Re: [Marxism] Theocracy

[Greg McDonald <sabocat59@xxxxxxx>]

Haines, thank you for the kind words.  As goes without saying, I  
always seem to benefit more from these exchanges than the recipients  
of my spontaneous meanderings.

I share your concern with a few of the points I raised. Namely,  
agreed that any synchronic analysis of superstructural,  mythological  
or ideological facets of social being has to be grounded in  
historical materialism. I also agree that though ruling class ideas  
may be the ruling ideas, subaltern, subcultural mythologies/ 
ideologies need to be examined as well.

And I am also unsure about this human nature thing. I do agree with  
the plasticity of human nature, but I've also studied enough pre- 
history and history to know that religious projection for humans is  
as common as the desire to look at oneself in the mirror while  
grooming. We seem to need to bounce our unfulfilled hopes and  
yearnings off of some ever-receding horizon which changes over time  
as our natures change, that process we call "belief in god". Since we  
are not really exposed to talk about god anymore, except before  
sporting events or while listening to some politician, it seems we  
need a new vocabulary to describe this process of projection,  
feedback, projection. It's almost like an internal call and response  
thing, wrapped up in all of the negative emotional experiences of  
alienation and anomie. Maybe we should just call it the blues and  
have done with it. Really, blues musicians are my favorite preachers...

Bellah is an interesting guy. He was a member of the CP while at  
Harvard, but I do believe he was also influenced by Talcott Parsons,  
so interesting that you picked up on the functionalism.

Actually Bellah has said that he thought that his writings on civil  
religion in the late 60's marked a kind of Minerva's owl of that  
close functional fit. Obvious. Importation of foreign religions,  
massive drug experimentation (the original religion if you ask me),  
war in Vietnam, generational discord, etc.

King tried to straddle the reformist, revolutionary wings of the  
civil rights movement, and although he succeeded in incorporating the  
main reformist thrust of the movement into commonly accepted beliefs  
of american civil religion, his plans to put the next phase into  
motion with the poor people's movement got him shot, as you know.  
Hell, I was a kid when all that was going on and you were there, and  
here I am telling you to check out videos of folks praying in the  
street. How embarrassing!

Yes, how class fits into all this is rather complicated. I think most  
white working class folks still buy into the civil religion, maybe  
precisely because of the severe psychic disruption created by the  
distinction between what is and what should be. You know, collective  
wish fulfillment projected outward.  But then again, it's really hard  
to say for sure. Don't most people still stand at attention and sing  
along during the national anthem before the big ball game? Do they do  
it because they believe, or because of peer pressure? Hell I don't  
know. It's all worth checking out though.




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