People of deep faith don’t usually try to impose their beliefs on others. They don’t jump on platforms to salute their own piety. In Texas, some folks who have shown little or no compassion for the needy, who have scorned the tenets of their own religion, want to post the Ten Commandments in every classroom across the state. That way, no one will every break any of them, right? No one will covet what others have, no one will commit adultery, etc., etc.
Michelle Boorstein writes in the Washington Post about the growing demand in Texas to flaunt the symbols of religion. The legislature votes tonight on posting the Ten Commandments. This is the same legislature that allows anyone to carry a deadly weapon and refuses to protect the lives of innocents. Massacre after massacre in schools, bars, and residential neighborhoods, but nothing to protect people from killers. Hypocrites!
The legislature will vote in a few hours, or the proposal dies.
AUSTIN — Texas lawmakers are scheduled to vote Tuesday on whether to require that the Ten Commandments be posted in every classroom in the state, part of a newly energized national effort to insert religion into public life.
Supporters believe the Supreme Court’s ruling last summer in favor of a high school football coach who prayed with players essentially removed any guardrails between religion and government.
The bill, which is scheduled Tuesday for the House floor, is one of about a half-dozen religion bills approved this session by the Texas Senate, including one that would allow uncertified chaplains to replace trained, professional counselors in K-12 schools.
Texas’ biennial legislative session is short, chaotic and packed, and it was not certain Monday whether the Ten Commandments bill would definitely get a vote Tuesday. If it doesn’t by midnight, it’s dead for the session. But groups that watch church-state issues say efforts nationwide to fund and empower religion — and, more specifically, a particular type of Christianity — are more plentiful and aggressive than they have been in years. Americans United for Separation of Church and State says it is watching 1,600 bills around the country in states such as Louisiana and Missouri. Earlier this year, Idaho and Kentucky signed into law measures that could allow teachers and public school employees to pray in front of and with students while on duty.
Many legislators cite the Supreme Court’s June ruling in favor of Coach Joe Kennedy of Bremerton, Wash., who prayed with his players on the 50-yard-line. They see the Supreme Court as righting the American ship after a half-century of wrongly separating church and state.
“There is absolutely no separation of God and government, and that’s what these bills are about. That has been confused; it’s not real,” said Texas state Sen. Mayes Middleton (R), who co-sponsored or authored three of the religion bills. “When prayer was taken out of schools, things went downhill — discipline, mental health. It’s something I heard a lot on porches when I was campaigning. It’s something I’ve thought about for a long time.”
Those who object to the bills say they reflect a country that is tipping into a new, dangerous phase in its church-state balance, with people in power who want to assert a version of Christian dominance.
If the Founding Fathers wanted the new nation to be a Christian nation, the Constitution they drafted would say so. But it specifically says that there must be freedom of religion, the freedom to practice any religion or no religion. And the Constitution says there shall be no “establishment” of religion. That clearly means that the state shall not sponsor or favor any religion.
Texas is at war with the Founding Fathers and the Constitution.
Which version of the Commandments?! Jewish? Catholic? Protestant? Y’all best not teach my children the wrong version! Are y’ll fitting to tell Jewish children it’s okay to work on the Sabbath? That’s a violation of my RELIGIOUS FREEDOM. It’s unAmerican, it’s unConstitutional, and it’s downright blasphemous.
Also, off topic, Diane, I wish to express to you my desire that you post this from NPE and NJ.com here on the blog: https://networkforpubliceducation.org/blog-content/christopher-tienken-and-julia-larrea-borst-please-get-rid-of-testing-it-just-doesnt-work/. It’s the big one.
Texas (and some other, but not all, yet, red states along with some local areas in blue states) represents a different type of coup that I think is being led by the 38-year old Federalist Society that’s allied with ALEC and Charles Koch, et al.
Thanks to Traitor Trump giving the Federalist Society whatever they wanted while he was scheming to control the Repulibican Party and stay president for life, that Federalist Society now have judges that belong to their seditious organization [judges they control all over the country – including at least five or six seats on the U.S. Supreme Court] that were appointed by Trump.
“The conservative club that came to dominate the Supreme Court”
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/03/in-audiobook-takeover-noah-feldman-lidia-jean-kott-explore-how-federalist-society-captured-supreme-court/
“What Trump has done to the Courts Explained”
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/12/9/20962980/trump-supreme-court-federal-judges
“The Weekend at Yale That Changed American Politics — It’s not too extreme to say that one wonky student group founded in 1982 has reshaped the Supreme Court, and the nation. What actually happened at the birth of the Federalist Society?”
