Ostrakon

My partner and I run a lovely event here in Orlando called Pagans in the Park, which serves two main functions. First, it’s a place where the local pagan community can gather in a drama free zone to learn and have ritual communally to help heal some of the rifts that have developed from local infighting. Secondly, it serves as a place where local pagans who are new to the area, people interested in paganism or the general public can come a learn who and what we are. We don’t discriminate, but we do ask everyone to play nicely. And the beauty of it is that nobody is favored over another- we chose that neutral stance to help avoid the kind of stresses that promote ingroups and outgroups.

So far it works nicely.

I’m thinking about this on the night after I witnessed secondhand a blowup in the Irish polytheist community. Again, playing out in front of the Gods and everybody through the lens of social media. It seems one fellow got his knickers in a twist over a poem that he alleged is a death magic curse from a former female member of his religious group, whom he was trolling.

What is really interesting is how the fellow in question went around all the Irish pagan groups the former member was on, passing around this poem, and convincing administrators to remove her from something like 10 groups without ever actually reaching out to her and talk about it.

What is especially troubling is that so many admins accepted the fellow’s interpretation of the poem and themselves never reached out to the woman in question.

They simply ostracized her.

Since I have a love of history and philosophy, this immediately calls to mind an example from ancient Greece, and an object lesson on why democracy is a really bad thing.
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So Athens, the glorious seat of democratic government, wasn’t really that awesome. Every so often, an assembly was called and by law, every adult male had to attend the assembly to vote on laws for the city. In fact, once called, men with horsetail whips dipped in red paint were sent around the city flicking paint everywhere, and if a man was found with red paint on him afterwards, he’d be fined heavily for failing to show up for the assembly.

The interesting thing was what happened at the end of the assembly. A vote was called and cast called the ostrakon. The word in Greek means “pottery shard”, and this is how it worked:

A pile of pottery shards was kept on a table along with an intact pot. Each person was called up to the table and could write the name of a single person on that shard and anonymously drop it in the pot. Once complete, the vote was tallied and if any single person got 50% or more of the votes cast, he was sent into exile for 10 years and his house and assets were seized and distributed among the community. If the ostracized person returned from exile early, they were executed.

In fact, this is where we get the word ostracize.

The stated purpose of the ostrakon was to prevent any single person from becoming too powerful. A potential tyrant could be dealt with by a vote.

The effect of the ostrakon was devastating according to Plato. It was the worst form of tyranny; a man could live under a tyrannical dictator with limited fear, as long as he obeyed the dictator. But the tyranny of the majority in the ostrakon meant that a man had to constantly police his thoughts and words lest he slip up and become unpopular. Anyone could arrange a smear campaign to make another look too ambitious, and potentially be ostracized. The simple fear of a potential for unpopularity was itself a constant threat, and led great men to choose not to become leaders for fear of the vote.
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The parallel here is easy to see. In the fast moving and fractured world of echo chambers that is social media, the accusation of evil is the proof. The reply has to be proving one didn’t do the harm another claims, and you can’t prove you didn’t do something.
To her credit, the lady in question very clearly stated that it was based in a dream, and the fellow misinterpreted her intent.

But the damage is done. We’ve moved into the very tyranny that Plato tried to warn us of in The Republic, tyranny of the majority.

The consequences, I fear, from this culture of ostracism, is that differing and valuable voices are being shut out of the conversation about our faith, and no real growth is happening. That a certian kind of mania is taking hold where, ironically, witch hunts have become commonplace and real marketplaces of ideas and opinions are being shut down.

It happens often in the end of empire, and the idea of real tolerance and healthy disagreement ae long gone.

My advice is to fight the trend. Establish your own spaces where tryants are not in a position to rule, where the rights of individuals to disagree and to share their points of view are welcome. Cultivate tolerance and curiosity while expecting good manners.

And avoid echo chambers, lest we each find ourselves with an ostrakon in our hands.