partial answer to Eryk's question about "organized" religion

-IID42 Kandinskij @27+ wrote:

>
>You have kitsch religion, cultism, the repeated appearances of
>"charismatic personas" (consider Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, the continuous
>outcries for such). You have COMMODIFICATION of the human being.
>

It seems a lot of the time there is a real disintegration of reality,
and this is what I got out of Beaudrillard, or at least, part of what he
was trying to address, though I have disagreements with what he writes,
too, more so than not. He seems to say that there is an inherent desire
in man to head towards destruction and self commodification; that humans
crave a plastic world. I think we run into a word game here- I don't
think people want it, I just think that is the possible end result of
all the cultural programming we're fed.

Now, this is not to say that there is a cure all approach to the
destruction of cultural programming, though doing so can trigger events
that can trigger realizations in people and possibly get them going on a
path of self observation. But I think there is also a definite "feel
good" element to corporation bashing, the us vs them, the idea that
consumerism is the result of the corporation, which takes responsibility
away from the consumer. Would you agree? I mean I've been thinking that
lately, and it seems like you may have said it before. Despite what
seems to be a popular consideration of all the bad things coming down
from the mountains; there is no one willing to build a dam, or
sandbag…[I'm lapsing into metaphors again…] I mean to say that even
when we see talk of "personal responsibility" it is considered that
"other people need to take personal responsibility." I honestly made the
assumption for years that the banality of evil came from the secretaries
of bad men, and not "little old me," who nonetheless did nothing to stop
a parasite I have living in my head.



>
>This hasn't got anything to do with "objects' as objects were produced
>by humans many centuries before. It's a change of RELATION to production
>(resentment of work, poor work conditions, appearance of
>working class (and proudly), attempts to reduce artwork to working glass
>labor (consider the degeneration of the museum to yet another gallery)
>, populism, consummerism, instead of proper relation, kitsch vegetarianism
>instead of proper feeding (and no restriction is not the solution), etc.)
>

I've been reconsidering veganism and the vegan agenda lately as well.
But I think pure veganism has a lot to do with actually assuming a
personal responsibility. As I got into it though I noticed it is a very
kitsch "movement," very middle class, and very often it is more about
personal diet and weight loss than the cessation [or even just the
reduction] of others suffering for one's own happiness. So I have- and I
am thankful for this, now- steered clear of "vegan" with a capital V.
But again- and I will always come back to this- isn't it better that
people are vegetarian for bad reasons, as opposed to not being
vegetarians at all, when actual lives are being spared? It's a conundrum
for me, philosophically, but it's weaker now, since I don't want to take
responsibility for anyone elses decisions on the subject just yet.


>Non-coincidentally this can be rephrased as "reducing to passive object"
>(misinterpretation of the notion of BEING)
>

I think a major component of the self-taught enlightenment of new age
religions has this tendency, as well as misapplied zen, or the idea of
Ghandi as passive aggressive and that pacifism is passive aggressive in
nature [as opposed to truly passive.] I remember when I was younger I
was reading the Art of War and seeing it as a manual for passive
aggression. If you can't fight with fists you fight with behaviors and
aggravation, which is then misunderstood as an "intellectual" and
therefore "superior" method of fighting. I cleared that idea out of my
head a while ago but it has built up habits and mechanisms [which is a
very appropriate psychological term] which linger.


>The imprinting of the "persona"
>happens much faster with the massive media presence (and in general most
>humans are "killed" before they are even capable of building defenses).
>

I was initially drawn towards the culture jamming thing for just this
reason, but I suppose it could be said that one guy slaying the dragons
of mass media does not make the towns people into knights…I mean, you
can yell out the transparencies and the tricks of an advertisement
playing in the theater before a film begins, but I'm not doing anything,
really, to get people to really see through it…to get people to see
how it affects them on a very real level [and in fact, just ridiculing
ads as a means of defusing thier power can also bend them into a kind of
faux laughingstock which makes denying thier power all the easier.]


>
>Traces of the beginning of this "process" can be found with the
>Reformation / Enlightenment and industrial revolution (appearances of
>machines). May wish to reconsider previous conversation about
>RECENT appearance of "kitsch".
>

I don't know if I ever argued that Kitsch was a recent phenomenon; what
I wrote about Kitsch at the time was that it was a kind of narcissism, a
love of the object as an extension of a humans most delusional forms of
vanity. [I'm simplifying my own point here.] I personally don't know if
mass production has anything at all to do with kitsch….


>
>
>Humanitarian Atheism originated "along" with Enlightenment, by the way,
>and it's not "yours" though we are not writing this to attack you.
>

Oh, that's the other thing I've noticed- is the desperation to see an
idea that comes closest to describing the internal mechanisms, and then
presenting oneself under the umbrella of that term, which is a reduction
[or expansion] of the ideas to begin with. So I don't claim to have
invented humanitarian atheism; nor would I say I agree with its dictates
100%, but in terms of the language game it is "easier" to identify
myself as such [which also provides a handy back up for questions I
might not have the answers to- a shortcut to actual thinking.] I also
don't think it is mine in the sense that it is something that isn't
programmed; certain core elements of the philosophy might be "mine" but
I don't have a sufficiently true variation on it, either….



>
>
>However like most humans (east or west, male or female) you're TOLD
>what you are. And that "nice icon" that you've been TOLD since birth, and
>trained to (believe) + perpetuate is not_ you_.
>

I get this. The discovery of the actual self, and the reduction of the
factors that alienate us from ourselves, is a key factor in all the
liberation movements of the 20th century- the feminist movement, the
civil rights movement, gay rights movement- and then I've noticed that
it shifts from liberation to "pride" in the constructs that the
"liberation" movement decides to define. I don't have any personal say
in this, as I'm [alledgedly] in a position of privilidge, but I found
myself drawn to all of these movements, only to see them turn into thier
own commodification-producing machines that hand an identity to people
under the claim that it is liberation. An actual "human liberation
movement" might just be impossible to sustain…eventually turning into
a cheap commodification machine itself. It strikes me that there might
not be any such "movement" that can sustain itself past a certain time
or number limit, really, except for self observation…[which always has
only one "follower" and one "leader" at a time.]


-e.