1920s New Orleans of “The Princess and the Frog.” As with most of the Potter series, there’s not even a tip of the hat toward explicit traditional religion.”

Excuse me, but “traditional religion” is Paganism. It is not Christianity

Very few movies are made today about Paganism – or that even have Pagan themes. Only one recently even portrays it in a sympathetic fashion – Gladiator – and the piety of Maximus to traditional religion was roundly condemned as dangerous – it lacked Jesus after all and so could not possibly be meaningful or fulfilling.

Most movies, regardless of what conservative Christians might say, are full of Christians. Ordinary Christians going about their ordinary lives, not preaching, not witnessing, not bothering anybody but keeping their religious beliefs to themselves. Characters wear crosses around their necks; often, the central characters, one or more of them. They don’t talk about their beliefs but do they need to?

If this is somehow anti-Christian I fail to see it. But the moment any character looks even remotely non-Christian it becomes a bit deal to some of these people. Non-Christian religions should not be portrayed in a sympathetic light, apparently – only Christianity – anything else somehow equates to a Hollywood war on Christianity.

It’s madness I know, but those are the cards we have been dealt as a religious minority – listening to the majority whine because 99.99% isn’t enough – they want 100%. What these critics really want is a return to the days of Ben Hur and Spartacus, where Christianity not only gets mention, but Paganism gets denigrated in the same breath.

It isn’t a question of equal representation for them – it’s a privileging of their viewpoint they demand and a concomitant rejection of all others.

And the suggestion that the release of Avatar at this time of year could be a slap in the face to “believers”? These people need to remember this is our time of the year – a holy time for Pagan peoples across the board, and that even non-Christians are entitled to entertainment on December 25.

New York Times has a good review of the movie here looking at it from yet another perspective:  Editorial Observer

I recently read James Hoggan’s Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming (2009) and am about to begin Stephen H. Schneider’s Science as a Contact Sport: Inside the Battle to Save Earth’s Climate (2009). These, and all this talk about the big “Global Warming Hoax” which I wrote about on here has got me thinking about our home: Midgard. In the Heathen scheme of the cosmos, this is the human enclosure, and Asgard is the home of the gods. I will speak of the Outlands momentarily.

Everyone knows that Paganism is earth-centered religion. All original religion (ethnic religion) used to be earth-centered. And no surprise: the people lived very close to nature. Heathenism even has an entire tribe of gods associated with nature: the Vanir, as contrasted with the gods of the sky, the Æsir. The Vanir are distinctly gods of earth and fertility. However, the whole “nature-worship” thing is considered an evil by Abrahamic monotheistic thought. People should, they tell us, be looking to a god outside the world, not gods who are part of it.

Revealed religion, Book religion, that is, Abrahamic monotheism, turned that whole association with nature on its head.

The extreme-conservative Christian-dominated GOP is, not surprisingly, still largely hostile to nature and the environment, as recent statistics demonstrate. A Pew Research Poll from May 2008 illustrates the problem: 84% of Democrats say the earth is warming. The percentage of Republicans is 49%. Asked whether humans are responsible for that warming, 58% of Democrats said yes, a mere 27% of Republicans.

It gets worse when you follow the dollars. Looking at “oil-and-gas industry contributions to U.S. politicians” we see these stood at 60/40 between Republicans and Democrats in 1990; by the time of the Bush Administration they were at 80/20. The picture from the coal industry is similarly bleak: 90/10 between Republicans and Democrats by the middle Bush years (Hoggan 2005:152-153. 169). It is no secret to anyone that the Bush Administration was hostile not only to science in general, but to the environment in particular. We all remember, I think, the ridiculous specter of an EPA that insisted it did not have a mandate to protect the environment.

In fact, statistics show, the same Republican senators who oppose gay marriage and stem cell research also oppose environmental legislation.[1] In May 2000 the Family Research Council actually lumped “population control, economic redistribution and the environment” and called environmentalism a “socialist-leaning movement” and noted with some degree of paranoia that the 30th Annual Earth Day “happens to coincide with communist dictator Nikolai Lenin’s birthday.”[2]

It gets crazier, believe it or not. In 2000 the Interfaith Council for Environmental Stewardship, a new coalition of conservative religious leaders that offered a “Judeo-Christian” alternative on the environment.

