How to Diss an Elder, the Dead, and Everyone Else
As it happens, this trifecta of disrespect is not all that difficult to accomplish. This is after all the feast of Samhain, when opportunities to ritualize bad manners abound. At Samhain the veil of etiquette is thin, as we all know, and the living and the dead co-mingle like ants around a sugar skull.
Let’s say, for instance, that you are part of an organization that each year puts on a big public ritual to celebrate Samhain. At first glance it seems like an improbable time to be disrespectful, since the whole intention is for respectful celebrants to celebrate the dead together, respectfully. Yet the lead-up to such an event is in fact the perfect time to set the trifecta in motion.
Of course you will want to ask for volunteers to take on various roles in the ritual. If a certain elder in the community then heeds your summons and requests her favorite role, performed faithfully and well for many years, you should first tell her that her requested role has already been spoken for, then offer her a smaller role instead.
This in itself is a perfectly respectful thing to do—or it would be, if what you told her was the truth. But it isn’t, because no one else has stepped up to ask for that role. In fact, as the weeks fly by and the ritual draws near, you hastily contact at least three other people, all friends of the elder, and ask each of them if they would like her requested role.
These people will have already heard from their friend that she was denied her habitual role because it had been spoken for. They will realize she has been lied to, and realize too that the invitation they received was a tainted one. For one reason or another they will all decline your offer.
So far we have disrespect of an elder, and a few other people, but what about the dead? Here’s where you can get really creative. In this ritual to honor the dead, it might seem that the most weighty part would be the calling in and naming of the dead. The Ancestors, the Mighty Dead of your lineage, and the Beloved Dead of the community might all get a spot of attention, a few minutes apiece, to be remembered fully.
Instead, why not lump all three groups together, and budget two minutes maximum for calling in the lot of them? This is, after all, a ritual which is famous for being long. Shortening it is good, especially if it can be done at the expense of the very spirits it claims to honor.
You are nearly there! All that remains is to disrespect everyone else, and as it happens the perfect opportunity for this will be reached shortly after the ritual, when people compare notes and start to speak up about what happened.
The tone you want to take here is moral indignation. How dare these people accuse you of dishonesty and deceit, when you are a small, hard-working group of dedicated celebrants volunteering countless hours on this ritual, all for the good of the community! For anyone to accuse you of intentional deceit is not only morally wrong, it is downright disrespectful.
And there you have it. Play the victim card and the trifecta is complete. Accuse others of what you yourself have done, don’t admit to any transgressions, and the next year you will be an even smaller, harder-working band of celebrants. Well done!
November 6th, 2007 at 10:10 am
Brilliant!!!! Should be printed on leaflets and dropped by helicopter over all of Northern California….(except the clean-up would be a bear).
November 6th, 2007 at 10:38 am
Here Here! You have no idea just how long I have been looking for just such a manual, only to have it far surpass my expectation! Now, I too, (perhaps even for the second time) can diss an elder, the dead, and if i’m lucky everybody else. Thanks, a million times thanks!
November 6th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
Excellent! And accurate as I was one of our Elder’s friends too. Oh, and you forgot to mention under the dissing the dead that their names were done last year via recording and were only done live this year cuz I (and others) raised a sink about it.
November 6th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
Shiney, you are very welcome. You might want to start out small—just diss a few dead to start, or maybe take on someone who is not quite an elder—but once you get the hang of it, I’m sure it will become second nature.
November 6th, 2007 at 11:39 pm
oh my! Mistakes were made. Again. What’s amazing to me is that over and over again dishonesty is chosen over honesty. Just exactly how did they think this would have a good outcome? And you nailed the self righteous victim dynamic.
I stopped going to the Spiral Dance when I realized that the cone of power being raised with the chant “Let it Begin Now!” was actually not beginning much of anything except the same—dishonesty, cronyism, and using the public’s energy to support a toxic energy body. I know that the vast majority of the people shlepping and putting it on have their hearts in the right place, but the local Reclaiming scene - it just ain’t right.
Your description is, as the Brits say, spot on.
November 7th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
Alas.
Sorry for the dissing, dear; you’re tops in my book!
love love love love
also much love.
November 7th, 2007 at 4:38 pm
Thanks for this great post, Anne. As the disrespected elder in question, I’m much less riled than one might imagine me to be. I think that’s because this is the kind of game-playing I’ve come to expect from that crew. Sad, huh? It pisses me off, yes, but I chose to take the higher road and take the role the organizers wanted me to do rather than one of three I volunteered for. To me, community trumps individual personalities, and I would like to see this particular community survive beyond its single charismatic leader (SCL).
I have spoken of this to some of the chorus/band and tech people, who were entirely unaware that this skullduggery had been taking place. Now if they were not among the organizers (the SD cell), there is no reason they should have been aware. I just wonder how many of the actual cell members are aware. Somehow I don’t think they’d feel that great about the process if they knew about it.
I keep hoping someone will read this blog entry and send it to spiraldancefeedback@yahoogroups.com to give the organizers some of the ’specific’ feedback they’ve asked for. Obviously I am not person to carry that particular banner.
