(Ir)religiosity

These are some selected quotes from Noam Chomsky’s, Manufacturing Consent:

“These are not just academic exercises. We’re not analyzing the media on Mars, or in the 18th century, or something like that. We’re dealing with real human beings who are suffering and dying and being tortured and starving, because of policies that we are involved in – we as citizens of democratic societies are directly involved in and responsible for. And what the media are doing is ensuring that we do not act on our responsibilities, and that the interests of power are served, not the interests of suffering people and not the needs of the American people who would be horrified if they realized the blood that’s dripping from their hands because of the way they’re allowing themselves to be deluded and manipulated by the system.”

“Modern industrial civilization has developed within a certain system of convenient myths. The driving force of our industrial civilization has been individual material gain, which is accepted as legitimate, even praiseworthy on the grounds that private vices yield public benefits, in the classic formulation. Now it’s long been understood, very well, that a society that is based on this principle will destroy itself in time. It can only persist with whatever suffering and injustice it entails, as long as it’s possible to pretend that the destructive forces that humans create are limited, that the world is an infinite resource, and that the world is an infinite garbage can….At this stage of history, either one of two things is possible: either the general population will take control of its own destiny and will concern itself with community interests, guided by values of solidarity, and sympathy and concern for others; or alternatively, there will be no destiny for anyone to control….The question is whether privileged elites should dominate mass communication, and should use this power as they tell us they must – namely to impose necessary illusions, to manipulate and deceive the stupid majority and remove them from the public arena. The question in brief is whether democracy and freedom are values to be preserved, or threats to be avoided. In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than values to be treasured, they may well be essential to survival.”

As I mentioned last week I am, along with some others, reading and eventually reviewing Pete Gall’s memior, “My Beautiful Idol.” It is absolutely amazing. Pete’s story is beautiful. Further, his story is our story. It is everyone’s story. I’ll save the rest for my review, which unfortunately may be a little later than I’d originally planned. But it’ coming!

Until then, here are some excerpts:

“There’s an inherent immorality in advertising that shows itself in phrases like “create a need.”…Likewise, there is something inherently immoral about using a gift for ability for the good of something you don’t believe in. It’s a prostitution….”

“I don’t know how the word is used in the Bible, but to my marketing mind and idol is a god you can put in your pocket. It’s something you can control, pull out when you need a does of insurance or magic, and then put away while things click along well. Oh, and an idol will always choose your death over its own. This is true of careers, relationships, doctrines, fears, hiding places, and even the choices we make to “believe in ourselves.” Even the idol of me will choose my death over its own. It happens with suicide, but it also happens in a million ways too. We die in favor of the idols of ourselves anytime we can’t admit the truth to ourselves. And we’re all addicts to that on, I’m afraid.”

“I think the church has become a toothless lion. And the teeth have been pulled out by church people who don’t really believe what they say they believe. They don’t serve the people they say they’ve been called to serve; they don’t trust the truths that say they trust; they don’t love the people they say they love; they don’t keep the promises they say they’ll keep; and they don’t point to the sort of God they say they point to. People from within the church have made errors in judgment…and those errors have diminished the church’s credibility; and the more credibility has been diminished, the more people within the church have capitulated with society’s efforts to relegate the church to some quaint, outmoded superstition; and the more that has happened, the more the church has been left with little to show for itself but the arcane bromides of its small, dark existence.”

From The Myth of a Christian Nation:

“While those who wielded the Constantinian sword throughout history undoubtedly convinced themselves they were wielding the sword in love–this is a common self-delusion among religious power brokers–lording over, torturing, and killing people does not communicate their unsurpassable worth to them; it is not loving….One wonders why no one in church history as ever been considered a heretic for being unloving. People were anathematized and often tortured and killed for disagreeing on matters of doctrine or on the authority of the church. But no one on record has ever been so much as rebuked for not loving as Christ loved. Yet if love is to be placed above all other considerations, if nothing has any value apart from love, and if the only thing that matters is faith working in love, how is it that possessing Christlike love has never been considered the central test of orthodoxy? How is it that those who tortured and burned heretics were not themselves considered heretics for doing so? Was this not heresy of the worst sort? How is it that those who perpetuated such things were not only deemed heretics but often were (and yet are) held up as heroes of the faith?”
(Emphasis mine)

On a certain level I think this is connected to my post yesterday on President Bush and the Olympics and the subsequent discussion at Josh’s blog. But maybe not.

At any rate, I think it bears reflection. Why in the world have we let Christianity become a religion based primarily on belief and dogma rather than action and ethic? Somewhere along the line we divorced orthodoxy from orthopraxy and they lived as assumed false enemies ever since. But the truth is orthodoxy is orthopraxy at least that’s the way it was before the church sold herself to the state in what might be the most damaging act of institutional prostitution we’ve ever seen. If Constantine officiated the illegitimate wedding of the church and the nation-state then we, the bastard children of that nightmare, need to work towards seeing their divorce and the remarriage of doxis and praxis; then, hopefully, we see the need to distinguish between the two. Who’s with me?

“It is terribly important to realize that the leap of faith is not so much a leap of thoughts as of action. For while in many matters it is first we must see, then we will act; in matters of faith it is first we must do then we will know, first we will be and then we will see. One must, in short, dare to act wholeheartedly without absolute certainty.”