The Council held a press conference in Washington, D.C., April 17 to release a document called the “Cornwall Dec­laration on Environmental Steward­ship.” Endorsers include James C. Dobson of Focus on the Family, TV preacher D. James Kennedy, the Rev. Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association, Charles Colson of Prison Fellowship, Bill Bright of Campus Cru­sade for Christ, World magazine editor Marvin Olasky, Christian Recon­struc­tionist author George Grant and Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

Conservative Catholics included the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus of the Institute on Religion and Public Life, the Rev. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life and the Acton Institute’s Robert Sirico, a Catholic priest who spearheaded the Cornwall Declaration.

The religious leaders charge that liberal environmentalists “elevate concern for nature above concern for people.” They deny that global warming is occurring, argue that there is no overpopulation crisis and insist there is no evidence for rampant disappearance of species.[3]

It is no surprise then that in the 2007 National Environmental Scorecard released…by the League of Conservation Voters, John McCain, Republican presidential candidate in 2008, received

a score of ZERO. McCain was the only member of Congress to skip every single crucial environmental vote scored by the organization, posting a score lower than Members of Congress who were out for much of the year due to serious illnesses–and even lower than some who died during the term. By contrast, the average Member of Congress scored a 53 in 2007. McCain posts a lifetime score of only 24.[4]

And Sarah Palin is clearly no friend of science; in her anti-intellectual worldview there is room for neither evolution nor human-caused global warming.[5]

But we polytheists realize that live in a world filled with the divine. The gods, the spirits, are all around us, a part of this world we live in, not apart from it, not outside. I don’t know about you, but I take comfort from this cosmological scheme. From a Heathen perspective, what is outside of the community is not to be trusted. What comes from outside is a stranger. Those are the Outlands (Utgarðr). Why put your gods in the Outlands? The gods should be part of the community. This so-called Judeo-Christian alternative elucidated above seems to be from the Outlands. The lack of concern shown for the human enclosure (Midgard) is obscene.

But in polytheistic religions, the gods are part of the community.

This is particular true for Heathens, who see the gods as not just deities but founders, originators, even ancestors in some sense. You want to talk about having personal relationships with gods? Not to be too flippant about it, but “we got yer personal relationships right here.”

I think it’s fair to say that from a certain perspective, the ancients understood nature better than we do. Oh sure, we have science, we understand the science of it quite well. Any high school graduate knows more about environmental science than the wisest of the ancients. But scientists don’t generally live among the trees, among the wild that they study. Much of what we read is ivory tower intellectualism, as separated from nature as the god of monotheism is from the world. An academic might understand nature on one level but be completely unable to survive when thrown into it.

I am not denigrating science. Far from it. It is not that science has no role, but that it has its own role. There are some things science cannot explain, things science is not designed to explain, just as there are things religion cannot explain. They each have their own realm, necessary but different, like men and women.

The immediacy of nature is lost to most moderns. I say this every fall, but think of what the fall must have meant to our ancestors? They didn’t just pile up wood to have some nice cozy, romantic fires over the winter, but to survive. To stay alive. They didn’t go hunting to add some spice to their diet, or because it was a sport. They hunted to survive. I might look at a deer and admire its beauty, its sleek lines. They’d be looking as well at a piece of food with four legs. I don’t see it first and foremost as food. I don’t have to. I have a grocery store down the street.

That’s not to say they objectified the animals they killed. Nature was part of their grand narrative, a narrative inseparable from their own. They understood the role of the deer in nature. They thanked it for giving its life to feed them. That early humans, pre-monotheistic humans, gave a lot of thought to what they were doing when they hunted, the careful rearrangement of bones on the altar, shows that they understood things on a level lost to most of us. Life taken for life to continue, and a return of that life force to the gods who provided that life in the first place.

They say, based on the literary evidence, that ancients did not admire the beauty of nature in the same way we do. I suppose we will never know for sure what the common folks thought about it. After all, unlike the wealthy city-dwellers who wrote most of what survived, they didn’t leave us any written testimony. But it seems reasonable when you’re trying to eke a subsistence-level existence out of nature that you wouldn’t have time to sit around admiring it.

