From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sat Jan 01 2005 - 22:04:27 GMT
Marsha,
dmb said trading Christianity for the New Age is a case of accepting:
"...even more ridiculous beliefs from an even more obsolete religion in an
even more reactionary way"...
In response, MarshaV asked:
I'm curious. Would you explain what you mean?
Adam Watt also asked:
I second that curiosity. I have another too, regarding what your
apparently agreed 'degeneracy' is referring to, specifically what
degenerate behaviour you think is 'motivated by a desire for DQ'.
dmb replies:
I should start by saying that the new age movement is many things, but as a
generalization it seeks to go backward in various ways. The Wiccans, the
Druids, the crystal healing magic makers and such all basically neo-pagans,
a reversion to the time before the development of Christianity. It is a
regression to a place even further back in time. And this is no accident. I
think it is quite in line with the other kinds of degeneracy we know from
recent history. Since the advent of Modernity, there has been a series of
romantic, back to nature movements as a reaction to the encroachments of
technology and all that. The hippies, beatnicks and bohemians are only some
of the more recent examples in this trend. As Pirsig explains it, the hippy
movement was a moral movement that failed. It was moral to push for the
kinds of changes we actually saw in the 60's, such as the expansion of civil
rights for black Americans. But in the end, social and intellectual values
were not just challenged and criticized, they were abandoned. Pirsig says
the end and failure of the movement is the result of mistaking biological
quality for Dynamic Quality and by this I think he means the whole back to
nature, free love, live in a teepee thing. This is basically a regression
back to a primary culture prior to civilization, if not pure biology. Then
there is also the mistake of confusing enlightenment with being stoned outta
yer gourd. Both Pirsig and Campbell speak to this issue, as you may recall
from the "code of art" thread....
"......This last, the Dynamic-static code, says what's good in life
isn't defined by society or intellect or biology. What's good is
freedom from domination by any static pattern, but that freedom
doesn't have to be obtained by the destruction of the patterns
themselves." Pirsig in LILA
"One cannot help remarking, however, that since about the year 1914 there
has been evident in our progressive world an increasing disregard and even
disdain for those rital forms that once brought forth, and up to now have
sustained, this infinitely rich and fruitfully developing civilizaton. There
is a ridiculous nature-boy sentimentalism that with increasing force is
taking over. Its beginnings date back to the 18th century of Rousseau, with
its artificial back-to-nature movements and conceptions of the Noble Savage.
Americans abroad, from the time of Mark Twain onward, have been notorious
exemplars of the ideal, representing as conspicuoulsly as possible the
innocent belief that Europeans and Asians, living in older, stuffier
enviroments, should be refreshed and awakened to their own natural
innocences by the unadulterated boorishness of a product of God's Country,
our sweet American soil, and our Bill of Rights. In Germany, between the
wars, the Wandervogel, with their knapsacks and guitars, and the later
Hitler Youth, were representatives of the reactionary trend in modern life.
And now, right here in God's Country itself (published in 1972) idyllic
scenes of barefoot white and black 'Indians' camping on our sidewalks with
their tomtoms, bedrolls, and papooses are promising to turn entire sections
of our cities into fields for anthropological research. For, as in all
societies, so among these, there are distinguishing costumes, rites of
initiation, required beliefs and the rest. They are here, however,
explicitly reactionary and reductive, as though in the line of biological
evolution one were to regress from the state of the chimpanzee to that of
the starfish or even amoeba. The complexity of social patterning is rejected
and reduced, and with that, life freedom and force have not been gained but
lost." Campbell in MYTHS TO LIVE BY
Thanks for asking,
dmb
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