In sum, James Madison proposed that the structure of the politic in the U.S.A. be such that each group in society and its respective interests not be allowed to overshadow and dominate those of any other group and their interests. And it's been [more or less] that way ever since.................
Ok yeah I think I understand what you mean. Except I think it was easier back then as there wasn't too many groups to overshadow each other. I wonder if the envisioned what that would ultimately mean. Its idealistic but is it practical.
The only way to "stop" Woke Ideology is to understand it and parse its legitimate concerns out from any questionable ideology that those who invoke it may have. If Christians persist in utterly dismissing it wholesale without doing the deeper, painstaking philosophical work of analyzing what's actually being said, and by whom, then all they'll do is cause further Proletariat forms of backlash among Woke individuals.
Yes behind all this I think everyone agrees with the nobel cause of equality for all and its important to take a critical view of how inequality happens within society. But Critical theory goes beyond this.
Do you understand what I'm saying? .... I mean, there's a reason I have a couple of Marxist theorists on my list of personal influences. Not that I'm a Marxist myself by any means, but that some of the theoretical and structural social gripes of someone like Pierre Bourdieu are relevant to the class and group conflicts that are seen at various levels of society. Christians all too often dismiss this with a mere wave of the hand----kind of like how they used to do with the issue of slavery not so many centuries ago.
Yeah I understand. I think most people relate to the class struggle. This was a big topic in the 80's and 90's with Neoliberalism and privatisation. It seems a natural part of society that we form hierarchies but people who manage to get to the top, get in the position of power over others will exploit things. That is now being applied to culture, social relations and differences between groups.
But I think its the weaponising, the politicising of these nobel causes to equalise society, the ideological worldview that all differences are the result of oppression that warps things. Its the opposite of critical and rational thinking in that it doiesn't step back and consider all the influences that may cause differences.
Throwing the baby out with the bath-water has been going on since well before Marx ever came along. It's a part of the sloppy fallout from certain aspects of both the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.
I don't just mean Marxist thinking. Its more than that. Theres the Postmodernist twist or maybe its even moved beyond that. I am not sure what you would call todays thinking. But its certain Self Referential as far as reality is concerned.
But that has come at the cost of free speech which was a means to discover reality. To be able to speak the truth to find the truth. That is what I mean by "throwing the baby out with the bath-water". We are trading off the truths we have come to know at great cost for this new ideological worldview. It seems now identity groups percieved oppression is the new reality that trumps even objective reality.
Not everything in the Bible aligns with "lived reality," nor does it even address a lot of what now is encountered in today's "lived reality."
I think it does. I'm not talking about the events but Christs teachings, and the other letters to the Christians about how to live and the spiritual battle going on. If Christ was the truth then we can know that truth through our lived reality. I though the bible was seen as a book of life, revealing the secrets of our nature, nature itself, the universe.
And your notion as to "universal truths and facts" are always open to interpretation, and this is one small reason why I parse out the idea of "Reality" from "truth claims" about that Reality.
Yeah there are more than one way to know truth and reality. But as I said Truth and reality need to be tempered with rationality and our lived experience and reality. We are also rational beings. Its when these are used in combination that we can know the truth and reality.
The many transcedent truths like the freedoms and Human Rights we have come to know are our lived experience. These have been tested through trial and error and we know the outcomes for not upholding them. They are a different kind of truth and reality due to experiential reality.
But also the objective truths we have dicovered like with the social sciences and even hard sciences like physics and biology which show that certain ways of living are more stable and healthy than others. How we embody physical reality. How theres a certain order to physical reality that we cannot mess with.
You mean, the colonizers brought truths about germ warfare to the Americas when they gave blankets to the native peoples?
Yeah if onlt they didn't bring their dirty diseases with them lol.
Still, I get what you're saying. Somewhere in the wash is the historical Jesus of Nazareth, waiting to be properly represented to those who either have never heard of him or have been misinformed about Him.
I don't think that was the only reason. I think regardless humans are explorers. If it wasn't the colonisers it was going to be someone. Maybe the Chinese. Maybe a nobel people who treated them well. But its our history.
Its probably also something we need to fully understand before we cast judgements oin ourselves. So long as we are applying those standards we place on past events into todays society, thats whats important.
Yes. Enlightenment 'freedom' has been a double-edged sword, hasn't it?
And was needed. Enlightenment opened our eyes up to truth. Or allowed us to. But it also allowed us to question things to the point where we can rationalise the truth away.
I am not sure that was its intention though. I think many still believed in a omniscient and omnipresent God or force to the universe. They believed both the rational and the spiritual needed to be included. In fact many early scientists believed science would reveal God in the universe.
The problem with this description is that Modern Western Culture is the outcome of all that has cumulatively transpired in plural conflicts and encounters between various people groups and nations from about 1500 to about 1900, roughly speaking. The "true Gospel message"---whatever that truly is----- was awash in a cacophony of confusion during that time. We're lucky to still have Christianity with us today, and of course, you and I can surmise through various allusions to biblical writings as to why it still is among us today.
Yeah it is amazing. But then it was amazing that Christianity managed to become the belief of the very Empire who tried to wipe it out. I agree its been a battle of many factors not least politics and power. In some ways the more power the church gained the more it moved away from Christs teachings.
The Gospel was smoothered by much white noise but it still remained in pockets which kept the candle burning in the background, in the charities and grass roots movements that worked to live Christs teachings. Sometimes there were revivals but gradually Christianity has been pushed to the fringes but stick the light shines.
But the light will never go out and I think its when Christianity is most under pressure that it shines.
