Needs

Of Wolves and Ravens – Voting or Playing the Lotto

/ Ed Raby Sr / 1 Comment

 

Happy Tyr’s Day

Introduction:

I am on campus a lot as a student and have been over this last three and a half years and at every election time the message by the school is clear, get out there and vote.  “It’s your civic responsibility”. “You can make a difference.”  The problem with being an Economics Minor is when you start doing an analysis of voting using economic law and principles, you discover to your horror as a Political Science Major that your individual vote matters little.

It was humorous this last week as the Power Ball Lotto reached 1.6 Billion and I saw people lining up around the country for their almost statistical zero chance of winning it. Many of same people will adamantly tell me I am wasting my vote by voting for Libertarian candidates because they won’t win.  The irony is a little thick there because voting is very much like playing the lotto.  You are doing an action that might have the very small statistical chance of actually affecting the outcome of an election.

On to the Wolves and Ravens:  

Needs (Geri):

I am doing a little bit of switch here because as I already indicated I am a libertarian and so the first thing I am going to talk about is whether government is legitimate.  I think it in most cases is not even necessary.  Like I said on Sunday in the Pagan Pulpit on Havamal 47 – people in general are decent people. There are always bad apples and some people want protection against those apples, so humans start out with the idea of government as a means to do that.  If I take a Classical Liberal position you have government needed for a way of settling deputes and to provide protection of human rights, this would involve a need for courts, internal security (fire and police) and defense.  Other than that most other things could be handles by voluntary associations and the free market.

Image may contain: 1 person, smiling, standing and text

Wants (Freki):

So if we need this minimal government and we want it, how do we get it?  Democracy is the notion that the majority rules by voting and that the majority gets the action that they voted for.  There are several problems with this.  1) I don’t want this decision to affect myself or others negatively but when the majority rules the effect is felt on those that want the action and those that don’t.  2) I am forcing the other side to my will if my side wins.  If I am a decent human being, forcing another to do something they don’t want to do or affects them negatively, should be distasteful to me. I don’t want that. I don’t want to be part of something that is about the tyranny of the majority. What we have in voting and democracy most of the time is mob rule, and the person who can rally the biggest mob around them wins.

Image may contain: 2 people, text

Reason (Huginn):

OK. Time to look at voting rationally.  Two things: 1) The power of the individual vote is insignificant and 2) There are only a few times where your vote can actually matter.

The first is the simply point that the value of a single vote in any election is 1 over N.  N being the number of votes actually cast in that particular election. This means the larger and election, the more statistically insignificant your vote is.  You actually probably have more of a chance of affecting the outcome of smaller local elections than anything else.  The most power if have had personally in this regard is when I sat on two school boards and had a one seventh of a chance of actually casting a deciding vote.

The other part is knowing that the only time you actually to cast a significant vote is when you either break or cause a tie.  Otherwise you are just part of the mob.  In truth what you are doing is playing the political lotto hoping that you are part of the mob that wins. Also, if you are part of the mob that loses then your vote was wasted and if the election is won, every winning vote beyond what was need to win is a wasted vote. There are a lot of insignificant and wasted votes every election and the most of them are actually cast for the two major parties.

This is why people don’t get informed because I think they instinctively know this.  There is little point in spending a lot of time on something that you know won’t have much effect; if any, on the outcome.  So people vote their feelings or party line because it doesn’t require much thought.

No automatic alt text available.

Wisdom (Muninn):

So what, then?  Where does wisdom fit in?  I can only say that it might have little to do with voting or government in general.  If we were wise we would give government little power and maintain that individuals have strong rights the government can’t take away by voting.  Oh, yeah that’s what the founders gave us but we keep going down the path to less individual rights and more government.  A course that is not wise, but the desire for security over freedom keeps leading us to despise “The Blessings of Liberty”. . Perhaps people should reconsider that maybe our founders here in the United States were in a sense political geniuses and we should respect their intelligence of individual rights over government power.

Conclusion:

Yeah, I vote.  But don’t tell me my vote matters or its my civic duty.  For me it is more like other people playing the lotto.  It’s that slim chance I might make a difference, that I might be in the winning mob.  I do it for the thrill of marking my choices and hoping like the power ball player gets his number and dreams. I do it for the thrill of knowing that there is a statistically better chance that I will be involved in a fatal car crash on my way to the polls, than my vote will make a difference – it’s kind of like sky diving for a political scientist.

The Rabyd Skald – Wandering Soul, Bard and Philosopher. The Grey Wayfarer.

Skaal!!!

