Rational Pagans

There's a fellow who lives nearby (well nearby for around here).  He's very concerned about climate change.  And of course if we were rational and had any intelligence we would all feel the same way.  He writes lengthy letters to the editor on the subject warning us all of our imminent demise.  No one responds.  He calls up and yells at people who try and work for small change while mostly ignoring the big issue of climate change.  It's very uncomfortable for those of us who are yelled at.  He probably shouldn't waste his breath anymore and just start blowing up power lines and the other conveniences that ultimately won't be so convenient to our children and our children's children (provided we get that far).  But he can't and that's fine.  Life and climate change go on.  

His problem I think is that he assumes that we make thoughtful and rational decisions and don't act just based on our own habits and pleasure.  I recently read Heat by George Monbiot and there was a line from it that I can't shake.  He said, and I paraphrase, that he's worried that we'll all demand that our dear leaders do something about climate change while knowing and expecting that states will do nothing.  It's not probably conscious.  We all want to be good or more precisely to be seen to be good.  

Which brings me to a Christmas card I received last year.  More precisely it was a Solstice card.  Now a Christmas card is completely irrational.  Here's a card to celebrate the birth of some guy who lived 2,000 years ago thousands of kilometres away from here.  He said some good things so we need to remember him.  If we forgot about him the world would still spin, the grass would still grow, the snow would still fall. 

But the Winter Solstice is an essential point in time that should have a lot of meaning for us.  The days get longer from that point.  The sun returns to lengthen the day and (in the case of where I live) allows us to harvest and prepare for the next winter.  It's completely rational to celebrate the Solstice.  

But instead we wait until a couple of days after and talk about baby Jesus (or more commonly open presents). 

That card has helped me to realize that humans just may be becoming less rational as time goes on.  The good old Pagans had it right.  The sun is the centre of the world.  Everything depends on it.  So it makes sense to study and, yes, worship it's cyclical relationship with the earth.  Similarly if having kids and continuing on the species was central to us then we might like to consider whether those coal-fired power plants are really good for our species in the long run.  

I wonder what the Pagans would have thought.  Oh yeah, they would have never gotten into this mess in the first place.