By MICHAEL KRUSE September/October 2018
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/08/27/federalist-society-yale-history-conservative-law-court-219608/
“…Trump. As a presidential candidate in 2016, Trump promised that his nominees would “all [be] picked by the Federalist Society.” Yet, according to a person with direct knowledge of the situation, the list of Supreme Court nominees that Trump drew from in creating a conservative supermajority was devised by Leo alone. Neither the organization’s top brass nor its board directors had any official role in crafting it. …”
… “Leonard Leo, who helped to choose judicial nominees for former President Donald Trump, obtained a historic $1.6 billion gift for his conservative legal network via an introduction through the Federalist Society, whose tax status forbids political activism.” …
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/02/leonard-leo-federalist-society-00094761
Leonard Leo is right wing Catholic with 9 kids. The Koch-funded Paul Weyrich who co-founded ALEC, the religious right and the Heritage Foundation was right wing Catholic.
The SCOTUS judges making decisions in favor of elimination of the separation between church and state are right wing Catholic. Their decisions provide funding for Catholic -affiliated organizations. In almost all of the 50 states, there are state Catholic Conferences that politic. Reportedly, lobbyists are part of the Conferences.
As just one example of the staff of the Catholic Conferences, in Colorado, the Executive Director of the state’s Catholic Conference was formerly with the Koch organization and with EdChoice.
Others at the blog have read Mary Jo McConahay’s new book, “Playing God…. and have cited passages that confirm the substantial role that right wing Catholics have played in turning the country to a right wing vision.
People of deep faith don’t usually
try to impose their beliefs on others,
BUT that usually depends on the
beliefs.
Unless you believe in the made-up
rules, handed down by the made-up,
rulers, in the land of made-up words,
you won’t understand or be understood.
Belief quacks like a cognitive source.
The Wiccans are not going to be happy with this! They will want their rules posted as well. https://eternalhauntedsummer.com/issues/summer-solstice-2012/a-witchs-ten-commandments/
After that, Judaism, Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Baha’i, Confucianism, Jainism, and Shinto, and relating each to Neo-Pagan religions.
You forgot many other religions. Jehovah’s Witnesses, Unitarian Universalist, many many others. Personally, my view is that if Texas intends to post the 10 Commandments, they should be written in Hebrew.
@Diane — I should have said, “To name a few to start, but not limited to…” That’s why there is a First Amendment. Yes, the true word of God was in Hebrew and then (as my Rabbi friend told me) to transcribe “was to deceive” because once the Bible was written in other languages, it was not the direct word of God. And what about all the kids who simply want to go to school and read a book, write a story, or do a math problem? Too much.
Jehovahs Witnesses, born in the harsh environment of Nazi Germany, will definitely not want this. Their religion already enjoins them from participating in religious holidays. Anti-trinitarian, they are opposed to any government mention of religion.
And as a person who paid for nearly all his supplies to actually TEACH, how much money is this taking away from supply budgets? “Hey school, can I have some money for my printer cartridges?” “No, we don’t have money for that!” Here, hang this fancy sign in your room.” Uh, I am Muslim. And so on and so on…That’s why there are parochial schools where you CAN PAY for your child to attend if you do not like a free public education for ALL creeds, races, and religious faiths.
“Yes, the true word of God was in Hebrew”
Says who?
Horse manure.
Ok. Say on another note, are you a hockey player/fan?
Been a fan since I first saw a hockey game on Wild World of Sports in the Mid Sixties about the time the Blues came into existence. Been following it ever since.
Wish I could still play. Last played (goaltender) about 13 years ago at our high school alumni game. Needless to say I was the oldest player at the time. Now the old body doesn’t allow for that.
How about you?
By the way “Fighting ain’t hockey!”
