The Separation between State and Religion

In time we will realize that Democracy is the entitlement of individuals to every right that was in its times alloted to kings. The right to speak and decide, to be treated with decency, to serve and be served by people in a State of “love” that is, to serve with one’s work for the development of ‘life’. To belong to the Kingdom of Human Beings without racial, national, social or academic separations. To love and be loved. To die at the service of the whole and be honored in one’s death, for one’s life and work was legitimately valued. To be graceful and grateful. To have the pride and the humility of being One with the Universe, One with every realm of Existence, One with every living and deceased soul. To treat with dignity and be treated with dignity for One is dignified together with All others and Life itself. To walk the path of compassion, not in the sorrow of guilt but in the pride of being. To take responsability for one’s mistakes and sufferings and stand up again and again like a hero and a heroine and face the struggle that is put at one’s feet and in one’s hands. Millions of people, millions and millions of people might take many generations to realize the consciousness of our humaneness but there is no other dignified path for the human being.

The “work” as I conceive it is psychological and political. Psychology is the connection between the different dimensions within one’s self and Politics is the actualization of that consciousness in our practical lives. Religion is the ceremony that binds the connectedness between the individual and the Universe. The separation between religion, politics and science, the arts and sports is, in the sphere of the social, the reflection of the schizophrenia within the individual and the masses. The dialogue between individuality and the "human" belongs to consciousness. The tendency to develop cults resides in the shortcomings we’are finding in life as it is structured today. “Life” has become the private property of a few priviledged who cannot profit from it because as soon as it is appropriated it stops to be “life” or “life-giving”.

We are all the victims of our own invention and each one is called upon to find solutions. The only problem is believing our selves incapable of finding them. We are now free to use all Systems of knowledge objectively, sharing them without imposing our will on each other. To become objective about our lives means to understand that the institutions that govern its experience are critically important. That we are one with the governments, one with the religious activities that mark its pace, that the arena’s in which we move our bodies and the laboratories in which we explore our possibilities are ALL part and parcel of our own personal responsibility. That WE ARE ONE WITH EACH OTHER AND EVERYTHING AROUND US and acknowledge for ourselves a bond of love in conscious responsibility. That we human beings know ourselves part of each other and are willing and able to act on our behalf for the benefit of each and every individual. That we no longer allow governments, industries, universities or any other institution to run along unchecked by the objective principles of humaneness. That we do not allow gurus to abuse their power or governors to steal the taxes and use them to their personal advantage in detriment of the whole. That we do not allow abuse from anyone anywhere because life is too beautiful to do so and that we are willing to stop the rampant crime with the necessary compassion Conscious knowledge is every individual's right. Conscious action is every individual's duty.

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Friday, 7 May 2010

Elder concludes and Elena

One powerless possibility for a shared historical truth that breaks the mould is to come to conceive social and political power differently from how it has been conceived, mostly implicitly, throughout the history of metaphysics. The phenomena of human beings sharing the world in interchange with each other point to the limits of mono-archically conceived productionist, metaphysical power, for metaphysical power is always thought as a starting-point residing in one being governing a change, a metabolh/ in another being. Monotheism, in particular, thinks within this mono-archic paradigm by positing the a)rxh/ as a supreme being. In questioning powerlessly, we ask: Does not the reciprocity of the free exchange and interchange (metabolh/ in its other sense) between and among human beings, even today, still await its appropriate conceptualization, no longer subsumed (implicitly) under key metaphysical concepts from du/namij and e)ne/rgeia through to Nietzschean will to power in which power is always thought mono-archically? By virtue of the ontological peculiarity of human beings as ineluctably free beings cast individually and singularly out into an historically shared, universal, open truth of being, all interchange among them is a power play that, paradoxically, is situated essentially outside the reach of any metaphysically conceived power and therefore within a realm of powerlessness. In particular, there is no metaphysically conceived power capable of achieving a lasting unity of truth (e.g. a theocracy) or practical agreement among a plurality of individual emanations of freedom; any unity is a unity on recall, until the next outbreak of dissent and conflict. The yearning for the one (to\ e(/n) must give way to acceptance of the many (ta\ polla/).

