Santa Claus, Father Christmas and.........Odin?

Odin on his 8 legged horse (Image source:   http://www.designboom.com/design/santa-claus-changing-design/)

Yule   The Winter Solstice has been celebrated since time immemorial, and in the  cold Nordic countries, where the return of the Sun's life giving warmth is of particular concern, there is evidence that it's been celebrated since the time of the Megalith builders and before.  Yule/Jól was was probably connected to the full moon nearest the winter solstice. 

Santa with his flying Reindeer

According to Wikipedia: 

Yule or Yuletide ("Yule time") is a religious festival observed by the historical Germanic peoples, later being absorbed into and equated with the Christian festival of Christmas. The earliest references to Yule are by way of indigenous Germanic month names (Ærra Jéola (Before Yule) or Jiuli and Æftera Jéola (After Yule). Scholars have connected the celebration to the Wild Hunt, the god Odin and the pagan Anglo-Saxon Modranicht.    Yule is also used to a lesser extent in English-speaking countries to refer to Christmas. Customs such as the Yule log, Yule goat, Yule boar, Yule singing, and others stem from Yule or Yuletide ("Yule time"). 

Yule is the modern English representative of the Old English words ġéol or ġéohol and ġéola or ġéoli, with the former indicating the 12-day festival of "Yule" (later: "Christmastime") and the latter indicating the month of "Yule", whereby ǽrra ġéola referred to the period before the Yule festival (December) and æftera ġéola referred to the period after Yule (January). Both words are thought to be derived from Common Germanic *jeχʷla-, and are cognate with Gothic (fruma) jiuleis and Old Norse.   The word is attested in an explicitly pre-Christian context primarily in Old Norse.

 Among many others  the long-bearded god Odin bears the names jólfaðr (Old Norse 'Yule father') and jólnir (Old Norse 'the Yule one'). ^"

 The  Yule Log

The origins of  the Nordic Yule go back to a feast to honor the Norse God Odin, who among other things was the jolly  God of Intoxicating Drink. The custom of  the Yule Log or Yule Tree  emerged from this winter festival as well.  

The custom of Yule log varies from region to region.  It's good to remember the primal importance of the gift of warmth and of fire to early people living in the cold North, the "flame at the Hearth" for ancient families.  The Log may have originally been a large tree (Christmas Trees)  brought to the house with great ceremony. 

On Christmas, people light the Yule log placed in the hearth.   The burning of the Yule Log brings good fortune for family and friends.   After Christmas celebrations, a piece of the Yule log is retained to relight next year along with next year's log.

Origins of Santa Claus 

"The appearance of Santa Claus or Father Christmas, whose day is 25th of December, owes much to Odin, the old blue-hooded, cloaked, white-bearded Gift bringer of the north, who rode the midwinter sky on his eight-footed steed Sleipnir, visiting his people with gifts. … Odin, transformed into Father Christmas, then Santa Claus, prospered with St Nicholas on the Christmas stage."

......Margaret Baker 

St.  Nicholas was a 4th-century Christian bishop from Lycia (now in Turkey), who was  known for his charity, and giving gifts to the poor. In one notable story, he met a pious but impoverished man who had three daughters. He presented them with dowries to save them from a life of prostitution. In most traditional Iconic images,  St. Nicholas is portrayed as a bearded bishop, wearing clerical robes, an important patron saint of  children, the poor, and prostitutes.

So few people know that Santa Claus is a blend of an early Christian saint living in Turkey (Saint Nickolaus)  and the Norse god Odin, with a few other influence thrown in over the ages. But I guess that would take away the fun............

The other mythos from which Santa Claus derives is much earlier,  Odin, the ruler of Asgard.    Odin was often depicted as leading a hunting party through the skies, during which he rode his eight-legged horse, Sleipnir. In the 13th-century Poetic Edda, Sleipnir is described as being able to leap great distances, which some scholars have compared to the legends of Santa's reindeer (and, of course, the Edda are from Finland, which once abounded with reindeer). Odin was portrayed as an old man with a long, white beard. 