Grew up in the mean streets of Alameda, CA playing street hockey. There was a group of us who had our CCM wooden sticks with black cloth tape. My best buddy had season tickets to the California Golden State Seals. He has a picture of him and his mom in their seats along the ice — no glass, just a rail. I remember seeing Gump Worsley tending goal with no mask. We learned to skate at Berkeley Iceland. We also watched the Berkeley Bears. I remember the rink guy saying, “Watch the puck. That puck will fly up here an kill you!” Later, we formed another street hockey team at CalPoly, SLO. The frat guys thought “fighting and slamming us into the fence” was hockey. Too bad they didn’t know how to stick handle as we finessed our way to winning nearly every game. My friend and I drove to UCSD to play in another street hockey (on carpet). Here, I ended up playing goalie, full pads (old school) and getting dinked by none other than Charles Schultz’ son from Santa Barbara. Loads of fun. I am a Sharks’ fan, but do not recognize the team any more; all our players were traded away and Lil’ Joe + Burns (Carolina) in the playoffs on the brink of elimination, but producers. I ended up playing ice hockey (NNHL) in San Diego. We had a lot of transplants from Michigan. Here, I got to meet Gordie Howe. We were in a tournament in Orange County and he was the sponsor or something. He signed my program and said, “You guys get to play for fun. When I was playing it was my job.” We recently went to a Sharks/Vegas game. I had a little girl behind me screaming not cheering. Geez. I was about to take a penalty for hip checking her into the ozone. Funny, in Vegas you go through casinos to finally get to the venue. And, when someone goes into the penalty box, they yell, “Shame, shame, shame.” They have an irritating dude who goes around and “clanks” his shield which makes an irritating sound. My friend’s son (a Sharks prospect) played for all kinds of AHL teams. He just finished played in Slovenia; now he is heading for Sweden. Love hockey. It’s as they say around here, “a religion.”
Ah, the Oakland Seals! Got to meet the baddest of bad guys of the time-Carol Vadnais after the 1971 All-Star game in St. Louis. Was the nicest person you’d want to meet, hanging out with a couple of us young teens for10-15 minutes or so after the game. Loved those Seal white skates.
@ Duane — I just sent your reply to my best buddy who had season tickets to the Seals. He will get a kick out of it. What about those Panthers, eh?
How about Tkachuk, eh? St. Louis boy (even though he went to my high school’s arch enemy-Chaminade Prep. One wouldn’t normally think of St. Louis as a source of high caliber NHL level players but they’ve put out quite a few in the last decade or so.
Holy Snikeys! Right KAH-CHUK scores again. Talking about St. Louis, my high school buddy’s son, Robby Jackson, was on the AHL team for St. Louis, then he went to Tulsa and a few other places. We went to see him play when he was at St. Cloud. Fun hockey nights. And St. Louis seems more likely to have hockey than Cali! https://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/pdisplay.php?pid=170304
I suppose that you are going to tell us that it was written in the trails of parboiling liquid left by His noodly appendages, Duane.
While I hadn’t thought of that, sounds ridiculous enough to be considered holey scriptural FSM thought.
The religions in the US should be ranked in terms of political influence in key areas- ability to get government money for their sect, ability to take away liberty through political process i.e. gay rights, reproductive rights, etc.
The sects are DEFINITELY not all the same relative to impact in the public square. It deflects to imply that they are.
When Jesus talked about the Ten Commandments, he summarized them in Matt 7-12 with the Golden Rule, that generalized relationship statement that appears in every ethical system since Confucius, and says this “is the law and the prophets.”
So these guys that want to post the ten on the wall remind me of the Pharisees, at whom Mathew aimed his writings. These guys wore parts of the law on various appendages of their garments to remind them of the importance they held in the faith. But Jesus call the society to revolutionary love, even willingness to sacrifice oneself for one’s enemies. Hence true Christian belief. Hence all the modern avoidance of what Jesus really said suggests that these guys are off base.
It’s all about revolutionary love.
Matthew 6: 5-6
Roy was teaching. I don’t think that Yeshua of Nazareth meant that one should not teach, given that THAT IS WHAT HE DID.
And I was adding to his commentary not challenging it.
Ah, I see, Duane. My apologies.
Duane: I bet his suggestion that the leaders of the day were hypocrites made those leaders really mad. Many of them thought that following rules assured divine favor. Publicly following the rules was a thing that obviously existed then as now. When people insist on public prayer, I often think of these verses, which tell us to confine ourselves privately for our communication with the divine as each of us perceives it. It is difficult to follow any writing without contradicting its basic intent. I work to not be a hypocrite, usually, I fail
I used to consider myself a Christian. I taught Sunday school to adults and kids. I took part in an 8 year Bible study. I can’t consider myself a Christian anymore. The religion has gotten too ugly, hateful, exclusive. Jesus would not recognize today’s “Christians.” I know this post will get hateful comments. But that is the norm of so many of today’s “Christians” – hate.
More blood has been shed in the name of religion. Just watch Vikings and the battle between Christians and Pagans. Susan, not what the Christianity I studied, either.
The Christians have let rivers of blood throughout two millennia, throughout the globe, under the banner of their Prince of Peace. Rivers of it. Someone should write a definitive accounting. It’s horrifying to anyone who actually knows any of the history of their wars of faith and wars of eradication of heresies and wars of colonial nationalism and and and and and and. . . .
You nailed it, Susan.
