My latest Sense of Place post is up, regarding Capitalism and Disenchantment.  We don’t talk about Capitalism enough. One day I’ll write a book about Marx’s use of alchemical language to describe Capital.  I’ve got this certainty that capitalist exchange is itself a kind of magic; in fact, the only magic we’re allowed to believe in any more, material enchanted by our labour, crystallized into money, transmuted by others, improved and transformed, bearing with it the weight and meaning of each who’s touched it but ultimately extracted by a class of people who control the exchange.

Also, John Halstead wrote a piece about privilege.  It’s a start; however, I’m embarrassed by my own comment on his piece.  Re-reading the other comments, I’m realising many of us find ourselves enacting a pattern of stroking privilege in order to undo it.  I think, also, it isn’t so much always about privilege and sometimes actually merely about power.  Writing at all is a political act, and the voice which is heard gathers power.  Bards could curse with short satire, ruin a person forever with a turn of phrase.  It’s not just the use of the words, but the presumed authority of the speaker. The presumed authority is privilege, but the use of the words is power.

That is to say, sometimes acknowledging another’s privilege may sustain their presumed authority, even when the attempt is to combat it.

Also, “privilege” was a rather minor part of my critique of the humanist/naturalist position.  It’s frustrating (but unsurprising) that this would be what appears to have been taken as my point.

I’ve been getting wanderlust for the last month.  I like where I’m staying, but the lack of community (or, well, friends at all) is wilting my soul.  I may relocate soon, likely to Oregon or Maine.  Something’s supposed to happen after Imbolc (long story), so that may be it.

Also, this is why it’s difficult to talk about how some of us have met our gods.   No amount of bright-shiny we’re-all-one talk, nor Jungian psycho-analyzing, nor scientismic (new word) logicks (also new word) begins to describe our experiences.  We mostly don’t try.  I’m glad he did, and I think I’m gonna try harder myself.