°°°
While listening to JS Bach’s numinous Ascension Oratorio, in a performance conducted by John Eliot Gardiner, I began to wonder if Christianity, and all religions world-wide, had failed to change our basal human nature en masse to the extent that we humans no longer sallied forth to kill and destroy on behalf of some State entity or on behalf of some ideology or on behalf of some interpretation of a religion or because we as individuals had rejected or were not influenced by or had never known or had misinterpreted the message of such religions.
From the south of Madagascar to the inner city problems and violence in America and Europe to the current conflict in Gaza (and its consequences) to the war in Ukraine to the Rohingya in Burma and the violence and killing elsewhere, we appear to be a savage species untamed by the message of peace and non-violence which the major world religions all seemed to be trying to teach us, with for instance some Buddhists in Burma now apparently justifying the persecution of and violence against the Rohingya.
For over a decade I perhaps egoistically have believed that my own decades-long violent, suffering-causing, extremist life and my ultimate rejection of it through my weltanschauungen of pathei-mathos, might engender in some individuals an understanding of our human nature and the need for compassion, empathy, and honour. But it and so many so very many such attempts – from the poetry of TS Eliot to With The Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa by Eugene Sledge to One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – seem to have made no appreciative difference whatsoever.
I have to admit I have no solution to how to now change, reform, our basal human nature so that we now no longer sally forth en masse or individually to kill and/or cause suffering to others. For it does not appear to be just a matter, as I once perhaps naively believed, of exegesis and denotata.
David Myatt
April 14th 2024
Image credit: John the Evangelist: Folio 209v of the Lindisfarne Gospels
British Library Cotton MS Nero D.IV
David Myatt
Have All Religions Failed?
0
°°°
While listening to JS Bach’s numinous Ascension Oratorio, in a performance conducted by John Eliot Gardiner, I began to wonder if Christianity, and all religions world-wide, had failed to change our basal human nature en masse to the extent that we humans no longer sallied forth to kill and destroy on behalf of some State entity or on behalf of some ideology or on behalf of some interpretation of a religion or because we as individuals had rejected or were not influenced by or had never known or had misinterpreted the message of such religions.
From the south of Madagascar to the inner city problems and violence in America and Europe to the current conflict in Gaza (and its consequences) to the war in Ukraine to the Rohingya in Burma and the violence and killing elsewhere, we appear to be a savage species untamed by the message of peace and non-violence which the major world religions all seemed to be trying to teach us, with for instance some Buddhists in Burma now apparently justifying the persecution of and violence against the Rohingya.
For over a decade I perhaps egoistically have believed that my own decades-long violent, suffering-causing, extremist life and my ultimate rejection of it through my weltanschauungen of pathei-mathos, might engender in some individuals an understanding of our human nature and the need for compassion, empathy, and honour. But it and so many so very many such attempts – from the poetry of TS Eliot to With The Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa by Eugene Sledge to One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – seem to have made no appreciative difference whatsoever.
I have to admit I have no solution to how to now change, reform, our basal human nature so that we now no longer sally forth en masse or individually to kill and/or cause suffering to others. For it does not appear to be just a matter, as I once perhaps naively believed, of exegesis and denotata.
David Myatt
April 14th 2024
British Library Cotton MS Nero D.IV
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Filed in Christianity, David Myatt, David Myatt: Pathei Mathos, David Myatt: Personal Comments, DW Myatt, Jesus Of Nazareth, Novum Testamentum Graece, Pathei Mathos, Philosophy of Pathei-Mathos, Philosophy of The Numinous Way
Tags: Culture of Pathei-Mathos, David Myatt, DW Myatt, Novum Testamentum Graece, Philosophy of Pathei-Mathos, The Culture of Pathei-Mathos, The Numinous Way, Way of Pathei-Mathos