I too usde to consider myself a Christian. I was four years old and didn’t know any better than to believe the one body of superstition out of many hundreds of thousands that I happened to be born into.
Susan,
Thank you for writing your comment. I agree with you. The period between the mid-30’s and the 70’s reflected the Social Gospel movement. It resulted in FDR’s New Deal Legislation.
The general public understands “Christian” to mean protestant and yes, as a collective, their influence is largely on the right. There are well placed people in media who further the “Christian” narrative in order to protect the right wing shift in the Catholic Church. Politically, the American Catholic Church is a powerhouse. They have two universities (Georgetown and Catholic University) in the seat of power, D.C., that have influence and both are connected to Charles Koch (Jane Mayer’s book, Dark Money, describes him). Staff at EPPC which is heavily Catholic have been described as the epicenter of the anti-woke legislation in states. The Federalist Society’s right wing success is credited to Leonard Leo, a right wing Catholic.
The Citizen’s United decision was rendered by right wing Catholics. There is not one evangelical Christian on the US Supreme Court. There are almost 50 state Catholic Conferences. Some reportedly have paid lobbyists.
An internet search of individual states and school choice will show you how deeply involved the Conferences are in promoting school privatization. It is the untold story of our age.
Jefferson warned, in every age, in every country, the priest aligns with the despot.
Btw- Georgetown didn’t admit its first Black student until 1953. In 2022, their law school hired Ilya Shapiro for a top administrative position in constitutional law. He is from the Koch network. He was made infamous for his anti-Ketanji Brown tweet.
Harvard Constitutional Law Professor, Adrian Vermuele speaks in favor of giving preference to Catholics in immigration. Well-placed… If you hear the term, common good, from a right wing Catholic, they mean what is good for the Catholic sect.
So, Moses came down from the mountain (Horeb, or Sinai) and said, “I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that I got him down to ten. The bad news is that adultery is still in.”
Let he in the Texas legislature who is without sin cast the first stone.
Anyone?
xoxoxoxo
These people care nothing for the Constitution. They have never believed they had to play by the same rules as the rest of the country. They are not Americans, they are squatters with guns.
Trump accelerated this and enabled it. But this has been coming for a long time. Obama apologized, but he was right: These are the people who cling to their religion and their guns. Change terrifies them. Worse, they believed the world would always be as simple as a Western. When the Westerns were all lies.
Dare we say that this Brown shirt zeal is deplorable?
It’s beyond that. The Republican Party has become a party of thugs.
LOL. You are on a roll, Diane!
And, what happened to the, separation of church and state, and, wouldn’t there be, the breach in the freedom of religion, if, not everyone in the class is, of the, same religions, or, maybe, they’re, planning to, round up all the, Christians, all the Jews, all the others who don’t believe in the same God, and, separate them, by religious sects, into, different classroom settings, and then, how can you, be certain, that, all these, different classrooms’ teachers are, equally, qualified, to, instruct the students, based off of the, same, curricula???
yup. it makes zero sense
So, here’s a concern. Suppose that Arkansas posts the version of the “ten commandments” that appears in Exodus, and Texas posts the DIFFERING version that appears in Deuteronomy, both of which are infallibly what HE wrote with HIS very finger, and then, in accordance with Christian tradition, they declare Holy War on one another and slaughter hundreds of thousands of the citizens of one another’s states in the name of the Prince of Peace and over the question of which excerpt from a Bronze Age tribal legal code must be taught to kids in the 21st century so that they can live by it or spend eternity in hellfire (you know–like the war between those who believe in cracking the big end of the egg and those who believe in crackling the little end in Gulliver’s Travels). This would be in keeping with Christian tradition but would take time away from their state pastimes of staring vaguely into the distance and spitting.
cx: each of which is infallibly the one version that HE wrote with HIS very finger
cx: staring vacantly
Bob,
As I’ve mentioned here on several occasions, the Founders wanted a secular state where everyone was free to practice their religion without government imposition. Why don’t the Republicans know that?
A very good question, that!!!
Meanwhile, the new Making Our Republicans Overtly Nationalist, or MORON Party, formerly the GOP, is protecting students from the poetry of Amanda Gorman:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/amanda-gorman-poem-florida-banned-b2344699.html
In school after school throughout the state of Flor-uh-duh, classroom libraries and school libraries are being emptied in noncompliance with state censorship. Because ignorance is bliss? Ignorance is strength?
Or for no reason at all. Simply to spread terror.
proizvol. n. Russian. Arbitrariness. In particular, the random, capricious, arbitrary use of state authority or violence; using fear as an instrument of command and control; state bullying or terror
This is how Fascism works, folks.
