Re: Empire and Its Servile Masses (was Felix Morrow on religion)

[Yoshie Furuhashi <critical.montages@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 2/24/07, Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> >
>   The types of
> > religion that tend to inspire workers and peasants' revolts and
> > revolutions tend to be messianic and millenarian, which Shinto isn't.
>
> Or the kinds of social relations which tend to encourage revolts are the
> kind of social relations which also engender messianic and millenarian
> religions.
>
> We have a complex social web and it is not at all clear which elements
> are causes, which effects.

Around the end of Tokugawa Shogunate, there was a wave of millenarian
uprisings, called _ee ja naika_ (why not?), half riots, half
carnivals, tinged with a shade of Shinto.  And there is an example of
American Indians' Ghost Dances; the Taiping Rebellion, the Boxers'
Rebellion, etc. in China; etc.  So, it is true that cultures that did
not widely adopt any of the religions of the book can turn
millenarian.

Maybe the main difference is that Christianity and Islam, unlike
Judaism as well as pantheisms like Shinto, Hinduism, American Indian
religions, etc., have always had universalist aspirations and
evangelist dimensions, backed by powerful empires, so they had a
chance to shape the consciousness of masses as well as ruling classes
worldwide, unlike more tribal religions.
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
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