Religion/God and Big Brother

It is my contention that the level of religious influence and need in a society can be measured as the inverse of the level of technology and science in that society. This is no coincidence, because religion acts to fulfill a certain social need/power and psychological desire-power which is more totally and properly fulfilled through technology and science; the nature of technology and science is as Marcuse said increasingly to gain control over nature, and this also means and inevitably culminates in control over human nature, the "final frontier" of science and technology.

As technology and science increase in a society, religious presence and power wanes, ultimately culminating, theoretically, in a society of total-control, surveillance and mind-control of the individual's thoughts, actions and feelings, the "scientization of man", at which point religion will vanish entirely.

As a note of comparison:

"God loves you." .... "Big Brother loves you."
"God is watching you." .... "Big Brother is watching you."
"I love God." .... "I love Big Brother."



(The locus of this drive-power relationship and impulse is the secret heart of human-psychological and human-social nature, the true form underneath all economic, political and ideological movements, and the noumenon of every human phenomenon. History is the un-folding of this principle basic relationship between individual form and social form/power; we have the gradual development of common social-power of oppression and prescriptive control which will naturally, until just before the final 'end of history', raise individuals along with it, thus masking its true growth and "intent".)

And yet as with religion, God/BB may be watching, but it's only because one "loves" (fears) him that ones acts are infuenced/limited/ by these top down ethics.

If no man cared about being watched, Big Brother would have as little influence as a dead God.

I, as an optimist of strength (rarer than a pessimist of strength, as it includes all pessimism and yet sees light) do not believe that the world, increasingly energetic, can forever be included in One system.

There are two ascending curves - one is of increased technological control, one is of increased technological "bandwidth" for emergent meaning, individual power, creation. The optimistic view is that the last curve is ultimately steeper, and the project for central control will have to be abandoned for a more sophisticated "immanent surveillance", which is simply the "form" side to the creative "force".

“You look up when you wish to be exalted. And I look down because I am exalted.”

The "because" in that sentence carries all the weight of optimism of strength. It is the responsibility of life to create exalted states, which are called Gods by those who still need to descend upon chaos against order. Our responsibility is not to kill God but, like with the sophist understanding of Schroedinger's cat, to have him already be dead.

Big Brother always watched, until men started realizing they themselves were the ones looking and started asking why, until they no longer had survivalist need of the flagellating instinct.

To clarify, I do not mean to establish a relationship between religion-god and technology-science, so much as to define the degree of religion-god literally as "the lack of technology-science, and nothing besides".

Fixed Cross wrote:

And yet as with religion, God/BB may be watching, but it's only because one "loves" (fears) him that ones acts are infuenced/limited/ by these top down ethics.

If no man cared about being watched, Big Brother would have as little influence as a dead God.

I disagree, because while God dead or alive does not in fact exist (has no literal power, only symbolic power), Big Brother cared about or not very much exists, and has much literal (and symbolic) power.

Strip the symbolism from the dead idea (e.g. lose one's fear/love of it) and yet it still exists, and even, as a consequence of one's lack of concern and ability/sense of meaning for it, more powerful than ever.

Pezer wrote:

“You look up when you wish to be exalted. And I look down because I am exalted.”

The "because" in that sentence carries all the weight of optimism of strength. It is the responsibility of life to create exalted states, which are called Gods by those who still need to descend upon chaos against order. Our responsibility is not to kill God but, like with the sophist understanding of Schroedinger's cat, to have him already be dead.

Big Brother always watched, until men started realizing they themselves were the ones looking and started asking why, until they no longer had survivalist need of the flagellating instinct.

I believe that the social form/s is (still) the primary entity and the individual is the secondary entity, not the other way around. The situation you describe does not exist yet, and until humanity grapples with many tough questions such as the one in this topic, never will.

"Where we have ways and means, God is not." "Where we have no ways or means, God is."

OK. There are then two types of God: the one that is a reflection of the cowardly instincts against the needed unknown, and the one that is a reflection of the future answers that will displace him. The first needs no reflection, every molecule of thought gives it life it does not deserve, the second requires humble and reverent rebellion. Humility and reverence in accuracy and pride are Satanic, with the eye of intent upon receiving the spoils of the world despite any other forces such as Gods.