Odin (1886) by Georg von Rosen

I read that during the winter, in some pagan folklore, children would place their  boots near the chimney (and in the cold of a Nordic winter, it's a good place to put them), filling them with carrots or straw as a gift for Sleipnir. When Odin flew by, he rewarded the little ones by leaving gifts in their boots. Like traditions of the "Green Man" in England, in rural areas of Germanic countries  this practice survived despite the adoption of Christianity. As a result,  gift-giving became associated with St. Nicholas rather than the earlier Pagan god Odin.  Only now we hang stockings by the chimney, and leave cake and brandy rather than carrots and straw.

Frau Holle and Her Feather Bed

Since there is so much snow back East, I thought  of course of the old legends of "Frau Holle", a Nordic Goddess of Yuletime who, it is said, is shaking her feather bed when it snows.  So I felt like re-visiting an article I wrote about this Triple Goddess last year.

12-10-2012:

One of the  Goddesses that reflects this time, and the idea of the flux of cycles, is the Nordic Goddess Frau Holle. Holle has very ancient origins indeed, and is a Weaver Goddess, a Spinner of fate.   Mother  Holle is very much associated with Yule, and with the hearth and home, especially in the winter.  But she is known throughout northern Europe, an ancient goddess that predates the advent of Christianity. ** Also known as Holda or Hulda, she is a  triple goddess,  embodying the passages of life. In some myths, she is "the ash girl", her face half black with soot and half white.  This comes from a story of how in order to marry the God of Winter she had to come to him neither naked nor clothed, and neither in light or darkness (the White Goddess and the Dark Goddess).   As the Mother goddess, she protected the forest and was often shown among trees.  Holle (interesting to see the relationship in the name - "Holy", "wholly", "whole")  in old age  is Winter's Queen, and Mother Holda is the source of  "Mother Goose"  legends, because the snow flies when the she shakes the feathers from her down bed.  In Holland, they still say that 'Dame Holle is shaking her bed'.

"Frau Holle, as she is known in Germany, was called The Queen of the Witches. The brothers Grimm tell a story of step-sisters who both go to visit Frau Holle in the 'nether realms'. They begin their journey to her by falling in a well............Holle's name is linguistically related to the word Halja, which means "covering", and is the ancient Teutonic name for Hel, the Norse land of the dead. Holle is sometimes called the Queen of the Dead, and resides in the 'nether' regions. She possibly lent her name to the country Holland, 'the land of Holle', which is also called the Netherlands because many parts of the country are below sea-level."   

Sandra Kleinschmitt

Holle/Hel  is thus  both light and dark, young and old, illumination and shadow. Whole.
  
 As Joseph Campbell pointed out, to understand the evolution of myth is to understand many things, including the evolution of language and religion.  One of my images that I keep creating lately is "dual" masks, masks that are half black and half white, or half "underground" and half "above ground vegetation".  I think this reflects my sense of how very important holistic consciousness is, personally and collectively, whether we speak of shadow work, coming to terms with the ebbs and flows of self, or the cycles of our Mother Earth, the ebbs and flows of the seasons and the creation/death/rebirth cycle.  To try to live within the Whole.  Or at least, come to terms with it!

And who is Hel, the ashy side of Holle's face, from whose name we get "Hell"?   Besides being the origin of the word people use daily as a swear word, and millions of Christians have a mighty fear of going to (without knowing anything about where the concept originated from).  People no longer remember that once "go to Hell" meant to die.

"Hel (Hell)  has been used by the early  church as a scare tactic to frighten the masses into “righteous” acts. To get the real story, we have to go back to the early Nordic people and look this death Goddess in the face. 

Hel" by Susan Seddon Boulet

Hel is cast into the netherworld and becomes the ruler of that underworld to which souls who have not died in battle will depart. As thanks for making Her ruler of the netherworld, Hel makes a gift to Odin. She gives him two ravens, Huginn and Muninn (Thought and Memory). Ravens are messengers between this realm and the next, opening pathways to death’s realm.

Her realm is named for her, Hel or Helheim. Because She accepts all to Helheim, she also becomes the judge to determine the fate of each soul in the afterlife. The evil dead are banished to a realm of icy cold (a fate that the Nordic people found much worse in telling than a lake of fire). Unlike the Judeo-Christian concept, Helheim also served as the shelter and gathering place of souls to be reincarnated. Hel watches over those who died peacefully of old age or illness. She cares for children and women who die in childbirth. She guides those souls who do not choose the path of war through the circle of death to rebirth."............

