>I'd like to ramble on. Is this a quasi-religious matter? Why does it
>seem to me that the word "entropy" is regarded as blasphemy? Am I
>just hyper-sensitive? Please set me straight.
Hi John,
Thanks for the feedback! The reason that "entropy" is
regarded as "blasphemy", is because it raises all kinds of
nasty political questions.
For example, if the earth can not be all-things-to-all-people,
then we can see how super consumption by the First World
is causing or will cause starvation among the Third World.
I am glad you raised the notion of a "quasi-religious matter".
There are many you know exactly what they are doing, and are
willing to sit-back and watch the body count rise. But many
simply believe in THE INDUSTRIAL RELIGION.
===============================================================
THE INDUSTRIAL RELIGION revised 12/29/95
by Jay Hanson
To those who followed Columbus and Cortez, the New World
truly seemed incredible because of the natural endowments.
The land often announced itself with a heavy scent miles out
into the ocean. Giovanni da Verrazano in 1524 smelled the
cedars of the East Coast a hundred leagues out. The men of
Henry Hudson's Half Moon were temporarily disarmed by the
fragrance of the New Jersey shore, while ships running
farther up the coast occasionally swam through large beds of
floating flowers. Wherever they came inland they found a
rich riot of color and sound, of game and luxuriant
vegetation. Had they been other than they were, they might
have written a new mythology here. As it was, they took
inventory.
-- Frederick Turner
. . .
As the new century rises like a wave on the horizon, we sense
that we are not going to be able to ride this one out, that
uncontrollable currents will pull us to the bottom and tear us
apart. We have good reason to be frightened because we are in
the midst of a "paradigm shift"; a tidal wave of change that
threatens to overwhelm and annihilate us.
This new century brings with it dangers and challenges that we
can scarcely imagine. Human society has experienced paradigm
shifts in the past, but nothing compared to what is yet to come.
For 14 centuries, Ptolemy's astronomical theory (that
everything in the universe revolved around the Earth) was taught
as religious dogma throughout Western Christendom. But, Copernicus
changed all that and caused tremendous controversy in religion,
philosophy, and social theory by proving mathematically that the
Earth moves around the Sun.
The implications of Copernicus' ideas were devastating for the
Catholic Church. No longer was the Earth the center of the
universe. In fact, man might not have a special place in
creation at all! This was heresy on a grand scale. The medieval
churchmen even refused to peer into a telescope to "see for
themselves" because doing so meant defeat for their current
religious dogma.
Before Copernicus' time, knowledge was based on "authority"
(reading scriptures or philosophical tracts). In contrast, the
new knowledge was "empirical" (by scientific observation and
experiment). Ultimately of course, science defeated religious
dogma. The Copernican revolution successfully challenged ancient
authority and caused a paradigm shift in our entire conception of
the universe.
If we substitute "Industrial Religion" for Catholicism,
"ecology" for Copernicus' astronomy, and "Growthmen" for churchmen,
we can see that a parallel situation exists today.
In the 16th century, Martin Luther established a new form of
Christianity that ultimately came to regard work as the only way
to obtain love and approval. But behind the Christian face arose
a new secret religion that actually directs the character of
modern society. At the center of Industrial Religion is fear of
powerful male authorities, cultivation of the sense of guilt
for disobedience, and dissolution of community by promoting
hyperindividuality and mutual antagonism. The "sacred" in
Industrial Religion is work, property, profit and power.
Industrial Religion is incompatible with genuine Christianity
in that it reduces people to servants of the economy. The most
aggressive and ruthless are rewarded with even more power and
riches. Industrial Religion was destined to fail from the very
beginning because it actively destroys its own premises (both
morally and physically) by encouraging its members to dominate
and exploit each other and nature.
Evidence that Industrial Religion is failing, ipso facto, is
everywhere: desertification, topsoil loss, falling water
tables, filling garbage dumps, ozone depletion, global warming,
human sperm decline, rising cancer rates, loss of biodiversity,
collapsing ocean fisheries, depletion of oil, nuclear waste,
300,000 to 400,000 polluted ground water sites, pesticide-
resistant pests, antibiotic-resistant disease, billions of
people in the Third World planning to industrialize; social
problems such as jobless futures, the national debt, crack
babies, declining SAT scores, skyrocketing teenage pregnancy,
violence and suicide . . .
Growthmen are today's equivalent of the medieval churchmen.
They refuse to look at the scientific evidence and "see for
themselves", because once again, it means the defeat of their
current religious dogma; it means that they must give up their
faith that the problems caused by growth can be cured by more of
the cause.
