Monday, April 9, 2007

* Monotheism as Madness

The Judeo-Christian-Islamic complex has been the bane of the planet for an eon.In the ceaseless dialogue regarding diversity in higher education—and mainstream culture, for that matter—one issue is inevitably ignored: the fact that our mainstream intellectual discourse is still unconsciously directed by monotheism, or monism, or whatever monolithic -ism that best fits the context. For instance, monocultural intolerance might be seen as issuing primarily from monotheism—as a "one true god" serves as jealous centrism for an array of intolerances. And this is not just another Christianity-bashing escapade on my part: all this applies equally to Islamic fundamentalism; indeed, it is the Judeo-Christian-Islamic complex in toto that has been the bane of the planet for an eon.

Here I am reminded of the opposite ideal, of Native American cultures' (more usual) religious pluralism/acceptance: to be able to place that statuette of the Virgin Mary right next to the Corn Goddess kachina on one's shelf of household gods—without any cognitive dissonance; and to be unable to conceive that one's own culture-based & placed-based "religion" is also therefore the best one for that other culture/tribe on the other side of the mountain. . . . It is this truly "diverse"/multicultural attitude that I try to foster in my students.

Quots. of the Day:

"God is a thought that makes crooked all that is straight . . . ."
    --Friedrich Nietzsche

"Children of God feed upon children of earth."
    --John Trudell

"There is not enough religion in the world to destroy the world's religions."
    --Friedrich Nietzsche

3 comments:

Mike Messerli said...

Tom,

The "the bane of the planet for an eon."?

That's quite harsh. Not sure where that anger comes from, but it's not the feeling of many of us you consider as part of this comment. Please don't paint us all with your broad brush strokes, there are many of us, sincere, good people out here trying to be a positive influence on this planet.

Glad I found your blog, hope you do meet some of the great Christians I know.

Tom Gannon said...

Touché—and "thank God" for Francis of Assisi, etc. Yes, my comments wield way too "broad a brush," but they're aimed at a general dominant ideology, not at particular people or praxes. But after all the hyperbolic conservative demonization of "liberalism," my side needs a little hyperbole, too?! (And yet—not to waffle completely—my particular reasons for a preference for "polytheism" over monotheism requires further development in subsequent blog entries.)

Irenesson said...

Your assertions about monotheistic intolerance is well founded, but I disagree about "monocultural" intolerance. It's not that cultural intolerance doesn't exist, it does, the fault is that you seem to think that there's an alternative to monoculture. There isn't.

Multi-culturalism is an illusion, an illusion conjured up by the apologets and other political correct people of the world. The closest thing is a "multi-enclave" society, but such will only exist if there's a dominant culture that forces every other culture into peaceful, but oppressed, parallel co-existence.

All federally based states, including USA but most notably the former USSR and China, exhibits this formation of society. But in fact all states work in the same manner, just on a smaller scale. Remove the dominant culture (communism in the case of USSR), and all previously oppressed cultures will try to seize the power for themselves.

I can appriciate your veneration for polytheism, as I'm a polytheist myself, but don't make the errornous assumption, that a polytheistic based culture isn't a mono-culture in itself. It is. Polytheism isn't multi-culturalism, it's mono-culture, just without an embedded intolerance.

A Word from One of My Sponsors (not "AdSense"; rather "MadSense" or "RadSense"):

MeadowlarkSponsor