GR organised religion cf. personal beliefs

Mutualcode at aol.com Mutualcode at aol.com
Sat Apr 26 17:15:25 CDT 2003


In a message dated 4/26/2003 2:14:24 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
MalignD at aol.com writes:


> Again, that may be, but it's a distinction and an observation that, it seems 
> to me, falls outside the useful, given the context in which it was 
> presented.
> 
> 

My observations are notoriously anti-utilitarian. But I still believe
that it is almost impossible to separate religion- at least in a
paleo-anthropological sense- from social organization. Language
and religion are both group phenomenon that co-evolved during
the recent past and were probably supervenient on the same
neural structures, following in short order from the integration
of the "apparati" responsible for self-conscious, perhaps even 
facilitating the aggregation of those co-evolving neural units.

Which is really what 1984 is all about: the psychic renovation
known as room 101. I take Orwell at his word that his dystopia
might not have been so "dys" if he hadn't been in such dire
straights physically and financially when he created it. But the 
creature "homo sapien"- which means mostly lateral dominance, 
language, the terror of self-consciousness, and, the birth of a
material culture, most significantly- religion, were forged together
under tremendous evolutionary pressure. In that regard, 1984 is 
the literary representaion of the older, over-simplified biological 
credo: Ontogeny recapitulates Phylogeny.

Room 101, in the organized religious sense, becomes Auditorium
101, or a little while down the evolutionary trail- Theater 101, where
now the group demons are symbollized, and the priests exorcise
and/or expiate them.

GR can also be understood in these terms, but here we are 
given access to a whole new dimension- we have always been
at the movies...

respectfully
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