I say this because I’ve read some of the letters and diaries written by early Minnesota settlers, folks, as it happens, who were mostly from Sweden and Norway. I remember then talking about the swamps and the mosquitoes and the other hardships the land put in their path, but beautiful as the country is, they didn’t have as many words for that aspect of the scenery. Mostly they dwelt with its harshness. This might or might not provide evidence for the scholarly position.

But at the same time, you won’t find the modern home-owner or contractor apologizing to a tree before he cuts it down. There aren’t many laws (outside of the California Redwoods) regarding cutting down trees (that I’m aware of), unless it’s some neighborhood/community standards thing.

Nobody is worried about religious associations in nature any longer. Nobody but modern Pagans. And what Heathen does not know that the oak is sacred to the Thunderer? Or that Yggdrasill is an ash? Or that it was an elm and an ash that gave birth to the human race?

For most, trees, if they are loved at all, are loved for their beauty, or for the shade they provide. Their religious associations are mostly lost. How many sacred groves do you see on your local city map? But once there were Groves of Thor. Bad things happened to those who violated such places. Look to the example of Þórir and Karli, who ransack a Finnish grove dedicated to Jómali (Óláfs saga helgi). Their greed in violating this sacred grove results in their eventual downfall (DuBois 1999:7).

It would stand to reason then that where environmental issues are concerned, whatever ones feelings about Anthropogenic Global Warming, that a certain heightened level of concern about the environment, will be visible among Heathens. Heathens will not objectify nature. They will not set themselves apart from it but will in some sense try to accommodate themselves to nature.

It makes sense, doesn’t it, given the tale of Aksr and Embla? As I noted above, in Heathen mythology, the first people were made from trees, which scientifically speaking, has a great deal more to say for it than the idea that we were made out of lumps of dirt, or just conjured up out of thin air. As Carl Sagan noted in his series Cosmos,

We’re virtually identical to trees. We both use nucleic acids as the hereditary material; we both use proteins as enzymes to control the chemistry of the cell and most significantly, we both use the identical code book to translate nucleic acid information into protein information. Any tree could read my genetic code.

I don’t know about you, but when the oil and coal industries start paying lobbyists, journalists, and various non-climate specialist scientists to tell me that C02 emissions are good for me, or worse, that DDT should be a “food group” and that its liberal application over the face of Midgard can save the human race…well, I’m just a bit suspicious of their motives.

I’m more inclined to believe the scientists who actually study climate for a living – and who aren’t being paid by big oil and big coal to toot the company line (remember those tobacco company studies promoting the completely healthy effects of smoking?). I don’t think it takes a genius to figure out that big oil and coal are not thinking about our best interests as humans, or the religious associations of nature and of the things in nature. They don’t care that my tree is sacred to Thor.

But I do.

I have long argued that whether you accept Anthropogenic Global Warming as a fact (I do), we should still be showing some concern for our environment. This for religious as well as common-sense reasons. You don’t have to think of the planet itself as a goddess (Gaia) to see it as part of the divine. Everything around us is part of the divine. It is part of the human enclosure (Midgard). Would we treat our own homes like we treat the world around us?

And everything, literally everything we see in nature is part of something bigger, that “circle of life” thing you hear so much about. Every object in nature has some purpose that does not include humans. Pluck it out, and everything changes. Some creatures adapt, some do not. Usually, humans adapt. But at some point, even humans might fail to adapt. Blind faith that “god” will take care of everything, that “he” will see to it that everything is okay, is worse than absurd. It’s reckless.

Yes, species go extinct all the time. And many without any involvement from humans. They’ve had their chance and blown it. They couldn’t keep up with the changes. This used to happen all the time before there were any humans to affect the balance. But that doesn’t mean we should willy-nilly help them along. If we get too careless with nature, rather than managing nature, we might find nature managing us. Not a pretty picture.

I want to go back to polytheism. I don’t want to go back to the 9th century to do it.

Notes:
[1] http://www.grist.org/article/scherer-christian/
[2] http://www.au.org/media/church-and-state/archives/2000/05/pampe.html
[3] Ibid.
[4] http://www.sierraclub.org/pressroom/releases/pr2008-02-21.asp
[5] On the issue of Anthropogenic Global Warming, http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/09/sarah-palin-record-environment.php. On the issue of evolution, http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2009/11/19/going-rogue-is-sarah-palin-a-creationist/
[6] For health risks associated with DDT, see “Public Health Statement for DDT, DDE, and DDD” by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/phs35.html#bookmark09

I went outside this weekend and watched my neighbor annihilating the trees behind his house. I do mean that literally.

