Did I read what you wrote wrong? When you proceed to mention 'seers, kings, high priests, viziers' etc. I assume you are speaking of all religious hierarchies, and Christianity as one among them.
Skip wrote:Most religions are national - or tribal, if you prefer. The seers, kings, high priests, viziers or whatever their top morale officers are called do impose their world-view on the population with which they are concerned. The peasant, miner and midwife are all forced into the vision of the prelate; they're told their meaning, assigned their role, given their purpose.
I understand what you say about Christianity, I think. I believe that I understand fairly well the critique. I have heard it - everyone has heard it - for many, many years. And any cogent narrative must have links to reality and to fact. Yet your overall implication - and if it is your opinion that is completely fine with me - is that Christianity is a destructive, even a criminal, historical movement. I think this is the gist of the conversations (sharing of agreements) that occur here when Christianity is discussed. My assertion, as you know, is that it is in no sense so simple, and the doctrines of Christianity, let us say at an inner level, and I say this as 'fact', have nourished very positive elements of culture. When I see these mean-spirited attacks, and even though I am not a Christian myself, I am inclined to defend (it is part of my nature). In any case: This is a public board and we should all be having fun as we engage in our polemics.
Your narrative, your discourse - I mentioned this over a year ago - is dripping with Marxian
interpretation. The interpretation you offer is essentially Marxian. To mention Marxism one also must mention the Frankfurt School (very influential) and Critical Theory which has - I use the word 'infect' since I am not a big fan - infected our cultures from top to bottom. I am surprised that you don't get what I mean. If what I say is true, you don't have a firm grasp on the ideas that have informed your perception, and thus you are blind (in some sense and to use a common turn of phrase) to the
metaphysical force of your view. But
I notice it.
Mohammedism has been called 'frozen Judaism' and is an offshoot of Judaism though the separation occurred later. I mean only that it is one of the virulent forms of 'mad religion', and I grant you that some sects of Christianity are rather batty. But there is a very high aspect, too. And it is that part - the better part - that is core to our own civilisation.
Are you prepared to defend the methods by which they did this?
That is part of a reductionist, and even a little manipulative, narrative. To win my points I must
agree to the evils of the Conquest. It is simply not a good question. Let me put it this way: The so called Aryas, who came down from the North, subdued and dominated the dark indigenous tribes of the tropical Indian subcontinent and through those processes created a civilisation, various civilisations.
China has been expanding, and contracting, for centuries and millennia, and surrounding cultures (for example historical Vietnam) have been resisting, but also incorporating, cultural elements from China for 800-1000 years. Same with Japan.
Rome, in its expansion, imposed on the territories it absorbed what we understand as civilisation, and of course law as we understand it. All of Europe is an
outcome of Roman expansion, and we are all direct products of that. Numerous are the examples of regions petitioning Rome to become a part of the Roman project.
Incan civilisation conquered and then
repopulated the incorporated area, moving the indigenous populations to other lands to break their sense of connection to 'their land' and thus created the Incan civilisation, which was remarkable and long-enduring. Civilisation is in many senses a
price that one pays.
These processes occur - have occurred and likely will continue occurring - and as some things are destroyed, new things are born. Is your lament that the world is like this? There is quite honestly and factually no period, ever, where these sorts of things did not happen. If you were a real Marxist, naturally, you'd be clamouring for the 'end of history' in a paradisal worker's utopia. Certain communist states have been attempted with this ideology. Modern China comes out of
all that.
What you do with your narrative is wield it in a Marxian-critical manner. It is not neutral. It has and proposes ends, even if you are not aware of those ends, nor the degree that you embody the narrative. It cannot be said that all of that is 'bad' either. Critical Theory and its reach into the Academy is not all 'bad'. Yet: it is a form of acid and it tends to corrode in all manner of different areas. Therefore, it is wise to be aware of it, to have some self-consciousness of it. That of course is only my opinion.
My view is that the Critical Narrative is not benign, it is
active and
determining. (It is acidic overall and yet not all acid-elements are 'bad'.)