On Goodness
Holywood Cemetery in Richmond
“Beyond right and wrong, there is a field. I will meet you there.” - Rumi*
*Apparently this isn’t translated well. However, I heard it while ago in Richmond, and the mistranslation fits too well to not be included with this post.
My Goodness
Who’s sick of living in unprecedented times while trying to do good? God knows I am. There’s so much to fix and address right now: climate change, systemic racism, inflation, a fucking pandemic, an impending recession, and now we have to re-fight the battle for access to abortion. I’m tired.
My entire lifetime has seen the right become increasingly batshit in the US, and it’s somehow gotten significantly worse since 2016. I remember the Tea Party days of 2010 thinking that things couldn’t possibly become any more unhinged. How wrong I was. Democrats are of course feckless and useless to the point that it’s offensive, but they’re not the ones actively trying to turn the country into a god damned theocracy.
This has all happened against the backdrop of the rise of social media. In fact, that’s exactly why I started this website. What can be done when the worst parts of the internet are jumping off our screens and literally killing people?
Now, here’s the thing about what’s happening on the right: every single person who harbors these beliefs sincerely thinks they’re doing good, just like those of us on the left. I’ve spent the last few months mired in the riddle of moral relativism, and I’ve spent the last couple of months in particular wandering around Richmond, Virginia. Unexpectedly, I love this city. Throughout it, you’re constantly reminded of the violent, complicated, and racist history of the US even if it’s not always contextualized well. One afternoon, I went for a walk through Hollywood Cemetery where there are countless graves of confederate soldiers. I guarantee most of them thought they were going to heaven despite the fact that they were fighting for the right to enslave their fellow humans.
I’ve been sitting with these kinds of thoughts for months ever since the racist mass shooting in May that happened in my hometown of Buffalo. Part of the thought process has involved a massive struggled with what — if anything — can be done about all of this. Years ago, I made the conscious choice to “do good” with my career, and so I got involved in nonprofits. It seemed like the easiest way to make the world a less shitty place. But am I making a difference when the Supreme Court and so much of our politics are shifting us towards oligarchy and a far-right Christian theocracy? All the work I do feels paltry when the world is literally burning now.
Nature for the Win
Surprise, surprise, I tend to find my answers to these paradoxes in “nature.” And in nature, I don’t see good or evil.
Years ago, I read a book that mentioned that most of what we think of as demons and evil spirits are simply fulfilling an ecosystemic function much like bears and wolves and other predators. This concept has stuck with me for over a decade now. Are bears and wolves evil? Nope. Are they risky, dangerous, and predatory? Absolutely. That’s why most people tread lightly around them and avoid them as much as possible for to ensure their own safety. We can think of certain spirits and beings and thoughts in a similar way: they may not be evil, just dangerous as fuck.
Many think that evil is a fundamental property of the universe, but at what point does the evil stop being evil? The ground at Hollywood Cemetery is composting the bodies of confederate soldiers. Are the nearby magnolia trees bad because they’re feeding off of some of the nutrients from people who fought on the side of the confederacy? Nope, they’re just lovely magnolia trees doing what magnolia trees do.
This is a complex way of saying that, as I grow older, I’m moving further and further away from the binary thinking in the West that has led to absolute good on one end and absolute evil on the other. Nuance is often more helpful with understanding how reality actually functions, and I don’t think we’ve done a great job of remembering to bring nuance into these discussions throughout modern, Western history.
Nature shows me that there aren’t evil people or beings. In fact, I have direct experience with a type of spirit that many would consider evil. I find them fucking terrifying, but I don’t get “evil” vibes from them. At the same time, there are certainly evil acts, but most of those can be reframed into extremely selfish actions or those made out of exceeding amounts of fear. Instead, I’m very much on board with the ecosystemic model I described above.
Dismantling My Conditioning
Despite these complexities that I try to keep in mind, the desire to do “good” is so deeply engrained in me that I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to completely disentangle myself from it. I get stressed the fuck out over the fact that I’m not able to compost or if I’m not recycling enough, and now I’m forced to ask what’s the point of recycling anyway? Plus, I worry about the move towards green energy since it will still negatively effect places and create pollution and all sorts of not-so-great geopolitical consequences just like oil. And now I wonder almost every day if I’m I doing enough to help dismantle systemic racism. All these things add up to me feeling frozen and like fighting the “good” fight feels almost pointless right now, especially in the face of gathering strength behind white Christian nationalism.
What allows me to move past this, though, is this ecosystemic model and my desire to engage in a more embodied and sensual relationship with the Earth and reality. I don’t need to always do “good” since doing “good” in the West has occasionally led to awful shit like slavery and genocide.
Instead of striving for “goodness,” I think we in the West need to remember our roots in “nature” and the “wild.” (I’m frustrating myself with all of these damned “quotation marks,” but they’re helpful in reminding me that these are all socially-constructed concepts). Removing our conditioning that has made us think that we’re separate from “nature” for centuries will (hopefully) only lead to a more holistic and relational framework for how we relate to the more-than-human. To do this requires that sensual and embodied relationship with the world around us. Go play in a river, get your hands in some soil, marvel at ants or moss. Seriously. It is in these places and with these beings that we can start to remember who and what we are. By falling in love with the world again, we’ll be able to make better choices and decisions as a collective. This has been my mission for the last few years.
Unfortunately, I spend too much time in my head due to the social structures we’ve created. My work these days is spent trying to uphold a collapsing system at the expense of me experiencing the Earth. What will vanish first: this specific robin song or the behavioral healthcare system in New York State? What a fucking conundrum.
I’ve been a Yankee wandering around the south for a year now. It’s the south that has given rise to and nurtures this racist and far-right ideology that continues to tear the country apart. How do I hold compassion for that? How do I hold complexity for that? Do I wish the confederacy and much of the right an eternity in their hell that they should be going to based on their beliefs and actions? Absolutely not; I wish them compassion and a softening of hardened hearts.
At the same time, playing in rivers with well-wishes can’t be the only thing we do. Living in the south has reminded me of that. We need to actively resist the pull towards fascism, racism, and Christian theocracy, and everyone can contribute to this struggle in small but significant ways. My way apparently involves steeping myself in the wilds and the foundational stories of our culture.
Richmond has certainly added to the complexity of this issue for me. It had to be this place — the former capital of the confederacy — that opened up a blossoming relationship with the wilds and the edges and the dangerous and the sensual. But the details of this are a story for another time.