In Defense Of City Spirits
by Gordon • • Magic • 14 Comments
My other woman is in fact Europe's only megacity. Ain't she pretty?
Brother Chris is right, of course. Urban animism has been discussed before. To my mind at least, it feels like a really nineties thing to talk about.
His post is nothing of the sort. It’s a thoughtful analysis of urban animism that covers what are probably the two most important notions to consider when discussing what is “natural”.
The first one. Cities are natural. Cities are birds nests made by millions of monkeys. What ‘un’ natural thing could they be built from?
The second. As Brother Chris rightly points out, our romanticising of the natural environment is largely a byproduct of pastoral fantasies. Wicca emerged along with “naturism” (the fantasy clue is in the word), the belief that countryfolk were “custodians of antiquitous wisdom” and an obsession with folklore as part of an urban misapprehension of the rural idyll.
Saying countryfolk are custodians of ancient tribal wisdom is kinda like saying Asians are good at maths or Native Americans are clairvoyant. It’s… icky.
And also it’s a new idea anyway. In fact, for most of history, country people were considered terrifying, rapey, inbreds. Which is a bit rich considering that, for most of history, everyone was a country person.
But the land itself was seen as being far from beautiful or health-giving. Prior to the 17th century landscape movement, upstanding ladies would draw the curtain of their carriage when travelling between towns so as not to be affronted by the savagery of nature. Winding it back to the even-more-romanticised Bronze Age, there was no such thing as the natural environment versus the built environment. It was just “that place where we live”. The time in between has been a bunch of things. Like any other moral or philosophical position, sometimes you’re hot, sometimes you’re not.
All of this has been covered before.
It’s worth thinking about again, however, because we as a species recently passed a significant demographic milestone.
More of us now live in cities than don’t. In a very literal sense, the city is now our natural environment.
Good or bad, squaring with the idea of humans as a primarily urban species needs to happen.
Here are a few things to consider when forming an opinion on city spirits.
- Technological innovation is solely dependent on population density (according to Jared Diamond). So ironically, the solution to the world’s ills are most likely to come from their principal causative agent.
- Living in a city is greener than not. City lives use less carbon because they benefit from proximity and scale. Recycling and waste reduction are easier as physical sharing is easier.
- Cities promote tolerance better than less dense areas.
- The next thing that lays waste to mankind -assuming it’s terrestrial in origin- will come from a city.
The BBC recently aired a fantastic documentary series called Megacities which I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone who hasn’t already seen it. (You all know what I mean by ‘wholeheartedly’ by now.)
And here’s another segment from my beloved London. There’s something vaguely Babel about The Shard. Can’t wait for it to be finished.
Who doesn’t love those stinking, writhing, dangerous, fickle, generous, inspirational, loud, complex city spirits? Which isn’t to say we shouldn’t have big love for the nature spirits. We should.
It’s just that putting them on a pedestal isn’t natural. (Couldn’t resist.)
touché. urban’ism has plenty of it’s own kind of stories that we just have to open up to – it all sounds very chaote but hear it out. I may sound biased because I’m a city boy but I love the country as well and has had plenty of magickal experiences on each side.
whenever i think of urban magick though, i always visualize steampunk – go figure…..
Mr. Black´s last [type] ..we’re going back, to the future…..
Steampunk has a Victorian aesthetic. Most cities became what they are today during the fin de siecle period. I’d speculate that the majority of cities have a Victorian psychological/astral blueprint.
Big love for the country, as well. I’m from a country family.
Thanks for this post. I find myself agreeing with most of what you say here — especially the parts about cities being as natural as birds’ nests or bee hives, clearly we build in concrete the way wasps build in paper.
But then you get to four points to consider “when forming an opinion on city spirits.” Suddenly I am in utter disagreement, not even sure why I feel so strongly.
One thing, of course, is that the ‘city spirits’ probably do not exist solely as a result of humans. Just as every group creates its own egregore whether the members know it or not, every city has likely developed its own Spirits who may or may not care much about the humans (either way) who live there, or even the ones who built it.
But I’m also feeling strong disagreement with each of these four points:
** “Technological innovation is solely dependent on population density (according to Jared Diamond).”
Well, No. Certainly “high-tech” stuff — the electronics that depend for their existence on mechanized mining, large-scale clean-room factories, etc — depends on population density at least at some points in the process.
But most innovation, historically, has come from the desperate need of an individual or a small group, trying to solve a problem without adequate tools or help. From the invention of clothing (in one place: furs, then furs belted with a strand of vine, then furs belted several ways, then woven strands of vines, then bone needles to sew the furs together; in another place: leaves, then leaves twisted together by their stems, then thorn needles) to the discovery of new edible plants, innovation arises from crisis. And most often from crises to which no help is coming. The opposite of population density.
** “Living in a city is greener than not.”
Depends on how you are living.
“City lives use less carbon because they benefit from proximity and scale. Recycling and waste reduction are easier as physical sharing is easier.”
Both of these are true, assuming a city-type lifestyle. If you’re driving a car 50 miles to shop at Wal-Mart you will certainly use more carbon and do less recycling than you would if you’re walking down the block to shop at a neighborhood retailer.
