Re: BHA: On spirituality, the Church and Indigenous Australians

[Hockeys <limhockey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Gary and Mervyn

This discussion is helpful to my developing thesis and I'm hoping to
elaborate on the issues if I can make it to Bradford. To clarify for
other listers, I am the 'white' student referred to by Gary. I am 15
months into my doctoral studies and Gary has recently taken up the role
of my principal supervisor. Apparently there are only about six people
in Australia who are seriously engaged with CR, and I am not based on a
campus on a daily basis (more like a few hours a fortnight so far), so
really appreciate contributions to this list.

> >So I think for this candidate the task is
> >to find a way of formulating the spiritual turn which disassociates it from
> >the organised religions through an uncompromising commitment to the
> >eudaionistic society.   The kingdom of god must be located here on earth.

The city I spend most of the working week in is 27km south of Brisbane,
with around 5-8000 Aboriginal residents from dozens of nations around
Australia, plus 160 nationalities from other parts of the globe. One
quarter of the city's 200 000 residents were born overseas. In this
context (as with probably most in the world today), to what extent is it
our task to find a way of formulating the spiritual turn which
disassociates it from the organised religions, and to what extent are we
to explore the dialectic of spiritual turn and institutional religion?

> Well of course some Christians do locate it on earth. I don't think you
> should encourage him to break with his church, rather to link up with
> progressives and fight for change within it (outside too of course).

I see this to be the real challenge facing all of us, no matter what our
situation of birth or life. But is the best way to fight for change, to
actually collaborate with others in building the alternative society in
the here and now? A lot of energy can be dissipated through direct
confrontation. One book which ties together many of the themes around
spirituality, the church and Indigenous peoples (at least in the
northern Australian context) is Richard Trudgen's "Why Warriors lie down
and die", published in 2000 by the Aboriginal Resource and Development
Services (ARDS), Darwin. The ARDS website is www.ards.com.au and has
links to a number of information pages which discuss Australian
Aboriginal ontologies, epistemologies and the struggle for survival and
liberation through collaboration, using Freirean and similar approaches.

But sleep beckons.

