Tag Archives: Culture

Wondering what this new religion will be

28 Thursday Jul 2022

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These are only general notes and questions to myself, and certainly not a final position on any of this.

I am working with the general proposition that Western history is moving along these lines: The largely Christian (broadly stated) world gave way to a “secular” world (see Charles Taylor for perhaps the most sustained account of this transition), in which the materialist atheist could be presented as the most reasonable person. The new atheism of 20 years ago would be the high water mark of this movement.

However, for whatever reason, that position has proved to be unstable. Even in the height of materialism and atheism, superstition and magic were always present and active among the most seemingly materialistic (see, The Myth of Disenchantment). Now, we are moving into the space of a new general religion (when a religion becomes the most common worldview in a culture, it will appear to be commonsense and not a “religion”: it is just the way things are).

Transgenderism as an ideology seems to partake of the rudiments of a religious system. I’m going to begin with a quotation Kathleen Stock:

Here are four axioms of modern trans activism, which I’ll be examining from different angles in this book.

1. You and I, and everyone else, have an important inner state called a gender identity.

2. For some people, inner gender identity fails to match the biological sex – male or female – originally assigned to them at birth by medics. These are trans people.

3. Gender identity, not biological sex, is what makes you a man or a woman (or neither).

4. The existence of trans people generates a moral obligation upon all of us to recognise and legally to protect gender identity and not biological sex.

Stock, Kathleen. Material Girls (p. 14). Little, Brown Book Group. Kindle Edition.

This paragraph which begins Material Girls lays presuppositions of transgenderism. What I find fascinating about this the extent to which this is an explicitly religious program.

First, it makes a profoundly metaphysical claim about a real self which is someone different than one’s current physical body. It is not merely that one feels a disassociation from one’s body, but rather that there is a more real self which is not the physical body. The materialist would contend one is only a physical body. A Christian (I’m not adequate to address other religions on this point) would contend the physical body is one’s “real self.” However, we would add the caveat that a description of the human being which is limited to the body is inadequate.

This metaphysical claim is an overarching claim that there is a reality which goes beyond the body in some way. I am not sure where or what this “real” self is. It is not completely clear to me that constitutes an incorporeal mind or soul; it seems to be an ideation.

Second, there is a sin of mis-matching the unseeable, incorporeal real self. That this is a sin is clear in that there is a moral obligation imposed upon all people to recognize the supreme reality of this ideation.

A metaphysical claim to an immaterial reality coupled to unbending moral obligation to recognize this immaterial reality contains at least the rudiments of a religion. Indeed, this metaphysic includes the proposition that language creates reality:

Butler makes the general assumption that anything at all humans can meaningfully think about is socially constructed, ‘all the way down’ as it were. This means she thinks there are no material facts before language – that is, prior to culturally specific linguistic and social constructions of them. Linguistic categories, including scientific and biological ones, aren’t a means of reflecting existing divisions in the world, but a means of creating things that otherwise wouldn’t have existed.

Stock, Kathleen. Material Girls (p. 23). Little, Brown Book Group. Kindle Edition. When seen from within a Christian perspective, this is an arrogation of the power of God to create reality by means of speaking. God says “Let there be light,” and there is light. But no such power appertains to human beings. Yet this ideology contends that language actually constructs reality. This is a profoundly religious sentiment.

When we look more broadly into the culture surrounding this belief system we see a number of rituals which fulfill the broad outlines of religious observance.

Early on in this movement, there were commentators (such as Mohler) who noted that transgenderism echoes the Gnostic idea of a secret real self beyond the body. There is another element common to Gnosticism, that of special knowledge held by only some. That special knowledge is critical to transgenderism: “A further influence in the background here is what is known in philosophy as ‘standpoint epistemology’. This is the idea that some forms of knowledge are socially situated, so that only if you are in a particular social situation are you able to easily acquire that kind of knowledge.” Stock, Kathleen. Material Girls (p. 34). Little, Brown Book Group. Kindle Edition.