The Old Testament–a library of books compiled over a period of 1,500 years and then translated and retold in various combinations and forms for another two thousand years, embodies the beliefs of the primitive people who created it–a nomadic pastoralist people who then went through the Agricultural Revolution of the Neolithic. In particular, the OT holds up as the model of social and political governance the absolute and never-to-be-question authority of an all-powerful father figure (and of kings and prophets who are the representatives of that autocratic father figure here on earth). Kierkegaard was spot on (and crazy as a loon) to identify as its key myth that of Abraham and Isaac, with its message of the necessity of ABSOLUTE OBEDIENCE (see his book Fear and Trembling). The socio-political belief system presented in the OT is so inclined toward violence that whole schools of Christian thought in the 2nd century–those whom we refer to now as Gnostic–held that there were TWO Gods–the evil, violent, authoritarian Rex Mundi of the Old Testament who created this fallen world–and the good guy God of the New Testament, who offered pie in the sky when you die IF you followed certain secret rituals, the knowledge of which was Gnosis.
So, here’s the deal. Old Testament values and democracy are COMPLETELY ANTITHETICAL. This is a case of absolute authority vested in a single ruler who issues absolutist laws for behavior, with violation of any of hundreds of these punishable by death, versus democracy and pluralism.
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. –Matt 6:24, KJV
Democracy and fundamentalist Christianity of the evangelical or Opus Dei varieties are completely incompatible.
Thank you for adding Opus Dei to your comment. As I’ve written before, the wife of the head of CPAC has been described in media as Opus Dei.
A great SCHOLARLY source for Gnostic belief systems (as opposed to the volumes and volumes of utter nonsense about these that you will find online) is Jonas, Hans. The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity. 3rd ed. Beacon, Boston, 1963. Includes historical background material, analyses of the belief systems of the major Gnostic sects, and selected key Gnostic texts.
Hi Bob,
I’d add to that all books by Elaine Pagles. Also, Stephan Hoeller, himself a Gnostic, has some interesting books: Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing and Jung and the Lost Gospels come to mind. Also The Gnostic Bible edited by Barnstone and Meyer. 🙂
Mamie, there have been a lot of folks in our time who have cherry-picked Gnostic texts to find stuff that accords with New Age philosophy, but the actual picture is MUCH DARKER, much more superstitious, much more a variety of phenomena of that ancient time.
Gnosticism was a much wider set of phenomena than reflected in the Nag Hammadi texts.
That’s why I suggested the Jonas text.
Hi Bob,
Yes, I do agree that gnosticism was a wider set of phenomena as you say. I’m not exactly sure what you mean but I think I know what you’re getting at. Or perhaps I have my own idea of that. 🙂
Here’s the thing that bothers me, Mamie. These texts were created a LONG time ago, by people who were very different from us in their ideas about how the universe worked and what was right and wrong. When one of these old texts says that a prophet commands the sun to stop in the sky, that’s because they thought of it as little fiery ball that traverses the sky each day. When they said that one should not suffer a witch to live, that was because they believed in witches and in killing them. When they said that if a man lies with a man, it’s like a man lying with a beast, and that he should be stoned to death, that’s because they believed that. When they wrote out legal systems that called for killing a mother who slept with her son but were COMPLETELY SILENT about a father having sex with a daughter, it’s because they former they condemned and the latter they didn’t. People err enormously when they reimagine these ancient tests according to modern values. THEY MUST BE READ IN THEIR HISORICAL CONTEXTS. In the couple centuries after Christ, there were literally hundreds of different Christian sects with vastly differing belief systems, but they were all breathtakingly superstitious and backward. They reflected the beliefs of people of their times. That’s my point.
When people imagine that those folks back then had sensibilities like ours and would approve of what we approve of, they are wrong. The Rex Mundi was a monster. Most gnostic sects were dominated by extreme ritualism and belief that only a precious few people had been granted access to the rituals (the secret knowledge, or gnosis) that would ensure their salvation. The rest of the population of the earth would suffer horrific fates, and this was a good thing. Yikes.
Also common across a wide variety of gnostic texts–so common as to be partly definitive of gnosticism–was extreme rejection of the world as fallen and sinful–contemptus mundi. Adherents were supposed to live ascetic lives, to abjure pleasure. Bodily pleasures, such as sexuality, were considered extremely ugly and sinful. Yuck. These were twisted people.
The way that you showed that you were among the elite, the chosen, those who had to knowledge, the gnosis, was by renouncing the world, which was considered evil and fallen, a product of the bad god, the Rex Mundi.
