On Mon, 13 Jun 2005, Luke Weiger wrote:
> I might've been a bit too cryptic here. Anyway, Miles, your argument above
> is a manifestation of Marxism in its most vulgar and least plausible form
> (what Dennett would call "greedy reductionism"). Chuck recently wrote in
> response to Carrol, "Besides the life of the mind didn't begin or end with
> Marx." Similarly, spiritual yearning didn't spontaneously arise with the
> advent of capitalism, and there's little reason to think it would
> necessarily evaporate upon the realization of something better.
Like many other human propensities, the realm of the sacred functions as an ideology in capitalist societies that (a) justifies existing social relations and (b) discourages rebellion and revolution. Sure, it's crude Marxism, but in my view, it explains about 90% of religious organization and experience, just as crude Marxism explains about 90% of any social relations. I agree that people had spirituality prior to capitalist societies, and they will have spirituality in post-capitalist societies. However, that's completely irrelevant to the point I'm making. (An ideological apparatus is not born full grown from capitalist society, like Athena from the head of Zeus; rather, it is usurped and transformed from predilections and social practices that preexisted capitalism. Think Nietzsche, Genealogy of morals, here.)
Miles