#american civil religion

[gameshowtrainwreck]

One thing I really love is that same school sports teams that would forfeit games because they would be playing against my black siblings are now the same teams forfeiting games because one of my trans siblings are playing on them.

Nothing says "standing up for the Bible" quite like treating other people differently than you'd want them to treat you, boy howdy. Really makes one proud to see the name of Christ printed everywhere but the printers' own fucking hearts.

(you heard me right; has your family disowned you for being trans? fuck 'em, they can burn in hell, they know they deserve to burn in hell for it, the Lord has given them over to their delusions. I consider you as my family; you have a (goofy, non-creepy) uncle now. feel free to drop me a line for irrelevent advice or goofy jokes or heartfelt words of encouragement.

You are valid. You are worthy of love. Even if it's just from some internet rando who never really fit in anywhere he went, you fit in with me. Spite is just as valid a reason to stick around as anything else, we'll hate on the motherfuckers together. I'll bring my SNES. I got Bomberman and Mario Kart)

[daisukitoo]

In the American civic religion, the traditional role of the church came to be played by, appropriately enough, a corporation. As formal religion waned, the Disney corporation took the reins of hegemonic cultural development, preservation, and transmission.

Pilgrimages to Disneyland and Disneyworld replaced similar holy trips to Rome, Jerusalem, or Mecca in other faiths. The poor would save for years in hopes that they could afford a once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage. The middle class would go as they could afford. The wealthy would either make a spectacle of an annual pilgrimage or of announcing themselves above such proletarian religious observances.

Like other religious institutions, Disney came to subsume competing mythologies, most often through purchase, as might be expected of a corporation. "Super heroes," a popular American form of demigod mythology, came to be owned by Disney, not just renamed as saints or called aspects of an existing deity.

Like all religions, there were schisms. Take the Pixar sect, officially a part of Disney but usually operating semi-independently, depending on whether the current leadership was promoting conformity or diversity. Pixar is perhaps best known for its paean to the American institution of Cars, a trilogy of stories in which the cars themselves have outlived humanity and formed their own nation on the highways that so long divided Americans from each other.

Pixar's iconography was one of rebellion from the church-corporation that had purchased it. Whenever it could get away with it, Pixar films started with a panopticon image of a self-powered spotlight, crushing the self ("I") from Pixar itself before looking directly at the viewer. The rebellion at Pixar showed this tragic destruction of "I" before showing that "you" are next, before performing their prescribed role of celebrating the culture and the corporation, a mix of the prescribed and the proscribed.

[instantpansies]

and what if i liveblogged my notes on "Sons of the Fathers: The Civil Religion of the American Revolution" by Catherine L. Albanese. what then (it's a library book and this is slightly more Dopamine™️ than pulling out a notebook rn. block #toastblock to avoid seeing my probably boring commentary on a moderately history book from 1976)

[mobileleprechaun]

Remake of a shitty Babylon Bee thing, got moderately big on Twitter. Popping it here too in case it brings any solace to Tumblr's ex-fundies/homeschoolers.

[jacquelinemerritt]

Postmodernism: It’s a Thing.

Originally posted March 7th, 2016

So, recently I’ve taken to reading the work of Film Crit HULK (who you should totally be reading too, by the way), and I came across an older article of his where he argues that postmodernism doesn’t exist. To summarize, HULK argues that there is no actual distinction between postmodernism and modernism, as both artistic movements had the same fundamental goals of questioning the validity of classically accepted truth, whether that truth be how to tell a story, how to express concepts with line and color, or how to construct buildings.

Now, I’m actually a postmodernist, but I still found his argument to be pretty compelling in regards to the weaknesses of our cultural definition of postmodernism and our collective lack of understanding of what modernism actually was and is. And as he argued, those problems lead to problems when attempting to discuss it, as most people just have a general sense of the concept instead of a solid definition.

The thing is, postmodernism definitely exists, and its existence is made clearest when looking at how it can be defined in the context of moral and political philosophy, as opposed to its murky existence in art. To put it simply, postmodernism in moral and political philosophy is the rejection of the modernist paradigm of rationalism, progressivism, and amorality in favor of a return to classical understanding of knowledge and the good.1

Okay, so I recognize that that’s a pretty technical definition that you’re not likely to get unless you’ve studied contemporary, modern, and ancient political philosophy, so I’ll explain what I mean. Modern political philosophy is defined by the works of three particular people: Niccolò Machiavelli, René Descartes, and Thomas Hobbes. All three of these authors’ works are concerned with tearing down the classical notions of the purpose of government, knowledge, and the good2, and in its place building a new standard for those things from scratch.

