Mother Nature is a mythical creature based on the Greek Goddess Demeter, whose daughter was abducted by Hades as his Queen, which brought wrath on the Earth and her control of Natura (all things around her) in the Middle Ages.
She is a creation of an ancient time and exists today in discussions about weather, particularly storms and worse.
In weather reports about bad weather in our area, I often use Mother Nature as an object of scorn.
i came under fire Friday for an offhand remark that the wind advisory issued by the National Weather Service revealed Mother Nature “in a bitchy mood.”
I was called “vulgar” and “disrespectful” and always “pushing the limits” of good taste.
At first, I thought this was a joke. Could I be chastised for calling a mythical figure “bitchy?” I might have understood the claim if I had called Mother Nature a “bitch.”. But, in this case, I said “bitchy,” which the Oxford English Dictionary calls an “informal adjective.”
“This is a bitchy business,” is an example of use of the word provided by the dictionary. Such use is neither gender-specific or used as a noun to insult any person, real or imagined. The dictionary does not call such vulgar, which is a term Oxford uses to describe several popular four-letter cuss words.
In a report about the Middle Ages and ancient Greece:
In Greek mythology, Persephone, daughter of Demeter (goddess of the harvest), was abducted by Hades (god of the dead), and taken to the underworld as his queen. Demeter was so distraught that no crops would grow and the “entire human race [would] have perished of cruel, biting hunger if Zeus had not been concerned” (Larousse 152). Zeus forced Hades to return Persephone to her mother, but while in the underworld, Persephone had eaten pomegranate seeds, the food of the dead and thus, she must spend part of each year with Hades in the underworld. Demeter’s grief for her daughter in the realm of the dead, is reflected in the barren winter months and her joy when Persephone returns is reflected in the bountiful summer months.
Mythology notes that Greek and Roman gods and goddess at that time were an often raunchy bunch, yet one can find comparisons of statements from those gods to those attributed to God and Jesus Christ in the Bible. All religions, ancient and contemporary, are beliefs based on the writings of humans.
Over the years, I have used ancient gods and goddesses in a way to poke fun at weather and other things that make us miserable. It was, I felt, less objectionable than using the same words to describe living leaders or Gods of the Protestant, Jewish, Muslim and other religion.
Guess I was wrong.
One exception is my writing about current accidental president Donald John Trump. Why? Because his verbal diarrhea of lies swamps the earlier use of falsehoods by any other president of modern history.
That is documented by fact checking services who work overtime to keep up with Trump’s antics and fantasies.
Reported CNN late last year:
As the 2018 midterm election nears, President Donald Trump is disseminating false and misleading statements at a pace that leaves even his own past prevarications in the dust.
In the month of October, Trump said 1,104 things that were totally or partially untrue — more than double his next most prodigious month (September), according to the tireless cataloging by The Washington Post’s Fact Checker blog.
Trump is averaging — AVERAGING — 30 false or misleading claims a day in the last seven weeks. And, per the Fact Checker, he often of late soars far above that average. As one example: On October 22, when he traveled to Houston to hold a rally for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R), Trump, said 83 untrue things in a single day
The scope of Trump’s falsehoods is literally breathtaking. In the 649 days between his inauguration and October 30, Trump has made 6,420 claims that are partially or entirely false.
So I have called Trump a “liar” and worse in columns written for my national political web site and other publications. His language against other elected officials, world leaders and opponents is atrocious. In recent days, he has launched a daily tirade against the late Sen. John McCain, a former prisoner of war honored as a war hero and statesman at his funeral and burial.
During my dozen years as a political operative or an association executive in charge of the nation’s largest political action committee in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I had little use for most presidents or members of Congress, but my level of disgust with Trump’s venom, racism, bigotry and unethical behavior surpasses my distaste of them.
In my opinion, and the opinion of the majority of voters who nationally preferred another candidate as president, Trump is not a man qualified for the job. He is a disgrace to America.
Let’s return to the topic at hand: Mother Nature.
She is a myth of ancient times.
Then, again, maybe the joke is on me. Maybe Demeter, Hades and others are the real gods and the ones we worship now are not.
We won’t know until we die and, even then, we may just be dead and don’t realize anything that happens afterwards.
It’s all based on belief.
1 thought on “Dealing with a bitchy problem”
I feel like I understand where you’re coming from, but did you know there are plenty of people who still revere the old gods? True fact. They’re called Neo-Pagans or more succinctly, simply Pagans. They are an exceedingly small religious minority, but they’re out there. You might say they’re “way out there”!
But in fact I’m one of them. I don’t actually have a literal belief that any of those old gods are necessarily “real” per se, at least not in the sense you’re using the term “real.” I do enjoy ancient mythology and find it holds much wisdom.
There is one goddess who is undeniably real, of course, and that is Mother Nature. Or Mother Earth. Also known as Gaia. We feel her and touch her every day. We live within her our entire lives. We are a part of her, no less than the rocks and trees and dolphins. James Lovelock even named his theory of the global ecosystem after her.
I think many Pagans wouldn’t mind you noting she was in a bitchy mood! My only aversion to that term is it seems generally disrespectful to (human) women.
Thanks for sharing your ruminations on this topic.
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