~bh ><>

I started reading Chris Hedge’s latest, American Fascism, last week. Because I’ve been so busy this week, I haven’t been able to delve into it as much as I’d like, but I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve read so far. Here’s a taste:

“Corporations, rapidly turning America into an oligarchy, have little interest in Christian ethics, or anybody’s ethics. They know what they have to do, as the titans of the industry remind us, for their stockholders. They are content to increase profit at the expense of those who demand fair wages, health benefits, safe working conditions, and pensions. . .this new class seeks to reduce the American working class to the levels of this global serfdom. After all, anything that drains corporate coffers is a loss of freedom—the God-given American freedom to exploit other human beings to make money. The marriage of this gospel of prosperity with raw, global capitalism, and the flaunting of the wealth and privilege it brings, are supposedly blessed and championed by Jesus Christ. Compassion is relegated to private, individual acts of charity, or left to the churches. The callousness of the ideology, the notion that it in any way reflects the message of the gospels, which were preoccupied with the poor and the outcasts, illustrates how the new class has twisted Christian scripture to serve America’s god of capitalism and discredited the Enlightenment values we once prized.”

I can’t wait to really get into this. You should go pick up a copy of the book right now. Every American needs to read it.

~bh ><>

I was re-reading some selected parts of Michael Mann’s Incoherent Empire this week and I ran across this timely quote:

“Like all imperialists, American ones are self-righteous. The politicians utter impeccable ideals of freedom, democracy, and humble rights for the world, and they promise it material plenty. They say they have achieved this ‘American Dream’ in the US and that they are now bring it to the world.. . .[But] American democracy today does not even seem in especially good shape. Only between one-third and one-half of American adults vote in national elections. Most members of Congress have to raise over a million dollars from business interests to get elected, and so inequality widens to a degree unparalleled anywhere else in the world. The media, especially television, from which most people get their news, are generally deferential to authority and rarely critical of their leaders in foreign affairs. American politicans rarely submit to sustained critical questioning from each other or from reporters—and the president almost never does. In Bush administration press conferences journalists typically ask a single question. When the question is evaded (which is always the case with difficult questions), they do not follow up. Questioning by the most famous TV interviewers, like Larry King and Diane Sawyer is sycophantic by European standards.. . .NBC did promptly fire Phil Donahue, the one television network host who opposed the Iraq invasion. It also fired veteran war reporter, Peter Arnett, who appeared on Iraqi television suggesting to the Iraqis that they tolerate foreign journalists in Baghdad on the grounds that their reports aided in US anti-war movement. All this self-censorship muzzles American democracy.”

This seems especially poignant now, when we’re in the middle of the chaotic, media masked whirlwind that is the current election cycle. What do you think?

~bh ><>

I’ve decided to alternate my “Weekend Link Blast” series with “Friday is for Quotes.” This way I can concentrate on compiling a better, longer list of links. So, every other week I’ll post a quote that I find to be blogworthy. With school and everything else I don’t really have time to post full blown book reviews, though I’d like to. I’ll try to post quotes from things I’m currently reading and I promise I won’t just throw up one-liner clichés. If I have time I may even post some commentary to hopefully spark the conversation.

So here we go. The following is an exerpt from the Dalai Lama’s Ethics for the New Millennium. Not exactly a new book, but a good book nonetheless. Here he discusses the difference between “religion” and “spirituality;” an important distinction I think we too often overlook. However, he differentiates the two in a manner we (Westerners) often don’t.

“I believe there is an important distinction to be made between religion and spirituality. Religion I take to be concerned with faith in the claims of salvation of one faith tradition or another, an aspect of which is acceptance of some form of metaphysical or supernatural reality. . .Connected with this are religious teachings or dogma, ritual, prayer, and so on.

Spirituality I take to be concerned with those qualities of the human spirit—such as love and compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, contentment, a sense of responsibility, a sense of harmony—which bring happiness to both self and others. . .There is no reason why the individual should not develop them, even to a high degree, without recourse to any religious or metaphysical belief system. This is why I sometimes say that religion is something we can do without. What we cannot do without are these basic spiritual qualities.

. . .Each of the qualities notes is defined be any implicit concern for others’ well-being. . .Thus spiritual practice according to this description involves, on the one hand, acting out of concern of others’ well-being. On the other, it entails transforming ourselves so that we become more readily disposed to do so.”

It has been my experience that this distinction between religion and spirituality is usually made like this: religion is often described as an institution interested in spreading particular set of beliefs or dogma in order to further perpetuate itself. People will often describe this as “organized religion” making the connotation even more negative. This isn’t all that different from the Dalai Lama’s characterization.

The difference lies in his description of spirituality. It seems to me that many people now like to describe themselves as “spiritual,” but not “religious.” Most of them, at least in my experience are still using the word spiritual in a metaphysical sense (not that that is bad) and are rejecting the dogmatic, legalistic confines of organized religion. These persons still feel a connection with God, or ultimate reality, or some other metaphysical reality just without the rigidity.

Now, I don’t think there is anything wrong with that per se, in fact, I suppose I would fit into that category. But I think I can still be “spiritual” and miss the larger point the Dalai Lama is making—the emphasis on compassion, responsibility, reconciliation and so on—and in that sense I’m still holding on to “the religious.”

And to do that, I believe, is to deny the humanity that unites us all.

~bh ><>