femme banal

far from relegating religion to the category of illusion,
each issues an invitation to "make believe."
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article referencing Luce Irigaray and Mary Daly

and I have missed things and kept out of sight
but other girls were never quite like this.
...na na na na-na na...
beatles ~ rubber soul

How did I end up on the Feminist Philosophy of Religion page at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy site? I'll tell you exactly how, though it could easily take the rest of the day. Grab a cup of coffee or a beer. You ain't goin nowhere for a spell. Well pardner, it was like this... As of several months ago, there are these new things on Amazon called SIPs -- for statistically improbable phrases. They show up right after book title, author and first line, like this... Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement (Hardcover) by Christine Rosen "On a blisteringly hot day in July 1896, a preacher in Topeka, Kansas..." (more) SIPs: eugenics promoter, eugenic health certificates, sermon contest, scientific eugenicists, eugenics crusade (more) Behind those simple looking links is a lot of hairy SCIENCE and MATH. Suffice it to say: very powerful stuff. Take "eugenics crusade." The embedded URL that link fires off has a lot of strange stuff in it. Nevermind. It basically reduces to something like this... www.amazon.com/gp/phrase/?phrase=eugenics%20crusade Try it: eugenics crusade On the resulting page, you'll see a list of hits, like so... 5 references in Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement by Christine Rosen 2 references in No Other Gods: On Science and American Social Thought by Charles E. Rosenberg 1 reference in Governing the Hearth: Law and the Family in Nineteenth-Century America by Michael Grossberg I removed the links from the above example. On the actual Amazon page, if you click either the little triangle or the "x references" bit, a list will open below the hit -- as in a collapsable outliner -- providing a snippet of context and a link to the full-text document image. And you get every instance of the SIP in every book that Amazon has scanned -- i.e., the ones that say Search Inside, like this... Go ahead, click on it. [Nobody ever clicks on the links. Berners-Lee would be rolling over in his grave. If he were dead, that is.] See? Do you have any idea what it would take to accomplish this in a large library? Or even a small one? Or in a "real-world" bookstore? Think about it. It would take a lot. Possibly months or years of grueling research. Instead: click! Now, as this is a pretty cool thing, I wanted to install that basic search string in my Google bar. No, not the one you get from Google. The one you get with Mac OS X 10.4 [or so], to which you can add other searches. This is probably possible somehow in Windows, but it's been a while and things have changed since I was last there, and I forget, and I don't care. This operating system business is not, strictly speaking, critical to our story. So don't go all religious on me. As it turns out, you can stick anything you want in this thing... www.amazon.com/gp/phrase/?phrase=eugenics%20crusade ...where it says "eugenics%20crusade" -- the %20 thing is a space; don't worry about it; if there's a space in your search URL, the browser will take care of it for you. Meaning what? Meaning that you can cut that line above, drop it into your browser's nav-bar window dealie, change the search string to, oh say, "gonzo marketing," as below, and Bob's yer uncle... Clicking on the above graphic will fire off the search. Go on, don't be shy. Now, see the fourth (or so) hit down? It should say "3 references in Business: The Ultimate Resource." Click where it says "3 references" and choose the first one in the drop-down list -- the one that says "on page 40." Then zoom that page with the picture of my ugly kisser and read "The Case for Business Criticism" -- the article Harvard Business Review refused to publish! Anyway, you get the idea. I hope. But we're not done yet. Remember I wanted to get a generalized form of that search into some googlesque toolbar? Right. You forgot, didn't you? But I didn't. So I went to this Camino search extensions page, the details of which you needn't worry about -- except that it contains a search method for (remember that quote way back up at the top?) the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. And the generalized form of that search, is... plato.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/webglimpse.cgi?id=1&amp;query=something [Can you believe I'm quoting code-ish sorts of things at you? I can't. But perhaps it's only to demonstrate that I have no in-principle beef with instrumental rationality. Please join me in ignoring this uncomfortable truth. (Or see yesterday's post.)] Yes, well, anyway. I installed both of those: the one for Amazon SIPs, and the one for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. To test the latter, I needed to plug a search term (in place of our something, above) into the teensy search-bar window. And the only thing I could think of that was halfway philosophical was... Once again, click the graphic to execute the search. Oooh, lookee! Heavy-duty! No? What? You mean you don't get off on Methodological Individualism? You mean to say that Epistemological Problems of Perception don't turn you on? Shit, looks like I'm going to have to rethink my audience... Again. ! ¡ ! ¡ ! ¡ ! ¡ ! ¡ ! ¡ ! But forget all that too. Just scroll down to hit #15 -- the one that says Feminist Philosophy of Religion • supernaturalism or solipsism; values without the problems of The problems of what? Oh well, I guess it'll tell me in the article. So I go there. I scan it. Very academic prose. Very dense. Sounds like total bullshit. Makes it hard to separate the real bullshit from the garden variety vanilla-flavored bullshit. But I press on. At least I can find out without the problems of what. And would you look at that? Here's the passage, from somewhere down under the sub-heading... 