What do Football, St. Parascheva and our Climate Disaster have in Common?
Football isn’t a game, nor a sport; it’s a religion – Diego Maradona
Now, as all of you will have had reason aplenty to discover for yourselves, there are new gods growing in America, clinging to knots of belief: gods of credit card and freeway, of Internet and cellphone, of radio and television, gods of plastic and of beeper and neon lights. Proud gods, fat and foolish, puffed up with their own newness and importance.” – American Gods by Neil Gaiman
First off, this short meditation is only meant to pick your curiousity and should be seen more as a question than an answer. So, no, I am not telling you what these three have in common: you will have to figure that out for yourself. Second, you should know that I am in the midst of reading the book “The Master and his Emissary” by Ian McGilchrist which is an accounting of the brain research hinting at possibility that many of our modern, seemingly unsolveable problems [ie. Mass extinction, climate disaster, loss of soil nutrients/minerals] are related to an over-reliance on the left brains way of interpreting ‘Reality’. He claims that the right brain – the brain that sees the big picture and aknowledges mystery and interconnections as real and valid perspectives is meant to be the “Master” of the two brain hemispheres but that for cultural reasons our Left hemisphere, meant to be the “Emissary” has become the Master – to our detriment. Third, I propose that we admit that the “irrational” part of our being must be aknowledged as an equal and valid partner in all we do and think and feel for it gives us the will, the inner power, the desire to live – even if the struggles seems hopeless. Given that many people, especially the young, feel hopeless and fatalistic about the future today it is possible to link this over-reliance on a hyper-rational left hemisphere world as counterproductive and incapable of extracting us from our self made catastrophe.
Football is a religion to me – I worship the ball and treat it like a god. – Pele, Brazilian soccer star
Football [aka Soccer]
People seem to have a need for meaning, for purpose in their lives, to be a part of something bigger than themselves, because in spite of what we are told about how wondourful it is to be independent and self sufficient, what I call “I did it my way” lie, most of feel afraid and inadequate when we’re alone… except of course for those of us who turn into narcissists or sociopaths. In other words, the non-rational part of us believes first and then uses reason second to get what it wants. This is not just my opinion. There is new research, admittedly tentative, that shows that reason is meant to be the handmaiden of our desires. [ref. neuroscience-proves-we-buy-on-emotion ] Below is an example how many people find meaning and purpose to add significance to their lives.
This new religion was none other than “Football”, or “The Beautiful Game” as some like to call it. As this new phenomenon took a hold of the people across the globe, it led to the construction of stadia that would in effect become the new churches of this religion, where the faithful could visit to see the prophets (players) they admired conduct their demonstrative sermons from week to week. It would in fact be very easy to classify football as a religious faith because of the impact it has upon those who follow it with such passion. Fans who would follow their team across the earth in an effort to be there when the team they love and worship is crowned a champion of some kind. Managers and players are held up like saints and prophets of old and often deliver moments of genius that some would say are biblical in proportion. Who could deny that football has crossed the line into the territory of religion when in Argentina, if you so desire, you can visit the “Church of Maradona”, and worship with devoted followers of the living “God”, Diego Maradona.
Saint Parascheva
A few days ago an Orthodox friend told me about the largest pilgrimage inn eastern Europe that was happening in Romania: 300,000 believers were lining up in queues stretching for miles to venerate the relics of St Parascheva, which lie in the northeastern town of Iasi, believing that her remains could heal them. Here is one story of a recent [non scientifically non-verifiable] healing.
Her hope was in the healing of her son. He was seven years old and unable to speak, had frequent seizures and severe bouts of night terrors and agitation. A multitude of specialists were unable to treat the condition, leading her to finally seek consolation at the relics of the saint. She described waiting amongst the throngs of pilgrims for four hours with her child in her arms, who upon arriving to the Cathedral was still and calm for the first time, as if sedated. As they waited in the cold, she prayed: “God, if you love this child and can give me a chance, help me!” She approached the holy relics for veneration, touched her palm to the saint’s garments and rested her head upon her son. The mother related to Fr. Alexandru that they then quickly set out to return to Constanța for the long journey home and the boy fell asleep. But after some time had passed, and before they arrived, her son awoke and spoke for the first time the words “Saint Parascheva, thank you!” His first words were not “mama” or “papa”, but this full sentence expressing gratitude toward the saint. The following day, the boy continued to say “Saint Parascheva, thank you!” and also “I love you, mother!”, speaking more words in 24 hours than he had in the entirety of his life.
I am not asking you to believe that in the above, but try just leaving it in your mind as a unknowable mystery. Perhaps this quote below from an American Theologian will allow you to admit to the possibility that “Reality” includes a way of seeing that not comprehensible without some right brain intuition.
As God’s good creation, the world becomes a free partner in its own becoming while the Creator enables its existence at every moment. To put this succinctly, God creates the world by empowering the world to make itself. – Theologian Elizabeth Johnson [via Franciscan monk Richard Rohr]
Fact: We have lost 73% of wildlife between 1970 and 2020 Fact: We are causing this 6th massive extinction event Fact: We do out of our way to either downplay or ignore this information – we just don’t really care. Fact: Knowledge of facts has little to no impact on changing our behaviour or priorities.