In short, this is more than the imposition of civility. While this is only the briefest outline, it seems to me that this entails the rudimentary aspects of a “religion.”

It would not be difficult to take these 8 elements of a religion (found here) and find a corresponding application that the general pride and particular “transgender” world constitutes a religion:

EIGHT ELEMENTS OF RELIGIONS
1. BELIEF SYSTEM or WORLDVIEW: Many beliefs that fit together in a system to make

sense of the universe and our place in it.

That is unquestionable.
2. COMMUNITY: The belief system is shared, and its ideals are practiced by a group.

Again, this is a given.

3. CENTRAL STORIES/MYTHS: Stories that help explain the beliefs of a group; these are told over and over again and sometimes performed by members of the group. They may or may not be factual.

The transgender position insists on a story which is radically different than that held by Western Civilization just a few years ago.

4. RITUALS: Beliefs are explained, taught, and made real through ceremonies.

It could be contended that the entire work of physically transitioning constitutes a fundamental ritual, as well the wearing of certain clothing, et cetera.

5. ETHICS: Rules about how to behave; these rules are often thought to have come from a deity or supernatural place, but they might also be seen as guidelines created by the group over time.

Again, unquestionable.

6. CHARACTERISTIC EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCES: Most religions share emotions such as awe, mystery, guilt, joy, devotion, conversion, inner peace, etc.

The core emotional experience is the basis of the truth claims.

7. MATERIAL EXPRESSION: Religions use things to perform rituals or to express or represent beliefs, such as: statues, paintings, music, flowers, incense, clothes, architecture, and specific sacred locations.

Transforming one’s body.

8. SACREDNESS: Religions see some things as sacred and some not sacred (or profane). Some objects, actions, people and places may share in the sacredness or express it.

This might be the more difficult element, in that no god is explicitly invoked (at least not by all adherents). But there is an apparent element of being “special” or even transcendent in the idea of transcending one’s body.

Rieff, Triumph of the Therapeutic, 2.3 (Culture)

11 Thursday Jun 2020

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Rieff ends the chapter “The Impoverishment of Western Culture” with a movement from the individual aspects to the way which these individual attitudes playout across a culture:

“Every culture is an institutionalized system of moral demands, elaborating the conduct of personal relations, a cosset of compelling symbols.” ( 52)

The system which surrounds the individual consists of a cultural wide system of both (1) moral demands, which is expressed by means of “compelling symbols.” Freud provided a mechanism to understand and resist those symbols.

Moreover, Freud’s system made it impossible for anyone to again try and resurrect and impose the fading moral order:

No moral demand system could ever again compel at least the educated classes to that inner obedience which bound men to rules they themselves could not change except at the expense of spirit, far beyond the usefulness of such rules to the continuance of cultural achievement.

Freud believed he had put human beings – at least educated human beings – beyond the power of some system to impose upon human beings moral demands which they did not personally find necessary. 

Rieff saw material comforts “rising expectations” as sufficient to stave off the ascetic strain of morality.  We can simply use “analysis and art” as a substitute for religion.

We were now in a place where only a “yielding demand system” could possibly hold sway (53). 

We keep seeing ourselves at the end of history, where this will just be the conclusion.

Rieff’s conclusion that Freud had created a stable place of yielding seems to fail with a vengeance. The moral demands may have changed (one must believe that biological sex is a social construct, and so on) from prior morality. That may make it appear to be “liberating”. But we are seeing moral demands as strict as anything which has been witnessed in any religion. People are keeping lists. Public displays of piety are mandatory. 

It seems that Freud may have provided a tool to go after a morality of one sort of sexual limitation, but he did not free humanity from any sort of exclusively personal moral freedom. 

Some opening observations on the new public religion

06 Saturday Jun 2020

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I am fascinated by the overtly religious nature of the compliance which has been required with respect to certain social issues. Rather than look to the substance of any particular issue, consider the structure of the way in compliance is required and maintained.