5.5 Pragmatizing Feminist Philosophy of Religion The end result of these combined naturalization processes should yield something new to philosophy of religion: "truth without the problems of certainty; justification without the problems of foundations; nature and access to it without the problems of supernaturalism or solipsism; values without the problems of absolutism or arbitrariness; and distinctively religious or spiritual experience without idealism, dualism, or institutional religion" (Stuhr 2003, 194). The reference being to... Oh, I see. I get it. The way you get around all those problems is by being a hulking ripped Greek guy with a monster club! Leave it to the superchicks to pick up on a book with a cover like that. Postmodern my ass! The page makes much reference, among a myriad of weird and incomprehensible other matters, to a certain individual... "Feminist Interpretations of Mary Daly (2000), devoted to an assessment of one of the most original authors in the field..." "a chapter on feminist philosophy of religion as represented by Mary Daly..." "the concept of a male God has been judged by every major feminist thinker, including Mary Daly...." "the early Mary Daly (1973) posited God as "Verb," a dynamic becoming process that energizes all things." "the tradition that employs the classical ontology of being, extending from Thomas Aquinas to Paul Tillich and the early Mary Daly..." "A distinct alternative... appears in the feminist philosophies of religion of Luce Irigaray and Mary Daly. Both seek to project a 'female divine' that would be fully immanental in and for the female Self (capitalized by Daly)... and would provide what Irigaray calls a 'sensible transcendental.'" It goes on. But you begin to get the idea that Mary Daly must be some sort of big cheese in the world of academic feminism, right? However, immanental? Excuse me? Ah well. I suppose we must have this sort of barely literate writing if we are also to have, after all, a sensible transcendental. Whateverthefuck a transcendental might be, sensible or not. Unless perhaps it's one of these... ...which makes about as much sense. Possibly a lot more. But hey! I bet Emerson would know. Too bad we can't ask him. Now I lay me down to sleep, praying Ralph my soul to keep... More to the point: what's a Mary Daly? It sounds like one of those unmentionable high colonic things you get in Hollywood. And so <sigh> it's back off to Amazon to see what I can see. Ah, here's something now! Quintessence...Realizing the Archaic Future: A Radical Elemental Feminist Manifesto. Sounds weighty. Her publisher has not opted to contribute any blurbiture, so I'll have to depend on the Valued Reviewers -- one of whom helpfully provides a quote from the book, which he sets up as follows: "Daly's narrator, 'I,' is 'Anonyma,' a Mary Daly fan from 50 years in the future, who has brought Daly forward in time to survey the world her books brought about." So here we go... "Are there men and boys on the other continents?" [Mary] asked." "Yes," I said. "But ... the world today is Gynocratic and Gynocentric. ... The Earth's transformation has required that her inhabitants grow through profound psychic changes. Those who were not able to grow could not endure in the purity and strength of the New energy field..." "Are you saying that men who insisted on clinging to patriarchal beliefs and behaviors became obsolete and 'died off'?" asked Mary. "Yes, they rapidly became extinct," I said. "And what became of the patriarchally assimilated women who identified with the roles and rules of patriarchy?" asked Mary. I answered, "Those women who refused to release themselves from the phallocratic dependencies and habits that had been embedded in them under the old system were in effect refusing to evolve. So they also could not survive in the New energy field." Well, I guess that means I'm toast. But soldiering on... Here's another one titled "Feminism Commits Suicide" by Lisa (USA)... Mary Daly's Quintessence makes me wonder: Is there any room in the feminist movement for sane women? I believe in a woman's right to control her own destiny and enjoy the same rights, freedoms and opportunities as a man. Yet in Mary Daly's futuristic fantasy utopia, I am killed off by a "new energy field" that eliminates all men and all heterosexual women. And feminists wonder why so few college-age women are willing to identify themselves as feminists! No, they aren't "afraid of the F word." They're afraid of being considered psychopaths who want to kill men. Hey this is fun! Let's see what else we got. Hmmm. Here's a guy named Hubert van Tuyll... What struck me as most peculiar about Daly's book is not the implied desire to exterminate men -- that is to be expected --- but that women with different viewpoints have also vanished from her perfect world. Oh dear. A bit too serious, that one. Well, what about her other books? She seems to have written enough of them. Some would say far too many. Here's one called Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy, of which the publisher -- Women's Press Ltd; now there's an imprint -- says: "In this exhilarating journey into the interior of language, eminent philosopher Mary Daly reveals the patriarchal construction of language and religious imagery, offering imaginative and daring alternatives." And on their site... Mary Daly is one of the most exhilarating and imaginative feminist thinkers of our time. She is also a raging Fury, a Nag-Hag, a Crone. In Pure Lust - which is the female lust for change, as opposed to Cockocracy, the Phallic State - she extends the 'deviant philosophy' developed in her classic Gyn/Ecology. Intergalactic. All right. btw, that page also says that Daly "exhorts us to the Vourage to Sin," and that she's a "Revolying hag." What do you want to bet that attention to detail is part of "the guilt and fear in which the male sadosociety entraps us"? But what do the Amazon reviewers have to say? Here's a one-star write-up of Pure Lust titled "Or 5 Stars as a Self-Parody." I have to confess...I LIKE reading Mary Daly. She is a complete kook. You don't get beyond the introduction of this book without realizing where she is coming from, viz., a la-la land of man-hatred, where everything male is evil, violent, and destructive, and everything female is life-affirming sweetness and light. I sometimes use this text in my classes, and when I finish reading students the introduction, even the women sit there with their mouths agape... they just don't appreciate the articulate, nay, the poetic, ramblings of a damaged, if brilliant, mind. [snip] I give this book only 1 star because it is offered in all seriousness, and what it offers is in fact hateful nonsense that will appeal only to minds and hearts as damaged as Daly's. If, though, you want to read it as a parody of the most extreme sort of feminism (and Daly IS extreme -- she would not allow men in her feminist ethics classes at Boston College, and was eventually, FINALLY, forced out of academia for it), then I give this 5 stars. It's a crazy ride, full of vivid language and wild rants. It can be lots of fun, viewed the right way. This is what ends up on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy? It seems to me that "feminism" has outlived its usefulness as a term that means much anymore. I mean, there is feminism and then there's... just pure hog swill. Who can tell the difference? And telling the difference does seem somehow, well, important. However, the gist of the Stanford article -- with its "justification without the problems of foundations" and "invitation to 'make believe'" tropes -- appears to reduce to nothing more than, one more time... And that, if you recall how this overlong post started, is how I got there.

