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Revolutionary Literalism
I keep hearing a consistent message from people interested in alternative religion, the occult, and the counter-culturalists of all shapes and sizes: literalism in religion is a mistake. Or rather, the mistake. The mistake to end all mistakes.
I hear that the Bible shouldn’t be taken literally. The story of Jesus shouldn’t be taken literally. An anthropomorphized God shouldn’t be taken literally. This is what the cutting edge of the counter-culture tells me.
But I got to thinking… if I wanted to be even more counter-cultural than those guys, and go further out on the edge, then don’t I have to eschew the message those people are spreading? I don’t doubt their motivations; and when I look around, it certainly seems like literalism has caused lots of problems. But if I want to stay fresh, and really be on the bleeding edge of alternative religion, it seems like I have to move past the condemnations and worries being trumpeted by these people into… something else. I have to go somewhere other people are too chicken-shit to go. I have to venture into the dark untamed jungles of literalism.
If all the radicals and revolutionaries say god is a force or a concept, or synonymous with the universe, or inside each of us - in order to one-up these people, and be a true revolutionary, it almost seems like you’d have to say God is a dude with white hair, robes and sandals who sits on a big golden throne in the clouds. Either that, or he looks something like this little Jack Chick depiction. It makes me understand that Tertullian quote about the Resurrection that the reason he believed in it was precisely because it was absurd. Talk about a radical!
I guess this can be boiled down to a few different questions. Is alternative religion and the counter-culture concerned with forging it’s own thing, or with reacting against the things somebody else forged? If it’s about reaction and about critique, how far do you take that? When do you start critiquing the critiquers? What happens when you revolt against the revolution? Is it more revolutionary to dodge the draft or to enlist willingly?
Going back to the religious side of the equation… Is literalism really the Great Enemy that so many of us believe? Is there something hidden inside of literalism which is what we are truly fighting against? Is it possible we are misdirecting our energies in fighting it to begin with? Are there times when literalism aids rather than cripples us? Does our ironic distance and intellectual detachment cause just as many problems (or more) than literalism ever did?
- Lincoln’s Revolutionary Side
- Literalism Doesn’t Exist
- Another good quote
- V for Vendetta, Part 4
- Literalism in Religion & Elsewhere
- Prev: Pope John Paul II a Martyr?
- Next: The Opposite of Shamanism
August 25th, 2005 at 8:55 pm
Literalism isn’t so bad. That can be dealt with. The literalists however, that’s another thing altogether. They cannot be dealt with, because they will be dealing with you as well. A 250 lb militaristic 4th degree jujitsu expert who is also a paranoid literalist would make mincemeat out of my openmindedness by opening my mind on a street curb.
August 25th, 2005 at 9:30 pm
Oh yeah, huh, Jack Chick, not Chick Corea comics… Hehe, thanks.
Personally, I think believing everything literally in the Bible leads to people saying the earth is 6,500 years old and is about as good as believing in Steven King’s “Insomnia” as a world view.
-tc
August 26th, 2005 at 6:40 am
Imo, one has to differentiate between ‘religious thinking’ and ‘magical thinking’ - these two may overlap in certain places and at certain times but they are not the same thing. It is the source of much confusion to people who get them mixed up so we need to define terms.
In fact these two modes of thought are the only modes of thought there are, they apply to everything (how’s that for literalist! Heh). Basically, magical thought is based on the ‘desire to get something’ and religious thought is based on the ‘desire to be worthy of something’. Of course in either mode there will come a point where desire must also be transcended but that’s a different story.
Clearly many people who see themselves as religious thinkers are really magical thinkers - they ‘desire to gain paradise’ for example and Tim’s example of wanting to go one further or ‘one-up’ radicals is also essentially an effort to ‘gain’ something.
There is nothing wrong with being either a ‘magical’ or ‘religious’ thinker, it’s everyone’s choice to follow either path but imo, if you are following the ‘religious’ way then literalism is an obstacle on the road.In the ‘magical’ sense, as Tim points out, it is not a problem and may even be an asset - certainly much can be gained by it if gaining is the goal.
August 26th, 2005 at 10:56 am
Maybe the problem with being a literalist is that it would tend to make you too predictable, too easy to manipulate and control by those who have studied the works you have chained yourself to. All you would ever be doing, in the hands of your puppet masters, is reacting instead of actually thinking.
This makes me think of the observation made by historians that many Asian despots welcomed, even supported, Buddhism because it made the populace more accepting and easier to manage and abuse. Perhaps this is just another way of saying that when people don’t believe they are worthy of anything, in their currently manifested imperfect states of being, they become ripe for exploitation.