Well, I agree with that, Bob! I don’t think we can ever know what truly went on in ancient consciousness. But I do think that the myths, metaphors and images of religious systems can be enormously revelatory. The problem is taking them literally because then the whole thing falls apart. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have meaning. Personally, as much as I enjoy learning about different myth systems, I embrace experience over belief. Belief is belief and experience is experience. 🙂
xoxoxo
Bob,
Perhaps the more you have an inner knowing (not believing) of the transcendence of your own being, the more you detach from the world psychologically in the sense that you become kind of an observer and can watch it all from a more objective standpoint. Yet, paradoxically, somehow life also calls you to be more in the world “doing” things. I think of one of the Gnostic gospels where Jesus says, “Be passers-by.” Again, it’s a paradox because you are an actor and an observer at the same time. I would go so far as to say that the outside world is believed to be “evil” in “religions” that place the highest value on an inner experience of the transcendent because the distractions of the world keep you from connecting with the inner experience. Also, religions that place value on inner experience of the transcendent often come into conflict with the dogma of the institution because belief is required and personal experience is devalued or worse. 🙂 Just some thoughts. 🙂
Beautiful thoughts indeed, Mamie. However, these are MODERN REINTERPRETATIONS, reimagining from the POVs of modern sensibilities, stuff that was conceived of FAR DIFFERENTLY in those ancient times. No, they did not think that we should be drawing upon inner resources, upon the transcendence of our own being. They believed that women were evil because they were the cause of the first sin and they brought people into a fallen world as a result of sin which was evil and ugly in itself and that the only way to avoid eternal damnation was to spend an enormous amount of time and treasure doing ritual purifications to “wash off the world.” LOL.
Do you know Jean-Paul Sartre’s little book The Transcendence of the Ego? I thought you would appreciate this. The title is an intentional ambiguity and a joke because in the book he will be arguing against the idea of a transcendent ego and asking us to TRANSCEND THAT IDEA. LOL.
But yes, that strain of religious (and often secular) thought has its appeals. The Buddha’s call for renunciation of desire, Aurelian stoicism, Existentialist insistence upon our ability to choose to experience absurd joy because of our noncontingency.
You illustrate beautifully precisely what I mean, Mamie. That notion of gnosis as the” inner knowing . . . of the transcendence of your own being” is a lovely contemporary reimagining. But those folks back then thought in terms of gnosis, knowledge, of rituals of purification–the kinds of things that gave rise, later, to grimoires. LOL.
Consciousness evolves, Bob. EVERYTHING is a modern reinterpretation. Everything changes. 🙂
No. It is the job of the historian to try to get at how people of another time thought. Let me give you an example. When Plato spoke of virtue, he used the word aerete, which means something like efficiency. So, one could have a virtuous man, a virtuous state, or A VIRTUOUS SHOE. A virtuous shoe would be one that was comfortable and lasted a long while without falling apart. And this very word presupposed a preexisting set of criteria for virtuousness (efficiency) that just had to be looked for and discovered. When he spoke of the psyche, he meant both what we mean by mind and what we mean by soul. He believed as a result of this language that what goes on in the mind IS the actions of the soul. Now, he noticed that we can think of perfect things, like a perfect triangle or circle, that do not exist in nature. Therefore, he thought, because he did not distinguish between the mind and soul–because he had one word for both–and because he believed that the soul lived on after the body died–that perfection was to be found in a separate spirit world, the world of forms, that the psyche could tap into by thinking hard enough about things. So, if one did that, one could discover the virtues, which were eternal and preexistent.
So, the point is, HE DIDN”T THINK AS WE DO. And our job is not to falsify how he thought but to figure out the different ways in which he understood things.
Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose, Bob!
To be perfectly honest, I can’t say with absolute certainty that I know what those people back then thought. Can you know with absolute certainty what they thought?
It’s very difficult. One has to engage in successive approximations. Reconstructing these ancient ways of thinking involves a hermetic circle because we have to UNTHINK how we see stuff. So for example, people look at ancient Greek myth and imagine that they are dealing with THE GOD OF this, that, or the other. NOPE. The way the Greeks saw it, in the earliest stages of their religion, was that these phenomena WERE gods. Fire was a god. The wind was a god. DIFFERENT IDEA.
I think we’ll have to define some terms, Bob. Transcendent and ego. Isn’t this the problem with so much of this discussion? The definitions!!!