how do you say putz in wymyn?

enchanté

Consider the possibility that the world was never what it used to be, however much we wish it had been. Thus the mourning of the magicians. Thus childhood's end in a field of broken pentacles. What's passed has been received in full. The long night over, nothing left of yesterday, not even darkness. In a freshening wind, only future to look forward to, the horses paw the earth, the beggars ride... Die Entzauberung der Welt Max Weber wrote that. It means "the disenchantment of the world." He didn't write the music, no, that's Robert Fripp on Eno's here come the warm jets, back when Eno could rock. High brow, low brow. Better like that if you mix it up. Jam it all together, run it through the blender, crank it. Juxtaposition being almost everything. You ready there, Max? Then hit it, Herr Doktor... ...it means that principally there are no mysterious incalculable forces that come into play, but rather that one can, in principle, master all things by calculation. This means the world is disenchanted. One need no longer have recourse to magical means in order to master or implore the spirits, as did the savage, for whom such mysterious powers existed. ~ Max Weber, Science as a vocation in H. Gerth and C.W. Mills, (eds.) From Max Weber New York: Oxford University Press (1946) Savage. You like that? Let that Fripp clip loop a few more times -- you're getting close. The world is... alles was der Fall ist. So said Wittgenstein. And Metheny: as falls witchita, so falls witchita falls. Everybody gets a hand in. Everything that is the Case -- the lead guitar in Neuromancer, so to speak. Unless you're thinking Wintermute. There is no way things are. But oh the nostalgia for how they might have been. Attempts to re-enchant the world abound. But too self-conscious, clumsy, not the same. Once you know you're doing it yourself, all you get is a pantheon of plastic gods and an embarrassment of bitches. Because instrumental rationality got in the way of all that sacredness. Of all that wilding Dionysian discord. Of all those spooky bedside comforts instrumental in your own undoing. Pandemic panegyric self regard. I'm going to count backwards from 100 now. Just relax. Gonna take you down to tinkertoys. In Constructing the Self, Constructing America: A Cultural History of Psychotherapy, Philip Cushman writes: In 1836, Charles Poyen, a follower of the infamous Anton Mesmer, brought Mesmer's strange combination of Enlightenment science, hypnotism, romanticism, and spirituality to to the United States. With it came the seeds of a liberationist ideology that would mix with the native abundance of the New World and grow into a whole new type of healing technology, one uniquely adapted to the optimism and material promise of the American cultural terrain. In the nineteenth century, the United States was caught in a vise created by the potential material profit offered by the "virgin" continent, on the one hand, and the psychological wounds occasioned by immigration, racism, gender prescriptions, unregulated capitalism, and the weakening of tradition and community, on the other. This juxtaposition of seemingly unlimited abundance with severe confusion and suffering created a paradox, the effects of which could be seen in the strange psychosomatic symptoms that affected the new urban populations of the East and Midwest. The paradox posed a question, and mesmerism, an unlikely hero, provided an answer. Herein lies a strange and very American tale, one that describes the creation of a new and un-European concept of the human being. Simply put, the human interior was conceived of as neither dangerous, secular, nor controlled by external events, as Europeans believed; instead it was inherently good, potentially saturated in spirituality, and capable of controlling the external world: it was an enchanted interior, a fitting partner for the enchanted geographical "interior" that spread westward to the Pacific. This "strange and very American tale" is headed straight for "mind cure," New Thought, Christian Science and all manner of weirdball spiritualism. A story we'll be exploring here too, but later. My attention span is flagging. However, following on that last trope -- a psychological analog for manifest destiny -- Cushman writes... Mesmerism's subject was the interior, enchanted, potentially expansive self, a self so clearly syntonic with the American terrain and the power relations and forms of control that were a part of that terrain. Of course, mesmerism not only reflected this nineteenth-century American self; it also helped construct it. In a later chapter called "Self-Liberation Through Consumerism" -- the section is titled "Heinz Kohut and the Valorization of Narcissism: The Self Takes Center Stage" -- Cushman talks about Kohut's "self psychology" and theory of narcissism, writing (p. 270) that Kohut confused appearance for essence, that is, taking culturally conditioned psychological dynamics for universal human truths. He says Kohut ...saw the whole mid- to late twentieth-century clearing -- the appearance of emptiness, confusion, isolation, the commodification of human life -- and called it essence. By doing so he reified the given, gave it a scientific justification, and encouraged its continuation. Ultimately, this is the source of his limitation, and ours as well. And there's this a page later... ......self structure is both built (through psychologically taking in and metabolizing the parent's qualities) and liberated (through the unfolding plan of the nuclear self). The consumer language in [Kohut's] formulation should be obvious. The two characteristic elements of twentieth-century American consumerism -- individual salvation through the consuming of commodities and the liberation of the enchanted interior -- are clearly evident. Instrumental rationality will use any means to achieve desired ends. Self-interested, calculating, focused on efficiency, prediction, command and control, it ultimately leads to Weber's "iron cage" of rigid, stultifying bureaucracy. Neither is it above using "spirituality" and enchantment to "get its needs met." Although the psychological construct was still a long way off in Weber's future -- our present; be here now -- instrumental rationality can also lead to the inflexible algorithm run amok that is personality disorder.

