A friend of mine once said that all political bickering was pointless, because conservatives and liberals all wanted the same things, only through different means. I'd debate that, but for the sake of argument, let's accept his claim. Does that mean that our differences don't matter, or that they matter but still shouldn't affect us in any substantial way? (It's semantics, but in the modern age, we love to say things matter if we feel they ought to matter--no matter how little effect they have on us and our conditions.)
Today, there are two great veins of theology-doesn't-matter thought.
One is found on the right. Check your Maggie Thatcher, PM of the UK, on her statement that, roughly paraphrased, Christianity is a doctrine of personal salvation, not social liberation. Rightists want us to all make money and God forbid we use religion to actually do anything.
And it's been very successful for them. They've moved the split from between faiths to between faith-in-general and lack-of-faith in general. And of course, the religious agree on about as much as the nonbelievers, but the believers have more will to power, so they win. As long as you believe in God and making money, you can be in the club.
But that's not it. On the left, there is a push for touchy-feely conditionless spiritualistic bullshit. All the comfort of religion without any of the social restraint. But of course, you can take the faith out of authoritarianism, but you can't take the authoritarianism out of some faiths. And so we see the same collectivism and "self-"discipline of the 1960s, again turned inward, with no social animus beyond claiming to love everyone. There is no weight, there. It's all psychodrama, and there's no way anyone notices that anything's wrong, because they preach that the whole world is inside anyway.
Both ignore the social dimension of religion, addressing only the interpersonal, if that. Larger society is repudiated. The world is made less and less immediate. Solipsism is the rule of the day.
So while it's comforting to say "Why can't we all just shut up and get along," I have to ask why spiritualists introduce all this metaphysical garbage if they don't want it to matter. Latter-day religionists, the heirs of ten thousand years of social religion, are now telling us to mind our business. And the idea that we're all trying to find our path to the same place is hopelessly naive, man. No. We're not all seeking the same happiness, the same heaven, the same end. Some of us don't want to end at all. Some want to stay in the cycle, while others want moksha, while some don't believe the cycle continues and that this is the whole of their existence. Likewise, my friend was wrong. Different political ideologies, like faiths, want to see different worlds created, and this "let's all get along" rhetoric smooths over only so as to appear more tolerant. If you think all world faiths express the same divine truth, you've missed a lot. It's mushy, sentimental thought with no respect for the history of religious practice or profession.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2007-05-09 03:52 pm (UTC)Today, there are two great veins of theology-doesn't-matter thought.
One is found on the right. Check your Maggie Thatcher, PM of the UK, on her statement that, roughly paraphrased, Christianity is a doctrine of personal salvation, not social liberation. Rightists want us to all make money and God forbid we use religion to actually do anything.
And it's been very successful for them. They've moved the split from between faiths to between faith-in-general and lack-of-faith in general. And of course, the religious agree on about as much as the nonbelievers, but the believers have more will to power, so they win. As long as you believe in God and making money, you can be in the club.
But that's not it. On the left, there is a push for touchy-feely conditionless spiritualistic bullshit. All the comfort of religion without any of the social restraint. But of course, you can take the faith out of authoritarianism, but you can't take the authoritarianism out of some faiths. And so we see the same collectivism and "self-"discipline of the 1960s, again turned inward, with no social animus beyond claiming to love everyone. There is no weight, there. It's all psychodrama, and there's no way anyone notices that anything's wrong, because they preach that the whole world is inside anyway.
Both ignore the social dimension of religion, addressing only the interpersonal, if that. Larger society is repudiated. The world is made less and less immediate. Solipsism is the rule of the day.
So while it's comforting to say "Why can't we all just shut up and get along," I have to ask why spiritualists introduce all this metaphysical garbage if they don't want it to matter. Latter-day religionists, the heirs of ten thousand years of social religion, are now telling us to mind our business. And the idea that we're all trying to find our path to the same place is hopelessly naive, man. No. We're not all seeking the same happiness, the same heaven, the same end. Some of us don't want to end at all. Some want to stay in the cycle, while others want moksha, while some don't believe the cycle continues and that this is the whole of their existence. Likewise, my friend was wrong. Different political ideologies, like faiths, want to see different worlds created, and this "let's all get along" rhetoric smooths over only so as to appear more tolerant. If you think all world faiths express the same divine truth, you've missed a lot. It's mushy, sentimental thought with no respect for the history of religious practice or profession.