Pointless Philosophizing: Life-Paths, Polyamory, Spirituality

[kiya]

For some fairly complicated reasons, a monogamy/polyamory flamewar has been raging in alt.religion.wicca.moderated for about the past month. It's been provoked by someone who . . . well, says the intent was to speak about her own life-paths, but who has also basically held that anyone who is monogamous without trying polyamory is Ye Brainwashed Drone, because how does anyone really know what's right for them unless they try all the options? Challenge Your Beliefs! Polyamory Is The Spiritual Path To Enlightenment! Yadda! Yadda Yadda! But I'm only talking about myself, why are all of you so offended?

Someone else came in and made a, "Well, she's right, you don't know fuck-all" reply to someone; someone else replied, rather more calmly than I did (like that's a shocker) saying that it's fair to say that people don't know anything about courses they haven't tried, but they're damn well experts on what they want to bother with. To which the reply was made, "Well, on what basis are such judgements made, then?"

I replied:

Don't know about you, but I base it on the fact that my spirit screams in agony when I'm on the wrong path.

Which means that I come at the idea of "challenging preferences" from a fundamentally different paradigm, one in which my response to the idea of challenge-your-path is a baffled, "You mean, you don't *know* when you're screwing it up? Or . . . you want to go do things that are obviously painful just to prove that they hurt?"

Some people are issued broad, open lands from which they must reach their destination. I got started on one of those narrow cliff roads where if I go too far to one side, I faceplant into a mountain, and if I go too far to the other, I go off the edge. In my spiritual situation, trying new stuff just to see if it works is both stupid and painful; what works is _obvious_, because it's the only place where there's solid ground that I can walk upon.

Maybe there's a plains somewhere at the end of this cliff-walk. Then again, maybe not. I won't know until I get there.

I taglined with "still primordial after all these years", and I wonder how many people will catch the reference (Mage: the Ascension, one of the World of Darkness Character: The Pretentious Noun games). Short explanation: A mage has a soul of one of four types; primordial, pattern, questing, or dynamic. This has elemental symbolism and stuff, but in short and by my interpretation, primordials run on instinct, patterns make things orderly and choose courses that make sense, questing go looking for good ideas to club and drag back to the cave, and dynamics are never satisfied with the status quo.

I suspect the person I'm arguing with of having the questing nature. "How can you know you don't like it if you don't try it; trying it is the path to spiritual growth." A pushy questing type at that, and claiming a better path to enlightenment through this route. (Which kicks off my inner prejudiced bastard, who, influenced by my primordial approach, is having a hard time not responding to this person with, "You can't be all that enlightened if you have to go through all that thrashing about to make any headway, can you?")

I find myself in a weird sort of place on the whole intersection between polyamory and spirituality and, well, stuff. The way my life settles out as poly is incredibly tightly intertwined with my spirituality, but, then again, most of my life is like that; the springs of impulse are pretty close to the surface here. I used to get frustrated by this, because it wasn't How I Wanted To Be Poly, but eventually I gave up beating my head against that brick wall and let my instincts do their thing. Cut down on my personal drama bigtime. (Yet another example of faceplant-into-the-mountain, that.) But that isn't a purpose-thing, it's just an example of what I do as a special case of things I do.

I find myself probably more weirded out by 'convert to polyamory for spiritual and magical growth' than any other form of purpose-oriented polyamory. Even if commenting on (and mucking about with) someone's relationship structures isn't an unwarranted intimacy (I generally find it such; I know people who don't), I can't stretch my head enough to make it possible for spiritual direction to be that readily channeled, rather than idiosyncratic. It's like using topiary techniques on kelp in an attempt to make a bonsai tulip; talk about unrealistic goals. Or possibly a horse-cart issue; using polyamory to construct a spirituality favorable to polyamory in a place where there was not one before just hits me weird, as I don't have the notion that a spirituality favorable to polyamory is necessarily a useful goal. Nor, indeed, do I agree with the premise that polyamory and spirituality are intrinsically linked in any way at all.

Nrgh.

(Next up in pointless philosophizing: The distinction between Apollonian and Dionysian attitudes as rendered in Star Wars: Where The Jedi Fucked Up.)