Would love to engage on that one, Mamie. But that’s a long, long discussion. You might be interested in my introduction to the philosophy of Kant, which describes how he uses the terms transcendent and transcendental:
So, if we read a translation of Plato, and we come across the term soul or the term virtue, it’s important that we understand that he didn’t mean by these terms what we mean–that he thought differently. And that’s why we must have access to actual real, in-depth scholarly studies that get at how people thought back then, as opposed to how we think now. To stuff like W.C.K. Guthrie’s magisterial The Greek Philosophes from Thales to Aristotle.
So, with Plato, the truth was already out there in the spirit world/the world of forms to be discovered (for example, via what we now call the Socratic Method). The truth is out there. LOL. As opposed to being provisional STUFF THAT WE MAKE UP because it works sort of. It was this aspect of this thought, rooted in confusions due to peculiarities of his language, that made that thought perfect for adoption by the early Christian church, which imagined a Platonic spirit world above this world (which we should seek to transcend, lol).
This notion of an airy fairy pie in the sky parallel world is MY CANDIDATE for Western culture’s Original Sin. It led to the justification of horrors committed here. Don’t worry, folks. It will all be sorted out in the sky in the sweet bye and bye.
So, reading an ancient is like going into a very foreign culture as an observer or anthropologist. You have to gain an understanding of their different way of groking things. Hernando Desoto thought that the Cherokee didn’t have any religion because they didn’t have temples or priests. Well, to the Cherokee, the whole world was a temple, and everyone was a priest. LMAO. Or, rather, those concepts–temple, priest, simply weren’t part of their universe. There wasn’t a separate spirit world. There was this world, which could be seen in its spiritual manifestation, by undergoing certain rituals or austerities or consuming certain plants like Datura.
I think we’re in general agreement Bob. I think it’s very difficult because our conceptual way of thinking is not like the ancient way. So, you’re right in that we kind of have to unlearn or maybe think in a different way if that’s possible. The other difficulty comes in the definition of terms which vary according to different scholars, philosophers, etc. So, we really have to pin it down which is a huge discussion as you say! And then try to define the undefinable!! 🙂 But our discussions are always interesting….
Agreed. I have often thought that it would be lovely to sit and have tea with Ms. Allegretti!
I think that you and Mamie should meet at the 10th anniversary convening of the network for Public Education in DC, Oct 28-29.
I will pay for the tea and listen!
haaaa!!!!
Mamie, as lovely as she is–what a nice person!–might break the pot over my head. LOL.
And I would probably have it coming.
Bob, I’m sure that would be QUITE a lively conversation!!! 🙂 🙂
haaaa!!!
Thanks Bob… and Diane! But really…the more I learn, the more I realize I DON’T know!! And when I get too inflated, someone comes along and bursts my bubble! But it’s the engagement…and not holding too tightly to one’s stance!! That’s where the good stuff happens!! 🙂
Sartre on transcending the Ego:
He doesn’t mean “transcending” in the sense of going beyond to some sort of spiritual plane–he rejects that notion entirely–but in the sense of rejecting the idea of the Ego altogether as “magical thinking.” He wants us to transcend the concept in the sense of going beyond an idea that he thinks makes little sense.,
Well Bob…I read your essay and could lead to quite a conversation! 🙂 I always thought I should have been a philosophy major rather than a French major!
And yet, Bob, as much as I love philosophy, I think of Keats 🙂
Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine—
Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made
The tender-person’d Lamia melt into a shade.
Haaaa!!! Well, he gives a lovely case for holding onto superstitious thinking instead, but Carl Sagan had a very different take, didn’t he, when he referred to all this religious/spiritual/New Age stuff as continuing to live in “a demon-haunted world.” Here’s my take:
There are lots of places where Sartre went wrong. He frequently claims that consciousness is always consciousness of something–that it always has objects–and the major claim of Being and Nothingness is that the bizarre thing about consciousnesses is that there is no object at the center of a person to be conscious of, but rather a nothingness. Deep into B&N, he introduces the notion of a state of “pure reflection,” pure consciousness, which is NOT intentional, in the philosophical sense–that does not have an object. I would refer M. Sartre at this point to the Chandogya Upanishad and suggest that what he’s running up against there is the core of self as part of the One. LOL. I don’t think that I’m violating there my own principle of trying not to impose contemporary views on ancient materials–I think that that’s actually in the Upanishads. See my essay on “The Vast Unseen and the Vast Unseeable.”
Bob, I think Iain McGilchrist’s The Matter With Things would blow your mind. His brother Nigel has a great book out too – When the Dog Speaks, the Philosopher Listens. It’s about Pythagoras.
Yeah. You have mentioned this several times. Perhaps I’ll have to bite the bullet and buy it. At $150, it’s insanely expensive.
I’ve read it 3 times Bob. I don’t think you will be disappointed!
