America's main enduring tradition is iconoclasm. Less the religious aspect (although that frequently applies as well) American's love uprooting tradition and cheering for the underdog. Well, assuming America is the underdog, which in our cultural paradigm must always be the case. Logic need not apply. America is fairly young, and began with a revolution against a more powerful empire while uprooting and destroying the indigenous people and religion. Most of us were raised on the "greatness" of the iconoclasm of our predecessors, no matter how offensive the crimes of the past might be. We continue this tradition today by upholding the "Mavericks" in Congress, no matter how much such individuals actually support the status quo. Currently, there is a distressingly large push for radically regressive measures in the name of "traditional" values against actual traditional values of the country. As I said, logic need not apply.
It may make no sense, but there is a continual undercurrent against traditional principals.
That traditional disparaging of tradition is harmful for paganism. The view of so many Americans to most situations is a dismissal of how things were done, dismissing our parents as out of touch, dismissing previous wisdom and dismissing most rules as impinging on personal freedom. It's a view of destruction, destroying the past again and again. I'm not exactly a traditional person (being queer, trans, having visible ink, piercing, etc.) but I take issue with much of this destruction. We've destroyed indigenous cultures, both the Native Americans as well as Native Europeans. We've destroyed the past of most immigrants who were not white, erased our cultural histories until Irish, Italian, Jewish, Polish, and more blended into the same homogeneous 'whiteness' rather than enriching each other with distinctiveness. Nothing is coming out of it, because we're not paying enough attention before we smash something to realize there might just be something(s) worth learning. We destroy, but rather skip the rebuilding, recreating phase.
Polytheistic paganism requires rebuilding and recreating. We reconstruct because there is no other way to discover what came before (unless someone out there actually has a TARDIS, in which case, please come by yesterday.) We have to look back at older wisdom, because we can't always know exactly what was done, we must investigate why.
I'm not a pure reconstructionist. Gods, I'm not even in a specific pantheon, but I still spend two hours doing research for a five minute devotional offering to Apollon. Two hours, because I do very little Hellenic practice and despite having good resources I needed to know not just what to offer Apollon, but how and why. Two hours to piece together scraps from various people's personal gnoses (verified and unverified) in addition to the records left to know how I should do this small devotional offering.
Unlike most polytheistic pagans, I'm not huge on ancestor worship. Not because I don't want to, but rather my blood ancestors wouldn't appreciate it, and back much farther than most (as my family is really damn Jewish.) Until I can work out if it would be of use, it means I must look to other places for a similar connection. I recognize the wisdom these links to the past bring. The understanding of hardships that are often beyond our comprehension in an age where we can have a face to face chat with someone anywhere in the world. I'm not saying today's world isn't hard, quite the contrary, we can learn from the past to help us function in this rather shitty time of continual recession and the assault of the repressive right-wingers.
Maybe I am an iconoclast. I want to attack the underlying assumptions of monotheistic USA, from the conception of "self-made men" to American exceptionalism... but especially, I want to attack the notion of simple answers. "Self-made men" usually "pull themselves up by the bootstraps" and make money that the government takes and gives to "parasites." If you can't tell, I call bullshit on that entire sentence. This culture has a mythos that individuals make themselves, erasing family, mentors, friends, and the systematic opportunities that differ so greatly between people. American exceptionalism is a disastrous concept that states the USA is some morally upright country supposed to spread liberty throughout the world. I say disastrous because not just of the history of slavery, genocide, internment, but the present day wars on other cultures as well as our own. We have the highest prison rate in the world, and it is destroying swaths of our society instead of building towards a future. Not something worth spreading, but we are anyways. But I digress.
Regardless, really what I protest and attack is the simple question simple answer view of the world that is so prevalent. It's one of the things I love about polytheism, there are no simple answers. I have to look at this huge expanse of beliefs, and consider, deliberate, study and understand. No, not everyone seeks such a spiritual path or has the time to invest in such inquiry. That's just fine and dandy, but the questioning is important anyways. Mostly because I think that people don't have to be as stupid as they presently are. Critical thinking is something supposedly taught in schools, where everyone is told where and when to move according to bells. We aren't taught to question, because we're taught to look for the simplest answers, to get the grade, to get to college, to get the diploma, to get the job, etc. It's a mindset that in my view we have to break out of in general, but especially so to practice polytheism. Honestly, I feel it is a mindset needed in Christianity, Judaism, Atheism, in every sphere across the board. We need to question, and then listen to the answers.
Critical thinking doesn't work without listening. Typical inert iconoclasm that doesn't engage doesn't teach us anything. Ask why Athena might not be the best goddess to call upon for a female sexual empowerment ritual. Ask what happens next in a story, and listen. Especially listen when the entity speaking isn't exactly corporeal. They're words are all the more likely to get lost in translation from spirit to body. Rather than the dismissive, narcissistic, ignorance so often embodied to erase the past, listen. Listen to the Catholic grandmother who talks with spirits, the Jewish mother who prays to St. Anthony when something important got lost, as well as chosen mentors and teachers. They're wisdom is disappearing.
I'm not saying "do whatever your elders tell you" because lets face it, if I was I'd be doing rather different things with my life. At least listen, and understand their words, because it is a better foundation to build upon.
And because after my only semi-coherent ranting I need something cute, here's a picture of a sugar glider.
1. iconoclast. (n.d.). Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition. Retrieved April 26, 2012, from Dictionary.com website:http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/iconoclast
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