The dissertation is almost, almost, almost done, but not yet. Today, in the midst of studying, working on a crossword, and reviewing someone’s ordination paper for Sunday I starting reading an essay by Michel Foucault. Horray, something new! This essay is from The Foucault Reader edited by Paul Rabinow – titled: What is Enlightenment. I haven’t finished the essay, and I still have the audacity to write about it. Meh.
Anyway, here is what I liked; it is a comment about modernity:
I wonder whether we may not envisage modernity rather as an attitude than as a period of history. And by “attitude,” I mean a mode of relating to contemporary reality; a voluntary choice made by certain people; in the end, a way of thinking and feeling; a way, too, of acting and behaving that at one and the same time marks a relation of belonging and presents itself as a task.
I like this idea of modernity as an attitude rather than a moment in history. On one level that is basically what all the captured and dissected moments of time are, naming the prevailing attitudes of the day. That’s all fine and good if we don’t care about the minority voices, which I understand we don’t because it makes history and philosophy to messy and complicated. It is better to just name the victors and lump the thoughts of the masses into a singular, or sometimes two categories.
What if we took this to describe different groups of people? What if political parties were attitudes? Republican would be an attitude of denial, of embracing wealth, hard earned wealth by my grandfather that I deserve via my trust fund. It is currently an attitude of small government until a Republican is in office, etc. Democrats, on the other had, embrace the attitude of continuing to smack their head against the wall thinking that maybe the next time it wont hurt, the attitude of greater bureaucracy in order to fix a problem, and avoiding any real convictions and fire when it comes to different issues. The fun thing about this is you can not say what Democrat or Republican stands for, but instead what the ethos, the feeling or attitude of the groups are. They will shift from time to time, with basic tendencies.
Think about this with Christianity. What if Christianity is not a set of beliefs or doctrines, but instead attitudes toward life, others, and the idea of God? If that were the case than I would say that most people seem to treat God as a 8 – 10 year old child sitting on a chair who demands to be kept happy through songs praising how awesome this child is. Self-esteem issues? Or the attitude of some Christians seems to be that God is sleeping and we need to be as quiet and dull as possible so we don’t wake God up. Some seem to think that God only listens to them and no one else. I won’t even start about attitudes towards others.
It seems to me that when we consider the attitudes of groups and individuals when take away a lot of the window dressing that people can hide behind. It may be a good way to consider people.
Then again, after reading this, you may find yourself saying, “he has got some attitude!”
No comments:
Post a Comment