painfully stupid but not as bad as the twilight of american culture. monks... OMG! powers of mind in victorian britain heinz kohut and the psychology of the self

Cognitive Therapy of Personality Disorders ~ Aaron T. Beck

en garde

In a bottom-up reversal of the usual suspects, a post by Simon Robinson on OutofRange alerted me to this listing by long-time Valued Reader Jack Schofield in his 18 August 2005 Web watch column in The Guardian. Locke step Chris Locke, aka RageBoy, is working on a new book, and has started a blog to post work in progress. This time, the Chief Blogging Officer and co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto is not writing about the net. The book is Mystic Bourgeoisie: Numinous Lunacy and the Sanctimonious Narcissism of the New Age [sic]. It deals with the New Age (and earlier) tendency to believe complete tosh. Warning: includes nudity, and may contain nuts. [links added] Actually, that would be NewAge++, which involves a critical (in both senses) distinction I'm attempting to draw -- or perhaps I should say, a critical expansion on the more familiar, though ever vaporously vague, "New Age" category. Before Jack's pointer appeared, I'd been wondering whether I should take the nudity out. However, I wouldn't want to disappoint any Guardian readers who might come here expecting to find some. Thus, ironically, his warning has had an unintended sustaining effect. ;-) As to the "nuts," if I removed them, there wouldn't be much of anything left. So, in lieu of something racier, here is the Rosy Cross as worn in their various ceremonies by members of the Golden Dawn, of which W.B. Yeats [you really owe it to yourself to hit that link] was an active member. I found this image on the Kheper site, which has more strange and wondrous stuff than you can shake a leg at. It's fast becoming primary resource. Like the bookstores -- both online and brick-and-mortar -- the web is awash is such... material. click image for larger view!

self-initiation into the golden dawn tradition: a complete curriculum of study for both the solitary magician and the working magical group [not a recommendation]

to serve & protect

I posted a page on Amazon yesterday. It tells a bit more of the story I've been unpacking here. I'ts called... So you'd like to... protect yourself from the Mystic Bourgeoisie click here to go there follow-up note: As of no more than 48 hours later, this rose to the #2 slot on the Amazon page listing the top 100 So You'd Like to... Guides. Depending on when you hit that link, it may or may not still be there. But it was as of August 26. Is there strong interest in this little-discussed subject area? It would appear so.

on the edge of the future: esalen and the evolution of american culture

the social construction of preferred realities

tell me that you'll never leave
and I'll just try to make believe
that everything you're telling me is true
come on baby won't you just...

