“Bless me gender neutral parent, for I have transgressed the boundaries of acceptable discourse, and in so doing, abused my privilege.”
Someone needs to make a Venn Digram of the Catholic Church and Successor Ideology where the intersecting (pun intended) center includes original sin, confession, and Index of Forbidden Books.
"a banality so complete that it courts its own kind of grandeur." is a beautiful description of the feeling which our new synthetic faith stirs up. The "coexist" bumper stickers that became popular about a decade ago would make me feel that way. The imagery of the old faiths might be included, but the resulting product is something in which nothing authentic about them survives.
Thank you for undertaking this project. It's young but already incredibly helpful.
"There is a scene in Denys Arcand’s 2003 film The Barbarian Invasions, in which a young French antiques appraiser visits a Quebec Catholic church to size up some long unused religious artifacts the local priest is trying to offload. The priest shows her around a dusty lock-up and tells her: 'Quebec used to be as Catholic as Spain or Ireland. Everyone believed. At a precise moment, during the year 1966 in fact, the churches suddenly emptied in a matter of months. A strange phenomenon that no one has ever been able to explain.'”
Easily explained, the Tonkin gulf resolution was August 1964; smart leadership knew it meant that the entire veneer of the western establishment wasn't just fake, but murderous at a massive scale. All the 1965-1970 counterculture broadsides were secondary to that fundamental shift.
The ULTIMATE example of this kind of space is the Harvard Business School chapel. It's special not just because it is a post-faith faith space, but because it's not simply empty -- there's a globalist Harvard Business School corporate sense of "spirituality" that conveys there, placed as it is in a world center of power for that vision.
Stonehenge feels that way because the original religious impulse is lost and incomprehensible, leaving a kind of generic spirituality. If the original religion was legible it would feel different to us. The Harvard chapel actually does have a bit of that feeling to it -- it's sort of Christian-influenced but original Christianity is not quite legible any more at HBS.
"a banality so complete that it courts its own kind of grandeur" - the sort of phrase that makes reading you very rewarding, but I'm unsure what the content of that "grandeur" in this case is supposed to be. I can't see it. At some point you reach pure moral negation, pure privation, which in a human consciousness should induce only pity. If the world is ruled by such a thing, there is only grandeur in resisting it.
I use “M.” like the French do, for Monsieur but ALSO for Mesdames and Mademoiselle EQUALLY. ALL CAPS are ITALICS. I don’t read what I type before I post, so errors are expected.
I tend to agree, M. Frangelico. Along with the pity, tho, goes the knowledge that people generally end up where they do due, IMO, 50% choices they've made and 50% ?
I call it Serendipity. Synchronicities (tho they sometimes can be given TOO much weight, AFAIK). PROFOUND good fortune. For one undeniable case, the genes You have (and the parents that came with them. ;)
Wesley, another great contribution today. You lay a good bit of groundwork on understanding that the current progressive/Woke movement can only be understood through a religious construct. And, like most new religions, in its attempt to gain traction it must demonize/cancel all of the heretics who dare challenge it with reason, logic and scientific evidence. The Christians no longer need a crusade against the infidels to feel secure in the durability of their faith, but that was not the case 1,000 years ago.
Wormwood, the senior devil in C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters most likely shaped those kitchen staffers, a warning penned in 1950. For me, worship in a Christian church with true fellowship constitutes deep pleasure and rich engagement. As Wormwood notes, “the deepest likings and pleasures of any man are the raw material, the starting-point, with which the Enemy has furnished him.” With Yang’s description of this multi-faith metal filing cabinet immersion experience, all pleasure and desire to worship has disappeared…Wormwood must be smiling!
Makes me consider if this is a secular version of Apostle Paul's notice of the unknown God in Acts 17? “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean.” 21 (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)
22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.
As much as I enjoy your writing on the Successor Ideology, I have come to the conclusion that further analysis of it is pointless. It's already crystal clear that the ideology is deeply irrational, self-contradictory, and not truly authentic. More analysis isn't helping, only actions matter now. What type of action? I don't know. Perhaps some kind of "culture jamming" would make a difference. Any acts of non-compliance, no matter how small, would make a difference. How about ideas on resisting the SI?
The Kitchen Staff will hear confession from 4-5 pm.
“Bless me gender neutral parent, for I have transgressed the boundaries of acceptable discourse, and in so doing, abused my privilege.”
Someone needs to make a Venn Digram of the Catholic Church and Successor Ideology where the intersecting (pun intended) center includes original sin, confession, and Index of Forbidden Books.
perhaps they will bake scones for the Eucharist
Possibly drafted by a Dave Sim reader: "I am Cerebus, the kitchen staff supervisor...."
"a banality so complete that it courts its own kind of grandeur." is a beautiful description of the feeling which our new synthetic faith stirs up. The "coexist" bumper stickers that became popular about a decade ago would make me feel that way. The imagery of the old faiths might be included, but the resulting product is something in which nothing authentic about them survives.
Thank you for undertaking this project. It's young but already incredibly helpful.
"Evanesces," "inert and cossetted nihilism": our host is firing on all cylinders.
I believe there was more authenticity to the bumper stickers when they were popular in the 70s. ICBW.
