Shopping list of bad faerie

5.0.18

faerie - fairy - fear - fierce - farce

Black humor warning: Try to read this one beyond mere "judgmental", beyond "generalized", please. I cry my own personal years-long frustrations ... and you can laugh with me. As a Tao-positive person, I appreciate paradoxes and contradictions, I enjoy getting acquainted with the dark side of the shiny concepts. One of the reasons why I value faeries-space is because aside all the joy, smiles and love - it invites, welcomes and makes room for sadness, frustration, pain, depression, fear, distancing and anger alike. This is a caricature of that imperfectly-human side of faeries, the invisible dumpster of the sanctuary life.

Neo-pagan pathos. "Dear friend, queer friends ..." Having a song is quite important – as the magic of the act creates a sense of bonding in the group - immediately by singing together, through the declared intention and within the spell of lyrics. It is an expression of celebration that touches the marrow of belonging, distinction, i.e. the paradoxical dynamics of the group. But what do the words convey? It confirms the presence of the feelings that might not be there. Sugar and pathos. The neopagan chorals are a very specific genre, ladden with self-importance (evoking something ancient, eternal, transcending) in a most kytschy, pretense-ful, synthetic way. It just reveals the lack of diversity, perspective and playfulness in the niche group. I am not great fan of introducing rainbow habits into faerie culture (I think faeries are much farther), but is an incredible number of great rainbow songs – if that specific style is required, with refreshing musical motives, simple and thus powerful lyrics open to multiple interpretations, the goosebump quality in them. I won’t deny the amazing quality of being acknowledged by the group – or even taking a souvenir (of a moment, of a melody) home – something to return to in darker moments when away. But could it be an adequate piece of art? Sticking to one particular item, not really crafty, reflecting the crowd’s need to have something reminds me of the most bleak average of the mainstream that faerie abandon and oppose to.

Synthetic love. There is yet another habit imported from the rainbow gatherings that I can hardly stand – and that is the kissing of the hands in circle. Holding all the circle hostage in a ritual that not everyone might feel resonating with. I skip the part of poor hygiene inherent in it. It’s just that monstrosity of declared love - veiling its genuine variations, spontaneous, not enacted when everyone is looking and a person hardly dares to just leave and break the circle. For me this anecdote example represent a phenomenon (proclivity) of faerie space – when we wish something magical or amazing to be there so much – that we force it into the play, quicken it, without allowing it to happen genuinely.

Spiritual exhibitionism. I wish drama queens get satisfied just with the theatrical wearing of the "Jesus rags". Wearing costumes to look like a wise man makes it clear that you can’t tell a wise man or what the wisdom is. Faeries like to be emotionally touched and moved – feeling epic, theatrically in tears, rightfully upset. Quite a lot of so called "spiritual life" is a collection of tricks to touch oneself, move oneself, self-induce goosebumps. Wanting a fabulous experience, they fabulize it. Unlike the care of the dark and deep soul, the spirituality aims high, toward perfection, purity, light, above-material, heavens or eternal. It is ambitious, forward-looking, messianic. And as in most of human history, the random individuals are being hijacked to these projects, tenderly and lovingly forced to adjust. Often manifesting through the fashionable "offense" and "sensitivity" and "respect" manipulations. Let’s call it by the right name: spiritual bullying. "Let’s not kill the flies with lines of death, photography stealing our souls or disrupting the spirit of the gathering, let’s break the dam because the water must flow" – all those betray imperatives, the ready-to-use definitions of evil, or abstract imagination.

False compromise. Faeries hate technology (even if they use it liberally) – phones, reproduced music and cameras to name a few – because it represents the consumerist and insensitive mainstream world. Contradictory, they will fiercely defend presence of the substances, as the expression of personal liberty, regardless of the fact that they clearly represent a dysfunctionality of the outside world – that we escape from, to gather, to interact live, to experience connections and not their substitutes. The violent business of substance production and distribution. Never discussed, hardly argumented, but automatically established rule of excluding meat from the sanctuary – is founded on the spiritual (Abrahamic) concept of "evil" (here: the killing of animals) rather than environmental aspect (unsustainable resource intensiveness of industrial production). How does footprint of local organic meat compare with industrial-agriculture protein-rich vegetarian products? Imported exotic ingredients. Soy grown on burned forests ground. Nutritional value should be explored scientifically and not established through spiritual sensitivities. Getting vegan gets challenging – avocado is evil, quinoa is evil. Not to mention peculiar barbarism of cooking with disgusting meat-imitations like TSP and TVP. Though coffee and chocolate and baguettes are obligatory? Including dietary restrictions based on individual health situations (no lactose, no gluten), science (no soy, no bread, no pasta, no granola, no sugar) and faith (no milk, butter, yogurt, cheese, honey or eggs) may easily leave us malnourished. Why not to switch to raw food than? The most annoying aspect is that vegetarian food is served by default, while vegans and others either feed themselves or the community makes an extra effort to include them. Because all eating vegan and sugar/gluten/lactose-free would impose someone else’s ideology on the rest. Why then vegetarianism is seen a compromise solution between carnivores and consensual vegetarians? Are we searching for intersections or unions?

