The sexual revolution currently does sterling work in maintaining the totalitarian bureaucracy; mainly as a fantasy, but also as an actuality (being bound-up with travel and intoxication, the other great fantasy self-manipulations).
This is another reason why Romantic Christianity is what-we-need. When Christianity is bureaucratic, it is just like 'work' - which people hate (even as they clamour for ever more of it). In contrast, Romantic Christianity is individual - each must 'do it' for himself; because no current institution or group will be encouraging him.
Indeed, whenever some modern group does appear to be encouraging this, it is invariably a fake or a deception - as with the 1960s counterculture embrace of William Blake. What was actually on offer then (and now) was Blake minus Christ, which made a decisive and deadly difference.
Or sometimes there is Christianity without Romanticism - which sometimes entails a passive, externally-applied pseudo-Romanticism; internal conformity to a pre-determined and externally-defined 'mass Romanticism'.
Of course, Romantic Christianity is not for the masses but only for geniuses - which may sound to be of minority interest only... since not many people consider themselves to be geniuses; whther actual or potential. Yet - when understood - genius is seen to be the thinking of the real self; and everybody has a real self and everybody can think from it - potentially. So we ought all to conisder ourselves potential geniuses, and becoming such to be our destiny...
Because the creativity of genius is Not in remarkable and admired discoveries or artworks; but in direct participation with created reality, which is the consequence of thinking from the real self.
And direct participation in the ongoing work of creation can happen only when the awakening real self is aligned with the divine - so it is always Good.
But at the same time difficult.
On the other hand, we can't be prevented from doing it; ultimately we can only prevent our-selves.
Which means stopping-preventing-ourselves - which prevention is the prevailing situation.
And this active stopping is the most radical and personally transformative act that can be imagined (: better than the 50 year-old sexual revolution - which has Very Obviously Failed...).
What is key in genuine religion is to recognize inspiration as something that comes to us from above rather than rising from our own depths.
ReplyDeleteBureaucratic hierarchy asserts that there is only within and without, that if we are not being led externally by other humans, then we are only heeding the carnal instincts inside us.
We must not accept this denial of God's reality as a supernatural being who is able to directly guide us without the intervention of anyone else. But we must not deny that God also can and does speak to others.
The genuine Christianity is a community, but that community is defined by the relationship of each Christian to God, not by their relationships to one another. If they all are in the right relation to God, they will be in the right relationship to each other, but however many people (and of whatever formal rank in the hierarchy) fail to stay right with God, that doesn't impair the Christianity of each one who does remain obedient to God rather than men.
But genius is the wrong word for inspiration from God. It does not originate with us, but with God. Instead of originators of revelation we are recipients of it.
@CCL - In the past genius was inspiration, but but not now; not for two hundred years and more. Now it comes from within - to meet what is without; or else it does not come at all.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I'm reading into it, but I think what you're saying is that direct participation is comprehending reality correctly and doing good. If that is the case, I think that some of the most important tasks we have are the common tasks of life, and direct participation sounds like a good pursuit- in fact, the only pursuit that isn't doomed.
ReplyDeleteIt's true that the term has been repurposed, but I think that the modern usage is more metaphysically correct, as the prior usage of genius owes much to a cultural attitude that tends towards predestination.
ReplyDeleteWe should not deny genuine agency over and responsibility for natural mental capacities which play a role in human social hierarchies. Nor should we confuse this faculty with direct revelation. Like a winsomely charming smile, a strong back, or a large monetary inheritance, it is ultimately a gift from God but we are free to use it for good or ill, we have it from apparently naturalistic proximate causes regardless of moral worthiness and we can lose it through no particular sin on our own part.
Of course, we can also lose any of these things through sin.
@Jared "direct participation is comprehending reality correctly and doing good." - no that's not it!
ReplyDeleteThe words mean actually joining with God in the work of ongoing creation - which happens in the realm of thinking.
Isn't comprehending reality correctly and doing good materially identical with actually joining with God in the work of ongoing Creation?
ReplyDeleteAt the very least, it should seem to be a fundamentally important component. I mean, in what sense are you actually joining with God in the work of ongoing Creation if you are not correctly comprehending reality and doing good? And if you were 'only' correctly comprehending reality and doing good, how should you not actually be joining with God in the work of ongoing Creation?
What are we to make of your assertion that the one is not the other? Please explicate.
@CCL - I don't understand what you are asking.
ReplyDeleteI'm asking whether there is really a difference between "comprehending reality correctly and doing good" as opposed to "actually joining with God in the work of ongoing creation, which happens in the realm of thinking."
ReplyDeleteI mean, except for that bit about it happening in the realm of thinking, I could have thought that you meant the difference was that you don't need to comprehend reality correctly to join with God in the work of creation. But you apparently foreclosed the only sliver of a difference I might have found (if with a needlessly verbose explication of the mental nature of comprehension).
And, if there is such a difference that it is necessary to say of the first statement, "no that's not it!", then isn't it important to explain what that difference is? If the difference isn't important, why such emphatic rejection?