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grufty jim 1978 posts |
Edited Feb 25, 2015, 11:57
Feb 25, 2015, 11:44
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IanB wrote: Point being that we have possibly lost something here with the demotion of religious education in a secular context (and study of the classical world for that matter) that can be convey life lessons without the fear and brimstone. I don't think there's any "possibly" about it. My main intellectual hero (for want of a better phrase) is a guy called Gregory Bateson. I consider him possibly the most important thinker of the 20th century and he was the subject of my M.Phil and at the heart of my endless, never-to-be-finished PhD. His ideas have been influential in niche circles but largely ignored in the mainstream (or else simplified and filtered through others). One of his famous lines was "It's all made of stories". He viewed human culture - and indeed reality as lived by human beings - as being effectively constructed by stories. Some of them simple ones we tell ourselves. Some of them stories we get told by our family. And some of them are massive overarching stories that everyone gets told. This last group covers mythology (or "mythopoetry" to stick with Batesonian language). And this mythopoetry is the glue that holds together our society. It is the mechanism we use to transmit important truths and values. It is where we learn about The Sacred. Now, the literal historical "truth" of these stories is irrelevant. This is where the fundamentalists get it all wrong (along with a whole bunch of the New Atheists who seem willing to make exactly the same category error as the fundies and discuss mythopoetry as though historical accuracy was in any way relevant to it). Just as there can be Truth in Beauty, though finding "Facts" there might be tough. One of the many examples Bateson uses is the parable of The Last Supper. He points out that he has no idea if a guy called Jesus sat down with 12 other folks on a given night as reported in the gospels. And to fixate on whether it happened, rather than examine the message of the story is bizarre (and arguably irrational and even a bit dangerous given the cultural repercussions). What is the message of the story (according to Bateson)? In his view, it is one of the ways in which our culture transmits a vital Truth through the generations. Gregory Bateson wrote: "Host / guest" relationships are more or less sacred all over the world, as far as I know. And are of course one of the reasons why, to go back to where we started, the bread and the wine happen to be sacred objects. Don’t get it upside down. The bread and the wine are not sacred because they represent Christ's body and blood. The bread and the wine are primarily sacred, because they are the staff of life; the staff of hospitality... of guests... of hosts... of health and all the rest of it. And so, secondarily, we equate them with Christ. The sacredness is real. Whatever the mythology. The mythology is the poetical way of asserting the sacredness. And a very good poetical way of asserting it. But bread is sacred whether or not you accept the Christian myth. And so is wine. Unless you’re determined to eat plastic. (or McDonalds, he might have added) Of course, I 100% agree that it should be possible for us to remove the malign influence of religion from society while retaining the values, truths and sense of sacredness that it helps to codify and disseminate. There's no inherent reason for us to stop asserting the primary sacredness of bread and wine when we cease to believe in Jesus as the Son of God. Yet nonetheless, that's precisely what western culture has done.
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Sin Agog 2253 posts |
Feb 25, 2015, 11:52
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Which makes Cameron's spiel of being a Caped Christian Crusader all the more confusing. Free Trade is the new Christianity. If there's none up above, make a heaven for the chosen few on Earth.
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grufty jim 1978 posts |
Feb 25, 2015, 11:56
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Sin Agog wrote: Which makes Cameron's spiel of being a Caped Christian Crusader all the more confusing. Free Trade is the new Christianity. If there's none up above, make a heaven for the chosen few on Earth. Oh baby... don't you know what that's worth...
