Symmachus wrote: ↑Fri Jun 26, 2020 2:15 pm
Or perhaps this is just human psychology?
What in human affairs doesn't come down to human psychology to one extent or another? I don't spend my time writing posts that say, "Well, that's human psychology for you," because, well, that is banal, obvious, and boring, although it is wonderfully accurate much of the time.
Symmachus wrote: ↑Fri Jun 26, 2020 2:15 pm
I do take this all with a grain of salt, as you prescribe us to, since there is a great deal lost when you flatten on the anvil of history the millions of multitudinous experiences of human beings, all from wildly disparate cultures over millennia, with a few big hammers like Roman imperialism and Zoroastrian theology.
OK, and yet describing things this way ignores the fact there was a kind of hotspot of cultural creativity in a more limited time and space wherein these elements came together that is arguably pertinent to what I am perhaps clumsily trying to convey. It is not like I am simply saying, "Wow, that Zoroaster and old Augustus have a lot to answer for here!"
Symmachus wrote: ↑Fri Jun 26, 2020 2:15 pm
And I'm sure you would agree that what might seem as manipulation of followers in the ancient world on a superficial level might actually have been attempts to "deal with real world problems that we can do something about" (e.g. Gregory the Great or any number of ascetics, to pick some easy examples). What would you have expected them to do instead? These were societies where a few weeks of severe or unexpected weather could fatally disrupt the food supply. None of the mechanisms that have solved any of the real-world problems they faced were even thought of, let alone able to be implemented. In such an environment, I find it understandable that people cast those problems in terms they could understand and that offered them something that seemed like a solution. Supposing that dualism developed along the course you trace here, it's not as if the pre-dualistic world you presuppose was any better at solving those problems. I'm not sure, in any case, the Melians would have taken any comfort from the fact that the Athenians were more sophisticated in their analysis than a Zoroastrian priest might have been.
I would like to think that you are reading the wrong things into my post. Just because I said that the theological strategy of transforming countless gods, demigods, and other entities into evil demons was probably useful for manipulating people does not mean that I believe this is an explanation of the cause of that kind of theological move. Nor am I interested in casting blame on the "ancients" for doing this kind of thing. Furthermore, far be it from me to judge harshly the peoples of antiquity for doing their best to deal with reality as they understood it. What I am doing here is making a casual, retrospective judgment based on how all of this seems to have turned out. It comes from my modern bias and my own viewpoint as it conflicts with the views of my contemporaries who put a lot of stock into the existence of all-righteous and all-evil invisible entities, apocalyptic prophecies, and the like.
Now, I do not doubt that people today also believe they are engaged in the serious business of dealing with reality when they become prayer warriors to cast out demons and prepare for their advancement to the next mortal probation in which they hope to be a step closer to godhood. The story is a little different, but it is definitely a reception of past ideas, and I don't think it is out of bounds to draw connections between the reception of antiquity in religion today and the cultural and historical factors that informed certain developments in the past, even with a broad brush and on a public message board. Obviously I don't, since I am doing it.
Symmachus wrote: ↑Fri Jun 26, 2020 2:15 pm
And besides, I wonder if you would agree that the explanation as you lay it out comes close to replicating the effect it decries: on the one hand, there are those who are simply trying to solve "real-world problems that we can do something about" and who don't use their worldview as a mechanism for manipulating followers, and on the other hand there are people trapped in a "moral-existential dualism" whose views are "fictitious," "paranoid," and "counterproductive," and all their activity involving their views a "huge waste of time" that is "avoiding reality."
Yeah, I knew that, if you read this, you would trot out this argument. I give it high marks for being clever, which is probably more than I will get from you for my post. OK, so, I don't view my participation on MDB as "trying to solve real-world problems that we can do something about." I am actually kind of taken aback that you, of all people, imagine me taking that position. My understanding, and correct me if I am wrong because I am working from my recollection of your explanation of why you came to this board, is that you are here partly because you were amused by our fun, silly, and satirical send up of apologetics. Really, I hope that you don't see me as imagining that I am doing serious work here. I am shooting the crap with friends.
