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(But
Only if It's a Rose in the First Place)
By Kaliane
Eclecticism
is all well and good, and it's probably even proper if you feel
no great bond with any one religion. I'm somewhat eclectic
myself, in both spiritual and mundane terms. Let's think mundane
for a second shall we? My home is an eclectic jumble of class and
tack, the antique and the new, the useful and the defunct ...
basically all appealing/cool/inherited/meaningful/treasured
gifts. "Decorating" this way does NOT give me the right
to walk into someone else's home and remove the Edwardian
saltshaker from their cruet set & call it an incense holder,
or take the carver chair from their dining set because it'll look
imposingly throne-like in my hallway. Nor does it give me the
right to take photographs & measurements of something crafted
carefully and lovingly overtime, discard the 'silly/boring stuff'
like structural integrity & suitability for purpose, draw up
plans for cheap mass-production, and sell shoddily-made particle
board replicas as the geniune article. Eclecticism is not
supposed
to be an excuse for laziness and arrogant thoughtlessness: not a
one of us has a 'right' to steal & distort selected bits
& pieces of someone else's living tradition to suit
ourselves. If you want to incorporate elements of some cultural
tradition, have the respect and personal integrity to go to the
source wherever possible - and have the respect to have properly
researched your own traditions first.
The source rarely lives in an expensive California retreat, nor
does it commonly publish through Llewellyn. The source is/was
quite often living in socially and geographically isolated
poverty, and the religion is/was intimately interwoven with the
daily struggle of getting food on the table. That's where most
religion is born, folks: in the quest for survival & meaning
in a sometimes harsh world - and we have no right to swoop in and
nick a pretty bauble off someone else's table just because we're
bored withour own stuff. If we truly can't go directly to the original source, it's our responsibility to research as
much as we can from as many secondary sources as we can, and to
be open to corrections and new angles or information from others
who've done their homework.
He is talking about the word
"karma"...nothing more, nothing less. He's talking
about what the word means, what it means within the belief system
that coined the word.
On to 'semantics'. It's simple. Words have power. Words are
powerful. Words have meaning. Words are meaningful. Sloppy,
careless usage diminishes the usefulness of words for their
intended purpose - communication. Effective
communication relies on words having specific, commonly accepted
definitions. The wider & more disparate thegroup with which
we are attempting to communicate, the more important it is that
we retain our view of the core meaning of each word. When we
adopt words from other languages, we are beholden to use it as
intended - that IS, after all, WHY the word was adopted rather
than translated. I'm a tad confused over the willful carelessness
with which words are treated by somepeople who practise
spellcraft and suchlike: if the real meaning of a word is
unimportant, what then is the value of canting aloud to the Gods?
I'm also thoroughly bewildered by the notion that insistence on
correct terminology is an infringement of anyone's right to
believe whatever they want to. If effective communication of your
ideas and beliefs is not your goal, why on earth are you
participating in a discussion? Verbal precision is necessary and
in written media such as chat channels and discussion lists,
where all other cues are absent (scent, touch, body language,
vocal tone, regional accent), verbal precision is even more
necessary than usual. If we will not make the effort to
understand & be understood, we may as well be trilling 'tay
inna wind, tay inna wind' and stop pretending we give a rat's
about anything outside our own heads.
Essay Copyright 1999 © by Kaliane. This article may be distributed freely, so long as this notice remains and the article is in no way edited from it's original form. No fee may be charged for the distribution of this article in any form without consent of the author.
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This page last updated 9/12/98