There is a tool used in Biblical counseling to analyze the existence of a “system”. The tool as developed in teaching (I am not the originator of the observation here, although I have used it in class) is used as a number of S’s for ease of memory

Source of Authority
Sin
Salvation
Sanctification
Systems of Authority
Sparring

There must be some authority basis upon which to determine what is permitted and what is not.

There is some wrong in the world. The current variants define these in terms of some sort of “hate” or “oppression”.

There is some sort of salvation, something you must do be absolved of your sin.

Sanctification: there is some or process by which you maintain your status as a morally acceptable person.

If you fail on these points, you are then Shunned. This is cancel culture. We probably need to add “Shunning” as a sub issue of sanctification: the person is forcibly kept apart from the community under there is repentance/penance and return (but the current public religion seems to lack any possible repentance and return).

Systems of authority: there is some mechanism to propagate the system.

Finally there is sparring: defending the system from other competitive points of view. The apologetics need not be intellectually sophisticated, it need only be sufficiently pervasive as to permit the system to prevail.

I think it would be easy to make an application to various recent points of public concern and controversy.

What I have also noticed is explicitly religious conduct: There are oaths, prayers; instructions to ponder various texts, to make various public demonstrations of piety.

Today I read about an author who laid out a public sin – of which he was neither guilty nor capable of committing – which required submission to an authority, various “sacrifices” necessary to be absolved of the sin, a process of sanctification, and a requirement of shunning for those who refuse to repent. While the word “sacrifice” has a perfectly common meaning of effort, the word was striking in the midst of such language demanding overt moral protection.

The insistence of the writer would have made a medieval inquisitor blush for its lack of nuance or possibility of being mistaken.

A public religion is being developed which admits no competitor. It is morphing at the moment, so I don’t think it will necessarily maintain the same sins and sacrifices. Maybe it is just testing out variants.

There is also a fascinating technological aspect of this new religion.

Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic.2 (You are “sick” should ask if life is meaningful.)

09 Thursday Apr 2020

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The prior post in this series may be found here. 

Rieff, pp. 23-27

There are two interrelated issues which run through this section of his discussion of Freud. The two issues are not unrelated, but they are also not coterminous. One issue concerns the function of culture vis-à-vis impulse (the inherent desires of the human being). These two, the Superego and Id, are in conflict with one-another.

In wildly simplified terms, the ego is the negotiation and expression of this conflict. Freud’s work was to make plain the nature of this conflict and allow the individual who had obtained “maturity” (Rieff’s term) was to become aware of this conflict and to set the relationship between the two oneself: “Maturity, according to Freud, lay in the trained capacity to keep the negotiations from breaking down.” (24)

There is a related issue concerning, culture, religion and the superego. The superego functions as the cultural representative. The requirements and limitations of the culture become effective in the individual. The tools developed by Freud permit the individual to keep these tools at a distance.

It is for this reason, the “modern intellectuals” (26) find Freud appealing. His tools provide one a way to read and thence to disarm the culture’s effect upon the individual. Although not discussed here, this explains why Freud was so valuable in the literature departments in cultural criticism because his critique – even if not considered scientifically valid as a psychology – was practically valuable as a means of putting cultural limits at bay.

Essentially, one could critique moral standards as merely archaic residue of an earlier commonly held superego.

Concept of culture is tightly related to the concept of religion in this thinking. Adherence to cultural understanding permitted one to have “meaning.” But Freudian analysis sidesteps this issue and simply does not permit the question of “meaning” to arise. Life is neither meaningful nor meaningless. This is the religious question.

