I’ve been feeling this for a while, and I’m trying to flesh out an idea here. Feedback is appreciated. I’ve been a leftist for a long time, and have studied theory and history in my lazy, hodgepodge way, and while I believe that materialism as the old boys theorized is definitely a useful tool and structure to view events and systems of humanity, it doesn’t have a kinda joi de vivre that I require to really get turned on by something. In my teens I was a lonely atheist, and in college I was a bewildered existentialist/absurdist and over the past decade or so I’ve been I’ve gotten out of straight materialism, starting with Buddhism and moving into reading and practicing stuff out of the western esoteric/occult tradition. I feel that the left has a tangible, essential moral and ethical center, but it hamstrings itself in its articulation by sticking with this materialist/mechanistic view of life and the universe. I want an enchanted left, I want a haunted left. I want a left where we honor our ancestors and speak to them, where we call upon the elements to help us, where we come together to bind our enemies and protect our allies in ritual chaos. Mostly I want a left that isn’t afraid to acknowledge the divine, that calls upon those forces and entities that can’t be seen but only felt. I want a left that can take leaps of faith into an uncertain future because We Have Faith. Faith in a Living, Breathing Something that we are all a part of, and so can act and rest in the knowledge that we aren’t alone in a cold dead universe, but rather vibrant cells in a communal, universal body.

  • glimmer_twin [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    When ghosts show up to help with the rev, I’ll become a Marxist-Spectralist, til then I’m sticking with the material realm.

    Not that there’s anything wrong with having some spirituality in your life - I just don’t think we should be trying to use it as a tool on the left? Religion has always historically been used by the ruling class to keep down the other classes so really you’re just fighting the bourgeoisie on their turf.

    • ciaplant666 [he/him]
      3·
      4 years ago

      Someone down below mentioned Libration theology, which I should actually study instead of just mentioning, but I can also point to the religious fervor of John Brown and Harriet Tubman, and the Black Church during the civil rights movement.

      Sure religion is a tool of the ruling class to dominate the proles, but then again, what isn’t?

      And playing with this idea: if Capitalism is a totalising, universalising phenomena, then we’re always fighting on “their own turf” to an extent.