I had been enjoying fall immensely. As anyone who knows me knows (and I’ve said it here before) fall is my favorite time of year. It is a very powerful time, a time when one season is dying away to give way to the dark side of the year, not to new life as in spring, but to death. And a very real prospect of death it was to our ancestors, subsisting in a marginal economy and often on marginal land. I can run to the store and stock up on food against the stray blizzard, and when I stockpile fire wood I’m not stockpiling it with the thought that my very life depends upon it. My fires are more for pleasure, and for saving on heating bills.

As I’ve said here before, I’ll thank the animal for giving its life for me and I’ll apologize to the tree before I cut it down, but I will kill the animal and I will cut down the tree. But what my neighbor is doing this fall is nothing short of murder. There is a wooded area behind his house and he just bought it from the “old man” who used to own all the land that comprises my neighborhood. He decided he wanted to build a pole barn back there (he needs one for all his tractors and trailers). To that end, he got himself a bulldozer and he has been bulldozing every tree in sight. It’s like watching the rain forest be raped. But it’s happening next door.

My senses cry out when I watch this. It’s so impersonal. You know those trees mean nothing to him. They’re objects and they’re in his way and they have to move – as expeditiously as possible. As a Heathen of course I am thinking of the land-wights (On landvætt pl. landvættir). I leave offerings for the wights. Any sane Heathen knows it’s better to have the wights on your side than against you. Nothing good can come of slaughtering their trees that way. That’s the pragmatic Norseman speaking. Then there is the lover of beauty and the pain of loss, seeing that nice secluded, wooded area give way to man-made structures. Then there is the sense of nature violated by such brutal methods. Perhaps there is no difference in axes and saws and chainsaws and bulldozers but degrees of efficiency, but I can’t look at it that way. To me, this is no different than my childhood friends on their hunting expeditions blasting squirrels and butterflies out of the air with their shotguns because they were bored. It seems like wanton destruction.

Nor is my neighbor all that careful about property lines, but that’s another story. Just take this from me: don’t let anyone excuse their boorish behavior with “I’m a country boy; that’s how we do it.” My family are good solid Scandinavian country folk and we don’t act like boorish louts.

So it’s a slightly sadder fall this time around. I’m already giving thought to a new barrier of trees between us – there are some really nice trees out there and I can pick and choose what to plant. It won’t be the same but it will be giving some life back in exchange for the taking. And here my Blessing for Planting comes to mind again:

(Lifting the plant to be put into the soil before you)
May the Lord and the Lady (i.e. Freyr and Freyja)
Bless you
And Grant you long life
and good health

For you are as much a part of this world as I am

(as you place the plant in the ground)
What I take away from Midgard (i.e. the earth) [I cut down plants/trees, pull weeds, etc]
I return to it. [by planting new things - restoring balance]

(as you fill in the soil around the plant)
Grow well little children of the soil
under sun and moon and stars
This blessing I offer

I don’t know that the sort of brutality being practiced next door will not have a long term affect on the natural world in my corner of the universe, but I will do what I can to make up for it, though the crime is not my own. I think at least an apology should be offered, but I know the trees did not get that much from the man, who cannot even apologize to another human for his rash and thoughtless acts.

It is fall, and things die, but we don’t have to add needlessly or thoughtlessly to those deaths.

On a related note: Saving Our Ash Trees

As every Heathen knows, ash trees are sacred not only to Native Americans. Yggdrasill is an ash. More, the first woman was Embla (often taken to be an Elm), while the first man was named Askr (ash-tree) according to the Voluspa 17 and 18. Oðinn himself gave them (Askr and Embla) breath and life.

I read Dr. Peter Gleick’s review of Bjorn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist. I recommend it (the review) to everyone. Dr. Gleick writes in an engaging style – it is neither dry nor obtuse and it is very informative – even eye opening. The review can be found here.

What has always struck me about people making arguments (and I’m not just talking about global warming skeptics) is their tendency to gloss over unwelcome facts and to use statistics selectively to prove a point. It’s not at all uncommon. Everyone has a point of view, a context, and our context shapes our understanding and approach. For some this is incidental; for others it is willful.

