Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 22:18:49 -0800
From: Ralph Dumain <rdumain-AT-igc.apc.org>
Subject: O'CONNOR'S CRISIS OF PERSONALITYY


O'Connor's remarks are very profound, which means I will have to
open the book on him once again.  Louis' own commentary is
remarkably perspicacious and exhibits a self-correcting
self-awareness that is much too rare in the sect-defiled
atmosphere we must now breathe.

You can take this observation and extend it to phenomena we
observe every day.  I have long noticed this same sort of thing in
the phenomenon of motivational speakers, success seminars, New Age
piffle, greedy Christianity, and reactionary spirituality in
general.  I actually was thinking of bringing up the subject of
spirituality yesterday because I've noticed some particularly
insidious areas in which it raises its head, e.g. ion the
alternative health care movement. There is no question that the
mysterious, random way in which a market society bestows its
favors upon people engenders a particular type of
consciousness.  Coincidentally, today I bumped into Marx's
denunciation of "The Social Principles of Christianity."  Given
the greater complexity of social and economic structure, the
phenomenon of upward mobility, and the ubiquity of million-dollar
lotteries, Marx's diatribe may need some updating.  But Marx is
right: Christianity is essentially anti-social and anti-progress,
as is this New age crap, being recycled by some quantum Indian
mystic yuppie, Dr. Choprak or something.  I noticed decades ago
that people who had attained cosmic consciousness had always
somehow managed to skirt class consciousness, and so I crossed
them off my Christmas list.


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