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Sin Agog 2253 posts |
Feb 25, 2015, 15:40
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It's just a shame we need a big myth, or a catch-all logical system, in order to glean the benefits. It is possible we're transitioning into something else, possibly something better, after religion governing everyone's lives for so long. We've filled in the gap with relentless individualism, ambition that takes no prisoners. That's where we're at right now, but it's always been the flaw of philosophers and thinkers to apply to the future the laws of the present. Like when Wilhelm Reich and Freud said sexual repression is at the root of our neurosis. Now porn is ubiquitous are we all better? Sexually, we're arguably even worse- unable to relate to human souls without first mentally banging their bodies; and younger men feeling sexually sated enough by porn not to need a relationship. (I know that seemed tangential, but bear with me). Jung may have had the foresight to realise that taking religion and myth out of our lives will leave a gulf to be filled by lesser beings, but maybe with a bit more foresight he might have seen that it could be replaced by something a little less forbidding and ineffable. Could be wistful thinking, but I do reckon that eventually people will cotton onto the fact that careerism, money accruing, as a life goal isn't massively fulfilling. The growth of your apartment size, your office, your stuff, is a way of tangibly measuring our arch in life, so that's one of the reasons why I think it works for so many, but the joy of empathy, of stepping outside of your own cramped head-space into another's, is too rich not to reassert itself. I adore stories and myth and having legions of alternative dimensions created by our own imagination hovering in the periphery of our lives, but I think it's only a matter of time before we stop needing the parable to learn the moral.
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grufty jim 1978 posts |
Feb 25, 2015, 16:00
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This pretty much cuts right to the heart of my thesis (due for publication sometime in the 2030s if the past 6 months are anything to go by) - so it's something I can discuss at length and would love to do just that. But the life of a freelancer means doing the work when it's there. Which means now! I just didn't want to duck out and leave you with the impression I was ignoring your point. Who knows... it's possible I may unexpectedly resurrect this thread in a couple of weeks. I will just say this though... Sin Agog wrote: It's just a shame we need a big myth, or a catch-all logical system, in order to glean the benefits. I'm just not entirely sure it makes sense to talk in those terms. It's analogous to saying "it's just such a shame we need eyes to translate light into information". Put simply... that's the mechanism we evolved to do that. And it's actually a pretty decent one. It worked for the vast majority of human and proto-human evolution and (in terms of longevity) cultural experience. That it has come a cropper amidst the agricultural-industrial-technological clusterfuck is (a) hardly a surprise, and (b) indicative of a... ... three hour rant...
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Sin Agog 2253 posts |
Edited Feb 25, 2015, 17:35
Feb 25, 2015, 17:32
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Well I think the cool (and scary) thing about being a person is we can shape ourselves however we want. Natural selection doesn't apply to us because we're no longer all that natural. In just a few decades we can revolutionise our lifestyles, and in turn our lifestyles can change who we are. This could be the control freak autodidact in me who never went to school speaking, but I think it's essential to push against the crushing weight of our instincts. Warfare and using our environment (including animals and people) as tools also comes natural to us, but it's of paramount importance that we not let it do so. State systems and myths rarely admit room for our changing lifestyles and minds. No myth is future proof. They also tend to be a nightmare for those benighted souls who slip through the cracks, for whom those set-ups, and those stories, just don't work. I don't see why taking the Universe as it is and deifying it the way it truly deserves should be harmful. I personally sport a Gaia theory, but I know in my heart of hearts it's just a prop I'm using, and I think that knowledge and that prop together helps keep me balanced. Balance is probably the key word here- we're off-kilter at the moment, but does it require religion to regain a steady footing? I'm not too sure we were all that steady with the supreme reigning supreme (though it had its many benefits). Perhaps that "be the change you wish to see" thing may work. People osmosing a more conscientious lifestyle onto one another by example. Empirically witnessing the advantages of selflessness, of bridging that barrier between ourselves and other people (and the natural world), may make it more likely to materialise. Or failing that, get a better myth.
