Saturday, 23 November 2024

Fuzziness about assumptions and aims used to be okay, but now Christians need to be Clear

This is a thing that I assume; but not the kind of thing that can be proven. It is that in the past it was okay for Christians to have all kinds of wrong ideas, but now there are some particular core aspects of Christianity that it is necessary to become clear about. 

I regard this as a consequence of the development of a distinctively hard-edged modern consciousness. 

Whereas in the past, consciousness was more groupish, hence less personal; there was an inevitable fuzziness about concepts and aims because each individual's awareness was significantly subordinated to the groups in which he participated (his church, his clan, his nation...). Much of Cristian life was a matter of (often unconsciously) going along with group practices. 


Now, as I understand it, we Just Are primarily autonomous and isolated consciousness's. Some people can, temporarily and usually partially, re-immerse in a group mind - but only by some kind of temporary depression of consciousness - such as intoxication, trance states, getting carried-away by some crowd event - which might include a religious ceremony...

Or people blitz their own consciousness, with constant and distracting sensory inputs from social and mass media.    

But most of the time we are awake and aware, we experience consciousness as isolated, alienated from the world, and our-selves. 


This being fundamentally "on our own" is, I think, why we now need to be clear about the truth of things, and about our purposes in living. 

This is why, when we are wrong about essential matters; it seems to make a much greater difference than it used to. 

Apparently; we cannot help but follow-through our own ideas to conclusions and outcomes, that necessarily affect us

Errors will lead to further errors, lies and other forms of untruthfulness will propagate into consequences. 

There is (in a loose but necessary sense) a "karma" of our choices.   


That, at least, is how I see it. And it is is a very different business from the old theocratic way of defining a single permissible truth and way-of-living - and enforcing this upon the population at large. 

Now, the process of assumptions and consequences plays itself out in a multitude of individual consciousnesses.

Whereas in the past Christianity was a matter of externally mediated and inflicted threats and rewards; nowadays "the game of consequences" happens inside each person - and operates with a kind of determinism.  

In the past each group-immersed person was not fully responsible for his spiritual convictions, therefore neither was he fully responsible for the consequences; but now that responsibility is unavoidable. 


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