Comments on: The Islamic Vortex (Note-2)

By: Alex

Alex — Sun, 31 Aug 2014 09:27:47 +0000

http://sarabitus.blogspot.co.uk/2007/11/on-church-and-language.html

By: Kgaard

Kgaard — Sun, 31 Aug 2014 04:02:32 +0000

I can totally believe he got a lot of stuff wrong. He did cover a lot of ground: Myths the world over plus all the major religions and a fair chunk of psychology. I guess what I’m really looking for is somebody to say, ‘Campbell was totally full of shit at his core, and here’s why.”

Short of that, I’m tempted to think this is case where he was just so timely in his research — focusing on symbology and the universal mythic themes at a time when millions of people were craving exactly that kind of work — that Campbell is written off precisely because he was so popular.

I would venture that the number of people led back to Catholicism (or Judaism or Buddhism if that’s what they grew up with) by Campbell is well into the 7 figures …

By: Peter A. Taylor

Peter A. Taylor — Sat, 30 Aug 2014 22:25:00 +0000

@Kgaard:

I know a Santera priestess with a Ph.D. in religious studies from Rice U. who thinks Campbell got a lot of stuff wrong. For example, she claims that the Oedipus myth is a European thing, not universal at all. Specifically, it has no analog in African religion.

By: Kgaard

Kgaard — Sat, 30 Aug 2014 20:50:23 +0000

Yup … that’s him. Help me out here … What am I missing about Campbell that annoys people so much? Perhaps it’s something obvious (i.e. some sort of value relativism).

By: Peter A. Taylor

Peter A. Taylor — Sat, 30 Aug 2014 20:49:12 +0000

@Cledun:

I am trying to classify people as “prophets” (moral innovators) vs. “custodians” (traditionalists). This is confusing because of a tendency a lot of people have to put new wine in old bottles. Martin Luther is one example of this, but NeoPagans are extremely blatant about it.

“We are members of the oldest religion in the world. We practice it exactly as our foremothers did 10,000 years ago. We make it up.” — Unitarian Universalist Women’s Federation (UUWF)

By: Cledun

Cledun — Sat, 30 Aug 2014 19:07:39 +0000

The Wahabi/Salafi “Reformists” want to do away with over a thousand years of Islamic fiqh, madh’hab, tradition. They want to do away with the Hanafi, Hanbali, Shafei, and Maliki schools of Jurisprudence, they want to do away with the accumulated shariah of the Sunni Ummah, and return to a romanticised time of Early Islam, of the Rashidun Caliphs and of Muhammad himself, before the Gates of Ijtihad were closed (before they were even open!)

In this sense, they are very much like the Protestants, who did away with over a thousand years of collective Church doctrine and tradition, who desired a return to the ways of the Apostles and Christ himself.

By: blankmisgivings

blankmisgivings — Sat, 30 Aug 2014 18:23:22 +0000

Intriguing, but much of what you say here is par for the course in Left discourse: especially postmodern, third worldist and eco-feminist discourse. See for example the writings of anarcho-leftist James Scott (a seminal figure for the academic left), or Indian Luddite Vandana Shiva (a crucial conduit for leftist anti-globalization types). In fact I would have thought the ‘revolt against abstraction’ has been a leading meme for at least one faction of the academic Left for half a century (since the failure of 1968) and is intimately tied to ‘multiculturalism’, ‘resistance’, ‘difference’ and other memes. Something interesting is certainly going on here, but I’m not sure what it is! Perhaps we could go back to the 18th century to see the ambiguous way abstraction and its enemies has divided up between Left and Right. Take Burke and Blake for example – the right and left versions of the revolt against abstract reason in that century in England, or Schmitt and Benjamin, a 20th century pair.
Having said that, I can’t really agree with the binary way of seeing things in your post: iconoclasm (bad), versus analogical thought (good). I know neo-reaction dislikes dialectical/Hegelian thought, but isn’t there a potentially productive process here of iconoclastic defacement, followed by a re-embodiment in newly imagined forms of the traditional/local – something like Victor Turner’s understanding of the ritual process? (Of course I wouldn’t count Islamic iconoclasm as part of that dialectic! That seems to be more a sorry relic out of phase with the leading curve.)

By: VXXC

VXXC — Sat, 30 Aug 2014 18:14:16 +0000

You want to smash the Prog gods?

Truly?

The Televisions. Smash the Televisions, in public.

Remember it’s a message, smashing their gods.

By: Chris B

Chris B — Sat, 30 Aug 2014 16:28:59 +0000

Erm. Interestingly Ashkenazim have lower spatial visual IQ then normal.

By: Harold

Harold — Sat, 30 Aug 2014 16:14:38 +0000

Neither have jews. Ever. It is one of the most remarkable phenomena almost never remarked upon. It is as if they lack any visual aesthetic sense. Synagogue is the only term for a house of worship that has no connotation of visual beauty. Every other culture of any sophistication has produced unique and beautiful artifacts or clothing or architecture or gardens…