Why is the freaking thing that expensive? Are the pages gold leaf?
Bob,
We can philosophize all we want about all the aspects of falling in love, beholding a sunset, watching a loved one die, eating a wonderful meal, listening to music…but it’s the EXPERIENCE and feeling of those and all things that touches our deepest humanity. Philosophizing, analysis, chopping it all up with our intellect destroys the experience. So, let directed thinking take a backseat sometimes and see what that’s like. 🙂
Could not agree more, Mamie!! YES!!!
Perhaps if Monsieur Sartre had experienced that pure consciousness, he would have no need to philosophize about it except to try to explain it to others. And of course that’s probably going to be pretty hard to do given the limitations of language! But actually we seem to need to make sense of experience using what might be called the logical mind. But then I feel like it can’t stop there. We can’t get stuck to that or else we risk shutting ourselves off from experience. We almost have to let go of that logical, analytical desire to concretize and fixate and become certain so that we can always be open to the experience again. It’s kind of a circular process. 🙂
Agreed!
In the story of the rise of the Hebrew Kingship(told mostly in the books of Kings) God balks at the idea of allowing the chosen people to have a king at all. Finally, God relents, and the rest of the stories until the fall of Israel and the Babylonian Captivity are motivated by the degree to which the Kings do or do not stick to the desires of God. These stories might be seen as justification for a kingship fundamentally subservient to a higher law than themselves.
When monarchs like James of England wrote in defense of divine right of kings, they often emphasized that it was their responsibility to balance the law of their land with divine law. In this assertion was the seed of defeat for divine right of kings. The subservient nature of leadership gave us the Social Contract. Hobbes supported monarchy in his coining this term, but the implication to subsequent thinkers from Locke to now was that legitimacy came from a relationship between all the governed and the government.
Beautifully recounted, Roy!
1 Sam 8:6 But when they said, “Give us a king to lead us,” this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the Lord. 7 And the Lord told him: “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. 8 As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. 9 Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will claim as his rights” . . . .
1 Sam 8:19 But the people refused to listen to Samuel. “No!” they said. “We want a king over us. 20 Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.”
1 Sam 8:21 When Samuel heard all that the people said, he repeated it before the Lord. 22 The Lord answered, “Listen to them and give them a king.”
1 Sam 10:17 Samuel summoned the people of Israel to the Lord at Mizpah 18 and said to them, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘I brought Israel up out of Egypt, and I delivered you from the power of Egypt and all the kingdoms that oppressed you.’ 19 But you have now rejected your God, who saves you out of all your disasters and calamities. And you have said, ‘No, appoint a king over us.’ So now present yourselves before the Lord by your tribes and clans.”
Sounds like the transition from purely tribal leaders and judges to kingship is presented as a turning away from one all-powerful father to another all-powerful father. There’s this “What am I, chopped liver?” flavor to it.
When/if the fundamentalist nationalists in this country get the government they are screaming for, they will have reason to mark this as prophecy:
Samuel: “The day will come when you cry out because of the king whom you yourselves have chosen.” 1 Sam 8:18
I think that you meant 1st and 2nd Samuel, Roy (rise of Hebrew kingship)
I was moved to write this note because I wanted to emphasize that we are talking about REALLY ancient belief systems here, ones completely incompatible with any kind of modernity that you and I would want to live in.
The two “testaments”, old and new, are incompatible. They teach two different gods, two different ethics, two different “realities”.
Growing up Catholic, I recall that in Sunday School the Old Testament was ignored entirely. But even the teachings of the New Testament were enough to scare the crap out of us.
And that was the beginning of my conviction that we were being conned and conditioned. I finally stopped going to church when I was 15.
I never went back.
even the teachings of the New Testament were enough to scare the crap out of us
You and me both. However,
The Reagan Commandment was discarded decades ago.
Texas Catholic Voice (an organization for Texas Catholic bishops) posted on 3-13-2023, “Last week we offered two events for parents interested in increasing parental choice in education….contact legislators.”
A more accurate description is how do we get money from taxpayers to fund our sect.
Bingo, Linda. (Pun intended.)
Another amazing, far-ranging conversation in the annals of my favorite blog. I plan to re-read once I have more coffee in my veins, right now it’s making me crosseyed 😉.
I’m nonplused at the vision of every TX classroom “prominently displaying” the Ten Commandments. As one who still has quite a bit of religion rattling around in her old bones, I find it… impertinent? Disrespectful? Pharisee-ish? Using a religious image as a naked statement of political power, I mean.
Glad to see the bill died, but that zombie will no doubt be back.
Seems to be a problem about which version to post.