 Rowen Saille of the Order of the White Moon,

Like Persephone, who is both the Queen of Spring and the Queen of Hades, Hel as the dark side of Holle governs the world beyond that of the living, the underworld or invisible realm. In magic, she makes thin the veil between worlds.

"Magic is the art of changing consciousness

 at will."............ Starhawk

 Seidhr [SAY-theer] or Nordic shamans called upon Hel's protection and wore  "the helkappe", a magic mask, to render them invisible and enable them to pass through the gateway into the realm of death and spirit.  The Helkappe, a mask, was thus understood as a liminal tool that enabled transit between the seeming dualities of life, and was infused with shamanic power.  To take this metaphor further, to wear a mask consciously, and as a psychic/sacred tool, is to engage consciously with the continual flux of personae - young/old, dark/light, good/bad.  This is the realm of the soul, beyond duality.  Wearing that kind of mask,  and taking it off at will, enables one to enter both realms.
 
For anyone who may wonder where the "flying broomsticks" of witches (or Harry Potter) comes from, Dame Holda is probably  the source.  Because of her association with the hearth and home, the Broom was both symbol and magical tool.  Folk traditions of "sweeping away evil from the hearth" are very ancient throughout Europe.  As a symbol of the Hearth, it is interesting to see this also transformed into the "vehicle of witches".  In later folktales, Frau Holle becomes a fearsome hag, riding her broom and bringing the storms of winter.


A wonderful commentary on Holle/Hel come from the   Goddess Inspired  Blog 
and again I quote, as she writes so beautifully of the non-duality of this myth.  



"Mother Holle  started off Her existence as the Goddess of Death and Regeneration. During the Neolithic in what Marija Gimbutas termed Old Europe people believed in the cyclical nature of all existence. Every ending was understood to be the beginning of a new chapter. Death, rather than being the final end, was seen as a resting stage prior to new life. Just as seeds rest deep undergound during the cold winter months waiting to sprit up as a seedling in spring, so were the dead seen as having returned to the Goddess’ dark womb to await renewal and rebirth.

The Goddess of Death and Regeneration was associated with winter and the colour white. Small stiff white Goddess figurines with small breasts and exaggerated pubic triangles were placed alongside the dead in order for Her to accompany the person on her or his journey of renewal. The Goddess of Death and Regeneration was not feared or seen as being evil, but instead was considered to be benevolent and generous.

Mandorla of the Spinning Goddess by Judith Anderson

“She holds dominion over death, the cold darkness of winter, caves, graves and tombs in the earth….but also receives the fertile seed, the light of midwinter, the fertilized egg, which transforms the tomb into a womb for the gestation of new life.”..... Marija Gimbutas

Old white-haired Mother Holle and Her underground realm are one interpretation of this aspect of the Goddess. In the fairy tale Mother Holle is described as being kind and generous and very just. She lives at the bottom of a well. The well itself can be interpreted as being the birth canal leading to Her dark underground womb...........Mother Holle is described as having ugly big teeth, a big nose and a flat foot. The latter shows her love for weaving or spinning, another sacred act associated with the Goddess: She is the Life Weaver, the Spinner of Destiny and Fate.

Mother Holle was known all across the Germanic world. She was called Holle in Germany, Hel or Hella in Scandinavia and Holde on the British Isles. She is the origin for the word hell and its German variant Hölle, as well as words such as holy and holding in English and Höhle (= cave) in German.

The Scandinavian Goddess Hel is probably the most widely known version of Mother Holle as Goddess, although by the time the Indo-European Norse wrote down their religious beliefs, Hel was no longer the benevolent Regeneratrix of the Neolithic. She had become the dreaded Queen of the Dead.

As was the case during the Neolithic, Hel’s realm Nifhelheim also lies below the earth at the root of the World Tree. Incidentally the bottom of the World Tree is also home to the three Norns, Weavers of Destiny. While, as said above, originally the Goddess of Death and Regeneration was also the Weaver of Fate and Fortune, later beliefs separate Her more and more into Her various aspects. 