Machiavelli is first on the scene, and he challenges notions of morality and government by claiming the most effective and most secure rulers are tyrants who engage in an evil and selfish rule. Descartes chooses to take nothing for granted concerning knowledge and builds a systemic approach to knowledge based on the principle that the human ability to doubt is the only absolute certainty. Hobbes then takes Machiavelli a step further and questions the reasons for government existence (drawing of Cartesian doubt) determining that the sole purpose of government is to prevent us from killing each other and provide safety from external threats (the basics of his social contract theory), and by such logic the best government is the one that keeps citizens safe through extreme enforcement of harsh law3.

I could track the development of modernism by philosophers further4, but instead I’m just going to note that Cartesian rationalism and the Cartesian Method (which is quite similar to Newton’s scientific method) led to the rise of industrialism, and social contract theory led to the rise of democratic regimes across Europe and America, wherein democracy itself ended up being espoused as a good in and of itself (a la Lincoln’s American Civil Religion). From here, we can already see a parallel between philosophical and artistic modernism; both began as revolts against the traditional or classical doctrine of what art and the good is, and both developed their own approach to art and philosophy from scratch, questioning the very nature of beauty and thought in the process.

Postmodern political and moral philosophy then was a reaction to the ideals of modernism, with philosophers like Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, and Hannah Arendt emerging as harsh critics of their ideals. Now, HULK actually acknowledges this, and he argues that the reactionary nature of postmodernism makes it indistinguishable from modernism, but in doing so he chooses to ignore the significant methodological departure made by Heidegger and those that he influenced.

Heidegger’s philosophy was, on the surface, a rejection of both Modernist and Classical ideals, but his concern with the etymological significance of language and search for the original meaning of words and concepts was a shift from developing concepts based on evidence to developing concepts based on the “text” itself. Derrida expanded on this with his concept of “deconstruction” as an approach to textual and political criticism (deconstruction is the de facto approach of anyone concerned with systemic injustice), and Arendt used this textual approach to examine the nature of human activity and thought, and propose a return to the “active life” and emphasis on public action present in classical thought.

Most postmodern thought builds on the Arendtian paradigm here, focusing on a return to classical ideals and deconstruction of modernist ideals, with the final addition of note being how postmodernism rejects both modernist and classical notions of human relationship in favor of focusing on developing an empathetic relationship with “the other.” This is also the primary function of postmodernism’s “incredulity towards metanarratives,” as Jean-Francois Lyotard put it, as the emphasis on “the other” leads to a willingness to criticize any overarching concept put forth by society that attempts to denigrate or harm people for perceived differences. Also, as HULK noted, the focus on deconstruction certainly is a metanarrative itself, but the embrace of classical values within postmodernism means that it isn’t simply a rejection of metanarratives, as is commonly misconceived. Finally, it’s also important to mention postmodernism uses the metanarrative of “philosophy” itself as its tool to deconstruct philosophy (this is the stated goal of Heidegger, in fact).

So, going back to my original definition, if postmodern philosophy is “the rejection of the modernist paradigm of rationalism, progressivism, and amorality in favor of a return to classical understanding of knowledge and the good,” can we use that definition to create a similar one for art? I think we can, and given my explanation of how postmodernism approaches these goals, I think it is as simple as “Postmodern art uses the classical tools of art to deconstruct or interrogate either the classical or modern paradigm of art.”

Now, I’m not going to attempt to apply that to any of the arts outside of film and television, but the application of this definition becomes pretty easy: Community is a postmodern show because it uses the format of the sitcom to interrogate all kinds of concepts and assumptions associated with traditional storytelling, and Hot Fuzz is a postmodern film because it interrogates the tropes of action films while remaining an action film. On the other end, a modernist interrogation of sitcoms would be Too Many Cooks, as it interrogates the “TGIF” sitcom era by showing the assumed state of peace and happiness within those sitcoms to be a complete lie, and a modernist action film would be one that distances itself entirely from and critiques the basis for that violence directly (unfortunately, I can’t think of a film that actually does this). Obviously there are many more potential examples I could turn to, and I’d actually be interested in discussing how this definition could apply to mediums outside film and TV, but for now, I feel like I have gone on for long enough about postmodernism and modernism. And I will be damned if they are not complicated to talk about.

Stray Observations

1Eudaimonia, if you prefer Greek.

2This is a slight fib, as Descartes had next to no concern with government, and neither Hobbes nor Machiavelli cared much about knowledge, though they certainly used Cartesian rationalism.

3Both Machiavelli and Hobbes have an incredibly pessimistic view of human nature, and it guides the entirety of their philosophies.