lie to me
~ johnny lang ~

That mp3 quits a bit abruptly, doesn't it? Yeah, well that's the way it goes. No early warning. First you see it, then you don't. And why is this relevant, you ask? Some of you have been asking that about this blog. Well, honey, you just play that clip again, then take your best wild guess. Unless you been livin under a rock, unless you somehow escaped the comedie humaine unscathed, I'm gonna bet you can connect these digital dots all by yourself. What'd you think? That this time it wasn't personal? Got this big ol' worldwide web and what? Gonna talk about the fuckin weather? No. That's not what's going on here. Don't be fooled by the vocabulary and pseudo-academic jive. It all comes down to bricolage in the rag and bone shop of the heart, where -- as Jackson Browne once said -- the junkman pounds his Fender. If I could play it for you, lay it down in tracks of molten fire, crank the gain and run it through a bank of Marshall amps, I would. Blow you away with a wall of unrelenting unrepenting solid blue rocked-out howling noise! Wake you shake you, bring your ass down from this sorry broken way too scary dream. So where were we? Oh yeah: lies. Interesting -- isn't it? -- that it's easier to tell what's false than what's true. Sometimes, anyway. lewis & clark wave hiya to the friendly natives Whoa, huh? Do you get cognitive whiplash when I change gears like that? First we're talking about love and loss and lies, then suddenly we're talking about... redskins! Yup, there's that postmodern thing again. Things just won't hold still. The falcon cannot hear the falconer. Mere anarchy &cetera. I shed a tear. Well, hold onto your seat, Valued Reader, because here comes another gear shift. Our theme for today is neither de blues (Aerosmith, 1994) nor the Louisiana Purchase (Fresonke and Spence, eds., 2004). "I took a course in Hallelujah. I went to night school for de blues..." Rather, our focus will be on that grand old standby: psychotherapy. Of a sort. OK, we can let the academics back in now. I guess it's safe as long as you lay off the soundtrack for a while. You have to be careful with these people. Wouldn't want to give anyone a heart attack. Let's start with this clip from Narrative Therapy: The Social Construction of Preferred Realities... Different selves come forth in different contexts, and no one self is truer than any other. We think that people are continually constituting each other's "selves," and that there are many possible stories about my-self, your-self, and other people's selves. That was just to give you a second to process the subtitle. Preferred? If that didn't raise an eyebrow, you weren't tracking. As a dear friend once said to me: do try to keep up. While no self is "truer" than any other, it is true that particular presentations of self are preferred by particular people within particular cultures . But a "preferred self" is different from an essential or "true" self. Instead of looking for an essential self, we work with people to bring forth various experiences of self and to distinguish which of those selves they prefer in which contexts. We then work to assist them in living out narratives that support the growth and development of these "preferred selves." So let me see if I've got the gist of this... If I'd prefer to be a fairy princess, say, instead of someone whose life has been derailed by a personality disorder arising from childhood trauma -- some combination of physical, emotional, sexual and/or psychological abuse -- then I could rework my "narrative" to where I was really born with a magic wand and a tiara? Or let's say I was spooked by all this postmodern confusion of optional selves and shifting histories. I could what? Morph myself into some arcane magus from the 15th century? Cool! But the authors continue with the obvious next question, even if they don't really frame it as one... POSTMODERNISM AND MORAL RELATIVISM When we say there are many possible stories about self (or about other aspects of reality), we do not mean to say that "anything goes." Rather, we are motivated to examine our constructions and stories -- how they have come to be and what their effects are on ourselves and others. Translation 1: Please don't even notice that the reason we're mentioning this little "anything goes" problem is that it... well, does seem to crop up in the context of this brand new construction uh... theory we've constructed uh... developed. And moreover, don't pay any attention to the use of "preferred realities" in our book's subtitle as BAIT -- or that the intrinsic allure of this bait is what a) sells our book, and b) sells our book to people who read that subtitle and think: "Cool! Why, that means that... anything goes!" Translation 2: We'll teach you how to lie your ass off -- first to yourself, then to everyone you want to snow with your preferred wonderfulness. Plus, we'll give you a bunch of fancy psychological jargon to lie in so that you'll come off sounding, if not entirely numinous, at least reasonably profound. Oh wait... I guess I interrupted again. Bad habit of mine. Excuse me. Our authors weren't finished protesting too much. Even if we wanted to foster a value-neutral, "anything goes" reality, we couldn't. One cannot make up and inhabit a completely new social reality overnight. But that's the thing, isn't it? We've had a lot longer than overnight. We've had at least since Emerson pulled the "Oversoul" out of his hat and told us that if we just rely on our Self -- some transcendental transform of manifest destiny masquerading as a crypto-gnostic Inner God -- we can be what we want to be. Yeah, right... on cloud nine. Except the Temptations were talking about smack and these guys are talking about "therapy" -- which once upon a time was about facing up to some sort of socially shared notion of reality. True, such "sharings" are hard to come by these days, what with the billion and one brands of harebrained opinion floating around the Internet and all. But be wary of buying into that "moral relativism" trope. That's there as a red herring to make you think that if you don't buy in, you're some kind of right-wing fundamentalist whackjob with repressive notions about what does go -- and what's self-serving bullshit. You want to "find your own story," "create your own reality"? Sure, I'll bite. I'll make believe. I can see your tiara now. Yeah, that's it. And your magic wand. Oh, isn't love wonderful when we're both completely honest?

come on baby won't you just...

speak

the moment of realization

don't let mystical bullshit creep up on you! learn the early warning signs of total horse pucky! question paranormal claims for "the present"! Remember: these people are laughing at you as they rake in your hard earned cash for their flagrant jabberwocky. Do yourself a favor and save it up for something practical, like say a dirtbike or a new toaster oven. And if you so much as glimpse a reference to quantum physics, realize that you are dealing with spiritual psychopaths whose connection to reality is tenuous at best. Follow these simple steps and protect yourself. You'll be glad you did when you see all your friends in psychic bondage at some rural ashram, or worse, at some precious little wine and cheese gathering in Boulder, Colorado! Trust me, I know what I'm talking about. Don't learn the hard way like I did.

these people are very confused

One day, Yanguan called to his assistant, "Bring me the rhinoceros fan."

The assistant said, "It is broken."

Yanguan said, "In that case, bring me the rhinoceros."