The dangers, of course, are obvious. As Dr. Gleick points out, “By selectively using data, it is possible to support almost any conclusion.” So true. And I’m sure we’ve all seen examples of that. It’s true of any discipline. It’s perhaps more egregious when it comes to something as critical and potentially catastrophic as anthropogenic global warming. And it’s another case of letting theory determine evidence. If we’re going to bother with statistics or an appeal to data in the first place, doesn’t it behoove us to make thorough use of them? It seems to me self-defeating to use only part of the evidence in order to support a theory that, if exposed to ALL the evidence, would fall apart (and how much worse to cling to it in the face of all evidence to the contrary!). Why would anyone even wish to do something so blatantly dishonest?

Obviously, there are ideological considerations. Some people simply don’t want to accept that the world might be other than their ideology (political or religious) demands. Marxist views of history are an obvious example of this. If you accept the basic tenet of Marxism – class struggle – then all of history must be understood in this context. The problem is that not every even in history had anything to do with class struggle. Attempting to twist every historical event to fit the ideological framework has some truly laughable results. Unfortunately, our understanding of history suffers as a result.

I’ve laughed out loud at some of the Marxist interpretations of American history where the U.S. Cavalry is likened to the Nazi SS and the Reservations are extermination camps like Auschwitz. There will be people who read this and say “But of course they were!” but I will point out, with all due respect, that these people have probably not consulted the primary source material, and have made little or no attempt to understand the past within its own context. Their cry is simply a knee-jerk reaction based upon ideology. Anyone bothering to study the primary source data (as I have, and in great depth – Reports of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, anyone?) will know this is absurd. But you won’t convince a Marxist of this because ideology demands its truth in the face of any and all evidence to the contrary.

Truth, of course, is a sticky issue. Dr. Gleick has this to say of truth:

“truth” is an elusive concept in environmental and ecological science. Environmental scientists know that uncertainty is a fundamental part of many of these
issues—uncertainty due to inadequate data collection, or the complexity of ecological relationships, or the inability to know the future. As a result, much of what we know is estimation or expert judgment and should be described as such. Anyone claiming to know the “truth” is grossly overconfident and underinformed.

I would say that truth is far more elusive than people recognize. Based on very little evidence or understanding of any issue, people will assume they know the “truth” about it. This falls under the category of “everyone knows.” No, everyone doesn’t know. What you learned in grade school or from mommy or daddy or from your friends doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. Even well-meaning parents can misinform their children and I won’t even get into the number of parents who do so with malice aforethought. “Common knowledge” is no knowledge at all.

When I was growing up, “everybody knew” that General George A. Custer had led the 7th Cavalry into an ambush and gotten himself and everyone else killed. The problem is, of course, that this isn’t true. Not even close. It is difficult to arrange an ambush if you don’t know the enemy is coming, and the native encampment had no idea the 7th Cavalry was on its way. It was not the Native Americans who surprised Custer, but Custer who surprised them, and not just once, but twice. Yes, he approached a large enemy encampment in broad daylight and caught them by surprise. What is often claimed to be a terrible blunder was actually quite an accomplishment if you bother to study the facts.

In the same way it’s easy to accuse Custer of being a “glory hound” or superabundantly arrogant, but it’s another to actually study the man (let alone the battle itself) and have the integrity to admit that your understanding was based on nothing more than “common knowledge.” In We Were Soldiers, the Mel Gibson film about the Vietnam War, one character is made to utter some truly ridiculous words: “Custer was a pussy.” I invite you to actually study Custer’s war record and then return to me and in all honesty make that claim. You won’t be able to. And to his credit, I’ve found no evidence that Sergeant Major Plumley actually uttered those words.

I use the Little Big Horn as an example because it in many ways mirrors the debate on climate change. It is a divisive issue, first of all, one that breeds fanatics on both extremes and one that allows for little middle room. One is either “pro” or “anti” Custer, as though the event can be narrowed down to one man, who is taken completely out of the context not only of his time in history but even the Indian Wars themselves. It is also a topic that invites many of the same “truths” to be put on display, as well as a selective and contentious use of the evidence, of facts. The “anti-Custer” faction in particular remind me of global warming skeptics, eagerly making bold judgments without any support of the evidence.