Ecological Suicide
Which leaves us with the state of our left hemisphere created world of today: manic and dying, acting like a cancer that consumes all in its wake and unable to change its behaviour. For over 60 years scientists and poets and writers have been warning us that we are headed down a path of ruin – to no effect. It’s not as if we don’t know what we are doing – any 10 second google search will tell you that life as we know it is heading towards a dead end that does not have a happy ending – at least in the short term. Somehow all this knowledge is incapable of helping 8 billion busy consuming homo sapiens to feel that they can escape this “Progress Trap”. We tinker at the edges – we saved the Ozone layer, we stopped Acid rain from killing our lakes, the Cuyahoga River in Columbus Ohio which was so polluted that it caught fire in 1969 now has fish swimming in it – yes, we have accomplished much. But we are caught in a trap illustrated by this more recent phenomena: for every bit of renewable energy we add our consumption of energy as a whole goes us by a similar amount, so that the amount of fossil fuels we need to match our exponential growth in our economy keeps at a steady percent of our use, while our total use keeps increasing. In other words, we are like a dog chasing its tail – very busy, but going nowhere. Why is that – given that so many good and smart people are working so hard to stop our suicidal behaviours? Well, any answer I give would only prove that am delusional as it would take at least one huge book and several PhDs to answer that. But what I can ask us all to do is consider including what the three topics in the title have in common as a part of how must process our experience of ecological and social collapse….
“Experts studying the limits of deterioration that the Earth’s systems can endure suggest that, in terms of biodiversity loss, we are closer to the tipping point than we are with climate change. My father would have said, “Your arguments are not trivial; they are not wrong. However, I still do not believe it.” [ from miguel-delibes-de-castro-biologist ]
So have you figured out what these three topics have in common? All three illustrate the power of Belief, or lack thereof. Belief is a touchy word and even touchier topic in our so called Age of Reason where faith is mostly looked upon as a left over from a time when Science and mass education did not exist. The problem with this viewpoint is that if we were only rational we would not be experiencing the suicidal destruction of our Ecosystems – thus the question – how can we fit Belief into a useful worldview along with Science and Reason?
The decision to buy is made subconsciously, and these subconscious decisions are based on a deeply empirical mental processing system that follows a logic of its own. Our subconscious/intuitive decision to buy is then communicated to the conscious mind via an emotion. The conscious mind then searches for rational reasons, and that’s how we complete the circle: We justify our emotional signals to buy with logical reasons.
So what are we to do?
From all that I have read and experienced in life our “solution” to our current suicidal, cancer like cultural mores, is that we need to to tell ourselves a different story about what matters and what “Reality” is all about. Rather than a story where humans are separate from Nature and Mystery – we need a story, like that told by all Indigenous peoples – where we are but one thread in the fabric of life. We also need to not see technology and reason as the dominant forces within our society – but rather as handmaidens to aid us in living together in a way that emphasizes the transcendence that makes us part of the bigger story – the story of human beings as characters in the bigger story of life itself. This new story will also have to face head on that our current story is killing us and the sooner it ends the better while admitting that at this stage of the game there is no happy ending – there is only gut wrenching change that will hurt – but will also eventually heal us and our world. This life save surgery is akin, in my mind, to cancer surgery with accompanying therapies that are often horribly painful – but have the potential to be life saving. However, because we are so far along the path of destruction, there are no guarantees that even changing our story – and of course how we live and use resources and farm and how we co-habitate with other species – will save from unimaginable pain and suffering in the near future. Thus, what do we do? Begin a new story where short term pain will allow for the possibility of long term gain. Admit that part of the “mystery” of existance is life is perioidically beaton down, as it was during the Permian Mass Extinction, as was when the first real City State Empire of Akkad collapsed [this was written much later as a precautionary but non-factual tale]:
May your holy walls, to their highest point, resound with mourning! May your giguna be reduced to a pile of dust! May your pilasters with the standing lahama deities fall to the ground like tall young men drunk on wine! May your clay be returned to its abzu, may it be clay cursed by Enki! May your grain be returned to its furrow, may it be grain cursed by Ezinu! May your timber be returned to its forest, may it be timber cursed by Ninilduma! May the cattle slaughterer slaughter his wife, may your sheep butcher butcher his child! May water wash away your pauper as he is looking for…! [ref: curse of agade]
And yet… life goes on. Life on Earth will survive – at least until our Sun dies. All that we can do is our bit to pass the torch of life to future generations by living in a sacrificial story that enriches the future in all we do and think and feel.
p.s. Other books that may help you see the value in this perspective are listed in the References – The Story Telling Animal and The Believing Brain.
References
https://channelmcgilchrist.com/master-and-his-emissary/
https://www.orthodoxethos.com/post/a-miracle-of-st-parascheva-in-ia%C8%99i
https://orthochristian.com/86706.html
The Story Telling Animal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhd0XdedLpY
The Believing Brain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0_-7FmrDq8
lost 75% of wildlife https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSJ_9pR_hIA https://livingplanet.panda.org/en-US/
The Cult of Trump https://amzn.to/4dTBM4q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMlLTtL80pI
https://www.worldhistory.org/article/748/the-curse-of-agade-naram-sins-battle-with-the-gods/
Fact:
“There has been a catastrophic 73% decline in the average size of monitored wildlife populations* in just 50 years (1970-2020), according to World Wildlife Fund‘s (WWF) Living Planet Report 2024. The report warns that parts of our planet are approaching dangerous tipping points driven by the combination of nature loss and climate change which pose grave threats to humanity.”
Fact:
What does our rational brain, that can see a tree but not the forest, do? Nothing.
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