A Skald’s Life – Self Virtues – Budget Plan

/ Ed Raby Sr / Leave a comment

Happy Frigg and Freya’s Day

Budgeting is not something new to me.  I have handled things before like this, mostly though I find budgeting tedious and boring, so I find ways to do it that are quicker.  Thankfully computer software these days makes things go much better.  Mostly though the plan for budget is pretty simply from my perspective.

When I was a Christian, I followed Dave Ramsey a lot.  The fact is his basic plan makes a lot of sense simply because it follows tried and true things. I don’t see that I have to change my respect for its wisdom.  We are in debt again and we do need to make more money to combat that but we also need a plan to get back to financial health again. Our plan follows the Dave Ramsey pattern.

  1. Basic Emergency Fund – $1000
  2. Debt Snowball
  3. Fully funded Emergency fund
  4. Invest 15% of income into retirement
  5. Pay off Home Early
  6. Build Wealth and Give

There is a missing step as I have children but they are all grown up and I pretty much told them what my family told me – ‘you want college education, pay for it yourself.’  Step 5 for us wold be more of buy a small home and pay it off quickly because right now we rent an apartment and probably will continue to rent until we get to a point of being debt free.

After twenty years of being in the ministry I have little to show for it.  I don’t own a home.  I have a lot of debt and some things have had to be cut.  Probably the most devastating right now is health insurance.  We can’t afford it with the payments we have to make on other things and that means both my diabetes and my wife issues will have to be handled out of pocket and nope – we don’t have the money for that either.  Hopefully nothing major happens.

If we have any further need its to start making more money and that is why I accelerated school to be pretty much done except the internship, so I can start marketing my degree for a better job. I would stay where I am but they would need to make me more than a grunt worker at this point and they would also have to make me full-time instead of 32 hours a week. At this point in my life it is about retirement and that means I am about 20 years behind people my same age because of being a pastor all that time in my first career. Yep, it’s a tall order but I don’t just want to survive but thrive.

As an aside if you are thinking of ministry as a career, I recommend going to a secular school for your bachelor’s and get it in something you can make money doing.  Do that for twenty years and get your financial life in order and then go get you Masters in Divinity and be a pastor. Trust me on this, you will thank me for it.

Right now we could be classified as working poor.  Not poor enough to qualify for government handouts, but not rich enough to get ahead.  That needs to change soon and for me that means a better job with more money so we can breathe again.

Discipline:

“Discipline is the willingness to be hard on oneself first and then if needed help with the development with others, so that greater purposes may be achieved.”

Principle: Apply discipline to every aspect of life that it can be applied.

Achieving greater purposes is a line in the virtue I have been thinking about a lot lately.  When I look at things in my financial future I think others are going to play a role.  What I want is my own business to take into retirement.  I want it to be my retirement.  Not having something to do, I think is the death of a lot of people.  The one’s who live the longest understand discipline and sticking with something.

At this point I have all the plans in place, bucket list, goals and routines.  Now its time to take all these pieces and step back and reform the bigger picture.  I think though I will do a separate post on this under The Rabyd Skald platform probably this afternoon.

Perseverance:

“Perseverance is the ability to stand up and return from defeat and failure”

Principle: Keep getting up after every defeat or failure.

Not much to say here other than I keep going and I keep getting up. Right now school needs to have more attention and so I am making my plans to put more effort in and finish.  I may limp over the line but I will finish.

Fidelity: 

“Fidelity is the will to be loyal to one’s Gods and Goddesses, to one’s Folk, to one’s self, and loyalty to one’s friends was as valued as highly as loyalty to one’s family.”

Principle: Be loyal to those who have been loyal to me.

I am a deist, humanist and somewhat of a pagan and so I am loyal to those philosophies. I am truly working on being loyal to myself, my wife and my family.  The Self and marriage is a tougher one to keep in balance because to have a marriage often involves sacrificing what you want at times.  I just don’t want to give up too much loyalty to myself.  I still want what I want and for my sake, I can’t give it all up.  At the same time I want this marriage to work and be better than ever.  I am loyal to my friends, they need only ask and I will do what I can.

The Rabyd Skald – Wandering Soul, Bard and Philosopher. The Grey Wayfarer.

Skaal!!!

Of Wolves and Ravens – ‘Nudism’

/ Ed Raby Sr / Leave a comment

Happy Tyr’s Day

As a Christian theologian I wrote on the subject of human nudity a lot.  You can still read most of it at All Things Rabyd under the page titled God and Nudity.  Through all that, I developed some interesting friends in the nudist community.  I discovered that the term ‘Christian nudist’ is not actually an oxymoron.  I see recently the Sky Clad Therapist among my recent followers.  He is someone I have had a long association with on WordPress through the years on this subject.

