Honourable companions,
A collegue asked me if I believe that Druids should be non-participating
observers in any environmental or social-justice movement. As I look at
what I wrote to her, I can see how I was open to this criticism. In fact
I do advocate this, but not in a negative sense, as I shall here explain.
It is plainly obvious to me, as it is to her, and to everyone reading
this letter, that the global environment is threatened with destabilisation
from pollution and resource extraction. However, unfortunetly, it is not
plainly obvious to everyone in our civilisation.
Most people in Canada, (and, I presume, the USA), are aware of some of the
issues of envronmental concern and agree that we ought to take some care
of it. However I believe that the large majority of people do not have
the faintest understanding of the true extent and scope of the problem.
This is for one of two reasons, and quite possibly both:
First, people may not be aware of the true nature of the problem because
the facts are unavailable. The sector of society that is responsible for
damaging the environment, corporate industry, is exactly the same group
that controls all of the channels of mass communication. This group is
unwilling to allow criticism of it to enter wide availability. Therefore,
it is extremely difficult for the facts to get out. You will not hear
them on the news.
Consider these examples of hard fact which will never be reproduced in
the mass media, however true and socially important they are:
- While the courts imprisoned hundreds of non-profting environmental
protesters against MacMillan-Bloedel Corporation's clear-cut destruction
of ancient rainforests of Clayquot Sound, British Columbia, Canada,
MacMillan-Bloedel's 26 criminal convictions for illegal logging practices
for profit did not result in even one prison sentence.
- Exactly four news agences (Reuters, Agence France Presse, Associated
Press, and UNited Press INternational) provide over 90% of the entire
foreign news output of the world's newspapers, radio and television
stations.
- Ten businesses and financial corporations control the three major US
television networks (NBC, CBS, ABC), 34 subsidiary television stations,
201 cable TV and 62 radio stations, 20 record companies, 59 magazines
(incl. TIME and NEWSWEEK) 58 newspapers, 41 book publishers, and 20th
Century Fox. These ten corporations include GM, GE and
White-Westinghouse, who are major millitary contractors.
- In seven out of ten Canadian provinces, two-thirds of provincial
newspaper circulation are controlled by a single man: Conrad Black, owner
of Southam Inc.
With this increasingly monopolistic pattern of public communcation in our
society, which is also at work in most other spheres of socal good
production, very little or nothing that contradicts the necessity of the
pattern or the right of its owners to own it is ever printed.
Second reason why facts about the true nature of the envronment are
unknown: People who contemplate the true nature of the problem become lost
in angst and ennui. It is easy to feel powerless when contemplating the
global deterioration of species diversity and ecosystem stabilty.
Therefore, we repress the thought, and occupy ourselves with local and
small-scale initiatives, like civic recycling programmes or local river
clean-up projects.
An additional dimension of the refusal to address head-on the true nature
of the envronmental disaster that we face, is the repudiation of
environmental activists who do face it. Eugene Hargrove, for example, a
professional philosopher and editor of probably the most important
academic journal on the matter, Environmental Ethics, characterised
monkeywrenching as "paramilitary operations... closer to terrorism than
civil disobedience..." Terrorism, however, involves threatening a person
or a group of people with death, unless they comply with some demand; this
is clearly not the same as monkeywrenching, which involves the sabotage of
property but not violence or threatened violence against people. Cases of
real violence, for example the bombing of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow
Warrior by the French government, in which one crewmember drowned while
attempting to rescue his girlfriend, do not get called 'terrorism' when
the terrorists themselves claim the moral high ground. Only radicals,
after all, can be terrorists.
And, as I argued in a previous essay, "The Hidden Meaning of
Think Globally Act Locally", the moral high ground claimed by law-abiding
environmental activists does not really exist.
Now, enter my point about the Druids.
Clear seeing is the special domain of the Druids. Both our considered
reason as well as our magical sight gives us the particular tools that are
necessary to penetrate the barriers of social illusion that
prevent recognition of social reality. This particular faculty is what
enables rectification of the problem: unless the problem is seen for what
it is, it can not be solved.
