If we understand the “modern” era as a continuation of
the past, then it is possible to reevaluate our “modern” times…
we have had the past, the Christian past… and one possible
way to understand the “modern” world is to think of the
“modern” world as a secular version of the Christian past…
in other words, Modern secular thinking is just a reworking of
the Christian idea’s of the past……….so to put some context on this,
Descartes and his fixation on certainty is a modern version
of the medieval idea of certainty……. he comes to his idea of
certainty by the secular version of medieval thought of certainty…
he wants science to be as certain as theologians are certain about
spiritual matters……… the quest for certainty in those 200 years from
Descartes to Kant is a secular version of medieval certainty………
this modern need for a reworking of religious idea into modern
methods or terminology still exists………
we see people who approach modern life with the exact same
needs as they approached the medieval times……
for example, we see those with a religious bent to idolize political
figures in the way the religious idolize religious figures…
look at St. Ronnie for example… the right idolize him in the exact same
way the religious idolize Jesus……………they want to “canonize” him to
the point where they were trying to get him onto Mount Rushmore……
and they have named everything not tied down after him……….
the right treat him as a religious figure… he can do no wrong…
and that is part of the how the religious “modernize” religious
ideals……….
if you see how the base has idolize IQ45 is the same thing…….
and the demonization of the left by referring to them in biblical terms,
quite often, Obama was called the “antichrist” by the right…………
and the understanding of the left was done in religious terms…….
and on the left, you have Marx’s idea that when the class system broke down
and everyone was of one class, that was the end of history, heaven achieved…
utopia discovered………Marx’s theory of communism was secularism overlaying
religious concepts… think of the theory of communism as a religious theory…
but being on the left, it has a slightly different idea…………
we have seen that the medieval age was an age where there was one god,
and only one god and only way to reach god………
now think of the reformation and Luther……
we have two different understandings of the religious concepts…….
we have the ancient Catholic, one god in heaven, art though…….
and we have the new understanding of religion founded by Luther
and company…………. you can see the outline of the next 500 years
with an understanding that the “modern” age is a restating of the
religious ideal in “secular” language………… That there are those people
who hate democracies where everyone can decide for themselves…
the Reformation ideal and those people who hate democracies
are the ones who pine for one god, one ruler, a political dictatorship…
which in their eyes is the same thing……. they adhere to the concept of
the medieval world where there is but one god and his name is Allah…
and their is no difference between those who advocate the medieval
world and those who advocate Allah…….the goal is the exact same goal…
to return to a world of one god, one ruler, one dictatorship both political and
religious…which in their minds is the exact same thing…………… they pine for the
days of religious, economic, political homogeny of the Medieval world…….
and those on the left, they want the equivalent of the reformation…
where every one was free to decide as they wish…….
you can think of the modern age as an repeat of the religious battle
that lasted for 500 years in Europe……… of one god, with one form of prayer,
with one understanding of life from birth to death………… and the other side
is fighting to have other gods, other forms of prayer and many different understandings
of life from birth to death………
you can understand the modern world as being a secularized version of
the religious viewpoint which has dominated the world for two millennium…….
you have always had clashing viewpoints in religious context…
you have the Jews and their emphasis on one god, one form of prayer
and one text……. and you have the Egyptian gods who are many and varied
and you have the Greek gods, many and varied, you have the Roman gods,
many and varied………
then the medieval world took their cue from the Jewish religion, recall
that Jesus was a Jew who never denounced Judaism or denied it……
the fact that the Christian world took their cues from the Jewish world is no
surprise given the battle of the world has gone from one god to the many gods
and back again…today, we are in the many god phase of religions…
tomorrow will be another story when the entire one god idea takes over
and the story continues with the battle between one god and many gods
going on through future history…….
anyway, if you look at the right, they want to turn the political
into the religious…………and the left wants to turn the religious
into the political……………….the modern world is simply the secularization
of the ancient, religious idea’s into acceptable modern idea’s………
we still think and argue and fight within a religious concept, we just
use modern words to cover that fact……………
this notion of the secularization of religious ideals was quite common
in the German world during the mid 20th century…see Hans Blumenberg
for example…“The legitimacy of the Modern age”………
Kropotkin