Freud held that to ask the question concerning “the meaning and value of life he is sick, since objectively neither has any existence.” (27)

More “Religions”

08 Thursday Feb 2018

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I previously posted on politics as religion.  Here is yet another example:

Siegel: Liberalism has taken on a religious aspect. It’s a belief system, and not a system that represents political interests. Liberalism is seen as a source of grace, in religious terms. It is hard to talk to people, when you are effectively suggesting they are not among the blessed (or, to use Thomas Sowell’s phrase, the ‘anointed’), that they are in fact mistaken. Trump is wrong about many things, but you can argue with Trumpism. But it is very hard to argue with contemporary liberalism, especially in its West Coast incarnation.

Just prior to the Super Bowl, the Washington Post wrote on football as Tom Brady’s religion. This is nothing new. The Aztecs played a purposefully religious: “The Aztec ball game had a lot of ritual significance. It was mean to mirror the ball court of the heavens, this being the ball court of the underworld where the sun passed each night.” The games of the ancient Greeks were religious affairs such as the Olympics or Isthmian Games.

Sporting events as religious ceremony has been noted many times:

As Wann and collaborators note, various scholars discuss sport in terms of “natural religion,” “humanistic religion,” and “primitive polytheism” pointing out that “spectators worship other human beings, their achievements, and the groups to which they belong.” And that sports stadiums and arenas resemble “cathedrals where followers gather to worship their heroes and pray for their successes” (1, p. 200). Meanwhile, fans wear the team colors, and bear its flags, icons, and mascots whilst literally singing its praises.

Sport as Religion. Or as The Atlantic writes, “In short, if you look hard at sports, you can’t help but see contours of religion.”

 

 

John Patton on the Treatment of Women in Tanna, Before Christianity

18 Tuesday Jul 2017

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John Patton (1824-1907) was a missionary to the New Hebrides. With the rather common attack upon Christianity in the West as somehow being degrading of women, it is interesting to read Patton’s observations about an explicitly non-Western and non-Christian culture on this point:

Amongst the Heathen, in the New Hebrides, and especially on Tanna, woman is a down-trodden slave of man. She is kept working hard, and bears all the heavier burdens, while he wills by her side with musket, club or spear. If she offends him, he beats or abuses her at pleasure. A savage gave his poor wife a severe beating in front of our house, while in vain we strove to prevent it. Such scenes were so common that no one thought of interfering. Even if the woman died in his hand, or immediately thereafter, neighbors took no notice, if any at all.

…The girls have, with their mother and sisters, to toil and slave in village plantations, to prepare all the materials for fencing these around, to bear every burden, and to be knocked about at the will by men and boys.

Oh, how sad and degraded is the position of woman where the teaching of Christ is unknown, or disregarded though known! It is the Christ of the Bible, it is His Spirit entering into humanity that has lifted woman, and made her helpmate and the friend of man, not his toy or his slave.

“At Home with the Cannibals”.

Leaving all the consequences to the disposal of my Lord, I determined to make an unflinching stand against wife-beating and widow-strangling [when a man died, they would strangle his wife], feeling confident that even their natural consequence would be on my side. I accordingly pleaded with all who were in power to unite and put down these shocking and disgraceful customs. At length, ten Chiefs entered into a covenant not to allow any more beating of wives or strangling of widows, ….One Chief boldly declared, ‘If we did not beat our women, they would need work; they would not fear and obey us; but when we have beaten and killed, and feasted on two or three [they were cannibals] the rest are very quiet and good for a long time to come!”

I tried to show how cruel it was, besides that it made them unable for work, and that kinds would have a much better effect; but he promptly assured me that Tannest woman ‘could not understand kindness.’

“Superstitions and Cruelties.” He then continued onto explain how he sought to teach the men to not abuse the woman. I imagine one point which would be offensive to some now is that he taught the men to bear the heavier burdens, “as men were made stronger, and they were intended to bear the heavier burdens”.

