Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Dec 02, 2021 7:07 pm
This may surprise you, but so is mine.
I don't think for an instant there's ever been such a thing as "a Christian nation," and I don't for a second suppose we're going to create one now. It's actually an absurd expression. The term "Christian nation" makes as much sense as (to borrow a quip from EC) "accountancy dancing." So one thing for sure: I'm not arguing in favour of such a ridiculous and contradictory idea...never mind that the means to bring it about would be likely to be authoritarian. No part of that appeals to me as "Christian."
But the difference between your current thinking and mine, it seems to me, keys on whether a nominal or pseudo-Christian cultural renassiance is a viable alternative, and can be looked to to save the culture. It appears to me you think it might be; but I think that's an utterly doomed hope.
In some sense you are bolstering the point I want to make. This is how I describe culture -- Christian culture if you will. The Christian ideal has not ever been achieved, and indeed it cannot be achieved on any wide-scale. As you say there can be Christian individuals, and it is possible that their influence does or can act positively on or perhaps against the pseudo-Christian or quasi-Christian matrix. So far so good.
But since the largest weight of your argument is through the understanding 'My Kingdom is not of this world", in essence your moral activity will take shape as a preparation for 'life beyond this life'. I regard that as a highly, if not intensely, problematic ideal. Effectively, according to the structure of your views and the 'praxis' suggested, there cannot ever be a 'Christian culture' and any attempt to create one, and to approximate one, is according to you a useless endeavor. Therefore in a sense you encourage a pessimism and in this sense a hopelessness. Since nothing really can be built here, and in any case it will only amount to approximations, the Christian you define places all hopes in a 'world to come'.
People do not really live in that way. It is in fact an impossibility. We always live, and cannot but live, with our eyes and our focus on the *real* events of this world. So it seems to me that our relationship to that *real world* is the principle area of necessary focus. Not in a 'world beyond' except as a hope.
Well, that's because all the above are mere collectives. It's only the individual who has a soul, or who can respond to moral imperatives, or to any vision of things as they do not now exist. Institutions, nations and states, along with "conglomerations" are not personal agents, and have no eyes, ears or consciences of their own at all. They are pushed around by "powers," but the forces of circumstance, or finances, or contingencies...with no ability, as collectives, to do anything at all about that.
I agree in principle. But even if all this is true nevertheless people function in and through these conglomerations.
In contrast, if I may suppose, I think you're putting a rather strong emphasis on things like the power of nominal "Christians," pseudo-Christians, "christianesque" individuals, and so on, to contribute to the situation. And yes, there have been a lot of them around throughout what we call "Christian-civilizational history" (which is itself another fiction, really). But they are the most useless of all human beings, in truth; and were always more of a problem to real Christianity than any kind of asset. They have always been, themselves, only moral and good according to the measure by which they have sometimes being absorbing the influence coming from genuine Christianity. Take that genuine Christianity out of the culture, and the pseudos and nominalists will be the most useless, uninfluential citizens you could possibly have, since they have no real or durable commitment to any principles at all.
I think my attitude is realistic. In this sense I must regard myself as christianesque since I view life in this contingent, mutable plane as the constraining factor, the limiting factor. An idea Christian exists as an ideal and, only in the case of (perhaps) saints and a few notable individuals has or can the ideal of Christianity be realized.
So for anyone who participates in 'building projects' in this world ethical and moral compromises will have to be made. And when one does that one displays 'christianesqueness'.
The more involved in the world, the more that one deviates from the abstract ideal.
In this sense, it seems to me, the Christian must continually ask for forgiveness for the sins that are inevitably committed. For this reason the constantly absolution of Catholicism is a notion that makes sense. One will
never achieve the Christian ideal until one is freed from the limits and constraints of incarnated life. And it is
not possible to lead a blameless, sin-free life.
There's nothing "organic" about a "state." It's an abstraction, a collective, impersonal. We must not draw a false analogy between the state and the "imperative" of an organism for survival. States come and states go.
Except that states function through their need, appetite, assertion of power, etc. Someone said "England has no friends it has interests".
My references to the US were made with this in mind: The US has and manages an empire of far-flung interests. The ideals of the US
cannot operate in such a situation of global ownership. But this power and control and ownership is as real as anything else.
The question is how this is seen and ethically and morally resolved. It is 'the problem of power' in the
Thracymachus sense. It is as real now as ever.
Karma is a problematic idea. Let's not invoke it here. It requires us to believe that the indifferent universe has some interest in balancing scales throughout reincarnation cycles. That's too much nonsense to swallow, I think.
I do not see it quite like that. Karma is another perceeptual means of seeing and understanding the consequences of the insoluble problem of incarnated, biological life. The Vaishnavas of India (worshippers of Vishnu of the Bhagavad-Gita) refer to our incarnated life as 'the material entanglement'. Once entangled every action that is taken can result in incurring a karmic debt that will further entangle one. It is a logical and indeed a sensible view, it seems to me.
One can be going happily along and be presented with a circumstances -- as if by chance -- that will involve one in actions that incur *karma*. And karmic debt has to be paid or has to be annulled somehow and at some point (according to the logic in this view).
Don't forget Nietzsche's first and most famous axiom, though: "God is dead." This is an axiom Nietzsche neither proved nor even bothered to try to prove; he just claimed everybody already knew it or should know it, and moved on.
As I said before I do not think this can be understood unless it is understood as an array of ironies. Whatever 'God' is when one has performed the infinite regress and identified a causeless, transcendental power out of which creation comes, that is an open question. Those that work within the notion of 'intelligent design' point out that the design they observe must have a transcendental origin, but no part of this necessarily bolsters the Christian view of what God is, or what God is not.
In this sense then to say *God has died* is to make an ironic statement that a god-concept has died. And effectively that god-concept certainly
did die.
So it seems to me that the notion of God must be re-described and re-written. In any case this is what Nietzsche seemed to realize.
Right. No wonder, then, that Christ insisted, "My kingdom is not of this world."
Well there you have it. Certainly not of this world and impossible in this world. If this is so it leaves *the world* to its own devices. Therefore, how can you (we) expect anyone to hold to the Christian ideal if in fact they seek to live life here?
You either live a life here, or you resolve to live a life somewhere else -- this is the terrible contradiction of the Christian ethic, unless it becomes
christianesque!
Yes and no. War always produces both huge losses and significant gains. For example, it kills millions, perhaps, but causes the economy to be run very austerely and stingily, and thus often produces a post-war economic "boom."
My concerns and interests about this extend beyond the topic of this thread. I am interested in understanding the *unraveling of the United States* as a result of a series of extremely bad wars. That is, wars that cannot be justified ethically and morally. In this sense *the chickens have come home to roost* now and social madness rears up, but very few seem to be making this causal connection.
Karma is a way to see and define that connection. Not so much a general sinfulness but sinful activities of
real consequence, brought about by *conglomerations of interests*, that empower a
karmic hammer that comes down, surely and inevitably.