The power interplay among many individual centres of power is not to be subdued or made calculable for an outcome that fulfils external criteria, but is to be recognized and protected as the historical form of human sociation that corresponds to individualized, plural, human freedom per se. The individuality of individuals is only made possible by an abstract form of sociation mediated by a reified social relation, money, that allows many degrees of freedom for individuals to shape their own selves and their own lives shared with chosen others. Individuals struggle against and with one another to become 
who they are and to gain what they desire to enjoy and individually shape their lives. On the fair side of the medal, the everyday interchanges among individuals enable them to exercise their individual powers and abilities for each other's benefit, and that in often unforeseeable ways. Each individual comes to show who he or she is and to validate their powers in the interchanges with others, and also to acquire goods of living that make their lives comfortable. Such freedom of interplay concerns powers and potentials, and not any outcomes that could be specified as 'the good' or 'well-being' of all, and therefore there is always risk of failure in the play of free individuality. The gambit to be esteemed as somewho and to gain the material wherewithal for good living carries no guarantees of assured outcomes, but is already the very realization of social freedom.

The justice pertaining to the interplay among individuals vieing for who-status and gain is the 
commutativejustice of fair play, and not the distributive ('social') justice of assured, secure outcomes. The superior instance called for by the power interplay of individuals has first of all to fulfil a judicial role to resolve the inevitable conflicts that arise, and secondly a rule-setting role to ensure that the interplay overall is played out according to fair rules. This latter is the translation of the Hobbesian criterion of "peaceable living" among the players, above all by preventing unfair concentrations of power in the striving for monetary gain and in the employment of money as an accumulated, reified social power. The adjudicating and rule-setting roles of government are its core determinations. The power interplay among individuals is not to be quelled but allowed to play out, with unforeseen and often surprising outcomes. A third role for government is to develop, through education and training, the powers and abilities of individuals so that they can play as well as they possibly can in the power plays of daily life to gain esteem and income.

A conception of social living and its government in terms of fair power play is antithetical to the traditional conception of power that posits a principal having dominion over the movements to bring forth an envisaged outcome. Such a principal is required by conceptions of 
distributive (social) justice that are bent on guaranteeing actual outcomes deemed as good, e.g. (the maximization of) the happiness of society as a whole.(15) To guarantee such actual outcomes, free interplay must be quelled or at least constrained and confined. The individual players in the power interplay who value their own individual freedom affirm a superior instance of power only insofar as it exercises judicial and rule-setting powers, for such powers are in accordance with the interplay of individual freedom and necessary for it. Such a free society is necessarily pluralist, for there can be no unified truth for a way of living in it, but only a plurality of different ways of living mediated with one another by abstract, reified social relations of interchange that leave each other in peace, and indeed, in a guaranteed, but benevolent indifference to each other. The preservation of freedom demands conceding thepowerlessness of government to bring about certain envisaged outcomes of the power interplay at the heart of social living.

The power play among individuals and associations therefore contains many contradictory possibilities, including the following: rivalry and teamwork, competition and co-operation, appreciation and depreciation of abilities, vanity and self-esteem, flattery and esteem, winning and losing, greed and moderation, mutual benefit and one-sided advantage, uplifting exhilaration and downcasting disappointment. The power interplay cannot be governed, controlled to produce certain desirable outcomes rather than others, nor can it be quelled to prevent the savage struggle over who-status among the players (over standing presence in the mirroring shine of public or private estimation) that rages everywhere and everyday, mostly covertly. Political power is not cybernetic, but can only arbitrate conflicts and right wrong through a judiciary and seek to maintain fair boundary conditions of the game as a whole. Fairness cannot be calculably set up. When the power play among individuals and their associations is fair, it is beautiful like a fleeting, mild summer's day, but, more often than not, it is unfair and ugly. The government is only one instance mandated to fight for fairness by laying down rules of play. Fairness, however, is not so much a matter of implementable government policy; rather fair play is an 
ethos in which the players are immersed that imbues the power interplay with a certain attunement. An ethos is an aether which the players breathe habitually like a fairer, higher atmosphere; it is not a higher power.  







Elena:


I'm a little tired to take all this texts on but it is worth looking at it some. 



"An ethos is an aether which the players breathe habitually like a fairer, higher atmosphere; it is not a higher power."

That's enough to allow for life! The crux is not higher power but higher atmosphere. That alone would guarantee different social, family and individual relationships because the individual mirrors his self in his community whether it is a community or not and the disintegrity, schizophrenic society of today reflects on the individual's sense of his own self. If everything else is so messed up how could I be not? If no one is coherent what could make me more coherent than others? 

To be able to disassociate from the general madness requires certain conditions that scape the majority of the participants in which Power over one's self acquires a greater strength than the Power exerted on one by the "atmosphere". It is not only possible but necessary just like it is necessary for children to grow up and leave home no matter how loving the parents may be but like in families, if the contact has been thwarted from the beginning, developing strong enough individuals to cope with the separation is no easy matter. 

This is very interesting because while there is no healthy separation between "realms of life", there is a necessary separation between people in different processes. 

Time to rest. 




  





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