Also, while you are indeed perceptive to see that I have created my own crude duality here that breaks the world into the congregation of the serious problem solvers and the congregation of deluded fantasists, I think that, again, you are reading your own assumptions into my understanding of these categories. I have to take the blame for being so careless as to treat this message board as a place where I can let my hair down and share my casual, late-night bar talk about the world. The truth is, however, that I think most of what all of us do, myself included, is indulge in fantasies of one kind or another. Very few of us are actually engaged in real-world problem solving, and most of those who claim to be doing so are full of crap. The wiser among them can be forced to admit this after being pressed by a non-threatening and skillful interlocutor.
That said, I am tempted to hypothesize that indulging in the stark moral dualism of certain theological systems and their accompanying apocalyptic narratives has probably been an aggravating factor in human conflict, even among those who do not believe in spiritual entities or the Bible. I can't prove it, and I will readily confess that it does not take demons or the final anti-Christ to participate in murderous "othering." Given, however, the wide purchase and pervasive influence of these ideas, it is tough to separate them out and imagine what the world might have been without them. I never claimed that my post was an answer to the problems of humanity, however, and I stand by that humble lack of any claim to have provided one.
Symmachus wrote: ↑Fri Jun 26, 2020 2:15 pm
Not that I am charging you with anything: human beings naturally reduce complexity into more manageable parts, 2 parts being the second easiest to manage behind 1. Maybe that is just the necessity of the format here, but on the other hand the form of dualism you decry seems pervasive to me and seems to appear even in denunciations of it. There are great number of Americans who view themselves as people who are just trying to solve "real-world problems that we can do something about" yet who characterize anyone who disagrees in exactly the same kind of terms you put here: people trapped in a "moral-existential dualism" whose views are "fictitious," "paranoid," and "counterproductive," and all their activity involving their views a "huge waste of time" that is "avoiding reality" (that stance practically describes
Vox and every Elizabeth Warren supporter I ever heard talk, yet they sincerely believe they're just problem-solvers; it's just they can't solve the problems until they fend off the forces of evil). And for every Trump supporter who thinks masks are a conspiracy to suppress the MAGA vote to benefit China, I'll show you a Ph.D. trying to beat up a gaudy bronze statue of someone who's been dead for more than 100 years and who they couldn't tell you two facts about, all in order to exorcise some demon that is supposedly all around us.
And yet I don't think one could make a real argument that Macedonian imperialism and Middle Zoroastrianism is lurking behind any of it.
You'll have to forgive me for feeling like you are reacting to my post as though I am an ideological foe who has just unfairly denigrated the benighted conservative gaggle. In other, fewer words, I am being told that, yes, my crap stinks too. You, on the other hand, are wise because you recognize that everyone's crap stinks, and so you are disappointed when you see me apparently failing to get that. Let me assure you that I apply my negative judgments to everyone who imagines that their devils must be exorcised in order to save us all, whether they actually believe in literal devils or not. We might say the same thing of exorcising Mopologists, a favorite pastime of ours here on the MDB. If I were to be so bold as to cling to anything in my earlier post after your criticism, even tentatively, it is that I remain open to the possibility that the belief systems that took hold in the West in the first century CE continue to have identifiable impacts on our world today. I may not have hit on exactly the right ones, or proved to your satisfaction the influences and connections, but, then, as you observed yourself, it's just a damn message board.
Finally, after this long time of our acquaintance, as narrow as it may be, I do understand that you hate this kind of historical shooting of the crap. I chose to do it anyway, because, well, I enjoy it. Sorry. Maybe that places me in a category with other irresponsible baddies, but so be it. My attempts to follow my better angels (which I do not believe in, but it's still a useful metaphor that has a long history behind it) do prevent me from making a fool out of myself in this particular way on a public blog, in journal articles, or in books published by university presses (smarter, more learned peers have succumbed to temptation!), but I just can't seem to restrain myself from doing it here. Maybe you can rhetorically beat the impulse out of me.