I'm reminded of the below (description from: https://newrepublic.com/article/118932/what-should-happen-unused-churches-religion-recedes)
"There is a scene in Denys Arcand’s 2003 film The Barbarian Invasions, in which a young French antiques appraiser visits a Quebec Catholic church to size up some long unused religious artifacts the local priest is trying to offload. The priest shows her around a dusty lock-up and tells her: 'Quebec used to be as Catholic as Spain or Ireland. Everyone believed. At a precise moment, during the year 1966 in fact, the churches suddenly emptied in a matter of months. A strange phenomenon that no one has ever been able to explain.'”
Easily explained, the Tonkin gulf resolution was August 1964; smart leadership knew it meant that the entire veneer of the western establishment wasn't just fake, but murderous at a massive scale. All the 1965-1970 counterculture broadsides were secondary to that fundamental shift.
Lol see the kitchen staff Lolol
The ULTIMATE example of this kind of space is the Harvard Business School chapel. It's special not just because it is a post-faith faith space, but because it's not simply empty -- there's a globalist Harvard Business School corporate sense of "spirituality" that conveys there, placed as it is in a world center of power for that vision.
http://www.hiddensacredspaces.org/harvard-business-school
Awesome link, thanks.
Every worship space contains this to a degree, even Stonehenge.
Stonehenge feels that way because the original religious impulse is lost and incomprehensible, leaving a kind of generic spirituality. If the original religion was legible it would feel different to us. The Harvard chapel actually does have a bit of that feeling to it -- it's sort of Christian-influenced but original Christianity is not quite legible any more at HBS.
"a banality so complete that it courts its own kind of grandeur" - the sort of phrase that makes reading you very rewarding, but I'm unsure what the content of that "grandeur" in this case is supposed to be. I can't see it. At some point you reach pure moral negation, pure privation, which in a human consciousness should induce only pity. If the world is ruled by such a thing, there is only grandeur in resisting it.
"Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall; and universal darkness covers all."
I use “M.” like the French do, for Monsieur but ALSO for Mesdames and Mademoiselle EQUALLY. ALL CAPS are ITALICS. I don’t read what I type before I post, so errors are expected.
I tend to agree, M. Frangelico. Along with the pity, tho, goes the knowledge that people generally end up where they do due, IMO, 50% choices they've made and 50% ?
I call it Serendipity. Synchronicities (tho they sometimes can be given TOO much weight, AFAIK). PROFOUND good fortune. For one undeniable case, the genes You have (and the parents that came with them. ;)
TYTY.
Racism --> sexism --> transphobia. And then homophobia. There's an entire book's worth of material right there.
Wesley, another great contribution today. You lay a good bit of groundwork on understanding that the current progressive/Woke movement can only be understood through a religious construct. And, like most new religions, in its attempt to gain traction it must demonize/cancel all of the heretics who dare challenge it with reason, logic and scientific evidence. The Christians no longer need a crusade against the infidels to feel secure in the durability of their faith, but that was not the case 1,000 years ago.
True, true. Also, started this today: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58133534-woke-racism
I pre-ordered it last week, have not started it yet. McWhorter is a huge voice for reason.
Except that he's trying to cram woke plural pronouns down our throats (in his NYT newsletter, to which I subscribe).
Yeah. Saw that. Ah well...
Yah, enjoying it and learning a lot about stuff I'd only caught a glimpse about the (what-i-call) Fundamentalist Wokeianity religion.
Ah well... Neglected: "Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America"
" I chortle inwardly, conscious of something freeze-dried within that might once have been capable of feeling the loss."
If that isnt modern man in a nutshell, I dont know what is. So bereft, so poignant and tragic. Wonderful writing, though.
No one writes like Mr. Yang. Beautiful, complex, supremely thoughtful. A joy to read, even when the subject is so disheartening.
Wormwood, the senior devil in C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters most likely shaped those kitchen staffers, a warning penned in 1950. For me, worship in a Christian church with true fellowship constitutes deep pleasure and rich engagement. As Wormwood notes, “the deepest likings and pleasures of any man are the raw material, the starting-point, with which the Enemy has furnished him.” With Yang’s description of this multi-faith metal filing cabinet immersion experience, all pleasure and desire to worship has disappeared…Wormwood must be smiling!
Phew...
Very poetic
Makes me consider if this is a secular version of Apostle Paul's notice of the unknown God in Acts 17? “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean.” 21 (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)
22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.
Phew! GREAT! NO NEED to reply. You knew that, right, Sir Wesley?
Sorry: "heteroglossia?"
"cossetted nihilism attending theTerminal Boredom at the End of History which have become a kind of inverted religious observance for me." Still HAVE?
Also, "familial dispute into which I had found been dragged" doesn't need the "found," right?
"Are novels the morbid obsession of people who need carefully constructed artifice in order to feel?"
I wonder if the Fundamentalist Wokeianity religion isn't the same morbid obsession. ICBW, tho.
Me? Too tired. Will probably hafta read third time for more.
Beautiful. Thank you.
As much as I enjoy your writing on the Successor Ideology, I have come to the conclusion that further analysis of it is pointless. It's already crystal clear that the ideology is deeply irrational, self-contradictory, and not truly authentic. More analysis isn't helping, only actions matter now. What type of action? I don't know. Perhaps some kind of "culture jamming" would make a difference. Any acts of non-compliance, no matter how small, would make a difference. How about ideas on resisting the SI?