Thursday 28 February 2013

The Good-Bad Faeries are in Brighton



When I was an infant my first experiences were very primitively categorised into “good” and “bad”.  When I was warm, dry, fragrant, comfortable, satiated and soothed life was good. When I was cold, wet smelly, uncomfortable, hungry and abandoned life was bad. The fact that mummy was the source of both of these states hadn’t occurred to me.
As I grew and developed I continued to build on this binary foundation and continued to categorise people and experiences into various shades of good and bad. This formed the basis of my basic ego based morality.
As time went by parents, teachers and priests contributed to my understanding of what was “good” and what was “bad”. My superego developed and helped me to understand that what was “good” for my ego didn’t necessarily make for a “good” experience for everyone.
So far so good! The trouble kicked off when I started to realise that a really important aspect of my nature was viewed by the moralists around me as being not just bad but totally fucking evil!
The only sane response to this creepy development was to critically appraise the moral framework, which had been painstakingly hardwired into my personality and carefully dismantle the faulty bits. Once I’d established that queer sexuality was OK after all I was left with an uncertainty about all this “good-bad” stuff.  Is there any sexually based behaviour that was unethical? Of course there was but how did I confidently discern? Maybe if it doesn’t hurt anyone ...but then how would I know what might hurt? Did moral frameworks evolve as ways of anticipating how best to avoid pain to others?
I imagine that in ancient times a tribe might have turned to its elders and ancestors as a source of ethical wisdom and that an elder would have based moral advice on memories and stories of how past behaviours had impacted on the tribe and its environment.
We live in fractured society. These simple ways have been lost to us and we have lost our trust in church, authority and science to answer our ethical dilemmas.
Faeries have started to find their moral compass in nature and in the company of like-natured beings. We meet-up and find ways to behave ethically towards each other and the worlds we live in. We try to move away from identifying ‘otherness’ in those who make us feel uncomfortable. We locate source energy in ourselves, our neighbours, and our surroundings. We support each other in developing spiritual practices, which will sustain us and help us grow into an understanding of the purpose of our unique queerness.
Anyone out there think they might be a faerie and would like to talk from the heart about the fire of spirit, how to feed and sustain it, how to grow in love for ourselves and each other? Anyone want to develop a loving, caring, intimate community of Faeries in Brighton?
Drop me an email gaysocrates@gmail.com and I’ll put you on the Brighton Faerie email group.
I look forward to meeting up!