4If you want a much better and more detailed history of the development of modernism, you should read Leo Strauss’ essay “The Three Waves of Modernity.”

Let the record show that I feel like a proper pretentious douche for talking about Heidegger with no hints of irony whatsoever. There’s a similar feeling regarding Derrida as well.

I obviously have no shame in talking about Hannah Arendt, because she’s the freakin’ best.

I also recognize that this is hella esoteric, and that I’m also really failing to do justice to the ideas of any philosopher I mentioned here (it’s why this is a blog post instead of a proper academic paper), but I hope that this was still fairly easy to follow.

Also obviously most films with basic dramatic structure would fall under a “classical” paradigm.

[gwydpolls]

Time Travel Question 62: early Modern and Much Earlier

These Questions are the result of suggestions from the previous iteration.

This category may include suggestions made too late to fall into the correct grouping.

Please add new suggestions below if you have them for future consideration.

I can't remember if we did this one. It would have been late last summer. i think we did some specific species, but i can't remember if it was done in total. I am quoting the whole suggestion here: "Carboniferous forests, before Angiosperms became dominant. I want to see the lepidodendrons and the huge equisetes and all the many Araucaria and gnetophytes and ginkgos that once thrived."

It is too late to fix the typo, but the First item should read somemething like: "People, species, and landscapes of California circa 1400.

[istherewifiinhell]

How fast can i make a quesadilla......

[ahaura]

stealing library books because the connection between native americans and palestinians makes people "uncomfortable"...

[not-so-superheroine]

a very different experience than mine that helps me understand others more. as art often should. thank you for sharing your experience. difficult as it wasm

i used to lead the entire school in the pledge of allegience via intercom and got to be second in command in my schools military program. it was formative for me but by senior year it was beginning to feel weird. i was the second highest raking person in an american military school program and went, "imma take this (leadership, confidence, authority, command) and leave the brainwashing over there. and i'm taking that college scholarship instead of enlisting despite the rank boost bc its legit military training."

it didn't feel that profound at the time.

i never thought the united states was "the best" but i thought, when i was younger, that it could be reformed or fixed. i don't think that anymore.

[practically-an-x-man]

Saying this as an atheist but I mean it genuinely when I say that early-2000s rom-coms have a gentler and more palatable view on God and religion than most actual real-life Christians do

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Glenn Loury: The Case for Black Patriotism

Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave and great abolitionist, in a famous speech of 1852 titled “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?,” asked America whether he had a share in the nation’s civic inheritance. Douglass was cautiously hopeful that America might be faithful to its founding principles and grant liberty and equality to his people. But he had to plead with his audience to consider the gravity of the times; he had to indict his country for not standing up to its own ideals.

Today we stand 170 years later. Douglass’s criticism of America remains fashionable, but many Americans seem to have forgotten what it was about America that Douglass wanted to be a part of. When we talk about race and America, we must ask whether the standoffishness exemplified, by, for example, the “America ain’t so great, and never was” posture popular on campuses and in newsrooms, truly serves the interests of black Americans. The narrative we blacks settle upon about the American project is fundamentally important. Is this, basically, a good country that affords boundless opportunity to all who are fortunate enough to enjoy the privileges and bear the responsibilities of American citizenship? Or, is this, basically, a venal, immoral, rapacious bandit-society of plundering white supremacists founded in genocide and slavery, and propelled by capitalist greed and unrepentant racism?

I wish to make the case for unabashed black patriotism—for the forthright embrace of America by black people. Our birthright citizenship in this great republic is an inheritance of immense value. Our Americanness is much more important than our blackness.

Of course, there is some warrant in the historical record for both sentiments. African slavery flourished at the time of the founding, true enough. And yet, within a century of the founding slavery was gone and people who had been chattel became citizens of the United States. Should equality before the law have taken another hundred years? Should my ancestors have been enslaved in the first place? No and no. But we must not forget that slavery had been commonplace since antiquity. Emancipation, the freeing of slaves en masse as the result of a movement for abolition—that was a new idea. It was a Western idea, brought to fruition in our own United States of America. It would not have been possible without the philosophical insights and moral commitments cultivated in the West during the Enlightenment—ideas about the essential dignity of human persons.

The founding of the United States of America was a world-historic event by means of which enlightenment ideals about the rights of individual persons and the legitimacy of state power got instantiated for the first time in real institutions. The United States of America fought authoritarian fascism and communism in the Pacific and Europe in the mid-­twentieth century. Our democracy, flawed as it most surely is, has been a beacon to billions of people. On our shores, we have witnessed since the end of the Civil War the greatest transformation in the status of an enserfed people that is to be found anywhere in world history. Some 46 million strong, we black Americans have become by far the richest and most powerful large population of African descent on this planet, and it’s not even close. We have access to more than five times the income of the typical Nigerian, the richest nation in all of sub-Saharan Africa.

