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From: javilk@netcom.com (Javilk)
Subject: Re: The function of religion is not to help you understand reality...
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Date: Wed, 16 Nov 1994 11:40:07 GMT
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stidd sean c (stidd@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu) wrote:
: Dear Mr. Javlik,
:   I don't really disagree with any of your criticisms except the 
: final one, although I do of course disagree with the rhetoric of 
: post-industrial scientific "progress" that seems to accompany them.  
 ---- Since I write a bit much, not all responses occur on all forums, you
didn't quote me, your flowery abstract speech tends, to me, to obscure
your points, and you did not offer much in the way of concrete examples, I
have difficulty in following what you are saying. It was a bit thin for
me, and I am a bit sleepy at about 3:00 am. 

: Of course, the idea that it is only improvements
: in material conditions that constitute improvements in our lives is absurd 
: and dangerous... but I don't think you were suggesting that, only that some 
: attention to the details of our material conditions is important.

 ---- Look at your history, and you will see that much of what we call
human kindness to each other on the broader (inter-family) scale only
occurs when humans have enough food and shelter -- what we, in today's
more complex society, call prosperity. You will note, that a large
proportion of Neo-Nazi skinheads, Fundamentalists of all kinds, etc. come
from what we call deprived backgrounds within our own society.  When
things were much worse, people habitually hung, tortured, and burned
others. 
   I forget what Masilow's Hierarchy of Human Needs, is like, but it seems
to me, we go for: 
     Food, Shelter, Health, Sex, Self expression, ...and only then,
spiritual things as part of the existentialistic tendencies of the Well
Fed and well respected.  Of course, I could have it wrong.  Some might go
for sex as a way to food and shelter. 

:   As to your final comments about "normalizing" being bad, they 
: are a fine display of the naivete of modern bourgeois antinomianism.  It 
: is an easy and trivial thing to suppose from the protected enclaves 
: of the American suburbs that if people "just do their own thing,"

 ---- (Yawn,) The Declaration of Independence speaks of Life, Liberty, and
the Pursuit of Happiness. That means, the right to do our own thing
without having some appointed (or self-assumed) Censor telling us what is
"Right", and what is "Wrong".  We are free to look at the RESULTS of our
own actions, then learn from them, and the examples of others, combining
and elaborating upon them in a never ending series of personal
experiments. 
   You want a dictatorship?  Go elsewhere! No one of us knows the best
path.  See all of us idiots on the net?  Who can tell which one of us is
right?   But by listening, we all get new ideas to try.
   Are you aware that most revolutionaries seem to come from middle class
apologists for their own comfort?  They do tend to kill quite a few
trying to create their "perfect world order". I prefer our chaotic ways,
and the regularly scheduled revolutions of the ballot box. They tend to be
less bloody and more reversible.  As one of my sig files says: 

Think Manageable, Think Personal, Think Responsible, Think Pagan. ---
Then take what actions may help all, and hurt none. -----------------

:The white-collar laborer of modern industrial
: culture is a throughly tamed, weakened, and spiritless human being - of 
: course he can be allowed to do his own thing, because his own thing isn't 
: going to hurt anybody else in a direct or concrete way.

 ---- I am a white collar person. A suit and tie Pagan, in fact. A large
portion of the people on these forums are white collar. You don't sound
too much like a day laborer either.  I see more vitality, more focus, and
yes, more spirituality amongst the white collar workers than those who's
primary energies are directed to getting enough food to survive, then
sitting in front of the glowing vacuum bottle, and/or sucking on a beer
bottle. (At least I use an LCD screen.)
   By the way, your phraseology is reminiscent of socialists to me, people
who would impose their will upon me "for my own good". For the most part,
let us decide what we wish to do, whom we wish to worship, and how to
spend or invest our own money. 

:   On the other hand, even in the case of modern industrial culture, there 
: are certain overall patterns...

 ---- Of what?  Environmental destruction and man's inhumanity to man? 
This is new? We are responsible for our OWN acts, not some long forgotten
Pope who said "suffer not a witch to live", not Hitler's, not Stalin's,
nor Mao's, nor Shaka's, nor Idi Amin's. 
    Freedom means some people will overstep the bounds of reason.
Conditions change.  At one time, behavior A insures survival, at another,
it's behavior B. If we have examples of A and B within our ken, we may
make our own choices, no matter how horrendous they may seem to the other
group.  As long as we do not strive to kill the other group, nor they, us. 
    Injustice is generally rectified by a bunch of farmers with pitchforks. 
Some, of course, now wear uniforms and carry other weapons, but the soil
farmers, the data farmers, and their kin generally do still decide the
verdict.  Fortunately! 
    I fail to see the point in your writing.  I know that from time to
time I too, rant on and on with low thematic content.  Methinks, however,
that the writing I am responding to is of a mite thinner.  Or I am half
asleep. Could be the latter, could be the (yawn,) latter. 

