tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4917494492495819584.post7381650868162409790..comments2023-08-03T07:27:04.314-04:00Comments on The Ascent of Humanity: The Red PillCharles Eisensteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09537299105835446336noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4917494492495819584.post-81840460811638983262008-07-24T04:41:00.000-04:002008-07-24T04:41:00.000-04:00"Calvin, or AoH?"AoH of course! Not tha..."Calvin, or AoH?"<BR/><BR/>AoH of course! Not that I'd want to "blame" Calvin, exactly, after all, he didn't force human beings to embrace his worldview. Something about it was found to be attractive to millions, so it's pointless to simply vilify him for having a vision I happen to find appalling.<BR/><BR/>"I tend to think that Calvin's and other heartless, misanthropic ways of viewing the world have held sway because they resonate in human consciousness in a morphogenetic way or Jungian collective consciousness way."<BR/><BR/>That's a very interesting idea. I think there may be something to that. What you say makes sense to me.<BR/><BR/>If we just assume for the moment that my theory is right, and Calvin (for example) has been more influential in various spheres of thought than Shakespeare, the question is why? Why should cruel, unpleasant cosmologies have more influence than philanthropic, life-loving ones? Why should asceticism outrank "joie-de-vivre" in religion, philosophy, myth etc?<BR/><BR/>Because something about the images and visions involved are instantly accessible and easily comprehended by vast numbers of people. It's simply much easier to understand what Martin Luther was trying to say than to understand William Blake's verse, for example. Zoroaster's vision of the universe is easily & instantly understood, whereas the Gilgamesh poet's just isn't. I had to read that poem three times before I could truly begin to understand what it was all about. It's incredibly profound and a masterpiece for all time, but somehow the images and ideas don't "click" the way Zoroaster's vision instantly "clicks" into place the moment you encounter it.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4917494492495819584.post-89386300411488758632008-07-22T10:56:00.000-04:002008-07-22T10:56:00.000-04:00Chris, if you were one of the people in the smoke-...Chris, if you were one of the people in the smoke-filled room, that group of people who decide what we will like, what we will hate, who will be President, etc., which writings would you promote? Calvin, or AoH?mariehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12647019636897281142noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4917494492495819584.post-75349684571544020502008-07-21T23:39:00.000-04:002008-07-21T23:39:00.000-04:00That's an interesting POV, Chris. I just ran acro...That's an interesting POV, Chris. I just ran across Ashley Montagu's <I>Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race</I> and am going to try to scare up a copy. It's on line as a Google book.<BR/><BR/>I tend to think that Calvin's and other heartless, misanthropic ways of viewing the world have held sway because they resonate in human consciousness in a morphogenetic way or Jungian collective consciousness way. But now it seems truth is reaching more and more into the world, that there is greater welcoming of it into consciousness than in Calvin's or Augustine's time. I remember very little of his <I>Confessions</I>, but I do remember that he said one of the things he fought with himself to overcome was the enjoyment of blood sports! <BR/><BR/>About the <I>Matrix</I> and Manichean us-them division, I thought the same thing when I first read about the movie, but then I read what Charles wrote about taking <I>many</I> red pills throughout one's life, about it not being an all-or-nothing affair. Also, if we realize the Agent Smith beliefs are impersonal beliefs based on the separation of humanity and nature into random, isolated bits of conflicting interests, I don't think we see it so much as a good guy-bad guy kind of pro- and anti-humanity fight, but rather a universal yet individualized seeing through fallacy to the true ground of being. I think that can mean a peaceful resolution rather than traumatic or violent coming of truth to consciousness.<BR/><BR/>Thank you for the interesting post. It is so encouraging for me to read this blog and Reality Sandwich. I think people's care and love come through, rather than the snarkiness that passes for discourse in some spots on the Internet.<BR/><BR/>U.M.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4917494492495819584.post-62115129241415511142008-07-21T21:07:00.000-04:002008-07-21T21:07:00.000-04:00I find it hard to relate to all this MATRIX-allego...I find it hard to relate to all this MATRIX-allegory stuff, to be honest. ASCENT is a wonderful book, but it seems like all these ideas were presented so much more clearly there than when you bring complicated allegories into it.