Thinking Locally and Acting Locally

I love politics.  I find it fascinating on an intellectual level.  I also find it entertaining, probably on the same level as some of my friends enjoy the soap opera style of WWE or Lucha Underground.  Hell, one of the candidates was even on WWE.

I also recognize that most politics, or what passes for it, is a complete waste of time.  Most of the things I have any hope of affecting as a voter are decided at local, regional, and sometimes State level elections.  Though, with the way our legislature in Michigan works, should appropriation funding be in a bill that passes there is no way for us voters to hold a referendum.  This is how the Republican-led State Congress pushed through a lot of legislation of all kinds lately, and made them stick despite loud protest.

I still vote, especially in local elections and ballots, because that is where a lot of funding comes for things like our police, fire, libraries, and so on.  It’s also where our leadership comes from for local boards, among others.  It directly affects my family and I.

A phrase I have heard for a long time now is “Think locally and act globally”.  It bothers me, because when we get down to brass tacks, my spheres of influence start and end locally.  I’m only acting globally if I’m acting with enough people that our collective pull is felt in some way.  A lot of the things I hope to make impact on simply don’t register all that large, even with a good number of folks interested in it.  My view is that we should be thinking and acting locally, and let things develop from that.  It is hardly a new view.  However, rather than be in the vein of ‘you need to change yourself before you change the world’ in an abstract way, or even a psychological one, this thinking and acting locally is a tactical one.  It is also tends towards the whole person rather than an aspect of them.

I have no hope of changing national policy.  I may not even be able to change a region’s view of how things like environmental care, farming, local interdependence, sustainable housing, and the like could be.  What I can change is how I do things.  What I can change is how I help people in my tribe, Kindred, friends, and allies.  What I can change is things on a very local level.

Otto von Bismarck said

“Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next best”.

Ideals are good things to have; they give us things to aim for, to work to attain.  They help guide our decisions communally and personally.  However, practical effects are what is lacking in a lot of politics lacks now, especially those that affect us locally and nationally, such as the ways we need to address environmental damage our ecosystems are taking on, climate change, and Peak Oil.  Lining up on either side of an ideological divide may feel good, but ideology won’t keep your family fed or help you endure the Long Descent.  If all you have is ideology, after a while all people will see you offer them are platitudes rather than something that will actually help them live differently.  If you want to change the world, not only do you need to be that change, but you have to help others be able to see themselves in that change too.

Lately, my family and I have been doing a lot of simple  wild yeast mead brewing in mason jars.  We had our first batch finally finish, and it tastes great.  Not only did this teach us that this is a completely viable way to make really good mead, but for our close friends with whom we are sharing this batch, it provides us a means of sharing the results, tying hamingja and wyrd closer together through Gebo, and perhaps inspiring others to take up brewing as well.

Is it a huge change?  No, not on a global scale.  Locally, though, it is helping Michigan bees and bee farmers, we’re reusing glass mason jars and ceramic bottles, and we’re learning practical skills, the results of which go well as gifts to our Gods, Ancestors, vaettir, tribe, family, and friends.  When we grow our own food this spring and summer, will that be huge on a global scale?  No.  It will, however, save us quite a bit of money in food bills, we’ll be using mason jars and potentially ceramic for some, if not a good number of the food we’ll bring in, and we’ll be learning practical skills, the results of which go well as gifts to our Gods, Ancestors, vaettir, tribe, family, and friends.

Part of the thinking and acting locally is that I drop the need or, as I would have put it during my ceremonial magic days, the lust of result, to have the large, powerful impact on a nationwide scale.  My worship and working with Jörð reflects this idea.  I worship Her as a Goddess of the Earth, and I also relate to Her as a Goddess of the Earth where I am (without exclusion to local land/Earth Gods and Goddesses), as I am also tightly bound to my local environment as I am to the Earth.  I have developed a relationship with Her in the context of where I am, where I live, and where I grow my food.  How could I hope to change Her?  So, I take up the space in Her where I live, where She and the landvaettir share with me, and do what I can where I am.  Therefore, all of my actions take place on and within Her and alongside Her in a local context.  To try to separate my understanding of Jörð from my local understanding renders my relationship with Her far less meaningful, to the point of meaninglessness in most contexts.  This thinking and acting locally is often referred to as regional cultus.  It is religiously thinking and acting in relation to the Gods, Ancestors, and vaettir on the local level.

The idea of thinking and acting locally is not separate in terms of religious cultus, growing food, addressing Climate Change, Peak Oil, or environmental damage.  Rather, I take them as a whole, with religious regard running throughout even if addressing environmental damage is not, in and of itself, a religious ritual or act.  I hold relationships with the landvaettir, and because of this relationship on a personal religious level and practical level together, I have a deeply invested interest in the environment thriving and the neighborhood we are part of together doing well.  If I care for the landvaettir, I care for the wellbeing of Their body/bodies, the physical land, plants, creatures, and other Beings which make Them up, and I care for Them on a spiritual basis as well.  It means helping to keep the environment clean and healthy while maintaining good relationships with Them through offerings, prayers, and actually visiting with Them.

Giving general ideas of how to interact with the landvaettir is only so useful.  I can go with lists of offering ideas, but inevitably I will come right out and say something along the lines of “You will need to learn what would be good as an offering for your landvaettir.”  This is part of the idea behind thinking and acting locally for the environment, Peak Oil, or Climate Change.  There’s only so much I could tell you about permaculture techniques or ideas for how to live sustainably that would apply with any accuracy.  Most of the permaculture, homestead, and other skills classes I have gone to have been held by and at places local to me.  Their lessons are bound into how our land works.  I could not tell you useful species of trees to in a Californian environment.  I could not tell you what herbs are invasive, native, useful, or good to grow in that soil.  It’s simply outside of my research and experience.

This is also why I talk a lot about getting to know our Gods locally.  That is, if you are worshiping a Goddess who was associated with wells, maybe get to know Her with your personal well if you use well water, or develop a personal relationship with the local bodies of water where your drinking water comes from.  Do research on where your water comes from, see if the Gods of waters have any association with it, or directly manifest in it.  See if the waters have their own Gods, or big vaettir.  Thinking locally and acting locally means taking steps to relate to this world when and where we are.

Since the body s part of the overarching soul matrix I also look at the bodies of water as the physical component of the Gods, Ancestors, and vaettir of Water.  Likewise the other elements.  How we treat the bodies of these Beings matters, and its impacts hit us in like fashion in our bodies and souls.  If I treat the body of the watervaettir well (pardon the pun), then I am nourished in kind by the water.  If I treat it poorly, I foul the water, destroy its ability to enliven plants and animals alike, and destroy the ability of my ecosystem to live healthy.  If I live upon the Earth well then I am nourished in kind.  It is Gebo, and its effects ripple through Wyrd.  When we think and act locally we partake much more readily in these ripples, in how Wyrd weaves.  In doing our part as best we can with our local threads we can more effectively weave with the larger patterns of Wyrd.