Masterpiece Cakeshop

07 Tuesday Mar 2017

Posted by in Apologetics, Culture, Uncategorized

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The First Amendment prohibits the government from telling private citizens “what they must say.” Agency for Int’l Dev. v. Alliance for Open Soc. Int’l, Inc., 133 S. Ct. 2321, 2327 (2013). It is undisputed that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission (the “Commission”) does not apply CADA to ban (1) an African-American cake artist from refusing to create a cake promoting white-supremacism for the Aryan Nation, (2) an Islamic cake artist from refusing to create a cake denigrating the Quran for the Westboro Baptist Church, and (3) three secular cake artists from refusing to create cakes opposing same- sex marriage for a Christian patron. App. 78a; App. 297a-App. 331a.

Neither should CADA ban Jack Phillips’ polite declining to create a cake celebrating same-sex marriage on religious grounds when he is happy to create other items for gay and lesbian clients. See Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584, 2607 (2015) (“[T]hose who adhere to religious doctrines, may continue to advocate with utmost, sincere conviction that, by divine precepts, same-sex marriage should not be condoned.”).

Here’s the rest of the brief

This is interesting, because it was not the refusal to sell anything: rather, the issue is whether the government can compel speech.

More:

Because of the artistry associated with custom cakes, Phillips also honors God through his work by declining to use his creative talents to design and create cakes that violate his religious beliefs. App. 282-283a, ¶¶ 57-58, 62. This includes cakes with offensive written messages and cakes celebrating events or ideas that violate his beliefs, including cakes celebrating Halloween (a decision that costs him significant revenue), anti-American or anti- family themes, atheism, racism, or indecency. App. 283-284a, ¶¶ 61, 63-64. He also will not create cakes with hateful, vulgar, or profane messages, or sell any products containing alcohol. Id., ¶¶ 59, 61.

Consistent with this longstanding practice, Phillips also will not create cakes celebrating any marriage that is contrary to his understanding of biblical teaching. App. 276-277a, ¶¶ 21, 25. As a Christian, Phillips believes that God ordained marriage as the sacred union between one man and one woman, a union that exemplifies the relationship of Christ and His Church. App. 274- 275a, ¶¶ 10-15. And Phillips’ religious conviction compels him to create cakes celebrating only marriages that are consistent with his understanding of God’s design. App. 275-277a, ¶¶16-22, 25. For this reason, Phillips politely declined to design and create a cake celebrating Respondents Craig’s and Mullins’ same-sex wedding, App. 287a, ¶ 78, but offered to make any other cake for them, id., ¶ 79.

 

This was not bigotry: he did not refuse to sell them anything. He merely treated the couple the same as he did every other patron: there were some-things Jack would not say. Irrespective of how one feels about the underlying wedding, one should be concerned if the government can force speech under threat of penalty. Think of it this, would you like President Obama or President Trump (or both) telling you what you had to say? You can’t pick the guy “on your side”.

 

 

Kierkegaard, The Diary of the Seducer.2

27 Friday Jan 2017

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The “editor” of the “diary” — the whole thing a fiction on a fiction — asks the question of why this “factual” diary had such a “poetical” aspect. The aesthetic aspect of the diary derived from the fact that the “seducer” had such a temperament,

The was the more he himself brought with him. This more was the poetical he enjoyed in the poetic situation of reality; he withdrew this agin in the form poetic reflection. This afforded him a second enjoyment, and his whole life was motived by enjoyment.

This is the “first stage” of human development: the aesthetic, which the first volume of Either/Or seeks to develop and display. This was the whole purpose of the “seduction”. It was the tantalization of desire, not possession of a body, which drove the man, “for he was far to intellectually inclined to be a seducer in the ordinary sense of the world.”

For his part, having brought the girl to the point where “she was read to sacrifice everything”, he broke off the relationship. He did not want her, he wanted the sensation of wanting her. This is what was described in the Immediate Stages of the Erotic, “the erotic here is seduction.”

Thus, the delight derives in the sensation which the seducer manages to derive from the relationship to the other person — the other person is reduced to the object of desire, but has no independent merit as a person. The value of the other is in the sensation they produce in the subject.

