Religion alone can carry the load, defend us against the de-humanizing collectives, restore true personality. And it doubtful our society can last much longer without religion, for either it will destroy itself by some final idiot war or, at peace but hurrying in the wrong direction, it will soon largely cease to be composed of persons. ... But I have no religion, most of my friends have no religion, very few of the modern writers we have been considering have had any religion; and what is certain is that our society has none. No matter what it professes, it is now not merely irreligious but powerfully anti-religious. And if we all joined a Christian church tomorrow, the fundamental situation would be unchanged ... For the symbols no longer work, and they cannot be made to work by effort on a conscious level. ... No matter what is willed by consciousness, that which belongs to the depths can only be restored in the depths: the numinous lies outside the collectives, cannot be subject to state decree, created by a final resolution at an international conference, offered to all shareholders and employees by the board of Standard Oil or General Motors. So we have no religion and, inside or outside literature, man feels homeless, helpless, and in despair.
-- J.B. Priestley, Literature and Western Man (1960)
For the truth is that what the intellectual quest really needs is a religion and yet it is fundamental to the nature of intellectualism that that is the one thing the intellectual cannot have. He can neither embrace the old faiths, nor can he invent new ones. All his ideas are condemned to pass their time on the margins of a culture that has chosen its own faith, its own metaphysic and which has no need of his refinements.
-- Bryan Appleyard, Understanding the Present (2004)
Frank, thanks, you are a perpetual consolation.
ReplyDeletePerhaps J.B. Priestley should speak for himself. I'm not in despair because I don't have supernatural forces paying occasional visits to my mind, or subscribe to beliefs that couldn't reliably be called evidence for even two seconds, and don't see why anyone else without religion necessarily should either.
ReplyDeleteBryan, I read your recent article, Waiting for the lights to go out, in the Sunday Times. I have loved the idea of self-sufficiency since seeing it pictured in the UK sitcom, The Good Life (known in the US as Good Neighbors), with Richard Briers.
It was interesting to read about the electric car, but what about using air as a fuel to run your car? Twelve years ago Guy Negre, a French engineer, built two of these Air Cars and he and his son drove them around Paris as taxicabs to test their research.
The car's oil (a quart of vegetable) only needs to be changed every 30,000 miles or so. It can reach a speed of 68 mph and has a road coverage of roughly 124 miles (more than double the road coverage of an electric car). To refill, you connect the car to a mains supply for 3 to 4 hours (it costs very little to run the compressor, nothing like recharging an electric car) or pull into a regular fuel station with an air pump that will do the job for you in 2 minutes.
Apparently, they're offering manufacturing licences and going into full production shortly.
Here's their website:
http://www.theaircar.com/
See it's not all doom and gloom. There're plenty of entrepreneurs out there chasing after progress and they aren't all religious nutters, cult companies, political chiselers, mad scientists, or too afraid. ;)
Here's Bryan's article:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2099-1813695_1,00.html
I don't have supernatural forces paying occasional visits to my mind
ReplyDeleteThat's not entirely true (there goes my career). I have had non-drug personal experiences that were outside what you'd call normal. Probably everyone does which might account for why superstition survives. There are many stories of people declared clinically dead who returned to life and told everyone what they saw and experienced while dead (or almost dead). I am sure there is an explanation and am also sure we do not know what it is yet, but at least science works to investigate these things.
For example, scientists photographed a leaf and its electromagnetic field. They then cut a piece out of the leaf and photographed it again. In this second photograph, the electromagnetic field of the leaf was whole even though it was missing a piece. They kept photographing it. A few hours later, its electromagnetic field shrank to the new size of the leaf.
There is no question that when something dies, be it leaf, germ, or person, the binding energy leaves and the body decays. This does not mean we go to heaven or hell. This does not mean there is a God. All it means is that while we are alive there is energy within us that leaves and dissipates when we die. For those of you who like ghost stories, one could claim that occasionally the imprint of life sticks around for a while in some cases.
Because some experiences are not your everyday experience doesn't mean they came from some flavor of God and therefore God must exist, anymore than it means they should be discarded as delusions if you know within yourself what was experienced was real.