Neil


Mervyn Hartwig wrote:
>
> Hi Gary,
>
> >>"the identity of identity and non-identity"
> > >(Hegel) versus "the non-identity of identity and non-identity" (Adorno).
>
> The snip was from Phil, so you better ask him too what he meant. I was
> saying that the current Bhaskar possibly straddles both positions. Very
> roughly: Bhaskar distinguishes two meta zones of being: 1. Absolute
> being - infinite, identical with itself. 2. Relative being - finite,
> non-identical with itself (characterised by duality). Within 2. there
> has emerged 2a Demi-real relative being (characterised by dualism,
> alienation and split, i.e. master-slave-type social structures and
> ideology).
>
> 2/2a is emergent from 1. and so is suffused and underpinned by it but
> not reducible to it. So within 2, there's a sense in which there is both
> indentity and non-identity of 1 and 2. Identity and non-identity are
> constellationally united or co-present in our zone of being (2).
>
> >Central to both theses is the matter of spirituality.  How though can this
> >be understood?
>
> On the trot, I would say that in Roy's current thinking spirituality is,
> in its shortest possible definition, the classic search for (alethic)
> truth, beauty and goodness. More concretely, spirituality refers to the
> non-material needs, and the creative capacities, humans have as a
> species (Marx's species being, Roy's core human nature or essential
> self, currently referred to as our 'ground state'). For Roy these needs
> crucially include non-alienation and the need for recognition and
> freedom, which of course are interrelated. Like Australian Aborigines
> were experiencing before the great holocaust of indigenous peoples
> caught up with them with the arrival of master-slave-type society and
> Empire, humans generally need to feel at one with (not alienated or
> split off from, and loving and caring towards) nature or the cosmic
> whole, the nexus of their social relations, other people and their
> essential selves. We can't of course go back to the Aboriginal way of
> life, but we can so to speak revisit it in the context of far more
> complex and differentiated totality and of all the cultural riches
> generated by master-slave-type societies in virtue [sic] of alienation
> (and now under dire threat), such that a global eco-sustainable society
> practicing a universal care ethic, in which universal self-realisation
> or 'the fee development of each as a condition for the free development
> of all', becomes possible. The seeds of a movement towards such a
> society are of course already growing vigorously in the global movement
> for Social Justice [the anti-capitalist or anti-globalisation movement]
> (including participatory democracy, peace and eco-sustainability), and
> it is not at all surprising to find indigenous peoples the world over at
> the forefront of it because they've experienced in the most appalling
> way what capitalism does to people and the environment, and their
> communities already significantly embody eudaimonian values which are
> wholly antithetical to the values generated by capitalism.
>
> >for Aborigines the Christian Church represents something else -
> >something not very good either. So I think for this candidate the task is
> >to find a way of formulating the spiritual turn which disassociates it from
> >the organised religions through an uncompromising commitment to the
> >eudaionistic society.   The kingdom of god must be located here on earth.
>
> Well of course some Christians do locate it on earth. I don't think you
> should encourage him to break with his church, rather to link up with
> progressives and fight for change within it (outside too of course).
> While recognising the truth of what you imply: institutionalised
> religion (like politics) has historically sided with the oppressors. I
> wasn't surprised to find in Roy's latest book a streak of anti-nomianism
> or hostility to institutional religion and politics; this is
> encapsulated in the concept of the primacy of subject-referentiality,
> i.e. don't expect or wait for the institions to act, act yourself. Of
> course, one doesn't have to be religious to embrace the spiritual turn.
> Roy sees himself as espousing 'a spirituality within the bounds of
> secularism, consistent with all faiths and no faith', and argues that
> his new philosophy 'shows the scientist to be nothing other than a
> (practical) mystic; and shows the mystic to be of necessity engaged in
> the most this-worldly concerns'.
>
> > For him the key is the construction of an
> >Aboriginal identity that is empowering.
>
> The politics of empowerment and self-esteem (amour de soi) are of course
> at the heart of the dialectic of freedom - see esp. the dialectic of the
> 7 E's in DPF. One achieves them in and through the struggle.
>
> Mervyn
>
> Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan@xxxxxxxxxx> writes
> >I am hoping to be able to persuade some of my graduate students to make the
> >trip to Bradford. I think that two of them are currently doing interesting
> >work around the question of Aboriginality and Emancipation.  One of the
> >candidates is white while the other is an Aborigine.
> >
> >Central to both theses is the matter of spirituality.  How though can this
> >be understood?  For one of the candidates his spirituality comes I think
> >out of his Christianity. In my own case how do I relate to this? Well I
> >have been a militant atheist who has grown to detest the aggressive
> >secularism, which so dominates our epoch and I urged him to come out as a
> >Christian in his thesis writing. People have a right to be religious. There
> >I said it!
> >
> >However for Aborigines the Christian Church represents something else -
> >something not very good either. So I think for this candidate the task is
> >to find a way of formulating the spiritual turn which disassociates it from
> >the organised religions through an uncompromising commitment to the
> >eudaionistic society.   The kingdom of god must be located here on earth.
> >
> >What of the other candidate?  I have mentioned him in an earlier post.  His
> >is a struggle from within the Aboriginal community.  He is striving to work
> >with progressive sectors of the state bureaucracy to bring about a rebirth
> >in Aboriginal education.  For him the key is the construction of an
> >Aboriginal identity that is empowering. Much to think about here. Not the
> >least this which I snipped from Mervyn's post
> >
> > >"the identity of identity and non-identity"
> > >(Hegel) versus "the non-identity of identity and non-identity" (Adorno).
> >
> >regards
> >
> >Gary
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >     --- from list bhaskar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
>
> --
> Mervyn Hartwig
> Editor, Journal of Critical Realism (incorporating 'Alethia')
> 13 Spenser Road
> Herne Hill
> London SE24 ONS
> United Kingdom
> Tel: 020 7 737 2892
> Email: <mh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
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>
> There is another world, but it is in this one.
> Paul Eluard
>
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