Monday, June 29, 2009

No Dawkins he ...

... Marx's challenge. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

However, those acts of self-realisation are increasingly thwarted in organised society. When people learn to cooperate, a struggle ensues because we become disconnected from the products of our labour. The ever-more complex modes of production manifest in capitalism lead to the deepest sense of alienation. We lose touch with the land, though can't give up on the expectation that work will fulfil us, even when it abuses and empties us.

What I find interesting is the suspicion regarding complexification. Why does it necessarily follow that, the more complex our world, the more alienated we become. The entire history of carbon compounds would appear to be characterized by complexification. If that is direction in which evolution is taking us, why should that make us feel alienated?
There is one theory regarding the origin of the word religion that has it deriving from religare, meaning "to bind back." Religion, in other words, properly understood, is that by which we maintain our connection to things and to time passing and past. I have never myself felt especially alienated, but, as I have frequently pointed out, I am uncommonly shallow.

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