One of the tasks of religion is to deal with the problem of Creation. How did the world begin? And who or what created it? But then there is the how and why of what came later, what we now called mythology, the story of the Earth and of humanity.
But another important function of religion is to document the trials and tribulations and overcomings of the past. The most famous is the escape of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt that Jews celebrate to this very day.
First we were slaves; now we are free is a very big part of what we might call "sacred history." It is obviously the major component of religion as practiced by the modern left.
First we were slaves as workers; then we won our rights. First we women were slaves of the patriarchy; then we got education and abortion. First we blacks were slaves of the white man; then we got our freedom and civil rights.
You can also see this narrative in the American revolution. First we were taxed by the bloody Brits to pay for their bloody French and Indian War; then we taught 'em a lesson they'll never forget.
There is another form of sacred history, that we were never slaves. The Brits have a version of this, with the idea that the last time Britain was invaded was in 1066. "Britons never never never shall be slaves," goes the line from "Rule Britannia!" Well, back in the day, most Brits were serfs. And, on my information the Dutch Prince William invaded Britain with a 500-ship navy in 1688. So what is that all about? It is about the Brits saying that they aren't victims, not nohow.
Obviously, in the modern age, the "we were victims" sacred hsitory has become almost universal. Really, you don't count unless you have a sacred history of victimhood. In the narrative of Christianity, this narrative is about the personal liberation from the bondage of a state of sin into the freedom of salvation through a personal acceptance of Jesus Christ as savior. But in the modern left-wing sacred narrative we are talking about the whole group's enslavement and the whole group's liberation from bondage through the agency of a political savior.
If you ask me there is a bit of a problem here. In the narrative of personal salvation there is a clear tendency to revisit the occasion of sin, and even, perhaps to wallow in it. In fact our lefty friends tend to be particularly critical of the whole guilt thing. My pal Nietzsche piles on with his critique of "the priests" that taught us to hate ourselves.
But our lefty friends do exactly the same thing with their holy victims narrative. Clearly, the workers are to be victims forever, and don't you forget it. Likewise women and minorities. It doesn't matter that we have enacted about a century's worth of pro-worker legislation, or that women have had the vote for about a century, or that the slaves were freed 150 years ago and obtained full civil rights 50 years ago. The victimization of racism, sexism, and homophobia are real and if you question the narrative you are a racist sexist homophobe.
Now, I've been reading some unapproved ideas lately, and it has occurred to me that maybe you can overdo this victimhood thing. I'm not at all sure that the Jewish obsession with going nuclear on anti-semitism is always a good idea. But, when you are a small minority, it seems like you need to be permanently mobilized against the possibility of danger. Perhaps because Jews have been an important part of the left since the beginning, all leftist movements share this culture of permanent mobilisation.
Is this culture of permanent mobilisation a good idea? It's a good question. If you want to maintain a group identification forever I suspect that the culture of mobilisation is essential. I don't think that the Jews could have maintained themselves as a people over thousands of years without their fierce culture of self-defense. But whatabout the workers? Do workers want to self-identify as embattled workers forever, now that workers are no longer starving and indeed sharing in full measure the prosperity of the modern era? Do women want to keep rehearsing the bad old days when women could not get an education and could not pursue careers? Do blacks want to maintain a separate racial identity from the rest of America?
Back in the day the declared purpose of the various left-wing movements was to mobilize people so that they could take their place at the table.and be recognized as the equal of anyone else in society. But the culture of mobilization keeps groups forever separate, forever rehearsing their grievances against the majority culture. This perpetuates a permanent division. And in fact indexes of memes like Google's Ngram have been documenting increased use of terms like "racism" and "sexism" in recent years. Really? Things are worse than they used to be?
We can see that the modern sacred histories are the same as the old sacred narratives. In fact, as Nicholas Wade writes, there is only one way that the gods can die, and that is if people stop believing in them. So it is with secular religions. The priests will continue serving the faithful as long as there are faithful. It is only when believers fall away that a religious movement starts to die and the priests are out of a job.
I suppose that the recent intensification of old left-wing narratives is an indication that the priests are worried. They evidently feel that their believers need to be energized and their faith renewed. But there's a problem. Whereas the old gods of Olympus needed to be propitiated with sacrifice forever, and the occasion of sin in Christianity is everlasting and the hope of salvation must be renewed constantly, the average left-wing religious movement begins, at least, as a specific attempt to right a specific wrong. Once the workers get their rights, once women get their abortions, once blacks get civil rights, once gays get their marriage, then, surely the urgency of bending the arc of history towards justice recedes.
