Go read you Durkheim folks. The building blocks of religion are the social experience, more specifically when the whole of the group becomes greater than the sum of the individual pieces. It's why Matt won't shut up about a new spirituality being necessary for a global revolution in the cushvlogs. You need to reignite the shared social connection that capitalist alienation has killed to create a cohesive class politic. Spirituality will come along with it as an inevitable byproduct.
Or, if you're a lib who doesn't understand why Marx disagreed with Hegel's dialectics, the spirituality will create the environment for the proletariat to organize together.
You need to reignite the shared social connection that capitalist alienation has killed to create a cohesive class politic.
I think this is backwards. A cohesive class politic (whatever that may be exactly) will inevitably incorporate a spiritual dimension or never successfully emerge in the first place. Whether it he unions or parties, labour organising has always had that 'being part of something larger' aspect and will continue to do so. I think you can, in some sense, describe the political goal of communism as a secular religion without it being derogatory in meaning.
Maybe I phrased that poorly but I think you can see that I agree with you based on my last sentence. Social cohesion around a class formation will create its own spirituality. Not necessarily non-secular, but it will create a social effervescence (to steal Durkheim’s phrasing) that lets the individual understand themselves as part of something greater than themselves on a deeply spiritual level.
Some really great ideas on this in non-essentialist theology/philosophy from Spinoza and later Deleuze. Again, Matt will talk about this stuff in length on the cushvlogs but it’s funny because you can tell he’s not a “real” academic because he doesn’t name drop when discussing the ideas. Makes it slightly harder to connect the concepts between authors without the labels but if you know what you’re listening for he touches on all this shit
And the spirituality if you will is created from our material and social relations - that we have to form and create. So since we have created god once, so can we create moments of social connection.
Go read you Durkheim folks. The building blocks of religion are the social experience, more specifically when the whole of the group becomes greater than the sum of the individual pieces. It's why Matt won't shut up about a new spirituality being necessary for a global revolution in the cushvlogs. You need to reignite the shared social connection that capitalist alienation has killed to create a cohesive class politic. Spirituality will come along with it as an inevitable byproduct.
Or, if you're a lib who doesn't understand why Marx disagreed with Hegel's dialectics, the spirituality will create the environment for the proletariat to organize together.
I think this is backwards. A cohesive class politic (whatever that may be exactly) will inevitably incorporate a spiritual dimension or never successfully emerge in the first place. Whether it he unions or parties, labour organising has always had that 'being part of something larger' aspect and will continue to do so. I think you can, in some sense, describe the political goal of communism as a secular religion without it being derogatory in meaning.
Maybe I phrased that poorly but I think you can see that I agree with you based on my last sentence. Social cohesion around a class formation will create its own spirituality. Not necessarily non-secular, but it will create a social effervescence (to steal Durkheim’s phrasing) that lets the individual understand themselves as part of something greater than themselves on a deeply spiritual level.
Some really great ideas on this in non-essentialist theology/philosophy from Spinoza and later Deleuze. Again, Matt will talk about this stuff in length on the cushvlogs but it’s funny because you can tell he’s not a “real” academic because he doesn’t name drop when discussing the ideas. Makes it slightly harder to connect the concepts between authors without the labels but if you know what you’re listening for he touches on all this shit
deleted by creator
And the spirituality if you will is created from our material and social relations - that we have to form and create. So since we have created god once, so can we create moments of social connection.