Back in the Christian days, I spent a lot of time a Biblical scholar and theologian trying to come to grips with nudity from a Christian perspective. I went through the entire Bible and came to some controversial conclusions.  Some of the more thought provoking ones were that God’s view of nudity is that it was good, that the Bible makes no distinction about women’s breasts as being sinful and that if we were to follow the gospel’s implications to their logical conclusions, then we should return to our original state if all sin has been removed by Christ – ‘naked and unashamed’.

Practically of course, one cannot act on such conclusions either as a Christian in Western society or particularly as a minister.  Now that I am neither, I face some thoughts on this matter because the only thing really now is the social mores of our culture and the decency laws.  I say this because personally I have been just as comfortable in my skin as I am in my clothes and have been that way most of my life. The question now is does my departure from Christianity change my perspective on nudism?  On to the Wolves and Ravens.

Geri (Need): Do we have a need to be naked?  I think we do.  Practically I know for a biological fact our skin functions in its job better when exposed to the open air.  From vitamin D production to simply not developing the fungus on our bodies that comes from sweat and oil being trapped next to our skin by our clothing, I would say there is good evidence being naked for some frames of time leads to better health.  Psychologically, I have to say there is something relaxing about it.  I know what others have told me social nudity has allowed them to have a better positive body image, better understanding of the equality of human beings and other benefits. So perhaps our minds, hearts and bodies do have a need for it.

Freki (Want):  Do people want to be naked? Honestly there are surely those that do.  The question is what of the rest of people who have social mores about it and don’t ‘want to see that.’  The point is though there are some of us who like to be sky-clad from time to time and I don’t think this can be labeled as inherently bad depending on the motivation.  From and intimacy standpoint, nudity with lovers is desired and I can’t say that is inherently bad either.  The issue is motivation and what the nudity is being used for.  But even the uses of nude photography and art have their want aspects that requires looking at motivation. To want to be naked in and of itself – no problem.  If there is a purpose attached then the moral question shifts to whether the want is beneficial or detrimental to self or society.

Huginn (Reason): If I apply straight reason to nudism and nakedness, I really can’t say there is any reasonable detriment to either self or society.  You can’t make a positive statement that a person’s nudity causes harm in and of itself. If a woman strips her clothes off in a crowded room, no one can claim that action or her nudity harms anything other than their sensibilities.  The only reason to be applied to such action is that because some do not have such a view, it might bring harm to her because some would be offended at take action against her – physical or societal.  Reason should tell the nudist, to be wary of the laws of the land and what society thinks to avoid consequences. But no reasonable inquiry can find that nudity in and of itself harms anyone.

Muninn (Wisdom): Wisdom says that there are certain societal issues that, while it is not reasonable to have moral objections to them, people do not act on reason. Probably some of the most noteworthy of such issues are marriage and sex.  Certainly in this category is nudism.  Nudity generates a varied response.  Those that want to fulfill their need and desire to be nudists need to exercise a lot of caution and wisdom.  Privacy and finding private places is a good start with this. If there is a need for social nudity, finding places dedicated to such activity is probably a better bet than fighting laws.

I am not saying to not educate and try to find a way to more rational laws.  I think for instance the topfree movement is a good movement.  What I am saying is you better ask yourself if your activism is worth the money in fines or time in jail. There is also the question of family to consider.  As much as individual practice is at the forefront, your spouse may not be of the same mind or the rest of your family.  Nudists simply have to accept the fact that not everyone can separate nudity from sexuality.

Conclusion:  Personally, I am not an open practitioner of nudism. It is part of my life but I do so privately, when no one else is around. It is part of my morning routine from the time I get up; through meditation, stretching, breakfast and my shower. I sleep naked and have for decades.  I don’t really have any rational objection to it anymore, nor do I appeal to any authority other than reason and wisdom.  I keep my practice private and to myself. I find it liberating, comforting and spiritually uplifting as a spiritual discipline.

I think that is probably the way most nudism is practiced in western society.  People being comfortable in the privacy of their own homes.  To be honest, we should respect that and it’s none of our concern most of the time.  For the nudist, I would say that it’s OK to be one, but listen to the ravens.  Use your reason and wisdom as you exercise your needs and wants.

The Rabyd Skald – Wandering Soul, Bard and Philosopher. The Grey Wayfarer.

Skaal!!!

