On 3/9/07, Doyle Saylor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
There are religious theories of the mind, but beyond the cheap thrills of meditating, what can they do?
One of the problems of Marxism is that it's been an expensive thrill from the get-go. It takes a great deal of formal education -- education beyond the reach of many in the world -- to be able to even just read the three volumes of Marx's Capital. And as Marxism has become incorporated into academic professions as one of many methodologies, the cost of acquiring Marxism has gone up. Can historical materialism offer itself at a lower cost to the masses? On 3/9/07, Doyle Saylor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
The great religions success are about the theory of great bodies of people united by the thought of the central figures of the religion. The anti-materialist content just allows a fertile ground for finding ways to empirically use practical techniques to bind together the network of minds.
Socialism has often functioned similarly, revolving around charismatic leadership, but that's one of the areas that historical materialism has not investigated deeply. It's Max Weber and contemporary Weberians like Pierre Bourdieu who have something to say about the question of charisma. On 3/9/07, ravi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
At around 8/3/07 11:50 pm, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: > ... but in all likelihood religion predates the > rise of class society and will probably outlive it, how to face death > -- one's own or others' -- being one of the questions that religion > may be better equipped to address than science. Bingo! I like the post-Ahmedinijad Yoshie even better than Version 1.0 ;-). Way more parsimonious explanations. May be wrong, but at least I understand it! (in this case, I believe it is right... and in this case, I think E.O.Wilson, the little crybaby, is also right).
I still don't really "get" religion -- the dominant culture of Japan that I grew up with, I fear, is not exactly conducive to understanding religion well* -- but I'm making efforts. * Today, I was having lunch with kids from my Persian class and our Persian teacher. Many of them have connections with the predominantly Islamic world: two of them are Iranian-American, one is Kurdish-American, one is Afghan-Kashmiri American (what an interesting combination!), one is from Malaysia, and so on. None of the girls wears hijab -- not even a micromini headscarf of the sort that fashionable Tehran women wear. Their dress, conversation, attitude toward religious holidays, etc. didn't suggest they are religious in any way (except the Afghan-Kashmiri boy who excused himself from class on Ashura), but today I realized that most of them don't eat pork, and the only people who are _really irreligious_ at the table may be me and our Persian teacher. :-0 I suppose that's an example of what's called flexible acculturation. I haven't figured out if that's more of act of cultural solidarity or refashioning of religion or both, though, in this particular instance. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>
