(COURT OF SILLY IDEAS) PROBLEMS WITH ANY NEW CIVIC ‘CHURCH’ One of the primary r

(COURT OF SILLY IDEAS) PROBLEMS WITH ANY NEW CIVIC ‘CHURCH’

One of the primary reasons we live in little isolated boxes is so that we can create our own illusion of status. We hate it when that status is challenged. But it is a status of our own construction. We are sold this fantasy by Government, Universities, Advertisers, and in some cases, lenders.

We could ‘buy’ that status cheaply because the ‘Blue Period’ of american postwar prosperity made it possible to transfer people from farm and apartment, to industry and home. But there is no reason that this can continue. Those conditions no longer exist. We are just spending our heritage, and impoverishing the future thanks to baby boomers. (I am Jones, not Boomer, generation.)

One of the things going to ‘church’ or whatever public ceremony you choose, does, is contextualize your status. And for some people that’s good. For some it’s unnecessary. And for others it’s downright unpleasant because its contradictory.

If some civic gathering (feast ritual) on a regular basis is status producing, personally advantageous, or economically advantageous, then I assume people would go. But the problem is creating that environment in modernity. Right now it’s the false promise of academia. Academia just sorts. It doesn’t teach us anything.

THE CIVIC SOCIETY

What I think all of us want is the true commitment of community. And that institution CANNOT be the state. The state can only apply violence. That is all it can do. WIthout the extended family, we require the civic society and the state has stolen it from us.

NEEDS

1) Rituals (christening, maturity, education, wedding, death)

2) Festivals (holidays)

3) Education (technical, civil-ethical, historical, literary)

4) Banking

5) Personal Financial Management

6) Insurance

7) Elder advice and counsel.

Most of this would be fairly easy to accomplish with the professionalization of teaching, banking and insurance.

MORE LATER.