“Of Wolves and Ravens” – How This Works

/ Ed Raby Sr / Leave a comment

 

Happy Tyr’s Day

In my introduction last week I probably rushed it a little in one factor of how this “Of Wolves and Ravens” actually works as far as a philosophy.  My main thing will be to take an issue (either political, economic, social or even personal) and working it through the philosophy summed up in the statement – “It’s OK to Feed the Wolves, but Listen to the Ravens First”.

My point is doing this is to basically create an exercise to engaging this new philosophy for myself.  Hopefully in working through this philosophy, I can provide some insight that you the reader might find beneficial as well.  Today I want to basically expand this philosophy a little with some examples so you the reader can understand what I am talking about in general.  Next week I will pick our first issue.  Each issue will be boiled down to the what we need and want but then engaging some reason and wisdom what is the best course of action.  I am going to use the general topic of Sex as an example.

Needs (Geri): When looking at the need side of things we have to ask ourselves what is needed here?  In the case of Sex, people as a race need to continue.  The real need of sex is procreation.  It might be argued that the entertainment value of sex is also a need but the issue of a need from a human point of view is about survival. Sex allows the human race to survive and go on.  Sex needs to take place for this to happen. If we look at organisms and their needs water, food and procreation top the list for all living things and for humans one of these is procreation and sex is what we do to make that happen. No one, but the most extreme view would argue that the wolf of need for procreation needs to be fed.

Wants (Freki): We humans though like sex and want it.  While some people want it for the procreative action as people do want to have children, the main thing about want and sex is that we enjoy the pleasure of it.  Sex in and of itself is not evil or bad, so us wanting it is not wanting something bad either.  The pleasure of sex is something good, we could conclude as it makes people feel better about life. It is OK to feed Freki when it comes to sex as it fills a desire and there is nothing inherently wrong with fulfilling a desire. It’s OK to feed the Wolves.  It’s OK to have sex because it is enjoyable and it leads to the continuation of the human race.

Reason (Huginn): The real problem though is we must first listen to the Ravens before we make that choice. The one thing we need to think about is what are the consequences of sexual activity?  Well this probably where I would note that ‘Sex’ as a topic might be a little broad but let’s continue.  Mostly the issue here is unwanted pregnancy but that goes back to wants and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).  The question of unwanted pregnancies is a large issue and involves other issues such as abortion, religion and economics but this can be curbed quite a bit in the modern world if people use effective birth control.  STDs are largely controlled by certain birth control methods but let’s be fair here – there is one benefit of sexual fidelity either abstinence or faithfulness to a single partner – the risk of STDs is near null.  Reason says that effective birth control coupled by basic fidelity and caution might kick the two major concerns about sex out of the picture. at least for the most part.

Wisdom (Muninn): On a wisdom side of things, we deal with relationships.  In western society it is a rare man or woman who doesn’t have a problem with jealousy.  Rape is also an issue here because the issue of mutual consent is a Wisdom issue. Sex is not something you take from others, nor can we avoid the fact that human nature causes both men and women to eventually look for an exclusive sexual relationship.  Not all cultures are this way, so each one would have to be considered but in our society if you go sleeping around the other person is probably going to get upset and a breakup is probably in your future.  Some people can be open about this in their relationships, but they seem to be the exception rather than the rule.  There are a lot of issues I could continue to talk about here and I can definitely say that the subject of sex is too broad a topic to handle in one post, but I hope you get the idea.

Conclusion:

At this point I might wrap things up with a conclusion.  Mostly when it comes to the subject of sex, my advice would be to be safe, respectful and communicate so boundaries are understood. There is a lot more here but for example purposes, I hope it helps you understand what “Of Wolves and Ravens” is going to be about.

The Rabyd Skald – Wandering Soul, Bard and Philosopher. The Grey Wayfarer.

Skaal!!!

A Skald’s Life – Business Virtues – Current Known Goals

/ Ed Raby Sr / Leave a comment

Happy Woden’s Day (Woden is another name for Odin)

So, with my decision to let meditation on the Nine Noble Virtues (NNV) be a true guiding force to my goals and letting go of my notion of roles, what goals do I currently have?

  1. Strengthen Marriage – Given recent events my wife and I are spending time and even a little money to work on our marriage.
  2. Finish my Political Science Degree – I have one semester left and an Internship.  By the end of December I should have graduated with only my internship left.  My degree will be a BS in Political Science with minors in Economics and International Business.
  3. Advance Career – Once I have the degree I need to start a new career.  I am keeping my options open at this point.  It may even involve continuing education.
  4. Monitor and Control Finances – My wife and I being on our own means we now do this together.
  5. Write for my Blog  – 1 post per day average.
  6. Exercise – Weightlifting four times a week plus morning stretching every day.
  7. Follow a Solid Diet Plan – Paleo with intermittent fasting needs to be more and more a part of my life.
  8. Create and work a Bucket List.

