A little Tuesday theology

[eldaradan]

Not my theology today. I'm having real issues forcing myself to write down my ideas lately, and moreso in getting them readable for others.

But this is a little good thinking from a few Christian theologians.

Willis Elliott hits a bunch of stuff. I've ranted a lot of this myself, and he hits several points dear to my heart quickly and eloquently

Comments

[outotoro]

I would point out that America has an even stronger tendency towards violence - it's our self ideal. We are a nation born of rebellion, of choosing to violently take up arms for what we want. We are the nation of "rugged individualists" - where we will look out for "number 1".

Now, to be fair, stories (and cartoons) need plot, and plot is always run by conflict. However, the fact that we view conflict and vital to entertainment seems to say something about what I would term the innate sinfulness and wickedness of the human being. =o)

[eldaradan]

Oh gag me. I respect your mind and your faith, but the insistence of human moral depravity just baffles me. It totally destroys any hope or possibility of moral advancement, and generally sticks God in the role of big dumb bastard

[eldaradan]

Also, we can look at the folk tales and stories that were mechanisms of cultural transmission and moral instruction before cartoons, and while they featured conflict, we can also often see a more coherent, sophisticated morality being communicated because folks HAD to get along with their neighbours and had to deal with conflict in a sane way; those stories are not all about insoluble conflict resolved by violence. Our cartoons COULD be the same way, but as with American Superheroes and the Indian Captivity Narrative, redemptive violence underpins these forms of entertainment/myth. It's not unique to America, but it is essential in any major empire, and our obsession with it is central to our actual moral depravity as a culture.

[eldaradan]

Feet are ok. Boots kinda gross me out, because I know where my boots have been! And I wash my feet way way more often.

[eldaradan]

Damn girl, he don't want much.

My boots looked a bit like that. So I put black re-dye on them and then polished them. Now, a month later, they look more or less like that again, but with a little less of the light brown. I really need to keep on it. And see if I can get the sides sewn back together. I'm going to be white-knuckled on these things, I think; the idea of letting go of these boots is HARD. They're my coming of age boots.

[phoenix_seraph]

 
Good stuff overall, lad.

However, beware of allowing your mind to be corrupted into the dangerous sexism of a blithely naive gender psychology -- fascism is just as closely related to the notion of matriarchy as it is to the notion of patriarchy, and it does us no good to condemn something by pretending we can blame only half our species.

That may not be a fashionable truth, but it is true nonetheless.
 

[calodar]

One could get into many discussions about what fascism is; Mussolini himself said that it would be more accurate to call it "corporatism." But I think such discussions are moot due to the emotional baggage that the word has picked up over the years. I dislike the word "fascism" for almost exactly the same reason that Ran Prieur does; it's become so universally agreed upon as a bad thing that's its lost its meaning and become an intellectually lazy catch-all to be used by anyone against anyone with whom they disagree politically. As Ran himself said, "Nobody will ever stand up and say 'I am a fascist.'"

[eldaradan]

Ezra Pound did. His politics made his poetry very hard for me to enjoy

[eldaradan]

Well, twentieth century fascism at any rate was based on masculinist warrior cults. I imagine a matriarchal society could become heinously oppressive as well, but might imagine a different label for it.