The fact is that in the present time our lefty friends act as if they have a profound need to occupy religious space with a powerful victim narrative; otherwise someone else is going to elbow them aside with the urgency of their own misery.
Maybe conservatives need to play this game with our own narrative of monstrous injustice. Maybe that's the name of the game we have to play. But I don't like it. Suppose we beat the liberals at their own ame and create a narrative of conservative victimization. Will conservatives in their turn become so enamoured of their victim narrative that they can't leave go of it?
I'd say that there is another way to create a sacred history, one that avoids the trap of permanently mobilized victimhood. It would advertise America as the last best hope of mankind on Earth, the city on a hill that is "still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home." Hey, President Trump's notion of Making America Great Again is, in part, about renegotiating great trade deals with our major trading partners to make sure that everyone gets into a win-win proposition. It creates an inclusive narrative of America to which all belong, as opposed to an exclusive narrative of competing victimhoods.
Here's the challenge. I reckon that every human community needs a sacred narrative to establish where it is coming from and where it thinks it is going. The Christian narrative, of sin and redemption, is one such narrative, but it is clearly challenged by the left's victim narratives. We need a new narrative for Americans, indeed for all humans, to attach to, one that supercedes and overarches the lefty victim narrative with something that is higher, nobler, more inspiring than the lefty victim narrative of us against the world.
I get the utility of the victim narrative, especially if you want to maintain the identity of a small group in a large world. But the trouble with such a combative narrative is that it might encourage non-group people to think that they really are in a no-holds-barred fight against the small group, or use the small group as a sparring partner to maintain its own identity.
At any rate, I would say, non-lefty Americans either have to come up with a sacred narrative that goes mano-a-mano with the lefty victim narrative or we have to come up with a better, wiser narrative that marginalizes the victim narrative into a shriveled nothingness, for a simple reason, that our better, wiser sacred narrative appeals to ordinary Americans much more directly and inspirationally than the dreadful everyone-a-victim siren song of the left.
But another important function of religion is to document the trials and tribulations and overcomings of the past. The most famous is the escape of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt that Jews celebrate to this very day.
First we were slaves; now we are free is a very big part of what we might call "sacred history." It is obviously the major component of religion as practiced by the modern left.
First we were slaves as workers; then we won our rights. First we women were slaves of the patriarchy; then we got education and abortion. First we blacks were slaves of the white man; then we got our freedom and civil rights.
You can also see this narrative in the American revolution. First we were taxed by the bloody Brits to pay for their bloody French and Indian War; then we taught 'em a lesson they'll never forget.
There is another form of sacred history, that we were never slaves. The Brits have a version of this, with the idea that the last time Britain was invaded was in 1066. "Britons never never never shall be slaves," goes the line from "Rule Britannia!" Well, back in the day, most Brits were serfs. And, on my information the Dutch Prince William invaded Britain with a 500-ship navy in 1688. So what is that all about? It is about the Brits saying that they aren't victims, not nohow.
Obviously, in the modern age, the "we were victims" sacred hsitory has become almost universal. Really, you don't count unless you have a sacred history of victimhood. In the narrative of Christianity, this narrative is about the personal liberation from the bondage of a state of sin into the freedom of salvation through a personal acceptance of Jesus Christ as savior. But in the modern left-wing sacred narrative we are talking about the whole group's enslavement and the whole group's liberation from bondage through the agency of a political savior.
If you ask me there is a bit of a problem here. In the narrative of personal salvation there is a clear tendency to revisit the occasion of sin, and even, perhaps to wallow in it. In fact our lefty friends tend to be particularly critical of the whole guilt thing. My pal Nietzsche piles on with his critique of "the priests" that taught us to hate ourselves.
But our lefty friends do exactly the same thing with their holy victims narrative. Clearly, the workers are to be victims forever, and don't you forget it. Likewise women and minorities. It doesn't matter that we have enacted about a century's worth of pro-worker legislation, or that women have had the vote for about a century, or that the slaves were freed 150 years ago and obtained full civil rights 50 years ago. The victimization of racism, sexism, and homophobia are real and if you question the narrative you are a racist sexist homophobe.
