Theme: Civilization

RELIGION OF PEACE?

Even if I am skilled in the arts, it is an intellectual skill. Even if I enjoy the arts, it is an intellectual appreciation – a sense of wonder not empathy. I am very well aware that I have a ‘scientistic’ mind both by nature, by upbringing, and by choice, and that experiential methods of argument are exasperating for me. I went to religous schools but I understood the bible as history – and nothing more. The bible’s contents always were nonsense compared to the encyclopedias. Especially its authoritarianism since due to genetic disposition universal in my family, I recoil against authority of any and every kind.. As a child I kept the world map, the constitution, bill of rights, and the declaration on my wall, a set of encyclopedias in my bookcase, and science fiction functioned as my mythos. And that combination of history, law, and myth has stuck with me as my subconscious model both by affinity and choice. I say this because I am aware of my priors both genetic, familial, cultural and experiential.

I get nothing from the life of Siddhartha Budda, the Christ, Muhammed, at all. And while I find it tedious, at least I can understand Confucius. I have no dream-world to invoke through association – only an historical one. I see only argument in favor and against actions for the purpose of producing consequences, and only a green and treed earth to revel in, not a life to be endured or suffered. I do not see man as oppressing me, but man in need of suppression of his barbarism. I see man struggling with his incompetence to organize, not skillful oppressors. And perhaps most importantly, I see all language as pretense for power. And in the Koran I see nothing more than a set of prescriptions, promises, and threats designed for the purpose of obtaining power. And in the history of islam I see nothing more than the use of that book to expand by conquest and to institute regressiveness upon civilization.

So when someone says “Islam is a Religion of Peace” I see no evidence of it. I see islamic civilization as the greatest failure of any extant group, the greatest threat to mankind, and an interesting problem since for christian africa, christian europe, hindu india, buddhist asia alike – everywhere islam goes it is an enemy that it seems rational for all the great powers to eradicate the same way that the west eradicated the religion of marxist communism.

I don’t know what other people see, hear and feel in that book, any more than in the bible or the study of buddha, or the study of judaic law. The content and purpose of these books is military: obtaining power over men and women by force of lying, deceit, shaming, rallying, and violence.

The purpose of Aristotle is to give us power over nature so that we may transform it into a garden preferable to man. Not to gain power over others but over ourselves. Not to impose stasis, but invention. Not positive command to specific actions or goals, but prohibition of that which inhibits actions and goals. Not to command man, but to prohibit man from command.

In my work I have come to see all man’s words as defense of, justification of, negotiation on behalf of, and assertion of, his reproductive strategy. This is a less ‘christian’ version of Nietzsche’s will to power. Instead it is a will to acquire, of which power is merely one asset to inventory.

I do not see in books what is said. I see what strategy is being defended, justified, negotiated, and asserted. I do not allow myself to be programmed by suggestion, and even if I did, I may be incapable of it. In fact, if suggestion is the method of communication I am largely immune.

But you see, that is the purpose of narratives: to program by suggestion. A recipe is very different from a story. A natural law under rule of law very different from both. But a narrative programs by suggestion, from the invocation of experience, and not from recipe (positive) and law (negative).

So if someone can please explain to me the criteria by which one could judge islam as a religion of peace, I would love to know. But as far as I can tell it is just another scourge of the earth and it has been since its invention. And every people conquered by it suffer for it.

It may be effective for the devil to convince us he does not exist. It is even better if he convinces us that he is god. It is possible the Jehova is the devil. It is certain that Allah is. Not by verbal analysis but by demonstrated outcome. Not by claims, not words, not ‘meaning’ (suggestion), but by evidence of the consequences of the long term use of those words.

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev, Ukraine

ROLE OF RELIGION IN THE 21st CENTURY?

FOOD FOR THOUGHT:

I usually position this question within intellectual history as the sequence:

(a) anthropomorphism / narrative oral tradition / hunter gathering / Shamans vs Warriors / Tribalism

(b) theism / writing / agrarianism / Temple and Church Bureaucracy vs Warriors / Tribal Unificationism

(c) moralism (rationalism) and modernism / printing / capitalism / State/Temple-Merchant-State shared power / State Formation.

(d) postmodern propaganda, pseudoscience and innumeracy / mass media, democratic secular socialist humanism / industrialism / State-Academy-Media against Warrior and Merchant Class and absent Temple class / (new world order formation???)

(e) scientific / digital zero-distribution-cost / (worldwide search yet unfound???) / information era / (power structure still emerging but swinging toward authoritarian capitalism) / (new order formation – looks like return to higher tribalism? Nationalism?)

I agree that ‘religion’ is with us to stay, but religion requires shared belief in a falsehood, for purposes of cooperating and organizing – usually as a resistance movement against human discretion and hubris.

We know that religious experience (spirituality) is caused by the pack-response (submission to the pack). We know that religions and cults must be costly for members, to survive their initial members.

We know that religions are advantageous for members in establishing limits of rule, moral norms, and metaphysical value judgements.

For example, the TED movement is considered by many to be a postmodern church, and each lecture no different from a Sermon from the Pulpit, where technology and will provide the promise of salvation.

We know that postmodernism is a religious revolt against the meritocratic unpleasantness of science. We know that evangelical christianity is a revolt against the secular state. (and it works).

But where does this lead us? I have been working on this problem for a while now and I am struggling with it.

Cheers

Curt