No imagery or idea can convince man to revere life once more, this reverence cannot be learned but only seen, and lost. However, even the dumbest among us has overcome much godliness by pure attachment to our societies. The inertia of ungodliness is strong, and the godliness of what this inertia does not cover is so unexplored and un-understood that perhaps one could indeed say it is more powerful than ever. So be it! I wonder what will stand behind that.

Like religion, science subjugates existence to an interpretation, which becomes a world, but one without a goal or a meaning. It's only "eye" is an ever deepening abyss, around which the increasing power revolves. Science can't look into itself, not without value ontology.

Religion has provided man with the one thing science can not give: an ethics centered around the human perspective. Science does not include this notion, as it is itself a transhuman ethics. Humans think they are using science, but they have been tools to the self-valuing scientific method all along. Now, humans are just tool-making tools to the organism which whole essence is summarized as the means to create tools.

This, by the way, struck me as a powerful description of God.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLrt6mGR8To

Capable, I am curious where you would place astrology, and the reverence for planets and the qualities they represent (to the astrologer).

To me this seems to fall in an area between science and religion. The peculiar thing is, that the more becomes known, the greater the reverence becomes, and with that the tendency to contemplate influences as Gods.

We mustn't underestimate the reverence great thinkers and creators of theory had when it concerned the forces and phenomena and laws they disclosed. Many of them were so awestruck by what they perceived that they simply used toe word "God" to describe the importance and absoluteness of it.

Interestingly, and in contrast to Rational Metaphysics (which I've been engaging intensely the past month(s)), value ontology does not evoke such a response, as it rather triggers what we already live, feel, in terms of reverence, and secularizes that. It thus secularizes Gods. In the same stroke it "sanctifies" the principle of selecting, since we place the principle itself on par with the very highest, most intensive manifestations.

Fixed Cross wrote:

Capable, I am curious where you would place astrology, and the reverence for planets and the qualities they represent (to the astrologer).

To me this seems to fall in an area between science and religion. The peculiar thing is, that the more becomes known, the greater the reverence becomes, and with that the tendency to contemplate influences as Gods.

We mustn't underestimate the reverence great thinkers and creators of theory had when it concerned the forces and phenomena and laws they disclosed. Many of them were so awestruck by what they perceived that they simply used toe word "God" to describe the importance and absoluteness of it.

Interestingly, and in contrast to Rational Metaphysics (which I've been engaging intensely the past month(s)), value ontology does not evoke such a response, as it rather triggers what we already live, feel, in terms of reverence, and secularizes that. It thus secularizes Gods. In the same stroke it "sanctifies" the principle of selecting, since we place the principle itself on par with the very highest, most intensive manifestations.

It is hard for me to place astrology, because I have never had any direct experience with it. The extent of my understanding is based only on my trust in others who have had experience with it. Logically I can develop, within tectonics and VO, possibilities that would ground astrology causally with more "normal" physical materiality, although such movements must remain speculative, at least until I could perhaps experience enough of the effects and inner workings of astrology to really understand it adequately.

I tend to see this reverence for God firstly through the lens of what Parodites identifies as the ego's need for ideality, the transcendental dimension of the "real" psychology which projects its own image of Absolute with which to compare its limited, finite experiences. This movement is daemonic, and produces ethics and "hope", as well as helps maintain openness (avoids premature closures). I can only view reverence for God as an actual relationship, between man and something to which the name God might actually point, secondarily and with a huge degree of suspicion and unanswered (unanswerable?) questions. Granted, one has a certain number of experiences which cannot be explained through traditional science or logic, but here I tend to fall back upon VO and tectonics as well as simply the unknown itself in a more pure form, rather than begin positing that classic or modern concepts of spirit/god/divinity/whatever actually indicate aspects of reality itself, that these ideas actually know something about this unknown(unknowable?). I mean, on what basis ought we conclude these forms actually know something about this? I can find next to nothing, anywhere and including personal experience, to substantiate such claims.

I'm interested in RM and its relationship to VO and tectonics. I would like for James to get back here and discuss it more, or at least perhaps you can persuade him to post up a lengthy treatise on the subject..

