![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Daily Words 3/15/6 - Why the Wiccan Rede Sucks
From an off-topic email on the Dragonfest discussion group.
See... the Wiccan Rede isn't actually a guide for living your life. It says "If you don't hurt anything, do whatever you want." There are two main problems with this rule.
(a) It doesn't give you any suggestions. Eating Cheetoes on the couch watching reruns of Leave it to Beaver is following the Wiccan Rede to the letter.
(b) It doesn't give any guidance on how to behave when harm is involved. There's nothing in the Rede about joining the Army. There's nothing in the Rede that prohibits punching your best friend. The Rede doesn't even address the Trolley Problem. And really, what's the point of an ethic that can't be used on an out-of-control trolley?
Now I'm the sort of eclectic frood who uses philosophy to provide moral and ethical direction and religion to provide experiential and metaphorical direction, so a loosey-goosey religion like Neo-Paganism is just the thing for me. But for people who are looking for direction in their lives, the Wiccan Rede provides little more than a Magic 8 Ball.
See... the Wiccan Rede isn't actually a guide for living your life. It says "If you don't hurt anything, do whatever you want." There are two main problems with this rule.
(a) It doesn't give you any suggestions. Eating Cheetoes on the couch watching reruns of Leave it to Beaver is following the Wiccan Rede to the letter.
(b) It doesn't give any guidance on how to behave when harm is involved. There's nothing in the Rede about joining the Army. There's nothing in the Rede that prohibits punching your best friend. The Rede doesn't even address the Trolley Problem. And really, what's the point of an ethic that can't be used on an out-of-control trolley?
Now I'm the sort of eclectic frood who uses philosophy to provide moral and ethical direction and religion to provide experiential and metaphorical direction, so a loosey-goosey religion like Neo-Paganism is just the thing for me. But for people who are looking for direction in their lives, the Wiccan Rede provides little more than a Magic 8 Ball.
no subject
The original rede hung over the autonomous zone in Rabelais' Gargantua, the Abbey of Thelema. It was not intended as instructions for life but a symbol that some heavy freakishness would transpire behind these walls. Crowley adopted it as a general motto to indicate his attitude (or pose) that all of life should be a disinhibited carnavale.
The "an it harm none" is a squeamish addendum; entirely ineffective against mutated 20th century moralism which forbids whole classes of activity not just on the basis of taboo, but on the presumption that they are harmful in some sense.
I suppose if you really want to produce a defanged, university-committee modern Thelemic motto you should go the whole hog:
"Do what thou wilt, an it harm none, unless they enjoy being harmed and have signed a disclaimer to that effect."