wilbjammin

People used to understand that metaphors were metaphors. Nietzsche's first book, The Birth of Tragedy is a plea to people to back to the way that the Greeks lived several thousand years ago, because people in our times have deceived themselves and are more unbalanced than ever. He discusses the idea of the Apollonian veil and the Dionysian return to the primordial. Basically, people now have forgotten how to live with a proper balance between the knowledge that life is suffering and the veil that we put over this knowledge that life is great and beautiful. Now, we are strongly Apollonian and so afraid of facing the idea of our mortality and allowing ourselves to realize that life is suffering that I think we are more gullible than ever because of it. We have lost the sense of the "beautiful horror", and the "horrible beauty" that life is.

There have been spikes in the way people have viewed the Bible from more literal standpoints, and have backed off a bit. We think of the Crusades and the Inquisition as terrible examples of how people have used to Christianity in a negative way, but there are other events that have helped move people towards these literal interpretations. Perhaps the biggest upturn in literally interpreting the Bible came during the Black Plague. People knew that their chances of living a long and fruitful life were low, so they searched for something to give their lives more meaning after death. I think this is when fear and the push towards Apollonianism really was at its strongest.

Now, in the post-modern era, life is more abstract than ever. If you want to talk about people being ignorant, stupid, and gullible then turn on the television. The rise of media to this massive all-encompassing thing has made life so alienating that many people have gotten lost in the mix. Look at how many people buy things that they don't need, vote for things that aren't in their interest, watch hours and hours of mind-numbing programing, are left without a critical thinking moment in their lives because they're so busy avoiding those moments when they are faced with their solitude, mortality, and the absurdity of the conditions of their existence.

What does scientific knowledge have to do with the problem of trying to figure out how to live a good life? It is helpful in deciding very simple things such as, "does this actually hurt people explicitly?" But, the problems dealt with by people 2000 years ago are the same problems we see now. I think it can probably be safe to say that it is even harder to get to deal with those problems now because of how convoluted and complicated our society has made things precisely because of science and other socially-constructed knowledge. Do people really live better lives now than people did before the industrial revolution? That's a question that really isn't easy to answer.

I don't understand the relevance. That kind of scientific question doesn't address a deeper question of meaning within the human experience. Given that we have more scientific knowledge now does not mean that people didn't have critical minds that considered morality and ethics effectively. This question of pornography is a question of morality and ethics, not about the mechanics of sex.



On a final note - The Bible and other religions have not always had such fundamentalist interpretations, and some sects never have. To give a blanket statement of religion being about fear and ignorance also ignores the variation in how religions operate across time and cultures.

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Innominate.