With the advent of modernity the world became subject to accelerating change in the infrastructure. The economic sphere produces activities which support but also subvert the superstructure i.e. the social sphere of ideology which includes religion and politics and traditional attitudes. The superstructure evolves more slowly and is more resistant to change than the economic infrastructure especially in the industrial age of advanced capitalism. Technology advances so fast, that it produces culture shock. It’s hard to keep up. The young are ahead of the old when it comes to assimilating new technology. Assumptions we take for granted are pre-established by superstructural ideologies. The rampant profusion of identity politics reflects in part the need to pin ideology to something stable in a confusing plurality.
The saturation of modes of information, surveillance, and control are at a level of such intensity that they qualitatively change the nature of our experience. In the 19th century, massive forms of production caused by manual labor were replaced with mechanical labor. In the mid to late 20th century, there was a switch from technology that replaces manual labor to technology that replaces mental/intellectual labor and even human experience.
Everything that was once directly lived has now been reduced to an image or representation what Lyotard called “hyper-reality”. Nihilism so feared by the existentialists of the 19th and early 20th century has become technologically realizable. Children are born into a world where an apocalypse is technologically possible. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche didn’t see that coming. Look at Tribnet 7000 on Facebook. The Apocalypse has become a utopian ideal. We are more likely to trod endlessly tweaking humanity with technological adjustments. Our video games pre-package experience for us. Commodities are no longer just things of use – they’ve become part of what we are.
That is only another unproven premise. In fact that is easily defeated by the idea that the world of the spirit is autonomous.
That has always been the manner in which Religion has treated the problem of evil, it’s causality is not understood.
One candidate for a concept of God that may have potential for surviving in the postmodern era is that of process theology. Armstrong the origin of process theology this way:
Merely seeking the source of that Identity, because it is separate from the multifarious product of evolution, is impossible, because that source has been cut off, in terms variety desrubed, most notably in buddhism’s karmic effects.
The fact that karmic debt does not begin in the latest incarnation, and we-I have to pay for an accumulation which determined you, is at least one way of looking at the problem of trying to understand causation.
The origin, the big bang itself or the babies clean slate, is only clean until the baby realizes that ignorance is not bliss.
Yes if good and evil are seen as opposites, or even as approximately so.
If enlightenment is a good in it’s self, and the goal a culture, a society of an individual sets for himself, then its opposite or it’s hindrance to attain is what bad.
It’s like saying, that as a runner, it is good to have the goal of trying to make it to the finish line, but giving up on that goal isn’t.
Good and evil objectively is difficult to define for earthly nonsubtke attempts and effects, but for subtle things it may be even harder, for lack of a well defined system of achievement.
Enlightenment is most difficult since it does beg the definition of something beyond which there is no compare in goodness. It is Goodness per se, it is the enlightenment of being in a state which needs no further elucidation of being in it’s self. It becomes complete. Any hindrance to that effect is evil incarnate, as goodness incarnate is similar in the absolute. There is in that level, either good, or, evil. There is no compromise, no excuses, no grey area.
The only grey area hel by any truly organized religion can be found in Catholicism, where purgatory serves that purpose. The buddhic sense of the bardos are much more sensible, since they are primarily shades of grey, where passage from one to the other seems dimunitive and unobservable to those passing through.
Zen Buddhism. The Bardo is incomprehesible except as fleeting lights, differentiated only by colors. There is no heaven or hell there, only energies of various frequencies, some of which present values in distinct qualities/quantities.
Some argue that Zen emanates from Taoist thought … suppose the history is a bit murky … some legends have Lao Tzu … considered by many to be the father of Taoism … yet … some scholars believe the genesis of Lao Tzu thought is a priori … perhaps as much as 2,000 years before the time of Lao Tzu.
Legend also has it that Lao Tzu opted for voluntary exile … into Tibet … Nepal borders Tibet and recent archaeological discoveries claim Nepal to be Buddha’s birthplace … murky waters for sure.
This also may explained why the Chinese viewed Buddhism as a brother … more than a stranger … and assimilated some of it into Confucianism and Taoism when it first entered Chinese territory. Contrast this response from the Chinese to Buddhism with the Chinese reaction to Christianity.
This seems to be clearly wrong. Unless we interpret the word ‘all’ as referring only to some limited ‘important’ knowledge. Obviously you don’t suddenly know everything when you become a sage … you don’t automatically know Swahili or other ‘mundane’ things.
And even if it was true, how would the sage know that he knows all without going out and testing his knowledge in the outside world? He could be wrong. He was wrong before he was a sage. How does he know that he is a flawless sage now?
Yeah. Apocalypticists have lost faith and hope in the modern world. Some wanted Trump to win the presidential election because they believed he would bring about the cataclysm necessary to fulfill the prophesies of the Book of Revelation and thus precipitate the second coming of Christ.
The word Apocalypse is one of those incredibly complex concepts.
Most users of the word likely see it as a synonym for Armageddon … feel comfortable with the association of catastrophe … annihilation of humanity and planet.
For me … there is enough wiggle room for alternative explanations.
For example … what would an apocalyptic metamorphosis of human consciousness look like?
Apparently the word apocalypse stems from the Greek language.