Rhizome 12/30/14 in which I offer a conditional defense of religion as an evolutionary development via Eric Mathews’ interpretation of Bergson in Twentieth Century French Philosophy (a really good and accessible survey of the subject for anyone who is interested: “The beliefs of static religion, fulfilling as they do many of the same functions as instincts, will be based on imagination rather than reason, and will often appear merely absurd and superstitious to rational minds. The faculty of imagination is a faculty of myth-making, rather than of abstract speculation. Human beings have such a faculty, Bergson argues (in line with his ‘creative’ view of evolution), for a purpose: it is there to control the dangers of excessive intellectualism. Intelligence is an evolutionarily useful capacity, but if over-developed, or developed in the wrong way [think evil genius here –my point], it poses a threat to the survival of society, the threat of excessive individualism and atomization, which it is the function of the myths of static religion to avert.” -Twentieth Century French Philosophy, Eric Mathews, pg. 36 Now this, for many if not most of us, would seem a hard pill to swallow. But we have to look at it in terms of Bergson’ concept of creative evolution: that which was adapted by Deleuze in terms of the individual creative act and Rorty in terms of the communal creative act of discourse. We have to consider the possibility that whatever issues we may have with religion (whatever failures and atrocities that have been carried out under its banner (it may have served as an important evolutionary adaption. We, of course, hold a certain reverence for the intellect. But you have to make an honest assessment of where we would be if everyone chose the path we have. Given the egoism you see all the time on the boards, you have to wonder if a ubiquitous intellectualism might have exterminated us a long time ago. Anyway, the prep for this rhizome ran out the window for it. I hope to go deeper into this and frame it in the context of my dichotomy between the competitive and cooperative models of evolutionary adaption. As I found out in the prep-work for this, I haven’t fully described it on the rhizomes. And I have come to realize (via the above quote (that religion has (in a rather inconsistent manner (been a major facilitator of the cooperative model which we may have to evolve to (in the sense of evolutionary adaption (if we want to insure our survival given our possible extinction through man-made climate change or our enslavement to global Capitalism. At the same time, I hope to show how it is a mixed package in that its myth-making function is showing itself to be our primary obstacle to the changes needed to truly adapt to our present environment.
Posted on: Wed, 31 Dec 2014 03:58:35 +0000
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