Belinda wrote: ↑Tue May 17, 2022 9:50 amThe Sea of Faith Network is based on the matter of the poem by Matthew Arnold "Dover Beach" in which the tide of faith is felt to be withdrawing from society. As you and Nietzsche note, loss of faith is scary. We have largely recovered from loss of faith in miracles but still have difficulty with loss of the fixed horizon towards which we naturally steer. The existentialists especially perhaps Sartre have led many to trust that a lone yachtsman can with courage find his own meaning. All that is required for faith is what we can all have, courage and reason, as we are inevitably future-oriented. The 'leap of faith' springs from courage and reason and saves us from complete disorientation.
I have a couple of thoughts here. At the moment I have begun to re-read CG Jung's
Aion. I'd read it, and other Jung works in the past but my present reading is bearing more fruit and I see more that is relevant at the very least to me personally.
Now, more than ever, the
manoeuvre that I better understand is that of 'withdrawing projection' from the outer world, and from externalized perception, and turning one's attention back to the *inner world*. If
the world and the 'outer horizon' was erased, and it significantly has, and if 'faith' had been in the imagined picture of a god or divinity or directing intelligence 'out there' somewhere, but the possibility of this conception has collapsed, well then the inner world opens up.
I would not so much say that the loss of faith in former pictures is what is scary, but rather that when the Guiding Story (for example the one offered by
standard Christian conception), which is what the *horizon* refers to largely, no longer seems to function, one is disoriented to a degree, but then, when the shift of focus occurs, in fact one has not lost but gained. The 'fixed horizon' becomes a less fixed and inner horizon, but the sense of it all, and the meaning, actually become more real because one is dealing essentially with *self*.
It seems to me that many people who have *experienced* Nietzsche as the dynamite he purported to be then veer off into modes of reaction -- reaction in the sense of re-assessment, re-examination, re-consideration and all the rest. I suppose that 'atheism' would then
seem a necessary belief-option but in fact this is not how it has worked out. Or it has worked out that way for some but not for others. If the shift moves to the inner plane and if 'divinity' exists -- the notion of higher, guiding consciousness -- it opens up when a different 'conceptual model' replaces the old, collapsed one.
I have a feeling that in this present conversation we have different and almost archetypal representatives here. IC represents and defends the *old mode of conception*, the largely collapsed one, but one that if it is to be maintained can only do so through a rigid sort of willed insistence. You [Belinda] seem to represent a post-Christian conceptual position where the influence of your upbringing, in a Christian sense, still operates and functions, while your preferential choice seems to be a model that is more similar to an atheistic position. But this might mean (if any part of what I intuit is right) that you might not be able to say "God exists for me but strictly on an inner plane" (or something similar).
Dubious and Promethean
seem to come from a more strict or common atheistic position (atheism as it is culturally conceived and explained by those on the cultural landscape who dedicate themselves to this task, and there are many). RC is another (somewhat odd) case insofar as he has turned away from the exterior model to one that has interior-focused leaning, but it is still closed-off and (as I said) rather solipsistic. Nick's general position is the closest to my own and he seems to represent a form of mysticism. Which is personal and personally undertaken. People like Nick are found on the fringes of religious traditions that allow such a mode of being. In his case Eastern Orthodox Christianity and in my own cast to Roman Catholic forms. My position is quite different though because I quite literally chose to *impose* it on myself, I did not grow up in it. And in fact I grew up within a general explosion and under parents who abandoned all their matrices and cultural commitments.
The existentialists especially perhaps Sartre have led many to trust that a lone yachtsman can with courage find his own meaning.
I certainly would admit that this strategy has been a part of the cultural and social evolution. But I see Sartre as *being captured by reaction* since, as it seems, the rebellion of the French culture was so extensive -- how could *belief* be maintained when the current operating against it was so strong? But the importance of finding what is inside of one's own self (steering mechanism) is open to anyone who simply turns his or her attention to the 'inner dimension'. In one way or another something speaks back.
Unfortunately, the loss of faith as a cultural malady is extremely real. If the internal relationship is lost then one is left with the surrounding monuments which are fantastic and even glorious in appearance but what was formerly numinous in them, and was a light that shone out of them, became dulled (I am thinking of a glorious old-school Catholic church for example). Then, one wanders in ruins. Also one is deprived of the sense of community and communal, shall I say, 'worship' which also means a shared purpose.
That loss is large (and devastating) indeed.
All that is required for faith is what we can all have, courage and reason, as we are inevitably future-oriented.
There is another thing too but it is difficult to talk about -- problematic I would say because there are so many possibilities of misunderstanding. Frankly, it is what might be termed the opposite of 'reason'. Opening up to intuitive, inner 'processes' (for want of a better word) where the rational needs, to some degree, to be suspended. I think this would amount to a very difficult operation for many because it involves a degree of surrender of one's own power in the face of something -- higher intelligence, and even 'the divine' if one is still capable of using that word -- which seems to require what you refer to as 'leap of faith'.