There is however, one big difference between yesterday's
churchmen and today's Growthmen. Growthmen carry the collective
responsibility for the deaths of billions of lives as once-civil
societies gradually disintegrate into insurrection, chaos, and
oblivion.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
References:
Willis Harman, GLOBAL MIND CHANGE;
Knowledge Systems, 1988 ISBN 0-941705-05-6
"Nicolas Copernicus established mathematically that the Earth
moves around the sun in On the Revolution of the Celestial
Spheres" [p. 5]
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Lewis Mumford, THE PENTAGON OF POWER
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1964 ISBN 0-15-671610-0
"If there is any one point at which one may say the modern
world picture was first conceived as the expression of a new
religion and the basis of a new power system, it was in the
fifth decade of the sixteenth century." [p. 29]
". . . it was by such close observation of planetary movements,
as well as by tedious mathematical calculation, that Tycho
Brahe confirmed Copernicus' conclusions and made possible
Kepler's final correction." [p. 31]
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I. Bernard Cohen, THE BIRTH OF A NEW PHYSICS;
Norton, 1985 ISBN 0-393-30045-5
"There were only two possibilities open: One was to refuse
to look through the telescope or to refuse to accept what one
saw when one did; the other was to reject the physics of
Aristotle and the old geocentric astronomy of Ptolemy." [p. 78]
"In the contrast between Galileo's heroic stand when he tried
to reform the cosmological basis of orthodox theology and his
humbled, kneeling surrender when he disavowed his
Copernicansim, we may sense the tremendous forces attendant
on the birth of modern science." [p. 126]
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Thomas Kuhn, THE COPERNICAN REVOLUTION;
Harvard University Press, 1957 ISBN 0-674-17103-9
"But for whatever the reasons, the Church did, in 1616, make
Copernicanism a doctrinal issue, and all the worst excesses of
the battle against the earth's motion -- the condemnation of
Copernican opinions, the recantation and 'imprisonment' of
Galileo, and the dismissal and banishment of prominent
Catholic Copernicans -- occurred in or after that year." [p. 199]
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Erich Fromm, TO HAVE OR TO BE;
Bantam, 1977 ISBN 0-553-27485-6
"Luther established a purely patriarchal form of Christianity
in Northern Europe that was based on the urban middle class
and the secular princes. The essence of this new social
character is submission under patriarchal authority, with
work as the only way to obtain love and approval.
[See reviewer's comments on Luther below.]
"Behind the Christian facade arose a new secret religion,
'industrial religion,' that is rooted in the character
structure of modern society, but is not recognized as
'religion.' The industrial religion is incompatible with
genuine Christianity. It reduces people to servants of the
economy and of the machinery that their own hands build.
"The industrial religion had its basis in a new social
character. Its center was fear of and submission to powerful
male authorities, cultivation of the sense of guilt for
disobedience, dissolution of the bonds of human solidarity by
the supremacy of self-interest and mutual antagonism. The
'sacred' in industrial religion was work, property, profit,
power, even though it furthered individualism and freedom
within the limits of its general principles. By transforming
Christianity into a strictly patriarchal religion it was
still possible to express the industrial religion in
Christian terminology." [p.p. 131-132]
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Max Weber, THE PROTESTANT ETHIC AND THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM
Routledge, 1992 ISBN 0-415-08434-2
"[Capitalism] is associated with an outlook of a very specific
kind: the continual accumulation of wealth for its own sake,
rather that for the material rewards that it can serve
to bring. 'Man is dominated by the making of money, by
acquisition as the ultimate purpose of his life. Economic
acquisition is no longer subordinated to man as the means
for satisfaction of his material needs.' This according to
Weber, is the essence of the spirit of modern capitalism."
"The entrepreneurs associated with the development of rational
capitalism combine the impulse to accumulation with a
positively frugal life-style. Weber finds the answer in
the 'this-worldly asceticism' of Puritanism, as focused
through the concept of 'calling'. The notion of the calling,
according to Weber, did not exist either in Antiquity or in
Catholic theology; it was introduced by the Reformation."
[p. xii]
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
REVIEWER'S COMMENTS ON LUTHER:
Luther taught a very strong concept of "calling," but not
quite in the same way as the Puritans. For Luther, calling
meant that all professions were equal in the sight of God,
and that God was as glorified through a candlemaker creating
high quality candles as he was through a priest or monk. His
focus was breaking down the clergy/laity distinction in
medieval Catholicism for a doctrine he called the "priesthood
of all believers".
The creation of a merchant class and the later Industrial
Revolution led to what Weber is talking about. The Puritans
took this concept of calling and eventually concluded that
since good Christians worked hard for the glory of God, good
Christians were wealthy Christians. Therefore, wealth was a
sign of God's favor. John Wesley (who was actually an
Arminian Methodist rather than a Calvinist, but he fits in
with Weber's thesis very well) realized that if people
followed the Methodist spiritual practice of hard work and
thrift, they would soon become very wealthy. This worried
him greatly, and he always exhorted his followers to "Make
all you can, save all you can, so that you can give all you
can." Wesley himself lived by this rule and died poor,
though he made a considerable amount of wealth in his
lifetime. His followers, unfortunately, conveniently forgot
about this point. "Russ Reeves" <russr@pe.net>
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Recommended further reading:
Berger & Luckmann, THE SOCIAL CONSCTRUCTION OF REALITY;
Anchor Books, 1966, ISBN 0-385-05898-5
"Reification is the apprehension of human phenomena as if they
were things, that is, in non-human or possibly supra-human
terms. Another way of saying this is that reification is
the apprehension of the products as if they something else
than human products -- such as facts of nature, results of
cosmic laws, or manifestations of divine will. Reification
implies that man is capable of forgetting his own authorship
of the human world, and further, that the dialectic between
man, the producer, and his products is lost to consciousness.
The reified world is, by definition, a dehumanized world. It
is experienced by man as a strange facticity, an opus alienum
over which he has no control rather than as the opus proprium
of his own productive activity." [p. 89]
This book takes you step by step through the process of
constructing "social reality" and complete with institutions
to "legitimize" that reality.
WARNING: If you read this book, you will never look at
another human in the same light. This is one of those books,
like BEYOND OIL, that will forever alter your world view.
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