But actual “country lives” use less carbon than cities because country people aren’t trying to do city-style things. (Compare and contrast ‘Back to the Land’ movements with ‘Telecommuting from someplace beautiful that I’ve just moved to.’)
Actual country people, as recently as mid-20th-Century in America (and presently in many other places) engage in much less carbon-intensive activity.
If transportation and plowing are by horse and you grow your own horse feed (oats, barley, hay) … if clothing comes from flax, which you grow, or wool, which you spin after your sheep grow it … if food comes from the land … then the need for carbon is much lower. And country people perfected recycling before we applied that term to the task of collecting single-use containers and transporting them somewhere to be ground up and re-formed into the same thing again.
** “Cities promote tolerance better than less dense areas.”
To some degree, yes, but this is not strictly true. Overcrowding promotes intolerance in a different way, just as isolation promotes intolerance through lack of knowledge of other ways — what used to be called Provincialism.
** “The next thing that lays waste to mankind -assuming it’s terrestrial in origin- will come from a city.”
Maybe. But that’s the closest I can come to agreeing with this last point. Assuming it’s human-made in origin, probably it will come from a city. Assuming it’s bacterial or viral or fungal, it may arise from the overcrowding that occurs in cities. Or it could as easily arise from city people foolishly interfering in jungle environments, or other places they know nothing about. Or from some change in environmental circumstance in the country, gradually being brought into the city from outside.
So, by all means defend City Spirits. But don’t assume cities have all the answers.
Cheers for the input, Maggie! All valid points, certainly. And I’d never suggest cities have all the answers.
I’d push back on the population density thing, however, as even in tribal areas and early history this is the case.
Of course, to get to a density that requires innovation you need an amenable environment. Which brings us back to Yali’s Question:
http://eschipul.com/2009/04/yalis-question-why-we-had-so-little-cargo-of-our-own/
Good environment -> population growth -> the need for technological innovation or redistribution of population. If redistribution isn’t possible for tribal or geographic reason, a technological fix such as agriculture is required.
I second Mr. Black.
Just wish I could have seen your clips, good ole London doesn’t like Canadians watching their goodies online. Serious pouting over here.
@Zanthera *cough* thewholeseriesisavailableinpiratedformonyoutube *cough* googleBBCmegacities *cough*
googled. really like the city pic.
Interesting answer. I like Yali’s question, and will have to read Guns, Germs and Steel (it’s already on my TBR pile, but …).
Not sure that ‘good’ environment leads inevitably to population growth. Certainly ‘improving’ environment can have that result.
For example, 19th-century farming families in America tended to have high numbers of babies in each generation, partly because they needed farm workers, childhood death rates were high, and contraception was cumbersome and ineffective if it was available at all.
With the 20th-C developments of vaccinations and antibiotics, the death rate dropped precipitously, but the birth rate remained stable. This leads directly to population growth.
Today, though, in most of the USA there is far less cultural pressure to have large families and, in most places, plenty of economic pressure not to. Effective contraception is available. In this situation, improving environment could have many results without increasing population.
The technological fix that was the invention of agriculture may well have resulted from the arising of cities, but surely these were not the kind or density or size of what we call cities today.
The technological disaster that is the invention of factory farming may have been a byproduct of cities, but it seems to me more to have been an effect of the demand for profit, the desire for greater control, and the hallucination that people are not animals. Perhaps that means that cities can be blamed for our most grievous excesses, but that sounds too simple.
Moving out of the city into the ‘near’ by country, (possibly) soon. Really due to safety – the neighborhood was flash-mobbed by teens who had a few guns with them. The police moved them along about 100 cars full of them. I could not ignore it any longer.
I would love to live in a city where people play as they like in certain locations – and I could walk, shop, and live in others. I love steampunk and work with it – we need more steampunk in cities – I think it makes them livable. So I will pack up my tools and house-hold goods and head out – with a daily drive to unwind within. For better or worse.
Love the picture too!
Me´s last [type] ..Preception & re-location of Refuge
You should read “City Come A’ Walkin’” by John Shirley. It features a unique twist on a “City Spirit”.
@Sunfell I’ll put it on the list!
A great post- I’ve always found cities to be more… active. Being a city boy born and bred
I’ve always found more comfortable than natural phenomena because they’re so naturally human. They’re best habitat we can make for ourselves, right? How is anything else going to compare? Don’t get me wrong, the country is beautiful and all, but cities are like humanity distilled or something.
Or I’m just reacting to all the Blake I’ve had to read recently
Love the post.
gee, I prompted a blog post by someone else. I feel so special.
Ah-freakin’-men.
You elucidate arguments I’ve been making for years. I’ve often been disgusted with the “Urban pagan” books that begin with, “Poor you, since you can’t live out in nature…”
Especially since at least in the US what we think of as “nature” isn’t natural at all – it’s RURAL. Rural may depend on nature, but rural is NOT natural at all, especially with the farming tactics still used these days.
Besides, as a Pagan that honors evolution, living in a city is nature at work for me – it gave me the sense to get in out of the rain!