If you mean the kind of heightened politicization of things that takes people away from the basics of living then I agree. But people can engage in politics without losing touch. Consumerism? I mostly agree. Though these days you sometimes have to buy the kinds of things that used to be free.
Corporations have been extremely successful. I wonder if this is because of the rise in the technologies that they partner with and control?
Also, would you say the Abrahamic religions are more romantic than, say, the new atheism? I tend to think of them as pretty similar, though there is plenty of room to have a more romantic sensibility relative to either. In other words, neither necessarily precludes a more romantic outlook.
Kind of sounds like god of the gaps or something. But what if caterpillars, rocks, maybe even plastics… are utterly sacred? What if nothing is profane? Whitman, anyone?
The sacred and the profane are metaphors of each other, they can not directly comprise each other, because if everything is profane, that will include the emerging sacredness. The glue, Romance, holds together that emergence, embedded in-it-self, and its defined from a ground of the pre-logical. It never says good by, because it never said hello.
Romance, as poetic license, holds the profane at bay with the sacred. The sacred and the profane are ideal definitions, which when taken as the object of itself breaks away, from its sense, and its sensibility. The ideal object has to be tempered by romance.
This is why I hazard to put the romantic period (as in the romanticism of whitman, monet, Chopin) in the center between the classic pillars of antiquity, and the modern notions of modern art.
Romance as romantic love, if it mimics art, as I think it may, would temper this seeming reluctance to let go to a feeling state between the sacredness of ideal love,( medieval/victorian) and the profane modern version. The temperance is not integrated, it’s pockets flow through it as though it’s matter consisted of irreducible particles, which can’t ever be degraded by the type of inclusivity implied between
The profane and the sacred. This inclusivity is bypassed by an exclusive adherence that need not say good by.
I should think so. They are also a very effective form. You can take risks as part of a corporation that you cannot take as an individuals. Limited liability and all that. Also the corporations have gained tremendous rights and powers, ones previously granted to individuals. So you have a very powerful combination of traits.
If you mean by New Atheism people like Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens, to the extent they were being atheists, sure. It’s not my romance, but it has forms of it in it. The Abrahamic ones are very focused on the transcendent - as opposed to indigenous religious, for example. So the romance is for things not here, things beyond.
New atheism in itself is antiromantic in the area it is focusing on, but sure one could be an atheist and utterly romantic. Hitchens, I would say, was romantic on the political plane.
Rocks and caterpillars, definitely. Plastic…? I mean single plastic artifacts might be. But like plastic bags in their billions, no for me anyway. I think you can twist and distort nature to where it no longer resonates with life.
I have to say, at first I didn’t understand what you’re saying here, but on a couple re-reads I quite like it. Romance as the glue… good stuff. Thanks obe.
Well my romantic side tends to idealize nature, so I agree. But it’s also my romantic side that longs for inclusiveness. For instance, my mother often ruined vacations when I was young, by being upset by the weather. My romantic side said, what’s wrong with rain? Endless rain that doesn’t stop for a week?
I agree about corporations. I’m not so sure the Abrahamic religions were focused on the transcendent. But that’s a longer discussion for another thread…
Sure, I get you. Though I can be romantic about rain and very upset at it also - sort of like women in my life, or men for that matter, though the nature of the romance is not the same. I mean, most plastic bags are not messing up my day. They just don’t strike me as sacred. I used to prioritize inclusiveness more than I do. I think some things are so distorted they can no longer participate in what I would call the sacred or what is romantic to me - I would have to mull over whether those two sets are the same. To it is sort of like a virus of non-life has entered life, and it is spreading. We can all say, really everying is a part of God, or everything has the Buddha nature, or everything is merely matter/energy in different forms, but I think there are qualitative differences. I am glad the state I lived in banned billboards. Something less romantic was not blocking what was more romantic for me. Sex with a prostitute might end up being sacred, but I think the chances are much lower than sex with someone you love and do not have to pay.
Yes a prioritized inclusiveness presents a problem, though, literally, the plasticity of our modern side: has created a new vocabulary, where sacredness can include a lot of other mundane things like rocks, but the exlusive definition seems to stick.
Which doesen’t imply that rocks can not be sacred as well, as part of nature.
As far as inclusiveness goes Anon, it’s perhaps easier to include a rainy day as wiithin other natural contexts, then such equally natural eventsh as disasters, as a form of appreciation.,. Nature’s moods, if liberty can be taken, also have to be priorioised., insofar as they can be appreciated.
