Polytheism and Plurality

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Kishkumen
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Polytheism and Plurality

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One of my favorite thinkers as of late is a pagan blogger named Rhyd Wildermuth. Often what he writes makes a lot of sense out of the civilizational cataclysm we are experiencing, and that gives me some small hope. In this piece he connects monotheism with totalizing ideologies and contrasts that with the natural pluralism of the polytheistic worldview. Here is a taste:
The monotheistic framework—and its modern offshoots, including secular liberalism and even atheism—deals in universals. Universals are not necessarily a bad thing, we should note, because ideas like “universal human rights” are products of this way of thinking. So too, unfortunately, are a lot of our ideas about identity, government, and the nation-state.

To understand how this works in personal relations, consider again the matter of ghosts. If a person claims they saw a ghost, the monotheist framework then poses a binary question: “are there ghosts, or are there not?” If the listener doesn’t believe in ghosts, then they are likely to dismiss the claim of the speaker. If they do, they’re likely to accept it. But if the speaker insists and is persuasive, or if the listener has a lot of reason to otherwise trust the speaker, then a crisis of belief will arise.

Or consider again the matter of trans identity. While a pluralistic/polytheist framework is content to accept someone’s professed identity without necessarily changing their own conceptions, the monotheist framework asks, “is this person really a woman (or man)?”

A lot of the conflict—both from sides—around trans identity comes down to the need for universality within a monotheist framework. So, people who would insist “no matter how you feel, you are actually this instead” are approaching the question from a monotheist framework. But also, those who insist it isn’t enough merely to accept someone’s preferred identity—but rather one must also change beliefs about what constitutes a man or a woman—is likewise using the monotheist framework.1

To put this in simpler terms, polytheistic pluralism allows for multiple realities that don’t necessarily cancel out each other, even if they are in conflict. I might believe something completely different from someone else about a thing, but that’s what makes life more interesting and rich. It’s only when we insist there is only one true belief about a thing that we come into conflict.

By now you’ve probably noticed that “polytheist” and “monotheist” don’t precisely map to particular religious affiliations. There are plenty of Christians and Muslims who approach the world from a much more pluralistic framework than the doctrines of their religions would like them to. 2

This is because this kind of pluralism is really the human default when ideology doesn’t take hold of us. Most of us are usually pretty happy to just get along with people regardless of their opinions of the world. The reason for this is that opinions don’t really constitute the majority of our in-person3 social interactions. You’re not usually verifying your bus driver’s opinions about capitalism or Black Lives Matter before taking her bus, or checking to make sure your grocery clerk has the same ideas about abortion or Brexit as you do before you let him ring up your order.

We generally prefer to just live alongside each other without ideological conflict, unless there is some external pressure exacerbating those ideological differences.
For more, see: https://rhyd.substack.com/p/polytheisti ... lP6eLEEnto
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”~Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
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