p. 47

in a pejorative manner

Why all the hesitant, irresolute indecision? That's what I want to know. Why the inability to call a spade a spade? Consider this clip from a Reference Books Bulletin review of New Religious Movements in the United States and Canada... This annotated bibliography focuses on new or alternative religious movements that originated or experienced renewed growth during the 1960s and 1970s in the U.S. and Canada. The term new religious movement is used interchangeably with cult in a nonpejorative manner. The scope includes works about traditional Eastern religions and their variations, neo-pagan and related groups, New Age communes, the Human Potential Movement, spiritualist/UFO, and occult/initiatory groups, as well as unusual variations of Christianity such as the Jesus People, Unification Church, and Peoples Temple. Related issues such as religious liberty, deprogramming, and brainwashing conversion are also covered.... The Peoples Temple, hmmm... Wasn't that Jim Jones? The guy who killed a couple hundred people by forcing them to drink cyanide-laced KoolAid? Yes, but that's right: let's not lay any pejorative trips on other people's "spiritual" convictions. Let's not even let ourselves think that cargo-cult-crazed UFO "devotees" are barking fucking mad! Because who's to say, really? Who are we to object to "brainwashing"? Who are we to make moral judgments on the "lifestyle choices" of others? Look... This is one of the downsides of postmodernism. Which is not to say that I think there are any easy workarounds. It's true we can't go around burning witches anymore. More's the pity -- I have to admit I find the prospect tempting. And not because wicca offends God and his angels or my delicate Puritan sensibilities. No. But metaphorically tempting because the "witches" of modern-day Salem -- see e.g. Rocking the Goddess: Campus Wicca for the Student Practitioner -- have nothing in common with the women who were burned to death there for entirely different, and entirely wrong, reasons. You see? We can make moral judgments. You won't find many these days defending the "lifestyle options" of the Inquisitors. You won't find many saying of the Elders who torched off the stakes, "Well, let's not be too hasty..." You begin to see what the problem is here? Puritanism was a cult. But because the core values and <koff> moral compass of the United States of America are grounded in and continue to reflect delusional Puritan superstition, no one wants to draw any fine distinctions. Why, my God, it might smack of religious intolerance! On which basis, make no mistake, the country was founded. There's a folksy myth, propagated through high school history classes, that the early settlers came to America to escape religious persecution. No way. Many came here because they got kicked out of England for perpetrating religious persecution, and their neighbors got sick of their doctrinaire bullshit. Some readers (yourself?) will say that the book covers I've chosen here misrepresent real wicca, that this is just silly child's play. That's true, it is. But here's the kicker: there is no "real" wicca! Or do you believe the hysteria in 17th-century Salem was actually based on women casting spells and cavorting with the devil? But why does any of this matter? After all, nobody with a modicum of intelligence goes in for this New Age stuff. And that's true too. No one wants to be associated with the icky old "New Age" anymore. It's so passe. Even New Age Journal changed its name to Body + Soul. Because, ever since ex-monk and "former professor of psychology" Thomas Moore's ever so special care of it, soul has been cool. And we're not talking Ike and Tina. Q: The one-sidedness and moralism of the various attacks on narcissism suggest that there may be some soul lying around in this rejected pile of ego and self-love: anything that bad must have some value in it. Could it be that our righteous rejections of narcissism and love of self cover over a mystery about the nature of the soul's loves? Is our negative branding of narcissism a defense against a demanding call of the soul to be loved? ~ Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life A: No. ~ clocke, right here The reason it matters is that we're also not talking New Age. We're talking NewAge++ -- the shrink-wrapped (pun intended) ready-for-market version. While relatively few Americans may be gazing into crystals, scanning the skies for alien ships, or dressing up like warlocks, a whole hell of a lot more have bought into core New Age concepts that have been repackaged for mass consumption. Visit any Barnes & Noble store. These ideas are no longer the sole province of the New Age section. They've spread like a viral pandemic into Self-Help, Health, Relationships, Psychology, even Philosophy and Science. For example, let's look at a handful of the "10 Tenets of Whole Living" on the about us page of that formerly-new-age but now squeaky-clean-mainstream Body + Soul magazine -- hosted these days, nota bene, on marthastewart.com... Happiness is a choice. You can make that choice today and every day. Tell this to tsunami survivors and the orphans on the streets of Rio. But then, the Third World isn't part of the magazine's target demographic. This is meta-metaphysics 101 for affluent Caucasians. It's also the quasi quantum physics message of What the Bleep Do We Know?, which ousted Plan 9 From Outer Space from the title spot of worst movie ever made. To wit: you create your own reality. The nasty non-quantum concomitant of this is that if your reality sucks, you have only yourself to blame. Got cancer? Got blown up at Nagasaki? Incinerated in Belsen? Jailed in Montgomery? Bad karma, babycakes. Too bad for you. Next time around -- you believe in reincarnation, right? -- chose to be a happy well-off white American. Stay connected to the natural world. It will feed your soul. Uh, not to be repetitious but... tell this to tsunami survivors. Ah, nature! This is the crypto-mystical nature of Emerson -- a stand-in for manifest destiny (as I wrote about yesterday in Imperial Certitude). Here, kemo-sabe, take these smallpox saturated blankets as a token of our goodwill. Sneaky, yeah, but that's nature for you. Ditto pneumonia, tuberculosis, whooping cough, dysentery, cholera, malaria, measles, HIV/AIDs -- the biggest killers on the planet. All perfectly au naturel. So yeah, by all means feed your soul. Cozy up to Nature. Nurture your spirit. It’s the source of your strength. Translation: Indulge yourself. Check out our ad pages for some sensitive organic/holistic self-serving suggestions. Believe in yourself. Your intuition is rarely wrong. Yeah, you go girl! Like when J.I. Rodale, who founded Organic Gardening and Prevention magazines, went on the Dick Cavett show and was talking about how taking Hawthorne berries was going to keep him alive to 102 -- then died of a heart attack right on the set. Or like when you just know that the answer to all life's problems will come out of that Inner Light Within. And the answer is always the same: that you're white and to die for. Think this is just a bit over-the-top? Click the chick. What you pay attention to will thrive. No argument there. Your narcissism is alive and well. Alright, OK. But Chris, I hear you say, what's all this about witchcraft and manifest destiny and the occult? And here we thought, from your previous work, that your beat was marketing...

7 Days to a Magickal New You Self-Initiation for the Solitary Witch: Attaining Higher Spirituality Through a Five-Degree System Wicca For One: The Path Of Solitary Witchcraft Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner must be a lot of lonely witches out there... To Light a Sacred Flame: Practical Witchcraft for the Millennium can you say grandiosity? American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations

cult marketing

imperial certitude

"With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil;
but for good people to do evil—that takes religion."
Steven Weinberg ~ A Designer Universe?

