Religious liberty and hatred

[Eric the Green]

(07-07-2016, 07:40 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(07-05-2016, 08:06 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I have to admit that it is amazing to me that some folks seem determined to live in the dark ages.

(no, I don't think that includes me   )

The Dark Ages?  No.  That's not where I think you're at.  

The Summer of Love?  Maybe.  

Just about there in the best songs ever thread!

Quote:It's just about a given that lots of folks believe their own culture is the best of all possible cultures.  It is very natural that individuals will want to share and spread their culture, their values, their way of looking at the world.  It might take the form of preaching to strangers, or trying to prohibit certain guns.  

Or more likely, promote them, or permissiveness regarding them. The gun culture is a culture. Gun control activism is simply concern for public safety; not a culture. But oh well, back to the topic....

Quote:From my point of view, style and civility matter.  No matter what one is advocating, if one uses hatred and disrespect as a tool to convert the enemy, one ought not to expect to get very far.

But it is hard.  No matter what culture one comes from, no matter what values one is trying to spread, no matter what flavor of love, peace and rock n roll one advocates, it's kind of hard, when the other guy is obstinate, ugly, insulting, demeaning, to resist grabbing him by the collar and shaking until all the (expletive deleted) is gone.  That's not generally for the best.  What would Janis Joplin or Jimi Hendrix do?

There are rock festivals, and then there are rock festivals...

Yes, civility matters. If one is insulting the other guy, it is more-likely about arousing rage against him or her, rather than converting. The Trump technique. "They're rapists!" We'd better build a wall!

But religious conversion is civil enough; just fanatical, too insistent, and too limited in viewpoint. I have mentioned the idea of integral philosophy and spiral dynamics to you, to no avail. But it jells to some extent with what you say. We can transcend, but also include, earlier-stage worldviews, and appreciate their level of consciousness as, in its time, an advance over its predecessor.

In this case, the religious Christian worldview of the Middle Ages succeeded what you call Agricultural Age values per se, or an earlier form of them, as martial values of conquest and imperialism, and the value of iron and bronze work, etc., which held sway in the classical age (the iron age more or less) and the late archaic ages (the bronze age). Religion tempered the martial attitude with Jovian faith and morals. Religious Empires succeeded those of the Power Lords. The Church in its Middle Ages heydey was a civilizing influence, as Kenneth Clark said in that video I linked here a few days ago. Of course, back then conversion was not necessarily so civil. Crusades were armed.

Well, I don't remember where I linked it, so
https://youtu.be/MpPNbI6GcxI