Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Pagan
Orwell On Nationalism, Learning to Receive, And The Patheos Pagan Kerfuffle

Orwell On Nationalism, Learning to Receive, And The Patheos Pagan Kerfuffle

Last updated on: February 2, 2017 at 2:27 am by Tom Swiss

Orwell On Nationalism, Learning to Receive, And The Patheos Pagan Kerfuffle 2017-02-02T02:27:43-04:00 Tom Swiss

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Greetings and welcome to another Random Wednesday on The Zen Pagan. Again this week, three short bits.

Orwell on Nationalism

George Orwell’s 1945 essay “Notes on Nationalism” is not just amazingly relevant to the resurgence of traditional nationalism we are experiencing, it shows how that phenomenon we now call “identity politics” rests on the same basis.

Nationalism, in the extended sense in which I am using the word, includes such movements and tendencies as Communism, political Catholicism, Zionism, Antisemitism, Trotskyism and Pacifism. It does not necessarily mean loyalty to a government or a country, still less to one’s own country, and it is not even strictly necessary that the units in which it deals should actually exist. To name a few obvious examples, Jewry, Islam, Christendom, the Proletariat and the White Race are all of them objects of passionate nationalistic feeling: but their existence can be seriously questioned, and there is no definition of any one of them that would be universally accepted.

…A nationalist is one who thinks solely, or mainly, in terms of competitive prestige. He may be a positive or a negative nationalist — that is, he may use his mental energy either in boosting or in denigrating — but at any rate his thoughts always turn on victories, defeats, triumphs and humiliations….The nationalist does not go on the principle of simply ganging up with the strongest side. On the contrary, having picked his side, he persuades himself that it is the strongest, and is able to stick to his belief even when the facts are overwhelmingly against him. Nationalism is power-hunger tempered by self-deception. Every nationalist is capable of the most flagrant dishonesty, but he is also — since he is conscious of serving something bigger than himself — unshakeably certain of being in the right.

Orwell’s key point is that such passionate feelings make certain facts “intolerable, and so they have to be denied, and false theories constructed upon their denial.”

In other words, this is the root of “alternative facts.”

George Orwell mural, Southwold Pier. By Ian Taylor via Geograph.org.uk. (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Learning to Receive

I’m going to be doing massage at a local wellness center one evening a week. Today I started my training there; they have a standard massage protocol they want me to learn, and in order to learn it, I have to see it done — i.e., receive it. So as part of my orientation, I had to get a massage. Definitely not the worst first day on the job I’ve had.

And it’s been a while — too long — since I’ve gotten a massage, in all the personal, professional, and political stress of the past several months.

But it reminded me of something from my training. When I was studying shiatsu and massage, we of course practiced each other to learn the techniques, which meant receiving a large amount of bodywork. And you might be surprised at what a challenge this is. We put our emotional garbage into our muscles, and letting someone clean it out for you can be a hard thing to accept.

You probably know the lines from eden ahbez’s song “Nature Boy”, made famous by Nat “King” Cole: “”The greatest thing you’ll ever learn / Is just to love and be loved in return”. For many of us, the second part of that, learning to be loved, can be the greater challenge.

The Patheos Pagan Kerfluffle

For those who don’t know, Patheos got new corporate overlords a few months ago when it was bought by Beliefnet.

Actually, the structure is that holding company BN Media is now the owner of both — as well as Affinity4, an affinity-based marketing company that is sort of a right-wing version of Working Assets/CREDO. It sells cell phone plans and other services, and lets customers direct a portion of their bill to various “charities and ministries”, which include groups ranging from Feed the Children to the NRA and the American Center for Law and Justice, a right-wing group that has been accused of backing homophobic policies in Africa.

Patheos recently sent its bloggers a new contract. It actually offers most of us more money — in the sense that we were usually making $0 a month before, and now might, if we draw a few thousand hits, make something like $6 a month. (Yes, even with this new and improved deal I will still get paid less than a dollar a post. So won’t you please support this blog?) But the new contract also included a clause in which we agreed to not disparage Patheos or any of it’s related companies.

Some bloggers were convinced that “related companies” could be stretched to include those non-profits that Affinity4 channels money to, that this contract would mean we were agreeing to not criticize these right-wing groups. Others — inaccurately, as far as I can tell — believed that ad revenue from Patheos was going to support those causes. And some were just surprised and upset to learn that Patheos’s new owned had ties to such groups. There were some other concerns as well, but those were the big ones.

So over the past few days there has been a shake-up. Patheos has offered a revised contract that clarifies some of the concerns, but a few bloggers have left. Some have done so after (in my opinion) flying off the handle and making questionable charges and conclusions, some have done so after thoughtful deliberation, though I don’t agree with their conclusions.

There has been a great deal of discussion behind the scenes. To make my position clear I’d like to publicly share something I posted there:

The world is full of people with horrible ideas. We should not directly support them, and I have a long list of companies I try to avoid, but the web of interaction and interdependency makes it inevitable that we do so indirectly. I pay my neighbor to cut my lawn, he sends money to the Trump campaign. I patronize my local vegetarian cafe to support local and organic agriculture, turns out its owner is ok with cops pepper-spraying handcuffed kids. If I were to do business only with people who agreed with me on all the big issues — well, since that’s the empty set. I’d have to go live off the land somewhere. (I’d have to squat, couldn’t rent and deal with landlords, couldn’t buy the land and have to do business with a government I don’t support.)

If Patheos wants to give me a tiny bit of money to keep doing what I’m doing, and Patheos itself is not advocating anything I find nasty, and I can use their platform to continue to advocate for what (I think) is right, and I can send that $6 a month to the ACLU, I don’t see that storming off in high dudgeon is going to produce a better outcome.

I’ve got no problem with using resources owned by right-wing people to undermine right-wing ideas. Audre Lorde’s metaphor, though well-intentioned, is wrong: the master’s tools will serve quite nicely to dismantle the master’s house.

My Blogging Life and Times

Random Wednesdays

George Orwell

Patheos Pagan

Previous Post

February 1, 2017

Playing With Paint (Acrylic & Watercolor, “52 Makeup” Week 4)

Next Post

February 2, 2017 Groundhog Day and Ikuru

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 2017 52 Makeup 2020 52 Makeup Always Roaming With A Hungry Heart Art Because I Could Not Stop For Death Caught On Video COVID-19 Culture Discordianism Ethics, Virtue, and Right Living History Magic(k), Ritual, and Mysticism My Blogging Life and Times Philosophy Podcast Poetry Random Wednesdays Religion & Politics Seasonal Musings Techno-Pagan Theology Uncategorized Warrior Path Zen

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 March 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 September 2024 August 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 December 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 October 2022 September 2022 June 2022 April 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What mountain did Jesus ascend from into heaven?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Mount Zion Mount Sinai Mount of Olives Mount Carmel