Racing heart. The ancient consensus-reaching process – suitable for the smaller tribes, which faeries progressively cease to be – requires a lot of patience, determination, time and energy. Hardly any faerie wishes to spend all the blessed days of the gathering sitting in the circle, deciding upon aspects of life that we will thus hardly get to live at all. As a matter of sustainability, for practical purposes faeries diverted to consent-building technology, like a sociocracy. This does not diminish the unique exceptional added value that the faerie "nuclear technology" (nucleus = core) - the heart-circle - brings about. Being listened to, speaking without interruption, fighting for words, rush to keep the audience, replacing complexity with stirring and palatable attractiveness – is a life-time experience. The shy ones get to speak, the minority reports are provided, the issue is grasped in more layers and aspects. This sort of richness need not be limited to the sacred ceremonial event of heart-circle, but could permeate the rest of faerie culture as well. Instead of "uneducating" ourselves from some of the mainstream world habits ... and learning some patience, taming the ambitions, allowing some time and space for solutions to develop, grasping the topics in their complexity (because we can, because we have all the time in the universe, because we invent this world for our selves just now) – we rather haste and minimize.

The fake consensus. There’s a strong counter-current – making the meetings concise, the decision processes efficient, even the heart-circles speedy. "Heart-circle is good thing. Done. Check. Next item." The technical minds hijack the faerie space. I find it bewildering to observe the shortcuts used, when circles get out of hands. "Focus." The loud voices monopolize the debate. "Let’s not interrupt each-other." The last one speaking never gets the word back. "Let’s hear everybody." A circular order suddenly starts somewhere else. "For the sake of time, I just want to state one important aspect." Someone introduces his own preference. "I like it too." A decision was suddenly made, by two or three. "Since we have reached a consensus, let’s see how we can implement it." No consensus was reached or even searched, but the topic is already concluded. "Let’s move on." Some are bitter and passive-aggressive – they leave the next processes up to the democracy of the self-chosen ones. Accelerating the circle spin with pretext of not wasting time and draining energy (serving common good) is used to insert solutions that reflect individual preference. Displacing the debate to another dimension is popular trick too: "This is not the place and time to discuss the matter in details. It’s not the right platform. There should be a proper meeting/circle/discussion on the subject." Those other activities never happen, follow the same displacement methodology, or consensus is somehow skipped in them. The pillars of the definition-less faerie culture are established through fashion and habit ("faeries have this tradition … "), or just someone inventing them on spot with oratory skills ("we as a faerie community surely ..."). Even if we deprecate the conspicuous "we" in favor of "I", the more inconspicuously abundant it gets. At the end of the day, faeries practice incidental consensus at best – those who who happen to be there in the circle, those who had time/resources or other topic-unrelated purpose to come to the gathering – are considered those "to whom the issue matters" and decide on behalf of the whole vaguely defined community.

Idealist ideologies. Regardless of using world’s technologies to come together or to communicate or of being dependent on external resources (electricity – no, but food – yes)… are faeries really defined as anti-corporation and electro-phobic? Do they despise money and replace them with love economy? Are we all urban intellectual on the extreme left side of the political spectrum? Do we worship multiculturalism? Do we want to tear down the walls and erase all the borders – not those raised/drawn by extraordinary idiots – but as a whole concept? Are we absolutely open to anyone and anything? Do we practice complete individual freedom – with no responsibility? Do we believe in cultural imperialism or cultural appropriation? How does all that stand with the notions of sanctuary (safe = closed space), capacity and stability of the limited natural and social ecosystem, individual liberty standing over the superstitious cultural imperatives, purchasing food and tools by the money brought in by those acting in the capitalist economy?

Speak louder. Some faeries don’t do well with a bit of mystery. They want to heart the words, the precise statements – not to acknowledge the presence of the other faerie. It’s an interruption, a brutal aggressive act when someone tries to find courage to disclose his feeling, expressions to verbalize them, orientation in the unclear complexity of the matter. Just to face the reproachful mark. I want to hear – that’s more important than you trying to speak. Some people hear the beauty of the music, some just have to turn it loud, audible, decipherable. The silent voice, alien language or a total quiet and passing times – are the acquired tastes for the capable ones.

Faerie nationalism. Even if faerie space is established as a bubble outside of the Matrix, sometimes the external dramas invade with no shame. English – by a course of both violent and incidental history established as a lingua franca, a practical tool that allows us to find comprehension, to communicate, to coordinate, to share perspectives, to exchange the ideas, to learn – is still treated as the Evil to be eradicated. Translations are not sufficient. Some faeries’ egos can’ cope with the necessity to learn other languages, if they want to understand and be understood. It must be my language that the others learn. Some cultures do not develop this sensitivity and look at the practical side, some instill it systematically. For some a sanctuary hosted on French territory obliges us to worship and learn about French culture. To learn the beautiful/magnificent/poetic language (which one isn’t?) unlike the harsh and brutal English of the world oppressors. Some still believe the embarrassing clichés of emotionless and calculating Germans, temperamental Spaniards or emotional Italians. French is the language of love, Frenchmen are the experienced amants, French taste in cheese and wine and bread is exemplary. Dutch grant themselves a permission to be rude or insensitive because "we are direct". British impose their cultural peculiarities around political correctness and substances – even if they a long way (and an inflated issue) to cope with them for themselves. And the Eastern Europeans are so hard-working and pessimistic.