From: "Eric" <ericandmary-AT-earthlink.net>
Subject: fundamentalists just wanna have fun
Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2003 07:42:23 -0600


Steve,

I recognize religion can play an ideological role; the one socially
sanctioned legal drug of choice for many. I also know too where your
comments on Buddhism are probably leading. 

In America 'Free Tibet' is a very popular liberal cause, but it is often
based on a naive notion of the former Tibet as a kind of Shangra-La. In
reality, the Buddhism represented by the Dali Lama tends to be
paternalistic, authoritarian, homophobic and oppressive, but this is
seldom communicated through the haze of its fairy tale utopian image. 

I also talked in previous postings about the links of Zen Buddhists with
the Japanese war machine during WWII.

I think part of the difference between us on this topic come down to
this.  While not promoting theism, I have come to recognize religion as
a fundamental category of 'human' or 'transhuman' experience, one that
does not easily disappear, but which is capable of morphing and adapting
itself to changing circumstances. Like the experience of the sublime
with which it is linked, religion is a primordial possibility that
registers again and again on human consciousness in feeling of awe and
terror, in the experience of love and the miracle of rebirth.  

My favorite definition of religion is the existential one formulated by
Paul Tillich.  He spoke of it as a 'ultimate concern' and recognized
that even an atheist must face religious issues to the extent that he or
she is concerned with the momentous issues of birth and death.  

I personally think much of Lyotard's philosophy is connected with
'religion' in this rather broad use of the term. Some of the concepts he
formulated, such as the in-fans, the inhuman, the sublime, anamnesis,
the figured and the differend certainly explore this 'region of the
soul', without necessarily formulating theistic solutions. I also see
Zizek and Badiou  working a similar ground. (I agree it is
'materialist', but ask you to consider the fact that etymologically
'matter' is derived form the Latin, mater - our great mother, the matrix
of all, the goddess whose veil has never been lifted.)  

I feel this is far from the pious nostalgia of a Heideggerian return.
Just as Lefevbre and the situationists envisioned a revolution in
everyday life, so these religious categories need to be re-examined from
the standpoint of a micropolitics of the personal that tends to resist
the State and the ideological formulation of secular humanism that we
are only legitimized by family and work.

Marx was once famously accused of merely secularizing the Augustinian
concept of the two cities unto human history. If this is religion, then
let's make the most of it.

eric    
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU
[mailto:owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU] On Behalf Of
steve.devos
Sent: Friday, November 21, 2003 5:07 AM
To: lyotard-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU
Subject: Re: secular transhumanism

Eric/all

I realise it was a rhetorical question; But fundamentalists don't have 
any fun, either intellectually owing to their belief in some apocylypse 
or other, and certainly not emoptionally and physically because of the 
endless prohibitions... and as for the endless physical and emotional 
abuse imposed on the body of those destined to believe. In contradiction

to this I suppose that we could follow Freud where he noted that the 
very acts forbidden by religion are endlessly practiced in the name of 
religion - in such cases such as rape and muder (in the name of 
religion) - as with the condemning of the 'other' because they are 
external to your group to oblivion and death. Not much fun here then 
either... (I'm listenning to Arvo Part's 'Orient Occident' as I write 
this and whilst Part is a great composer of music possibly even sublime,

he is hardly an example of 'fun' (indeed nobody in the house apart from 
George the Cat and I can stand it...)

With regard to the censoring of higher modes of consciousness and 
ecstasy - what precisely is so good about attempts to achieve this 
through the resurrection of the religious experience in a postsecular 
fashion ? The question I have for you is slightly different  in that I 
am reminded of Zizek's question in the beginning of Hallward's book on 
Badiou, where he asks 'What is the utility function of an ideological 
state apparatus ?'  now a materialist answers this by pointing towards 
the fact that the 'utility function' of an ISA is not the reproduction 
for itself of the ideological network of ideas, feelings and objects nor

the social  circumstances that created it but the reproduction of the 
ISA itself.  So then to paraphrase him 'What is the utility function of 
a religious form ? '  It's true that the same religious ideological 
structure can accomodate itself to vastly different social modes - 
[Catholic Christianity in 1492, 1939-45 and it's current reactionary 
forms in the 21st C - (let s not discuss Buddhism and it's supposed 
peacefulness...) ]  and it does so just to continue to exist...  So as 
such, then how does the transformation from the secular, to the 
postsecular not make one think that what we are seeing is this process 
in operation ?

Incidentally as this is in some ways an unoffical discussion list for 
Badiou/Zizek let's be clear that their materialist relationship to 
Christianity is markedly different from the postsecular approaches that 
are attempting to make Deleuze a religious thinker, or even worse the 
'postsecular messisiniam'  that seems to haunt derrida's recent 
religious conversion... The important difference is well put by Hallward

"'...the foundations of meaning being itself inaccessible, there are 
only interpretations...' Whether this foundation is divine or profane , 
religious or humanist makes little difference to Badiou. Religion  
subordinates the articulation of Truth to a reverence for the One 
meaning of meaning..." If modernity is marked by the passing of the 
'one'  it is by no means clear that attempts to resurrect the post-One 
can or should be allowed to succeed.

ecstasy - the dream of Cocteau that opium could be made physically 
harmless, though to be honest I'd prefer espresso a turkish cigerette...

regards
steve
Eric wrote:

>Steve,
>
>At the back of the mind when I used the phrase secular humanism was
>Nietzsche's concept of the ubermensch and his early book title: "Human,
>All Too Human."  As Badiou shows in his non-theological writings, the
>latent 'humanism' that underwrites talk of human rights and radical
evil
>is in fact a kind of ideology; one that is geared towards a concept of
>humanity as good, hardworking, pious and patriotic citizens.  As such,
>something to be surpassed.  
>
>In Lyotard's concept of the inhuman, what is at stake is the idea that
>what ultimately gives humanism value is the very fact that it cannot be
>closed in upon itself.  We can only be human to the extent that we are
>faithful to the contingencies of birth and death that Lyotard often
>terms the in-fans. Obviously, this region of the soul is one that has
>been heavily strip-mined by religious orthodoxy and my question back to
>you is 'why should we let the fundamentalists have all the fun?'
>
>Another reason I used the term was that transhumanism also refers
>obliquely to a movement in psychology that was popular back in the
>eighties and which was very interested in investigating deep states of
>consciousness elicited through such things as mystical experience,
>meditation and drugs. You don't have to be a theist to believe that
such
>experience occur and even have their own legitimacy.
>
>Personally I find the current drug laws more than just stupid. I think
>they are political attempts to control our consciousness and limit's
its
>scope and range to the conventional out of the state's desire to have
>pliable subjects. I guess part of my concern is that under the name of
>rationalism and secular humanism, there has also been an attempt made
by
>'progressives' in the past to censor and repress these higher modes of
>consciousness and legislate another taboo on ecstasy. 
>
>I believe that humanity has a potential that far exceeds the current
>spectrum of experience allowed to it under capitalism and today we must
>struggle to claim this as our own.  That is what I am calling secular
>transhumanism.
>
>eric
>
> 
>
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