In 1845, John L. O'Sullivan published an article in The United States Magazine and Democratic Review in which he wrote that it was "our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions." This was the first explicit reference to "manifest destiny," though the concept it conveyed was hardly unique. Or new. I was quite excited several days ago to run across a book explicitly linking Ralph Waldo Emerson and manifest destiny. The following is from West of Emerson: The Design of Manifest Destiny by Kris Fresonke, p. 48... ...Transcendentalists still bore a lingering devotion to what by the 1840s were antique systems of providential thinking, such as the argument from design, which rendered them a harmless opposition. The sense of being outmoded eventually stirred in many Transcendentalists an ill-advised enthusiasm for what seemed the closest surviving relation to providence, namely manifest destiny... Later (p. 89) the author writes: Drafting his sermon LXIII in 1820, for instance, [Emerson] wrote a paragraph resolving the difficulty of understanding Providence, which was admittedly "too vast for human optics"... The solution, he mused, was to use small clues to to infer great notions, or "to pick up here & there a pebble contrivance & say see! a God! as Newton thought." Emerson was repeating (and appropriating) Newton's own biographical metaphor of himself as a child on the beach collecting pebbles; he also was sketching the intellectual processes of the argument from design. The argument from design is a line of thought that constitutes a significant part of Emerson's philosophical activity in the 1820s and 1830s and culminates in Nature. In fact design was never so savagely depicted by Emerson as in 1820: "see! a God" seems to take enthusiasm for the argument from design to a new imbecility. Then, having clue one to start from, I found this... from: West of Winthrop: landscape and language in the Washington territory by Paul J. Lindholdt source: American Transcendental Quarterly, 9/1/04 via: HighBeam™ Research Literary studies of the nineteenth-century American West are refining theoretical discourse on manifest destiny further... [Richard] Slotkin gains a complementary update in a recent study by Kris Fresonke, in whose view manifest destiny effectively supplanted God as a philosophical prompt in works of adventure and exploration... Another way of saying manifest destiny, Fresonke wisely notes, is "the American territorial imperative"... Taking her cues from the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Fresonke discovers "buoyant and apparently counterintuitive accounts of the dazzling abundance of nature, no longer proof of Christianity for Emerson, but of American exceptionality." ... A nature-based nativism was busily supplanting God, but to read the book of nature aright still meant to learn to descry divine designs and correspondences... to firm up one's imperial certitude. it's not just for breakfast anymore! btw, thanks to the mystery of Time Travel this book was a major influence on Ralph Waldo and look, it's recursive! a quote from the above... oi!

the design of manifest destiny "as long as race is something only applied to non-white peoples, as long as white people are not racially seen and named, they/we function as a human norm. Other people are raced, we are just people." (p. 1)

the will to power

and if you say this life ain't good enough
I would give my world to lift you up
I could change my life to better suit your mood...
~ smooth / supernatural ~

