Mysticism, Dugin, Pluralism, This Little Corner and the Quest for the Next Center of Civilization

What will be the Religion that Comes After Post-Modernity?

In today's video we pull the focus WAY back and ask some questions about pluralism, religion and civilizations.

Imagine the world before "globalization" where little tribes make sense of their world through the filter of their tribal religion. Yes there are patterns of sacrifice, shamanism and animism but they have all of these little cultures around their religions and their gods.

Kingdoms and Empires arise, eating the little groups. Gods accumulate and recede, but still each culture has religion at its core, something "upper register" to make sense of the material world and account for its movement.

The great World Religions emerge and begin devouring the little ethnic religions subsuming their functions. Sense-making takes on a whole new level. There are tensions within them trying to account for the pervasive interpretive pluralism between upper and lower registers.

In Europe the Renaissance and the printing press send its civilization back to the book. Columbus initiates globalization. Erasmus and Luther in their own ways try to reform the church in different ways. Can't reason plus text bring clarity and hence uniformity from pluralism?

Catholic, Lutheran, Anabaptist violence spreads. Wars fracture Catholic Christendom. Texts haven't worked. Can we find someone common that all MUST recognize upon which to build ONE civilization, ending war, bringing agreement? What about regularity in the observable realm?

Physics used to be known by reading Aristotle. Now we discover it by measuring the reliability in "the natural order". Physics and math work the same for Catholics, Protestants and even Muslims. Maybe this can become our foundation for truth and resolve the pluralisms that divide.

If books were too upper register physics was too lower register. Physical observation was seen as grounding truth (Modernity) but texts were snuck into provide upper register meaning and sense making.

In the Modern West science and technology could colonize the lower, physical register but upper register texts still governed the hands and imaginations the wielded the science and technology. Pervasive upper-register interpretive pluralism persisted.

Secularity was a way of trying to tame the problem. Make "religion" private and try to leverage lower register observation as much as possible to create public facts upon which to govern.

Religious pluralism remains a knotty problem. Some imagined "religion" as seen in public secularity would pass away. It has not and will not. Others sought to reframe religion to find commonalities from above and below.

Religion makes sense of the vast array of historic, physical, human particularity. It makes sense of heaven (upper register) and earth (lower register). One's religion interprets all others just like one's eyes see and interprets all other.

Could the eye that turns inward find a universal through which to frame the multiplicity of the world? The tradition of reading beneath becomes noun-ified and mystical becomes mysticism.

Maybe the experience of all being one and an experience inside that is found across religions and time can end the pervasive interpretive pluralism beneath all our disagreements?

What if you didn't need to have billions initiated or meditate and you could provoke this mystical unity with a pill or a drink or a substance. Imagine. Maybe THEN the world would live as one!

Ah but isn't diversity a part of pluralism? Isn't equity the equality of all pluralisms?

What about diversity of civilizations based on religion? Shouldn't they have a right to flourish?

Isn't every cultural/religious "way" an assertion that their WAY is the best WAY? Isn't the West just trying to liberate the world so that individuals have the right to self-realization?

Alexandr Dugin says the 20th century was the battle between the three world-dominant political ideologies/religions. Communism, Fascism and Western Liberalism. Gotta kinda forget Islamic Fundamentalism but keep listening...

In the name of Diversity Dugin (Putin's brain) asks that the third Rome, Moscow, be given a shot. It is embattled by the West. Western Liberalism is a corrupt dead end and needs to back off.

Difficulty is that Dugin's civilization isn't thriving. You can rebuild church buildings but if no one bothers coming is it really functioning? This war might be Russia's last gasp...

Dugin is partly right. Modernity is receding. There is a void in the middle of Western Democracies where the church used to be.

The project of #thislittlecorner of the Internet is to wrestle with these questions. Will @PageauJonathan Orthodoxy in the New World find a way? Can @vervaeke_john a religion that's not a religion steal the culture?

Will Christianity once again rise from the grave in a new way making sense of the diverse pieces that need to fit into a cohesive picture providing a way forward?