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sanshee 1080 posts |
Feb 25, 2015, 23:06
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drewbhoy wrote: I certainly know the Church Of Scotland does food banks like a lot of churches south of the border. This should be applauded but makes me feel ashamed as we had a chance recently to probably almost cure this. Seemingly some like this idea of the poor and food banks and voted NO. What, just because the SNP/Yes campaign (for they are NOT the same thing) told you voting Yes would get rid of food banks that makes it gospel does it? In all those three dreary, expensive years of 'campaigning' I did not hear one single nut connected to one single bolt as to 'how' this was going to transpire. Oh, and how would voting 'Yes' have sorted out the food bank situation throughout other parts of the UK? Wait, to the Yes voter they don't matter. Nationalists only care about their nationals after all. or at least soil first, blood *laters*.
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IanB 6761 posts |
Edited Feb 26, 2015, 14:01
Feb 26, 2015, 09:02
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grufty jim wrote: this mythopoetry is the glue that holds together our society. It is the mechanism we use to transmit important truths and values. It is where we learn about The Sacred. Now, the literal historical "truth" of these stories is irrelevant. This is where the fundamentalists get it all wrong (along with a whole bunch of the New Atheists who seem willing to make exactly the same category error as the fundies and discuss mythopoetry as though historical accuracy was in any way relevant to it). Just as there can be Truth in Beauty, though finding "Facts" there might be tough. One of the many examples Bateson uses is the parable of The Last Supper. He points out that he has no idea if a guy called Jesus sat down with 12 other folks on a given night as reported in the gospels. And to fixate on whether it happened, rather than examine the message of the story is bizarre (and arguably irrational and even a bit dangerous given the cultural repercussions). Indeed or even Amen. One of the least attractive habits of commentators on the political left is their eagerness to kick those that they see as the naively credulous for their lack of rigor, citing absence of proof and the failure of religious belief (and non traditional medicine for that matter) to stand up to scientific examination. This apparently makes believers doubly culpable for a host of social evils. Talk about the left seeking traitors and the right seeking converts. Labour might not "do God" but they could do a lot worse than find a little more of the Socialism in Jesus and (more importantly) vice versa. It is not as if the Anglican church isn't demonstrating plenty of willingness to meet them half way. What Bateson could a time-poor non-specialist non-academic read without getting lost do you think?
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Sin Agog 2253 posts |
Feb 26, 2015, 11:29
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(After a little further marination on this topic just now). Let's accept we manifest our need for stories in the creation of religions and state institutions, like Communism. It's evident we, right now, are enslaved to fairy tales, to bow-wrapped plots, otherwise so many of us wouldn't watch as much TV as we do, read as many airport novels as we do. They consume a gargantuan chunk of our day, not to mention our nights, and they could be serving as a stand-in (alongside the shark-eyed celebs we know so much about) for the pantheon of dead Gods. (Or perhaps it's this surfeit of new stories which killed the old big ones?) I do feel with myths at the helm, there'll always be people who feel like they're stuck in another man's story. Believing in something passionately also feeds our hegemonic side; even as a vegan, or a nature-lover, I have to constantly fight back the urge to stand up on a pulpit and scream to the crowd about the error of their ways. I don't like the idea of one size fits all stories, or systems (although certain values need to hold true to everyone). Perhaps we could sate our need for stories by urging everyone to write and read each other's own creations? It may work, or something not too dissimilar. I've fallen on your side in the mythopoeic argument before, even when talking to you, but for the sake of dialectics I'm trying something new. I'm hardly one of those science-worshipping atheists with a void the size of Heaven gnawing at their guts, who replace one set of jargon for another. It seems only natural that people will eventually develop a short-hand for myths; their wits will quicken enough not to need to read the whole fable to pick up the moral. That's the way things like Aesop's Fables were designed- kids would grow old enough to just instinctively not tell lies and realise slow and steady wins the race. In a way, I think we're doing that already. Not every act of compassion in the world can be attributed to religion. Despite the fact that a minority get a remunerative gain by keeping the war machine chugging, the majority of people, atheists and religious alike, tend to be good apples. Compassion just needs to edge its way into people's attention, beyond their current communal myths of zombies and meth addicts.
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tiompan 5758 posts |
Feb 26, 2015, 18:08
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"Mind and Nature is short , light , and very accessible .
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