Vodou Culture 101: Balance
Again, another huge topic.
Vodou is a religion of nature. It is a religion in which we live as a part of the natural world, not as “masters” of it. Vodou is a religion of we, but the we is not just human beings. It is also the world around us. Plants, animals, weather, the elements, and every system we interact with: all these things are a part of vodou.
In the US, because we have access to this much technology and wealth, we mostly ignore nature. Technology allows us to pretend to be masters, to pretend we are indifferent to natural cycles. With air conditioning and heating, you can mostly ignore the temperature outside. With widespread artificial lighting, you can ignore the sun’s daily cycle. With widespread electricity, you can greatly delay the onset of visible rot or mold on food, allowing you to make infrequent grocery trips. With widespread cars, you can take jobs in places that you’d never be able to get to with public transportation or by walking, given the hours you’re being asked to work.
Technology is not bad. It’s just a tool that has a cost.
In ignoring nature, we tend to ignore balance. We’re prone to extremes. You can see our extremes a number of places, including how we approach working. On average, most people in the US work hours that are damaging, ignoring sickness or the body’s need for sleep, and we work them not as an emergency, but as a ‘normal’ part of being employed. We go to work injured, at the expense of relationships with family or loved ones, and are pressured to work even beyond whatever hours we’ve agreed to work. We are punished by removing our hours at work for asking for a vacation or being sick, which threatens our ability to house and feed our families or ourselves.
None of these things are remotely balanced in their approach to the needs of the person versus the business’ need to make a profit.
In vodou, balance is a key idea. Much like nature, vodou honors the idea that while extremity may occur, it’s not the state in which nature operates all the time. One sort of extremity invites its opposite to establish equilibrium.
I’ve said elsewhere that vodou is a warrior’s culture. Part of the self-advocacy that vodou honors is the conscious seeking of balance: to pay attention to and honor the individual’s needs, whether that’s sleep or seeking medical care (or some sort of health care, because seeing a doctor is increasingly out of reach for people in the US) or trying to consciously seek and honor the need for non-work time. The person needs the ability to take care of themselves, which includes taking care of their body, mind, and spirit.
Seeking balance is not something for which you have to apologize or feel shame, either, which is how the majority culture treats it. It’s a part of your responsibility to yourself—though given the pressure to work or starve, it is not simple.
The pursuit of balance puts vodou at a conflict with many aspects of the majority culture.