: Therefore, I suggest that you do so, and not waste time sneering at the 
: idea that there could be any sort of normative perspective.  You do have 
: beliefs about what the good for human beings is, and ideas about how 
: those beliefs ought to be realized in the world.  So stand up for them.

 ---- To adapt a well worn phrase, A single perspective is the hobgoblin
of tinpot dictators and would be censors, moral rightists; fundamentalists
of all sorts. Let us be wrong now and then, even often; let us be chaotic,
confused, and doubtful that we know what we are doing.  For when we doubt,
when we question, when we run our pilot experiments and make our mistakes;
when we and discuss those results with one another; then we see what works
and what works better.  To do that, we need freedom. 
   The great successes of America in this world, are not due to superior
natural resources, better ports, or "The Will of God". Russia has FAR
greater natural resources and was far more spiritually religious, or so I
hear.  It is even believed by some oil companies they may have more oil
than the Middle East.  So what happened?   What did they lack that we had?
   Our successes are due to our willingness to selfishly try things, and
exchange, yes, _Sell_ what succeeds.  Others, seeing they can obtain
better things, then strive to be able to exchange, _Buy_ them for their
own selfish purposes.  And the wheels of commerce and industry start
turning. 
    Those wheels may not be great, we may have a lot of trouble with them,
they run over people, crushing a few now and then, and sometimes more; but
what better alternatives do you see out there in the real world?  Whom do
nations strive to imitate?  Which nation do immigrants spend their life
savings trying to enter illegally -- to have not the hope of a citizen,
but the hope of a fugitive? What Goddess did the Chinese raise in Tianamen
Square? 
   They seek our Freedom, they dream of our Democracy.
   Sure we can do better.  But let's not try too hard at reforming our
precious freedom. Rather, let each one of us try to reform ourselves as
individuals, that the occasional errors of one or another's ways do not
drag the entire country down, as they have the great monoliths of the
past. 

:   Without an overriding sense for justice and the good, and without 
: attention to the true needs of human beings, material and spiritual, 
: science can only be of a very limited utility indeed to humanity.

 ---- Like only curing tuberculosis, diptheria, whooping cough and polio
are, in and of themselves, of little utility? Like only making it possible
to live two to three times as long as we did in the wild is, in and of
itself, of little use? 
  Who funded these developments?  People who had money!  People who have
enough left over after their daily needs, to be willing to risk loosing
some in exchange for the possibility of winning more. People who were, and
are, free! 
   You forget the witch burnings were also about freedom to oppose "The
Will of God", and the will of a rigid religious monolith, with personal
medicine.  This is why many of the early medical advances came out of Free
Nations.  And why, with the overly zealous antics of the FDA, we have
fallen so far behind Western Europe.  (Much of that stuff is manufactured
here, folks; it just can't be sold here.  And now they want to restrict
mega-doses of vitamins and amino acids?)
     Technology sounds useful to me.  And as it helps us climb Masilows
hierarchy of human needs, it ENABLES us to become better, more _HumanE_
beings. For example, look at how the egotism of the deities seems to have
been diminishing over the ages.  (Leaving out Hollow-wood movie
directors.)

     I may have mis-read your letter, if so forgive me. Do try to be less
abstract next time.  That way my response might make more sense to you and
me, not to mention the thousands of other people who will read this
through time, writing their Ph.D. dissertations on what we "really meant"
by all of this stuff, the way others oft read incredible social themes 
into an author's smiple tales of his friends and relatives.
   (I mean, they ARE archiving all this drivel in some great big data dump
someplace.  Some poor shnooks looking for thesis topics will inevitably
paw through all this drivel for hundreds of years to come!  And if you
think it makes little sense to you and me now, wait till you read what
they think we meant, after all the paradigms have shifted a few times! Or
heaven forbid, try to make a discoursive artificially intelligent Pagan
Entity out of all this drivel. So please, out of respect for those
THOUSANDS of confused future Ph.D. candidates, not to mention today's
readers, do be a bit more concrete. And I will try to do my best not to
write my replies at 3:00 am, when I am three quarters asleep and make no
sense even to myself.)

I do tend to rant myself, don't I.   Sigh...

Good Night.

-J- (Javilk@netcom.com) -------------------------------------------------
One slightly used ex-husband, good condition, likes thinking, walking ---
Sitting forelornly in Hecate's Used Husband Lot, The Moonlight Zone. ----
E-mail me for info on how to preview this Fine Classical Merchandise. ---
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

P. S. Anyone know how to get out of this used husband lot?
It's dusty out here.  Send me escape plans in... something.
How about Tif files, 
Don't use cakes, She has X-Ray vision, you know.
-- 