 Despite being feared by the Norse as the dreaded Hag of Death, Hel has Her benevolent roots hidden in plane sight. Being linked to the earth, She is one of the old Vanir Earth Goddesses, Vanir meaning “the Giving One”.

In Central Europe Mother Holle also evolved over time. Instead of becoming the Goddess of the Underworld, though, She became the Queen of Elves and the Mistress of Witches. Her character was actually very similar to that of Greek Hekate, the old Crone who roams the world with Her fearsome dogs.   Around 900CE Frau Holle had become an old weather hag who was said to ride in on Her broom stick bringing with Her whirlwinds and snowfall. Her life-giving generous nature was retained more in Germany than in Scandinavia, as even during Christian times She was seen as bringing life to the land causing growth, abundance and good fortune."

 http://goddessinspired.wordpress.com/2012/04/09/mother-holle-the-germanic-goddess-of-death-and-renewal-weaver-of-fate-and-fortune

 

The Winter of Listening

"I Rest in You, a Seed" (1993)

The Winter of Listening 

 (by David Whyte)

 

All this petty worry
while the great cloak
of the sky grows dark
and intense
round every living thing.

All this trying
to know
who we are
and all this
wanting to know
exactly
what we must do.

But what is precious
inside us does not
care to be known
by the mind
in ways that diminish
its presence.

What we strive for
in perfection
is not what turns us
into the lit angel
we desire.

What disturbs
and then nourishes
has everything we need.

What we hate
in ourselves
is what we cannot know
in ourselves
but what is true to the pattern
does not need
to be explained.

Inside everyone
is a great shout of joy
waiting to be born…

New Old Work........

Persephone

Last spring I began a series of 4 masks, inspired by a friend who wished to use them for a ritual theatre process based upon the Eleusinian Mysteries of ancient Greece.  We don't know exactly what occured in the Mysteries, because participants were forbidden to tell what occured - "Mystery" derives from a work that means "that which cannot be spoken".  But the  Eleusinian Mysteries  combined spirit of place and mythic enactment to transform pilgrims as they  enacted the death/rebirth cycle of nature, based upon the Triple Goddess Demeter/Persephone/Hecate  for almost 2,500 years, and probably longer, as, like many places of pilgrimage today, the origins go back far into prehistory. 

I wanted to try to make the masks look old, and tried to imagine what they might have looked like as painted Greek masks..........these don't really look much like ancient Greek masks at all, but I like them anyway.  They were recently used by a ritualist in California, so they have some energy instilled in them and I hope they'll "travel" to others who might want to use them to explore these important myths.
 

Demeter

Hades

Hecate

I've written quite often about Hecate, the Underworld Goddess who bears two Torches to assist Persephone, and the immature unconscious parts of all of us, through the Underworld to mature empowerment - here's a recent post.

Hecate

Persephone

Here's another recent variation..............Demeter aren't done yet.  But I had fun making the masks look "bronze".  I like the idea of these masks, and the other sculptures that seem related, really looking sculptural, with a heavy, strong, dark,  metal presence. 

Black Madonna

Here's an other theme that keeps arising, and it's good to come back to these images, play with them again.  The Primal Black Madonna, Earth Mother, Gaia, the Source that sustains us all.

Transformer:  Yin and Yang

I love these paper casts of a dead snake that I found years ago and made a plaster cast of.  Snakes were very sacred in ancient times as a symbol of the renewal of life because the snake sheds its skin.  Snakes also represented the serpentine movements of nature, the spiral of the Goddess that moves through nature's cycles, through life/death/rebirth again and again.  The Snake is identified with Demeter and Persephone, and in ancient Egypt the word for snake or cobra was the same as the word for female deity.

I did this "Skin Shedder Mandala" back in 1986, when I was studying "The Spiral Dance" by Starhawk as a graduate student at the U.A.  A lot of people found it dark or grim............but I still love it.  

The Black Madonna (2013)

Black Madonna earlier version...............

  And I'm having fun making these variations on the Torso .................... I guess the next one is a "copper patina" effect.  Good to be in the studio again, having my discussions, in the symbol language of art I think, with the Dark Goddesses of  Winter....................