<BR/><BR/>My problem with THE MATRIX, & the reason I'm not a huge fan (though I enjoyed it when I saw it), is that it presents these problems so fantastically that it doesn't help you identify how these situations occur in real life. Also, it's yet another tale of good guys vs. bad guys, whereas in real life, it's not so clear-cut Manichean.<BR/><BR/>Charles, you talk a lot about the double-edged sword nature of technological advance. I found your discussion of literacy particularly interesting, how it can leech sensous immediacy from our experience, how it can create phantoms in the mind, illusory conceits (like "racial purity" for example).<BR/><BR/>But once we've acknowledged that the medium is the message, I think we need to go back and look at the precise message of specific literary works. Isn't it possible that the modern world would be completely different, & much healthier if certain individuals - Zoroaster, Augustine, John Calvin - had never written? (It isn't JUST the fact of the written word taking away people's instinctual responses, it's also the fact that the texts with the greatest impact on world history are not always the ones humanists would like them to be.)<BR/><BR/>Isn't the specific content of Augustine's or Calvin's or (in certain problematic areas) Darwin's work very dangerous and disquieting in its implications? For they all set up an us vs. them dualistic universe, they all need an enemy, an Evil Force, to stand in Manichean opposition to The Good.<BR/><BR/>Did you ever read Harold Bloom's famous theory of THE ANXIETY OF INFLUENCE? Bloom believes that strong writers survive and become canonical because of their imaginative strength in absorbing precursor writers. So "bad" and "weak" writers get forgotten and become period pieces, whereas "strong" and "great" writers, like Shakespeare, absorb the influence of precursors (the Geneva Bible, Chaucer's CANTERBURY TALES, Christopher Marlowe) & then produce enduring masterpieces. <BR/><BR/>But I think it would be very interesting to turn Bloom's scheme inside out. What if he's wrong? What if "the strong" (Chaucer, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Joyce) are NOT the writers who shape the future of civilization? What if their influence on future generations of readers is dwarfed by the influence of writers with a very heartless, cruel, cold, life-denying, misanthropic, reductive view of human beings - John Calvin for instance? What if Calvin has had more influence on world history & psychology & philosophy than Shakespeare? Bloom never really addresses this possibility. He presents literary history the way he WANTS it to be - with his idol Shakespeare the most influential writer of all time - not the way it actually has unfolded, in my view.<BR/><BR/>I don't think the world is in the mess it is simply because of an unfolding plan or paradigm. I think it is the way it is because Zoroaster's stark, cruel vision of universal strife dwarfed in influence that of the wonderful poet who wrote the beautiful (and deeply humane, life-loving, people-loving) epic of Gilgamesh. Because Augustine's rigid theology dwarfed in influence Ovid's playfully erotic myths and legends. Because John Calvin and Martin Luther, contra Bloom's assertions, did much more to shape modernity than the Trinity of Williams (Shakespeare, Blake, Wordsworth) ever did. The beautiful vision of human possibility contained in AS YOU LIKE IT or characters like Falstaff and Cleopatra, has helped us progress as a species, but simply has NOT had the impact that Calvin's monstrous theology has (dividing the human race into the fore-ordained "saved" and "damned," thus paving the way for biological determinism and 19th century "race purity" theories).<BR/><BR/>And to push this idea further, YOUR book is another masterpiece that is dwarfed in influence by loads of books and TV shows and movies with a pernicious vision of human possibility. This is the real problem with the invention of the written word I feel. Not that literacy automatically drains people's instinctual responses, but that the "wrong" texts have exerted the greatest influence on the largest number of people.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4917494492495819584.post-18417891034579717202008-07-20T22:23:00.000-04:002008-07-20T22:23:00.000-04:00Neo started the search himself. That is an importa...Neo started the search himself. That is an important point. We are all born with the desire to transcend our world, but later we experience only the desire and do not know its object.Charles Eisensteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09537299105835446336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4917494492495819584.post-12517385332701725062008-07-20T17:39:00.000-04:002008-07-20T17:39:00.000-04:00Did Neo start the search by himself or did Finder ...Did Neo start the search by himself or did Finder or something else impel the search?<BR/><BR/>U.M.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com