I believe very strongly that the two barriers to total recognition are the
two I have described above: failure of media to report it, and failure of
ourselves to look at it. The latter is especially important to me, for it
is a barrier that exists not in some external structure of social
organisation, but in the internal structure of thinking itself. Again,
with the special tools of reason and magical sight, Druids are uniquely
equipped to abolish this barrier.
With this in mind, I confirm that Druids should be observers-- but not in
a passive sense. The pronouncement of Fi'rinne, Truth, is an active
event, and a dangerous and revolutionary event. It can cause the
overthrow of old prejudices, sustained bad habits, and nonfunctional ways
of being. It can dispell ignorance. It can destroy illusion. It can
empower the powerless. It can pierce the mist.
I draw your attention to the translation of the word: according to Fergus
Kelley's liner notes to the Testament of Morann, Fi'rinne is translateable
as Truth and also as Justice. This signals to me that they are one and the
same principle. There is ample confirmation of this in the source
mythologies. The Sacred Truth is the act of pronouncing judgement on
one's social conditions, in such a way as to cause a magical rectification
of physical conditions. Cormac halting the slide of the King's house is
one such example. Amergin calming the storm is another. Mogh Roith
bursting the dammed-up rivers of Munster is another. We also have the
evidence of magical devices that respond to the truth content of
pronouncements made by people nearby, whether they are Druids or not.
Cormac's Cup is the oft-cited example. John & Caitlin Matthews' book
"Encycopaedia of Celtic Wisdom" lists twelve such truth-detecting devices
(pp. 269-280) and describes their use in the procuring of justice.
By the way, there are two statues of Goddesses in front of the Supreme
Court of my country. One is 'Veritas', the other is 'Iustica'. It is a
marvellously Druidic building! The occupants of America's capital
buildings may be more influential in world affairs, but my country's
capital has far better architecture.
Back to the argument. The particular connexion of Druidic Truth to social
justice is an important one. It could mean that Druids have a role to
play not only as the clear-seers of social reality, but also as the
architects of social reality. If it is recognised that some socially
constructed organisation is responsible for our environmental crisis, then
exactly the same magical Sight which enabled the Druid to recognise it,
and hence bring about its downfall, may be used to rebuild a more
environmentally sound social oranisation. In addition to warriors who
resist opressive structures with their sacred "No", we require Druids to
uphold empowering structures with their sacred "Yes". Where empowering
structures do not exist, I think it is up to the Druids to build them;
this is a function that I think is shared with the worker caste.
It all starts with clear seeing. I was once asked by a collegue at work,
"do you believe that wierd celtic and witchy stuff?" I responded, "There
is nothing particularly to believe". All that there is to Druidism, in a
way, is simple recognition of the origin of life, the perpetuation of
life, and the cessation of life. This is nothing more than the
extraordinary fact of our physical dependancy on the world, and that this
supporting "context" called the world is in itself a living thing, a
planet-wide matrix of living beings, who nurture each other through the
processes of both life and death. We aquire this simple recognition by
"drinking from the five streams of wisdom", which amounts to courageous
use of the senses.
I should also affirm that the function for Druids that I am advocating
need not be exclusive of physical action. As Saille correctly observed, I
do not conduct my life as a mere observer. I know what it is to be
tear-gassed and clubbed by riot police. This is not at all a refutation
of my argument that a Druid's first priority is to be the invigilator of
mysteries (see my essay, "A Place for Druids"). There does seem to be a
lot of crossover between the realm of Druid and Warrior, and I think it a
good thing. But there must be Druids along with the warriors, else what
could be a healthy protest, would instead be a headless blunder. And there
must be Bards, to record what has come to pass, so that the protest may
learn from its experiences even as its members come and go.
The facts regarding our environment, as well as regarding human rights and
social justice, are undeniable. Yet they are sustained by a culture of
denial. It is the special duty of the Druid to invalidate the culture of
denial with effective use of the Sacred Truth. This duty is commensurate
with other duties as well, nevertheless, clear seeing is the first
step in the journey of a thousand leagues towards a better life for all
sentient beings on our planet.
Cathbad
Out of the Grove
And in the season of Spring Equinox, 2000