August 26th, 2005 at 11:08 am
I don’t see why literalist thinking is more or less predictable than non-literalist. Part of what I’m saying is that radicals can be just as predictable, and succumb just as much to “groupthink” as anybody else. After a certain point, revolution becomes utterly predictable
August 26th, 2005 at 12:05 pm
You’re absolutely right about radicals becoming predictable. As someone who has at least some radical opinions on almost every subject under the sun, I find it very discouraging and depressing. I think the main reason is because alternative groups, movements, etc. are too isolated, the members spend too much time talking only to those who already think the same way they do, which leads to staleness, smugness and complacency… and ineffectiveness, of course. A sense of how to be pragmatically effective in a complex world tends to get lost when everyone is sitting around congratulating each other on how enlightened they all are.
August 26th, 2005 at 12:12 pm
Another good example is if I go to a concert or some other social event with people of my demographic segment. I always think I’m so individualistic until I’m sitting there over-hearing conversations which sound EXACTLY like things me and my friends would talk about. Except it sounds annoying coming from somebody else. That happen to anyone?
August 26th, 2005 at 12:28 pm
something else to consider, too, is that all these so-called ‘biblical literalists’ aren’t being literal at all! or, if they are, it’s a weird kind of literalism. if someone was to take the bible (OT and NT) as a whole completely literally, they’d be living like st. francis (an *actual* biblical literalist if ever there was one). they’d be redistributing their wealth, they’d be praying in the closet, etc. even with all the legalistic stuff, jesus says there’s only two laws worth following: love god and love your neighbor as yourself. all these dispensationalists and fundamentalists and whatnot really aren’t taking the bible literally whatsoever! there’s no depiction in the bible of god as some dude with white hair– iirc, that image didn’t even come into play until the late medieval period when artists started drawing god that way. even the whole bearded jesus thing is totally unliteral– most early pictures of jesus depicted him as clean-shaven!
my view on literalism changed a while back, an i even had a post where i was trying to brainstorm a new term. i don’t think literalism is necesarily all that bad anymore; it’s a different way of looking at things. it’s almost a moot point– literalism is all well and good, just as non-literalism is all well and good, until someone from one side starts trying to foist their concepts on someone else.
i think there’s a lot to be asked here! now that i think about it, one of the biggest thorns in my toes concerning ‘newagers’ and occultists and whatnot has always been that they’re so reactionary. it’s like, i’ll read a book on paganism or alternative spirituality that’s pretty cool, but then realize that over half of the danged thing is just a reaction against ‘organized religion’ or whatever. it really detracts.
for me, it goes back to the ‘gnosticism is indefensible’ argument. like, as soon as you start trying to defend your ideas against detractors, you’re letting them frame the argument, and you’re not doing *your* thing anymore, you’re doing *theirs*. imho, it’s more effective just to tend your own garden, as it were.
it’s the old ‘all satanists are christians’ canard. you couldn’t be a “satanist” without accepting the concept of satan, which is (in the modern world) a totally christian concept.
August 26th, 2005 at 1:36 pm
The claim to literalism has always struck me as more of a memetic defense mechanism than a serious claim. People who claim to be literalists often make many concessions that parts of the bible aren’t to be taken literally, if you sit one down and talk to them. Its something they fall back on when someone tells them that they’re interpreting the bible incorrectly. “Me? I’m interpreting it ‘LITERALLY!’” which means, “the first interpretation that pops into mind at any given time regardless of how literal it really is.” Literally, in the American Protestant sense, means actually very subjectively if you think about it, because the so-called literalists only pick and choose what they want to take literally. After all, Oliver Cromwell found a wealth of “literal” proof in the bible supporting killing irish people. Maybe we should stop calling it literalism and start calling it pick-and-choosism?
August 26th, 2005 at 1:41 pm
Tim you’re so right about literalism being a counter-culture thing now. Many Protestants in America sell this idea that the country has become super liberal and oppressively secular, and constantly paint this picture that their version of Christianity, which they consider is the “right” and “original” version (despite it being a relatively recent invention), is under attack. In response, many youth are flocking to this Christian-rock-concert-fueled counter-culture. Its the same old punk “fuck the system!” mentality, just in reaction to the percieved “oppression” in (permissive) liberalism. Does that make sense?
August 27th, 2005 at 3:52 am
Okay. I feel like I’m on board a Douglas Adams spaceship to a distant planet and we woke up too early. Which is okay.
I don’t have to say much on literalism and that is my point.
We can talk about the literalists and why some people think what they think the way they do. But in the long run, what are we going to do about the literalists? I’m a paranoid/metanoid fucking nonstop imaginator and excuse me for saying so: but the literalists are going to come for us in the night while we’re all chatting, our eyes perfectly adjusted to our warm campfire.