This reduction of the other to object, to the sensation they produce does not necessarily mean a pleasant sensation — this is a matter of averting boredom. When we think of this process in such a manner, we can quickly see that the greatest part of our public life and media is built up with human beings who reduce all others into objects to reduce boredom — and, since we are on the other side of Sartre — to create “meaning” (as paltry as it is).

Think of political rallies, demonstrations, riots, demands for “justice” and such in terms of boredom aversion and the creation of “meaning” and they will become instantly more comprehensible. That is why such events and people are not susceptible to reasoned discourse or moral suasion: they are not operating at that “stage” (to use Kierkegaard’s term) of life.  Even the other speaking to them exists for the purpose of averting boredom (and creating meaning).  This throws an interesting light on apologetics.

Soren Kierkegaard: “The Rotation Method” Part One (Either/Or)

04 Wednesday Jan 2017

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This is the most entertaining essay I have ever read on boredom. It begins:

Starting from a principle is affirmed by people of experience to be a very reasonable procedure; I am willing to humor them, and so begin with the principle that all men are bores. Surely no one will prove himself to be so great a bore as to contradict me in this….Boredom is the root of all evil.

In the context of this volume, which is addressing the human being at the aesthetic level of being, this principle cannot be gainsaid. If the point of all life is simply to avoid pain and obtain pleasure, boredom is monster which lurks everywhere (as soon one has food and shelter).

Think of how much effort and treasure is poured into entertainment: movies, music, sports, video-games. Drug taking is primarily to shake off boredom by being easily amused. It is the mark of a  culture which is largely childish. Consider these two sentences and at the same time consider street crime:

In the case of children, the ruinous character of boredom is universally acknowledged. Children are always well-behaved as long as they are enjoying themselves.

Sadly I have known more than one criminal intimately. I have never met the man who stole because he was honestly going to starve after he could not find work. Violence, theft, assaults, are weirdly often a form of entertainment.

He even attributes the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11) to boredom (“To divert themselves they conceived the idea of constructing a tower high enough to reach the heavens.”).

Think of politics: how much of politics is entertaining theater (I am happy here to draw out examples from all parties and candidates sufficient to gore everyone’s ox. But these facts are too well known).

Sadly, too much of the Christian church is little better than second rate theater meant to divert on in the task of “worship”. That does not mean I think that Christian worship should be boring: When it is truly worship, nothing is more riveting. Rather, diversion rather than presentation of the living God is where most “worship” settles (frankly it is easier to be diverting than meet God — it also the reason why it is so easy to forget).

 

So when we think about it: this question of boredom has profound effects: I have only briefly (and in the barest form) considered crime, culture, politics and worship. According to Kierkegaard’s formulation of the aesthetic stage the trouble is that most of world is peopled by those who cannot operate at a more matured level (that is for his later books).

How we were changed after the Civil War

12 Sunday Jun 2016

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We no longer have ears to hear or eyes to see. The eyes and ears of the Civil Warriors were taught during two centuries. Europe’s very first program of universal education began in Protestant areas of Germany in the second half of the 17th century, and the teachers’ manuals offered instruction in reading, writing, arithmetic and four-part harmony. As many German Protestants sought refuge in America as Englishmen, and the hymn-singing culture that produced a Bach or Haendel also informed the soldiers of the Civil War. That is America’s true popular culture, the adornment of its true Protestant mission.

No longer. As Joseph Bottum explains in a 2013 book that I reviewed here, the old American Protestantism has all but been replaced by a secular religion inspired by the old Social Gospel, in which religious categories are twisted to fit the narcissistic sentiments of the descendants of the old Puritans. How did this happen? Perhaps because the sacrifice of the Civil War was too great: it killed or crushed the spirit of the most enthusiastic members of that generation.

Appomattox Through a Glass Darkly — read it, the discussion of music is well worth the time.