Cast of sculpture from IPark in 2005

The New Story

"The Universe is made of stories, not atoms."

Muriel Rukeyser

"Stories are not abstractions from life, but how we engage with it.  We make stories and those stories make us human.  We awaken into stories as we awaken into language, which is there before and after us.  The question is not so much "What do I learn from stories?" as "What stories do I want to live?" ........ that question might be just as much, "What stories want to come to life through me?"

David R. Loy, "The World Is Made Of Stories"

I truly do believe that story is the name of the country where the archetypes enact their dramas, the Gods and Goddesses weave their relationships and teach their values, and we, consciously or not, live out the myths. Within the Mythic Realms we find the templates of societies, and as individuals, each of us is "in-formed" by story, by mythos.  So what are the stories we're being told, infused with, fed by, what are the stories we've internalized?

I've so often spoken of artists, and myself, as people who often elect for the uneasy job of re-mything culture.  Sometimes they get elected, whether they think they are or not.  The myths rise up from the collective Self, perhaps from the Necessity of the time:  but it's individuals who give it voice, symbol, a language, and they often have to plow through the old mythos with a fair amount of resistance before they find resonant ears.  Pollinators of story........that's what I think I've been, along with many colleagues.  Pollinators, re-discoverers and re-mythers of stories about interdependance instead of competition, stories about a living Earth we live within, instead of a "reward" somewhere else, stories about the return of the Great Goddess and the feminine powers and values, stories that heal instead of making war.  Sometimes I worry that I come close to being propaganda, as I repeat myself and my themes over and over..........but these symbols and sounds lie at the root, the base, and are taproots that I can sink over and over to renew myself, to sustain.

So I felt like sharing again the video at the bottom of this post by Brian Swimme, and revisiting again the New Stories Foundation.

And here also is Someone I've been re-visiting, the ancient, and  ubiquitous,  Native American archetype of Spider Woman that has been so fascinating to me over the years.  Grandmother Spider Woman is more than an "archetype" to me...........She's also a wise mentor.  Since I seem to be going through a rather profound personal re-weaving at the moment, I've been renewing my aquaintance with Spider Woman as I ask for aid, a few of Her strong threads, through  friends, story, dream and synchronicity, to show me the way to go now.

Also called "Thought Woman" in Southwestern Pueblo cultures, Spider Woman is a primal creatrix who imagines things that come to be; she weaves the world continually into being and dissolution with the stories she tells. At the center of the great Web (symbolized by the ubiquitous cross representing the union of the 4 directions) that is always associated with her Spider Woman/Thought Woman sees the ever evolving pattern, the resonance, the harmonies and the disharmonies, the tears and new links. The gift of weaving, and the gift of story, are the gifts Spider Woman endowed her grandchildren with.  And as we are all, as it were, connected in the Great Web of life, the work is ultimately collaborative. 

Ts' its' tsi' nako, Thought-Woman the Spider named things and as she named them they appeared. She is sitting in her room thinking of a good story now:

I'm telling you the story she is thinking.

Keresan Pueblo proverb

In some Pueblo myths,  when the world fell so out of balance that it was destroyed,  it was Spider Woman who "midwifed" the New World by leading the people through the Kiva.  The "Third World" ended by flood, and She led the people into the  "Fourth World", which is our time.
As the Hopi (and Mayan) calendar or cycle recently ended, surely Grandmother Spider Woman is very present again, ready to lead us into the new 5th  world,  helping us to spin "new stories".  And if we look at what element "5", the "Fifth World" might represent, it is Center, and its color is white, the union of all colors.  Surely now is the time to tell the story of interdependence, connection, the story that ends with:

And We Are All One......

 http://youtu.be/TRykk_0ovI0

 

Reflections on Loneliness and the Demise of Blockbuster...

 "Back in the 1990s, scholars started calling the contradiction between an increased opportunity to connect and a lack of human contact the “Internet paradox................We live in an accelerating contradiction: the more connected we become, the lonelier we are. We were promised a global village; instead we inhabit the drab cul-de-sacs and endless freeways of a vast suburb of information."