Now, I've been reading some unapproved ideas lately, and it has occurred to me that maybe you can overdo this victimhood thing. I'm not at all sure that the Jewish obsession with going nuclear on anti-semitism is always a good idea. But, when you are a small minority, it seems like you need to be permanently mobilized against the possibility of danger. Perhaps because Jews have been an important part of the left since the beginning, all leftist movements share this culture of permanent mobilisation.
Is this culture of permanent mobilisation a good idea? It's a good question. If you want to maintain a group identification forever I suspect that the culture of mobilisation is essential. I don't think that the Jews could have maintained themselves as a people over thousands of years without their fierce culture of self-defense. But whatabout the workers? Do workers want to self-identify as embattled workers forever, now that workers are no longer starving and indeed sharing in full measure the prosperity of the modern era? Do women want to keep rehearsing the bad old days when women could not get an education and could not pursue careers? Do blacks want to maintain a separate racial identity from the rest of America?
Back in the day the declared purpose of the various left-wing movements was to mobilize people so that they could take their place at the table.and be recognized as the equal of anyone else in society. But the culture of mobilization keeps groups forever separate, forever rehearsing their grievances against the majority culture. This perpetuates a permanent division. And in fact indexes of memes like Google's Ngram have been documenting increased use of terms like "racism" and "sexism" in recent years. Really? Things are worse than they used to be?
We can see that the modern sacred histories are the same as the old sacred narratives. In fact, as Nicholas Wade writes, there is only one way that the gods can die, and that is if people stop believing in them. So it is with secular religions. The priests will continue serving the faithful as long as there are faithful. It is only when believers fall away that a religious movement starts to die and the priests are out of a job.
I suppose that the recent intensification of old left-wing narratives is an indication that the priests are worried. They evidently feel that their believers need to be energized and their faith renewed. But there's a problem. Whereas the old gods of Olympus needed to be propitiated with sacrifice forever, and the occasion of sin in Christianity is everlasting and the hope of salvation must be renewed constantly, the average left-wing religious movement begins, at least, as a specific attempt to right a specific wrong. Once the workers get their rights, once women get their abortions, once blacks get civil rights, once gays get their marriage, then, surely the urgency of bending the arc of history towards justice recedes.
The fact is that in the present time our lefty friends act as if they have a profound need to occupy religious space with a powerful victim narrative; otherwise someone else is going to elbow them aside with the urgency of their own misery.
Maybe conservatives need to play this game with our own narrative of monstrous injustice. Maybe that's the name of the game we have to play. But I don't like it. Suppose we beat the liberals at their own ame and create a narrative of conservative victimization. Will conservatives in their turn become so enamoured of their victim narrative that they can't leave go of it?
I'd say that there is another way to create a sacred history, one that avoids the trap of permanently mobilized victimhood. It would advertise America as the last best hope of mankind on Earth, the city on a hill that is "still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home." Hey, President Trump's notion of Making America Great Again is, in part, about renegotiating great trade deals with our major trading partners to make sure that everyone gets into a win-win proposition. It creates an inclusive narrative of America to which all belong, as opposed to an exclusive narrative of competing victimhoods.
Here's the challenge. I reckon that every human community needs a sacred narrative to establish where it is coming from and where it thinks it is going. The Christian narrative, of sin and redemption, is one such narrative, but it is clearly challenged by the left's victim narratives. We need a new narrative for Americans, indeed for all humans, to attach to, one that supercedes and overarches the lefty victim narrative with something that is higher, nobler, more inspiring than the lefty victim narrative of us against the world.
I get the utility of the victim narrative, especially if you want to maintain the identity of a small group in a large world. But the trouble with such a combative narrative is that it might encourage non-group people to think that they really are in a no-holds-barred fight against the small group, or use the small group as a sparring partner to maintain its own identity.
At any rate, I would say, non-lefty Americans either have to come up with a sacred narrative that goes mano-a-mano with the lefty victim narrative or we have to come up with a better, wiser narrative that marginalizes the victim narrative into a shriveled nothingness, for a simple reason, that our better, wiser sacred narrative appeals to ordinary Americans much more directly and inspirationally than the dreadful everyone-a-victim siren song of the left.
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