I am a descendant of slaves and I came up in the 1950s and 1960s on Chicago’s South Side; I didn’t have an easy upbringing, but I was a beneficiary of the civil rights revolution, which made possible for me a life that my forebears ­only dreamed of. I became an economist and Ivy League college professor. I am a product of the Enlightenment, and I am an inheritor of its great traditions: Tolstoy is mine. Dickens is mine. Newton and Maxwell and Einstein are mine.

We Americans, of all stripes, have a great deal in common, and our commonalities can be used to build bridges, undergirded by patriotism, between black America and the nation as a whole. We all want the same things. We want a shot at the American Dream. We want each generation to do better than the ones that came before it. Connections among groups in America could be stronger if we focused more on the things we have in common than on the things that divide us.

Those who make their living by focusing on our differences believe that there is something fundamentally wrong with the American project. They’re wrong.

They betray the legacy of Frederick Douglass, and we should resist their divisive rhetoric. It is easy to overstate the racial problems facing our country, and to understate what we have achieved.

Join me in valuing the American tradition at FairForAll.org

[fairyzar]

the older i get the more confused i become in regards to my identity.

[pantestudines]

"American Civil Religion" is grossly fascinating as a concept to me. Its shitty. It's fascist. I was raised in it. It still holds power over me in ways I hate. But It's inherently goofy... the only people really inducted Into it are like boy scouts and kids who were made to do student government in elementary school. Despite being obviously Christian the adherence to the first ammendment has turned it almost secular and, I think I could say, nontrinitarian? Like there's really only the One God in American Civil religion and as long as you are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or otherwise Very Monotheistic its okay to worship him however you want. "jesus" isn't really a factor in it, just "God". Being an Athiest, however, even a culturally Christian one, is less acceptable. The flag is a holy icon, one with an intricate series of Rituals only rrally enforced by the initiated. Native Americans are treated like wise sages whose wisdom was passed on directly to the founding fathers (and I should note my absolute distaste in this practice here-- American Civil Religion really is awful in most cases but this one always makes my skin crawl). The military might as well be priests, because all of the "rituals" in American Civil Religion are directly tied to military practice. But that only really extends to officers and the ones in ritual... out of costume soldiers or those in normal combat gear aren't sanctified in the same way. Any career path is lauded, however, at least as Long as you are both upper middle class and providing a direct service to the country. Weirdly it almost sees businessmen as outsiders-- sometimes trustworthy, but the private citizen who isn't involved in the Scouts or VFWs or something are taught to be almost like sheep that one must protect. That's the point of the religion, to protect and serve "America's citizens". Or, more accurately, the state itself, but thats obvious. Actual conservatives and especially rural ones have a much different idea of Patriotism, I think. They don't trust the state, only the soldiers and the land they stole. They also want everyone to be conservatives. They value individual freedoms (as long as you use them to be an evangelical gun toting farmer). Meanwhile in American Civil Religion... you can be a Democrat, you can live in cities. They don't mind, and often do, appeal to the capital L "Liberals". They just want you to respect and revere the senate and capital buildings as places of worship. A different kind of patriotism. The only laws or religious observances seem to be the laws of the federal government itself, and perhaps whatever someone who outranks you tells you to do. I wonder how many people even really grew up with it as their only religious Influence, like I did? Is this what the elite politicians are raised to believe by their elite politician parents? Or do they just grimly control the strings, donating to ROTC programs and performing flag burnings for 90 year old veterans to boost vote numbers? Or is this religion purely for shitheads named Eric whose parents were rich and who could never understand why his attitudes towards money and race and politics were off-putting to his poorer friends? (And the friends who in turn didn't realize yet why Eric's money and spoiledness off-put them so much?) Hopefully the whole damn thing gets dismantled soon enough I will never have to find out, but until that day I will remain distantly intrigued.

[enthusispastic]

.

[scklbz]

Opinion | Lessons from Alexandria: A Cautionary Tale for Modern American Politics

By Jet Espinosa In a city once hailed as a beacon of knowledge and tolerance, Alexandria drew people from across the ancient world. It was a place where scholars, thinkers, and believers from diverse backgrounds came to share and preserve their wisdom. With libraries that housed invaluable knowledge in science, philosophy, medicine, and the arts, Alexandria was a symbol of progress and…

[brbgensokyo]

its a bit late for me to writing about this but i really do think its interesting that Lemesia turned out as a world without religion despite being on the comatose psychic planet that loves you and having avatars of the planet being guiding hands