"(Vickers’s) web of connections had grown broader but shallower, as has happened for many of us. We are living in an isolation that would have been unimaginable to our ancestors, and yet we have never been more accessible. Over the past three decades, technology has delivered to us a world in which we need not be out of contact for a fraction of a moment...............Yet within this world of instant and absolute communication, unbounded by limits of time or space, we suffer from unprecedented alienation."

Stephen Marche **
"Is Facebook Making Us Lonelier?"

I feel very sad that the Blockbuster Video down the street, along with all Blockbuster Video stores, is closing.  I've had a relationship with them for years..........like going to a library, I knew the people there, would ask them about new arrivals, sometimes buy popcorn, and then settle down to enjoy a movie with my mother, who I visit at assisted living now.  I guess the internet, Netflix, and those obnoxious red boxes  in front of at every pharmacy were the end for this once ubiquitous business.

And I was also struck by the article I quote from above by Stephen Marche.  I don't know about others, but for myself, on a personal level, I have often found that the Internet has made me feel lonelier, certainly, more disposible.  I seem to be going through one of my "dancing on the table with a lampshade on my head" phases (again), and it's not even New Year's Eve.  I'm irritable, and know that I'm going through a kind of re-evaluation, and possible re-invention,  of my life.  But meanwhile,  I think it's a damn shame that Blockbuster is no more.  And I also think Americans have a deeply unconscious, buried,  "shadow" urge to feel interdependant and affiliated.  I hope.   More on this after my rant............

The video rental stores had real human beings behind the counter to talk to you about the movies you browsed for.  Unlike the "red boxes", which are similar in concept to the "self checkout" at grocery stores.   Not only is it another loss of many jobs, but it's yet another way in which Americans can, once again, avoid the messiness, eccentricities, and germs of  human contact with a click and a card.  What's next? Total virtual reality immersion?  

 "Individualism finds its roots in the attempt to deny the reality and importance of human interdependence.  One of the major goals  of technology in America is to "free" us from the necessity of relating to, submitting to, depending upon, or controlling other people.  Unfortunately, the more we have succeeded in doing this the more we have felt disconnected, bored, lonely, unprotected, unnecessary and unsafe."

Phillip Slater

In my mother's day the movies were a big deal - you went to the theatre,  which meant gathering with a bunch of friends, or dates, for a night out,  dinner as well.  A social occasion, which videos changed by making it a more private affair.  When she was a young working woman in Los Angeles in the 40's, even an  urban breakfast was less "private".   There was no "fast food" to speak of.  Breakfast meant a cafe, which had a cook, dishwasher, waitress and fellow breakfasters.  Every morning, a community of people was connected to  her eggs and coffee.  There were also no  disposable forks, spoons, cups, or plates - that idea, which we take so completely for granted, had not arrived yet, although it was looming just around the corner. 

And now we have the next evolutionary step:  Starbucks!  Instead of the inconvenience of a sit down restaurant and familiar breakfast faces, we have a lineup in our cars, greeted by a hand with a  paper cup, soon to end up in a landfill, and a universal litany of "welcome to Starbucks find everything you're looking for have a great day".  

I spent many personally evolutionary days in Cafe Society in the 60's and 70's in Berkeley and New York and other places, and have a great fondness for them.  They really aren't the same any more, or at least, I'm not.  Most of the Cafe's I can go to here in Tucson look  something like this:  

Now my true senior curmudgeon-ness is showing, along with my long winter underwear.  Because I remember Cafe Med, or Cafe Trieste, in pre-laptop days, as looking something like this:

 

or this:

Or this:   (ok, that's Alan Ginsburg and Company, and I wasn't there, but wish I had been....)
 

Yes, I know.  There would have been obnoxious cigarette smoke in those days.  And sometimes obnoxious people.   But there were also poets, regulars, friends, bead sellers, spare changers...........all the color and texture of human beings.  

And another question, for 2013,  might be, why would I need  to go to a cafe in the first place, when I can make gourmet coffee and bagels at home?  Don't I have a French Press and a toaster?   Could it be I, like  a few others, enjoy the sense of mutually  breathing bodies around us, a chance to eavesdrop on an interesting conversation, maybe even get to talk to that person with the intriguing book, or flirt with the guy who looks like he might be a fellow artist?