Yours in changing culture,
Macha
November 7th, 2007 at 6:28 pm
Oh, I am sorry that you all are having to go through this. Samhein was such a joy out here in Virginia for us. May the Goddess guard all of you. Blessings.
November 8th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
Hmm, not any less than I would expect from such a scattered and unfocused group of selfish people who can’t express their spirituality without flaunting their own needs (usually sexual). I am sick of the whole scene myself, and glad I missed it.
November 8th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
Thank you Anne for having the courage to say this.
You know how I feel about the dance held after 9/11. Things don’t seem to be improving and no one seems to be learning.
Sia
November 8th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
I was reminded today that I actually missed something very important in my post. That is the use of sanctimony to counter dissent. As a tool of group oppression it is right up there with moral indignation, but more insidious because it is billed as a compassionate way to “hear” people’s “stories” while not addressing real grievances in a concrete way.
In fact, sanctimony is so deeply disturbing that it really requires its own post. Which I shall of course attempt, after burying a whole shitload of things in my garden tonight.
Thank you everyone for the great comments. Back at you, Pandora.
November 9th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
Well thanks for sharing that with folk. I did not know.
I think Reclaiming needs an organisation for sorting out disputes and
problems. From my own experience just cos people say they respect the p.o.u. and work with that as the rule, does not automatically mean they do!
Course it is easier to work with the p.o.u. once you get rid of the people you do not like! or cause a problem etc etc and just have a group of
like minded people who dare not oppose you.
It will be interesting if Reclaiming rises to the bate and gets a system in place, owns the shadow side of some of the people?
who knows? I attended spiral dance and actually got to say, enjoyed it,
but then i did not know all this.
No harm can come from speaking your truth?
xann
November 26th, 2007 at 7:04 am
Smaller and harder-working. It’s true that communities such as Reclaiming, but of course not only Reclaiming, can close ranks upon facing criticism, and the only result of that is going to be that they become smaller and close-minded.
It’s a strange comfort, the ‘freedom of the empty church’ as I call it. For some, the less people who are involved, the more special those who remain at the core feel to be part of a declining and incestuous community. It’s easy to turn the upset of other people into the approval of the gods for your actions if you’re so inclined. I still stick to Reclaiming Feri ideals and practices but long ago realised I wasn’t welcome in the UK community for speaking my mind and sticking to my guns when I believed myself the victim of an injustice. I still feel like that, but the dispute was compounded by lies that were told, fences that were put up, and friendships ended simply because I had chosen to speak out.
Bullying and lies and backstabbing do take place. I got sick of hearing about how non-hierarchical Reclaiming is when, to anyone who is unwilling to enslave their brain to the collective will, it is patently, ridiculously obvious that there are those who seek to be in with the in crowd, and those who seek to ingratiate themselves with those who appear to have power-over. No hierarchy my arse. Of course there’s a hierarchy of privilege and power-over. But the emperor’s new clothes are always popular; we can convince ourselves of our own finery if that is what we want to do.
Excellent piece, thank you! x
November 26th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
Andy sez: “I got sick of hearing about how non-hierarchical Reclaiming is when, to anyone who is unwilling to enslave their brain to the collective will, it is patently, ridiculously obvious that there are those who seek to be in with the in crowd, and those who seek to ingratiate themselves with those who appear to have power-over”
Well said, Andy. I have been saying all along that Reclaiming has an _unacknowledged_ hierarchy which, IMO, is toxic.
Macha
December 6th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
Just catching up on some blogs I get through RSS feeds… Ann Flowers had commented in part
“I think Reclaiming needs an organisation for sorting out disputes and problems. From my own experience just cos people say they respect the p.o.u. and work with that as the rule, does not automatically mean they do!”
unfortunately from the viewpoint of settling disputes, the pou are not a rule. In fact, I don’t even see them as principles really, sort of more like a guiding prose-type poetry (I posted a poetic version a few years back on one of the Reclaiming lists.)
Macha, I am sorry but unsurprised that you were treated badly. I understand that you wish that community to survive; but you also wrote that the hierarchy is unacknowledged and toxic. I would say that anyone who’s had any contact in person or via lists with the SF Reclaiming community can acknowledge quite readily that there is a hierarchy that you deal with, and that it is toxic. It is acknowledged, but in secret, so it cannot be attacked.
For a person to be a doormat, one person has to lie down and the other person has to do the stepping. It really appears to me that there are quite a few people in the SF community who are either tired of being doormats or else are tired of seeing others being doormats and don’t know what to do.
Have you considered the possibility that the SF Reclaiming community is just *too damn big*? That, possibly, there are too many corners of darkness to hide in?
You can overthrow a hierarchy (the foot on the doormat) or you can remove what it has power over (move the doormat somewhere else and turn it into a tasteful wall-hanging ;>). Maybe it’s time for the doormats and the disgusted observers of doormattry to form, say, the San Bruno Reclaiming community, or the Berkeley Reclaiming community. Since the foot steps in darkness… maybe the mat can leave.
Just my 0.02 from the East,
-steward