This topic here was inspired because I realized that religion/God-belief can actually be defined literally as degrees of absence of science-technology. This is an interesting way to look at it, and if you further add the piece that society, through this movement of religion-becoming-science, is a progression from less to more control, more to less "freedom" (which progression, as I noted in the OP, will still tend to produce its own opposites and antitheses, namely that man will experience an uplift in his control and freedom even as those social systems which give rise to the individual are gradually shifting to forms which enclose the individual within more control and restriction beyond himself), this paints an interesting picture of history and future.

It was Orwell who said that if you want to know the future, picture a boot stomping on a human face, forever. We cannot concede to this image, but we must approach it. What in my analysis in the OP here reveals error or inadequate explanation of the situation? I find it very hard to refute this view, particularly with respect to any appeals to whatever reality God/religion/spirit might actually have beyond merely human imaginings. Once we are able to understand, rationally, the psychological mechanisms and movements which produce religious need and ideas, it becomes a whole lot harder to employ a religious-appear sort of "openness to possibility" as a defense against the kind of historical progression which I've attempted to outline in the OP.... and as you know, for better or worse, I am unable to entertain a good deal of "optimism" or hope which is not firmly grounded. This may only be my own psychological limit and suffering, I'm not really sure.

I think this is a good moment to invoke Socratic doubt. Here is a fitting explanation by Sauwelios:

Quote :

For Harry Neumann, Socrates is one of the few "pure" philosophers. Being a philosopher means knowing that one does not know—especially that one does not know whether faith or questioning is better. Socrates, according to Neumann, could not choose and never chose questioning over faith; he knew that he did not know whether the Olympian gods really existed or not. So Neumann's Socrates is caught in an impossible dilemma between faith and questioning: he is permeated by the awareness that the gods _might_ exist—and therefore his questioning their existence might be wrong—, but also by the awareness that they might _not_ exist—and therefore believing in them might be wrong. A "philosopher-king", on the other hand, liberates philosophy from the illiberal faith in gods. He chooses questioning over faith, and thereby may be said to have faith in questioning; he does not question whether questioning is really better than faith. And by thus liberalizing philosophy (questioning), he politicizes it, because he presents philosophy as a good, a value—something to fight for. He thus "philosophizes" politics, by bringing "philosophy" into the sphere of politics. But this is not true philosophy, not "pure" philosophy, because pure philosophy would never stop questioning whether questioning is really better than faith; it would never put such faith in questioning...

Scepsis vis a vis the possibility of God is necessary. Scepsis to the possibility of no-God is equally necessary. But what is God? An entity of intelligence beyond man, of which man is an effect. What does this mean, besides "the universe is intelligent"? Not much. And what is "intelligence"? Can it not be defined as "the capacity to act efficiently within a structure to wield control in that structure"? If so, "intelligence" refers to a necessity, a property conditional to the survival of self-valuing - where value rules the transcendent/monadic realm, intelligence rules the immanent/causal realm.

God might be defined as the value pursued by the cumulative intelligence in the universe. Its aim is its own wholeness, in comparison not to the outside world, but in contrast to (the pain it suffers due to) its own contradictions. We might conceive of a self-valuing God who draws value purely from within, from the possibilities offered within his existence, which might have come into being simultaneously with his first components, the first subatomic particles.

A God like meta-structure may have been inevitable to the emergence of structure at all, at least when I am thinking in terms of my post in the Tower.

Not that any of this precludes the Orwellian nightmare. To me however the vision of a global tyranny of a machine like efficiency ("consciousness in a subsidiary rule, almost indifferent, superfluous, perhaps destined to vanish and give way to a perfect automatism" - N) is not something I can rhyme with the idea of value as primordial and intelligence as universal.

Nature has imprisoned itself to then not simply outgrow the prison, but to integrate the prison as a function of a greater system it had suddenly become. The pressure is built as the prison system, but as soon as the prison is built, the pressure is exhausted. Perhaps all organs began as a form of spontaneous dance of excess, into which a power-order of rank was distilled, which then proceeded to form an imprisoning of the weaker drives into a dynamic (structure in time, mechanism) of which the stronger drives were the signifier.

For what is being imprisoned by the Orwellian rulers? What besides stupidity, weakness, and gullibility?
Us??
No way.