My first step to achieving all that is to put things into morning, daily and weekly routines. So what I need is a list of things for the Morning routine, the Daily routine and the Weekly routine.  I need then to start going through these routines.

Part of this is going to be setting up plans too:  Having a budget me and my wife work out together, my weightlifting plan and my diet plan.  In addition, I need that bucket list.

Once school is over, I will be making some decision about continuing my education.  I also want to get back to walking after school.  Right now I am using the rather long walk from where I park to class four days a week for that.  After school is over, I will need a new plan.

Self-Reliance:

“Self Reliance is the spirit of independence, which is achieved not only for the individual, but also for the family, clan, tribe and nation.”

Principle: Work to be self-reliant in all things.

My wife and I have actually achieved some measure of self-reliance at this point.  Food, clothing and shelter plus insurance and two vehicles. It basically allows the both of us to function in this society and we really don’t need any help.  We still get a little, but I am slowly trying to wean us both off of it.

There may be other things as time goes by that require provision.  Our goal is that we first look to ourselves to provide them or perhaps if we can’t, we don’t need them.  There is still a minimalist in me that is rather strong.

Industriousness:

“Industriousness is the willingness to work hard, always striving for efficiency, as a joyous activity in itself”

Principle: Work with enjoyment of work itself.

What we are doing now as a couple is trying to be more efficient. That is getting more bang for the buck.  Basically we are budgeting and looking at how to make more money wherever we can.  It really is now about finding work we enjoy and is more lucrative.

In any case even though I am not working where I would ultimately like to be, I still am trying to enjoy work for its own sake. It makes what I am doing go smoother and without that dread most people have when they go to a job.

Hospitality:

“Hospitality is the willingness to share what one has with one’s fellows, especially when they are far from home.”

Principle: Be ready to be hospitable to those who truly need it.

I actually thought about picking up a hitch hiker the other day.  My heart goes out to wanderers in this world, so it was a draw to me.  But from a hospitality point of view, we can offer much more than a couple of months ago.

I want to still design my living room in this small apartment to handle a small group.  I am introverted but I don’t mind the occasional social gathering I can control.  It might be more cost-effective to serve something basic and tell everyone to bring their own booze.  We will see.

I remain –

The Rabyd Skald – Wandering Soul, Bard and Philosopher. The Grey Wayfarer.

Skaal!!!

“Of Wolves and Ravens” – Introduction

/ Ed Raby Sr / Leave a comment

Happy Tyr’s Day

After my departure from Christianity, I began to study mythology.  Not so oddly, I landed on the Norse/Germanic Myths being my heritage in large part is from northern Europe.  From a faith stand point I don’t believe Odin is a true representation of the god that may actually exist anymore than I think the god of the Bible is a true representation of the god that actually exists.  I just like the imagery of the Norse myths.  They’re cool.

In this study of Norse mythology I came across the Wolves and Ravens of Odin.  The Wolves are named Geri and Freki and the Ravens are Huginn and Muninn.  Hunger, Fury, Thought and Memory respectfully.   Or one could put it Need, Want, Mind and Wisdom.  There is actually a pretty heavy debate on the meaning of these names but I liked the idea of them representing different philosophical ideas.  Out of this I began to think more about what my philosophy of life should be and an expression came to mind.  Mind you I don’t remember reading this anywhere, but I wrote it one day and it stuck in my head. “It’s OK to feed the Wolves but listen to the Ravens first.”

For me, the wolves have come to symbolize the driving motivations of life.  We need to have certain things – food. clothing and shelter as a base level of existence.  But we also want certain things.  These forces are largely matters of desire and they cause us to be motivated. The real problem is that if you feed the wolves without thought or wisdom to how you are feeding them and why, you can end up in a worse state than you were before.  We need to be motivated by what we need and want, but we need to pursue those things thoughtfully and wisely.

That where the Ravens come in.  Thought and Memory.  Reason/Knowledge on one hand and Experience/Wisdom. on the other. The imagery is the ravens perched on each shoulder telling us what we need to know and what wise course of action could be taken. Using this we guide our wolves productively.

“Of Wolves and Ravens” is about engaging this philosophy on various issues. I am thinking I will present a political issue, societal issue and a personal issue each week and examine them in the eyes of what we need, want, think and understand about them and hopefully draw some conclusions that will be both practical and sound in their philosophy.

Until next week, I remain,

The Rabyd Skald – Wandering Soul, Bard and Philosopher. The Grey Wayfarer.

Skaal!!!