The barbarian babies are wholly gratuitous. Weird, no? Just ignore them if you can. The book (actually titled Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876-1917) says, on page 156: Scientific racism in the United States became largely 'a spectacle of immigrants of one decade condemning to everlasting inferiority the immigrants of a later decade.' What imperialism was to anthropology, in short, immigration was to American eugenics. The so-called new immigrants from places like Greece, Russia, Poland, and Italy captivated scholarly attention as scientists now set out to survey, quantify, and assess what one eugenicist referred to as 'the great strains of human protoplasm... coursing through the country.' The book showed up today in my Amazon recommendations. Hmmm. On second thought, maybe the collaborative filtering technology that enables those recommendations has captured something that -- far from being "wholly gratuitous" -- is bang-on relevant to the current discussion. So-called "negative eugenics" was (and still is) the attempt to limit the procreation of the "unfit" -- there's that nefarious social-Darwinist idea again (see Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?). On the other hand, "positive eugenics" was (and is) the encouragement of procreation by the fittest. Only who decides what constitutes "fit"? Abraham Maslow thought he was as good a judge as any. Did his hyper-awareness that he was a Jew play into this? I strongly suspect so. Maslow had good reason to be hyper-aware of how antisemitic discrimination was hampering his professional advancement. It did... until 1935, when he was given a plum post-doctoral post at Columbia under the aegis of Edward L. Thorndike, a prominent eugenicist of the day. This bit is from one of the best histories of eugenics available, hosted by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory -- a highly knowledgeable source, since it was once the focal point of eugenics "research" in the United States. Eugenics also had the support of leaders in academia. E.L. Thorndike and Leta Hollingworth popularized eugenics to generations of prospective classroom teachers. Using flawed racial interpretations of the intelligence test data after the First World War, psychometricians such as Carl Brigham and Robert Yerkes added to eugenics' unjustified luster in the public eye. At the same time, the popular authors Henry H. Goddard and Edward A. Wiggam recommended policies of controlled breeding for American citizens. Traveling across the country with lantern-slide presentations, they warned of a "rising tide of feeblemindedness" and demanded a "new decalogue of science" – a modern ten commandments based upon eugenic principles. ~ from Eugenics Popularization Steve Selden, University of Maryland It was within this historical context that Thornike invited Maslow to join in a research project called "Human Nature and the Social Order." (source: Future Visions: The Unpublished Papers of Abraham Maslow, E. Hoffman, ed., Sage, 1996, p. 4). Although nothing I can find in the published literature about Maslow talks about any connection with eugenics, consider the name of that project carefully. Precisely what aspects of "human nature" had it set out to define? Then consider the following clip from the same Cold Spring Harbor page that mentions Thorndike, above. Eugenic ideology was deeply embedded in American popular culture during the 1920s and 1930s. For example, on Saturday night, high school students might go to the cinema to see "The Black Stork" – a film that supported eugenic sterilization. In church on Sunday, they might listen to a sermon selected for an award by the American Eugenics Society – learning that human improvement required marriages of society's "best" with the "best." The notion of breeding the best to the best returns us to the concept of "positive eugenics" -- and ultimately, to the question of what it was that so deeply motivated Maslow's later pursuit of what he called "eupsychian society" -- the social context for encouraging, achieving and sustaining the top level of his hierarchy of needs: self-actualization. As Maslow defines it, Eupsychia refers to "the culture that would be generated by one thousand self-actualizing people on some sheltered island where they would not be interfered with." ~ from The Third Force: The Psychology of Abraham Maslow by Frank G. Goble. The Maslow quote is from New Knowledge in Human Values Harper & Row, New York, 1959 And as these would be very special people indeed, they would breed -- that being the main idea -- a very special race. One could almost say a master race. But why master race? What did Maslow's utopian ideas about Eupsychia have to do with such a concept? The answer lies in his longstanding interest in dominance. Let's briefly review some of Maslow's publications... 1936 The role of dominance in the social and sexual behavior of infra-human primates 1. Observations at Vilas Park Zoo. Jour. Genetic Psychol., 48: 261-277. (With Sydney Flanzbaum) II. An experimental determination of the dominance behavior syndrome. Jour. Genetic Psychol., 48: 278-309. Reprinted in Dennis, W. (Ed.), Readings in General Psychology (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1949). 1937 Dominance-feeling, behavior and status. Psychological Review, 44: 404-29. 1939 Dominance-feeling, personality and social behavior in women. Jour. Social Psychol., 10: 3-39. 1940 Dominance-quality and social behavior in infra-human primates. Jour. Social Psychol., 11: 313-24. A test for dominance-feeling (self-esteem) in college women. Jour. Social Psychol., 12:255-70. 1942 Self-esteem (dominance-feeling) and sexuality in women. Jour. Social Psychol. 16, 259-94. Reprinted in M. DeMartino (Ed.), Sexual Behavior and Personality Characteristics (New York: Citadel Press, 1963). 1960 (With H. Rand and S. Newman.) Some parallels between the dominance and sexual behavior of monkeys and the fantasies of patients in psychotherapy. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 1960, 131, 202-212. Reprinted in M. DeMartino (Ed.), Sexual Behavior and Personality Characteristics (New York: Citadel Press, 1963). Note that all but the last of these eight papers were published during the period when the Third Reich was, in fact, attempting to build a master race through positive eugenics -- encouraging "pure" Germanic/Nordic human breeding, and thus Aryan dominance; and through negative eugenics -- eliminating Jews. Given his background with Thorndike, and the deeply eugenic tenor of the zeitgeist, how could Maslow have been unaware of the ironic parallels between a "eupsychian" model of society and the Aryan "utopia" that was, at the same moment, under construction? It's a leading question, to be sure, but let's see where it might lead. Here's Frank Goble again in his Third Force biography: ...Abraham Maslow was the only Jewish boy in a non-Jewish Brooklyn suburb. He has said it was a little like being the first Negro in an all-white school. The "third force" is a reference to how Maslow's psychology was often characterized: an alternative to both behaviorism and psychoanalysis. Behaviorism we can dispense with. Harlow's work had already delivered the coup de grace -- and recall that Maslow was Harlow's first grad student. Psychoanalysis isn't quite so easy. There were certainly aspects of Freud's ever-evolving work that ranged from the questionable to the absurd. Instinctual drives, the Oedipus complex, penis envy -- all have since been jettisoned from many (and there are many many) flavors of current psychoanalytic theory. Maslow's take way back when, however, was that psychoanalysis was too negative. Why dwell on the dark side of human existence? Why not look instead to human potential -- which became the name of a popular movement he was instrumental in kicking off. This brings us back around to the main theme of Mystic Bourgeoisie: how a world from which the shadows have been banished quickly becomes a breeding ground for all the skeletons in the historical closet. Why look at hidden motives and the darker aspects of the human mind? The simple answer lies in the evidence of what the human mind is capable of dreaming -- and turning into horrific realities, from the Inquisition to the Holocaust. Both of which involved, very specifically, the Jews. In The Third Force, Goble writes: "Freud believed that man was in constant conflict with himself and society." Is it possible that Maslow fit the bill in this respect? Could Abe perhaps have used a bit of psychoanalysis himself? Is it possible that he suffered from a form of closet antisemitism? Before asking whether such a thing exists, consider the following from Identity and Freedom: Mapping Nationalism and Social Criticism in Twentieth-Century Lithuania by Leonidas Donskis. The clip is from page 114... Noteworthy is the fact that even Jewish self-hatred, that is, Jewish antisemitism, so aptly described by the German Jewish writer Theodor Lessing and then plausibly reinterpreted by Isaiah Berlin, appears to have been a Central European phenomenon, which stressed the failu