No, I’m not saying “Christians” per se are going to come for us. But mercenaries to the new god, hired to make thinking for one’s self even more difficult. I think they’re springing a trillion leaks though. It should be an interesting decade or two and the ways in which genuine humanity gets around all this. I only wonder how long we’re going to be allowed to experience it for ourselves.
August 27th, 2005 at 3:56 am
Perhaps we could have a discussion about “The End of the Internet” as religious belief?
That could get awesomely intense. To explore, as it were, the reason we all believe these things that we do. But maybe, come to think of it, that’d playing with fire.
August 27th, 2005 at 3:57 am
Maybe we’d all get “42″ by the end of it.
August 27th, 2005 at 4:02 am
Many Protestants in America sell this idea that the country has become super liberal and oppressively secular.
Isn’t it funny how the fruits of secularism have become the vehicle for oppression?
August 27th, 2005 at 1:23 pm
Yeah, that is a paranoid view, definitely. I’m not worried about it anymore. I’m not sure where I stopped, but I stopped. Why can’t we come for them and take them away? If you’re going to believe something on faith, you may as well make a decision to give yourself the power in your imagination.
What do you mean about “The End of the Internet”? Do you mean one day we’ll wake up and nobody will be able to get online ever again?
Anyway, I still don’t get why literalists are bad? It seems like saying “literalists are bad, not literalism” is just a cop-out because you can’t explain why literalism is bad. And if it’s literalists who are bad, then that means that it’s simply people who are bad. And if people are just bad, then what’s the point of any of this?
August 27th, 2005 at 2:39 pm
Well. Checking RI this morning, Jeff seems to have another interesting bit about just this.
I’ve always rode the fence on Madsen, but I guess he’s gone into hiding because he has recieved “credible warning” that his life is now in danger.
Also, not to toot another insignificant horn here, but the one time I ran into Ran Prieur at a Kunstler book signing, one of the first things he asked me was how long I thought the Internet was going to last. In other words a lot of people (at least some) are beginning to wonder how long the Internet is going to last in an age of delusional literalism brought on by powerful forces that do not want their control diluted.
Why do I think literalism isn’t as bad as literalists themselves? Simple, literalists are actors, perhaps even violently so and literalism is just the script. Then again, maybe I don’t know what I’m saying. Which is great, because I for one do not enjoy being negative.
Oh yeah, in some ways I’m not so paranoid about it anymore either, just realistic. Now I’m trying to find the path to a more wholesome future — a way to circumvent and transcend a civilization that for the most part I see as doomed.
August 27th, 2005 at 2:44 pm
I’m not trying to intimate that I am alone in this or project any kind of arrogance. I want that out in the open. This is nothing to argue over.
And one more thing, no I do not believe all people are bad — only easily seduced into the scripts of literalism. And with that, I’ll shut up now! ; )
I kinda posted about this just the other day.
August 27th, 2005 at 2:52 pm
Ah, the great sign of denial! Your paranoia has become so deep that you simply see it as reality.
This is related to what I was talking about in that parapolitics & whining post. (PS. I’m not trying to pick on you here - just working out the problem out loud)
If you’re going to talk about scripts, then as Robert Anton Wilson says, “paranoia is a Loser script; it defines somebody else as being in charge around here except me.”
I know the response to this is again to point back towards so-called “reality”: somebody else really is in charge! the president, the government, etc. But are they really? Is George W. Bush or Dick Cheney (or one of these anonymous literalists) sitting next to you on your computer right now and smacking your hand with a ruler or poking you in the ribs every time you have a thought they don’t like? Because unless they are and you’re chained to your computer and have a gun in your mouth, you’re simply giving them power voluntarily and willfully. And that’s not on them at all. That’s on you, because that’s a decision you make.
August 27th, 2005 at 6:42 pm
I couldn’t have said it any better myself Tim. Paranoia, ohhhh how I know about paranoia, solipsism and all the rest. Let’s go over all this some other time, when and if it comes up again. I don’t quite have the urge right now to delve into what I really think.
Let me just say that I agree completely and have the same misgivings with ever psychically doling out my marching orders from anyone, as in I would never give evil assholes the time of day in the first place. I’m reminded by this line from the song “Last Things” by KMFDM:
“The constant realization of dominance results in fear”
I’m intent on doing something about this immutable truth and no, it doesn’t involve stewing in paranoid anguish!
August 27th, 2005 at 6:46 pm
Plus and this is a big plus which I thought I would add:
I’m not so concerned for myself as I am those who do not see it and will be unprepared. This is especially the case for the babies and children of today and those yet to be born.