I remember being told by a Native American friend that Custer engaged in genocide on a large scale, at one point killing thousands of natives. The problem with this claim, one which they repeatedly insisted was true while refusing to back it up with evidence, is that it’s demonstrably untrue. Custer was an “Indian hater” we here. Yet if you actually read Custer’s My Life on the Plains or his personal correspondence, you find no evidence of this. On the contrary, his opinion of the Native Americans is far more nuanced than is usual in the period, and is quite thoughtful and open minded. In truth, Custer, not alone among frontier army officers, was sympathetic to the plight of the Native American peoples.

People like to point to the Washita as a massacre perpetrated by the hateful Custer, but in fact, it was not Custer and his men who massacred unarmed Native Americans. It was the Indian scouts in his service. And when he was informed this was taking place, Custer ordered it stopped immediately. Yes, you can claim the village was unarmed and helpless, but if you want to take the incident out of its historical context you’re condemning yourself (and anyone who listens to you) to ignorance. The facts are that the village contained men who had recently raided white settlements and killed civilians. Only an idiot would have thought he could approach the village and force the chief to give up the culprits. First of all, the chief had no authority over his people of that kind, and secondly, the wanted men would have escaped, ridden downstream, roused the other villages, and then either everyone would have escaped or Custer would have found himself surrounded by enemies in the Washita valley, with unhappy results for the 7th Cavalry. Tell me honestly he would not have been blamed for this had the 7th been mauled there rather than 8 years later at the Little Big Horn (Doubt me? Captain Benteen, a Custer “hater” accused Custer of abandoning Major Elliot and his detachment at the Washita, but in the aftermath of the Little Big Horn had no problem condemning Custer for not abandoning the wounded in order to save his command).

History is complex. You cannot pretend to understand what happened without understanding that context. It’s easy to be an arm-chair general if you don’t mind looking like a fool. It’s easy to pretend to be an expert on anything if you don’t mind looking like a fool. That doesn’t stop people from doing it, and it doesn’t stop these people from misleading others. Hitler is a prime example of this. And Hitler is far from alone in history. Our own culture is full of such people, people who, for reasons of their own, selfish reasons, will lie in order to get their way. They’ll demonstrate an ignorance of the facts – a willful ignorance – and ignore all evidence that proves them wrong, and vilify their opponents as liars and worse the entire time.

That is why we, as ordinary people, must fortify ourselves through education. I don’t mean education in general, but in specific areas. That is why I have always urged anyone who has read my own words to not take my words at face value, but if the subject catches your attention at all, to read up on it and to form your own conclusions. I do not knowingly or intentionally withhold any facts as I come across them. I am more than willing to discuss alternative interpretations. We cannot be afraid of the truth. We cannot insist on a narrow interpretation that excludes unwelcome evidence, not and pretend to know what we’re talking about. If ideology is more important to you than truth, so be it. I cannot change that. But I can do my best to demonstrate to everyone out there what you’re about and what your game is. The biggest enemy of ideology is knowledge.

So whether the subject is religion, politics, climate change, or history, we must be willing to examine ALL the evidence. And we must then weigh and analyze the evidence and find a theory that is best suggested by that evidence. I did not go into the Little Big Horn intending to prove anything. I went into the subject wanting to learn the truth. Having been to the battlefield numerous times, I wanted to be able to stand at any point along Custer’s route and understand what he was thinking, and why. That is the only reason to study any historical subject. And the same holds true with climate and religion. What really happened, and why? What is really happening with our climate, and why? Simply assuming something is a canard and then doing your best to prove it while ignoring half the evidence is an intellectually and morally bankrupt exercise. You’re doing not only yourself a disservice, but everyone else as well.

Be intellectually honest. And demand equal honesty from those whose words you read or listen to. You may not like the truth when you find it, but it will at least be the truth, and that, for me, is worth any amount of disappointment, because let’s face it. You can pretend it’s not really cold, but that blind insistence isn’t going to save your fingers when they fall off, and burying your head in the sand won’t save you from the truck barreling down on you. At least, if you have your head up, unhappy as the sight of that truck may be, at least you’ll have a chance of doing something about it.

Remember, we create our fates. But we can also rise above them.