But notice one thing in the photos above, from the '60's.  The people generally look like they're talking to each other, or looking at each other at least.  Now look at photos from a contemporary coffee shop with wifi.  What you will see predominently   is a row of laptops, each at separate small tables.     If you're hoping for human contact,  there is nothing more impregnable than a laptop.  The fellow in the first photo on the right even has his earplugs in - about the only way you could get his attention would be to spill coffee on him.  Now that's privacy.

(I do have to note here a great article from the Huffington Post about coffee shops in San Francisco that have intentionally dropped wifi as  "part of a growing trend among San Francisco restaurateurs to reclaim the coffee shop as a place for face-to-face conversation among caffeinated human beings instead of just being a remote office for people silently tapping away on their laptops."  Huzzah for them!)

Do we really need all this "privacy"?  As Philip Slater, author of  The Pursuit of Loneliness, wrote in 1970 (I was very sad to learn this visionary writer died this year) - all this privacy and pursuit of individualism is not only sometimes bad for our health and personal prospects of longevity, but it is now increasingly clear that it's very, very bad for our planet's health and longevity.

"It is easy to produce examples of the many ways in which we attempt to minimize, circumvent, or deny the interdependence upon which all human societies are based.  We seek a "private" house, a private means of transportation, a private garden, a private laundry, self-service stores, and do-it-yourself skills of every kind.  an enormous technology seems to have set itself the task of making it unnecessary for one human being ever to ask anything of another in the course of going about his daily business.  ..........we seek more and more privacy, and feel more and more alienated and lonely when we get it.  What accidental contact we do have, furthermore, seem more intrusive, not only because they are unsought but because they are unconnected with any familiar pattern of interdependence."

I've been renting rooms at my house to make ends meet for a couple of years now, initially inspired by my experiences with B and B's in England, a tradition that goes way back there.  But this is not England, and it's also true that I live in a big Southwestern city,  and not a quaint tourist town.  Still, it's been interesting to observe that, although I've had some great interactions with a few of my guests,  even made a friend or two.........overall, the interactions are very impersonal.  And yet, I do find AIRBNB, and other such "share economy" ventures a real step forward, not only because they create much need small local businesses, but also because they promote more of a interchange economy.

"Our servility toward technology, however, is no more dangerous than our exaggerated moral commitment to the "virtues" of striving and individual achievement.  The mechanized disaster that surrounds us is in no small part a result of our having deluded ourselves that a motley scramble of people trying to get the better of one another is socially useful instead of something to be avoided at all costs.  It has taken us a long time to realize that seeking to surpass others might be pathological, and trying to enjoy and cooperate with others healthy, rather than the other way around."

Philip Slater

So.....having shared this, I would like to say that AIRBNB, and other "share economy" services, may be the fiscal end of the tip of an iceberg when it comes to the underlying realization many Americans are making that it's time to return to a more communal, more interdependent   relationship to each other, and to our environment.  I would like to remind myself in this journal that, like the broader implications of the archetype of "Spider Woman's Web", interdependency is the root of our problem now, and a "webbed vision" of interdependency is our solution as well. 

"The three variables we have been discussing - community, engagement, dependency - can all trace their suppression in American society to our commitment to individualism......We are so accustomed to living in a society that stresses individualism that we need to be reminded that "collectivism" in a broad sense has always been the more usual lot of mankind, as well as of of most other species. "

“What might we see, how might we act, if  we saw with a webbed vision? 
 The world seen through a web of relationships…as delicate as spider’s silk, 
yet strong enough to hang a bridge on.”

Catherine Keller, Theologian

 From a Broken Web

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"Jaron Lanier, the author of You Are Not a Gadget, was one of the inventors of virtual-reality technology. His view of where social media are taking us reads like dystopian science fiction: “I fear that we are beginning to design ourselves to suit digital models of us, and I worry about a leaching of empathy and humanity in that process.” Lanier argues that Facebook imprisons us in the business of self-presenting, and this, to his mind, is the site’s crucial and fatally unacceptable downside." 

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/is-facebook-making-us-lonely/308930/