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Fred Reed is one of my favorite writers. I don't know how many venues he uses; LewRockwell dotcom is the one I'm used to using to read him. Yesterday he really outdid himself. It seemed worthy of a long quote:
I wonder whether
something else is not involved. Today most of us live in profound
isolation from the natural world. People in large cities can go
for decades without seeing the stars. Should they drive through
the countryside, it will be in a closed automobile with the air-conditioning
running. On a trip to the beach, the sand will be overrun by hordes
of people, half of them on whining jet skis.
We exist utterly
in a manmade cocoon, as much as desert termites in their mud towers.
This, I think, profoundly alters our inner landscapes. Live in the
rolling hills around Austin, say, as they were before they were
turned into suburbs, with the wind soughing through the empty expanse
and low vegetation stretching into the distance, the stars hanging
low and close in the night, and you get a sense of man’s smallness
in the scheme of nature, of the transitoriness of life, a suspicion
that there may perhaps be more things in heaven and earth. It makes
for reflection of a sort that throughout history has turned toward
the religious.
People no longer
live in large wild settings, but amid malls and freeways. The ancients
believed that the earth was the center of the cosmos. We believe
that we are. There is little to suggest otherwise in manicured suburbs
and cities where the sirens will be howling at all hours. It is
an empty world that begets philosophically empty thinking.
Without the
sense of being small in a large universe, and perhaps not even very
important, the question arises, “Is this all there is?”
and the answer appears to be “Yes.” Without the awe and
wonder and mystery of a larger cosmos, existence reduces to blowing
smog, competitive acquisition of consumer goods, and vapid television
with laugh tracks. We focus on efficiency, production, and the material
because they are all we have. It is not particularly satisfying,
and so we are not particularly satisfied.
I suspect that
the decline of religion stems less from the advance of scientific
knowledge than from the difficulty of discerning the transcendent
in a parking lot.
Apparently what Reed talks about doesn't apply in Springfield Missouri. I quote from a fascinating account of the ascendancy of Western Civilization, entitled Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson. "Springfield has roughly one Church for every thousand citizens. There are 122 Baptist churches thirty six Methodist chapels, twenty-five Churches of Christ and fifteen churches of God - in all, some 400 Christian places of worship." Ferguson goes on to describe what is called Prosperity religion. He attributes the separation of Church and State, that is where there is no state religion allowing an open competition between multiple Protestant sects. Where there is free competition in a free open religious market there will be innovations designed to make the experience of worship more fulfilling. "It is this that has kept religion alive in America" asserts Ferguson
ReplyDeleteI agree with Ferguson's argument that a free and competitive marketplace of religions has kept Americans more interested in Christianity than Europeans. Conversely Americans were less susceptible to secular pseudo-religions such as Marxism and Carbonism.
DeleteI believe there is an interview of Ferguson about his book, on C-Span's book TV, just in case.
ReplyDeleteEarly religions began in a simple way.....experiencing "god" in nature. Sun gods were the first gods. Then gods associating with agriculture as we began to engage in the mystery and miracle of growing food and so no longer being subject to periods of want, etc. And goddesses too. Imagine that. Both the masculine and feminine natures expressed in nature were admired and seen as something larger than one little man or woman. The natural order of the planet was respected and man experienced himself/herself as part of the natural order. That is what has been lost and it's the same thing that Ferguson is saying, I believe. Believing in multiple gods was redefined as paganism which became to be looked as the religion of ignorant people. Religion as it currently is structured typically believes in only 1 god and it is always a male god who now takes the role of telling people how to live in every aspect of their lives. People see themselves as above nature rather than a part of it and seek to control what is natural and spontaneous within themselves in every way, in accordance with the voice of their god who defines this for them. We pay a dear price for this since it really means cutting off our very selves from the planet that creates us. Like disownning our own parents or denying our very roots.
ReplyDeleteThe "first gods" of nature that you referred to: those are the anthropomorphisms of nature that appeal to hunters and pastoralists. I think Reed was mistaken in invoking them in an essay about the silly de-Christianization campaigns in the USA. The Christian god belongs to a much later society: it was a "family fill in" type of god who tried to meet the needs of displaced rural peasants and slaves who found themselves living alone in giant cities of the Greco-Roman world.
DeleteI mean Reed's quote, not Ferguson.
ReplyDelete