Am I being too harsh on the inaugural festivities?
Bill Carpenter writes:
It’s understandable you would be disgusted with the “ascension of the Pharaoh.” But remember that you and a few others remarked that you did not want liberals to be possessed by madness and bitterness as a result of the election. They are our fellow citizens, after all, you may have said. This festival is the fulfillment of that generous impulse. It is relatively harmless, compared to the country-killing policies that are in store.
LA replies:
As I’ve said, I want the liberals to be happy. That’s not the same as wanting to see America resymbolize itself as a cosmological society under a divine emperor!
Bill Carpenter replies:
Indeed!
LA writes:
As Eric Voegelin explains in the first volume of Order and History, in a “cosmological” society, such as the empires of the ancient near east, the society is seen as the replication of the divine cosmos. The emperor symbolizes in his own person, and in his every action and gesture, the divine order of the cosmos and brings it into the society. Members of the society experience the divine through their identification with the emperor.
In an “anthropological” society, such as a representative democracy, the individual human being puts himself in right order through his relationship with the transcendent God, and the society is a reflection of that right human order.
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Richard W. writes:
I feel we’re at a third stage. We are closer to anthropological, but the transcendent God having no meaning to most liberals a different organizing power is needed. That power, sadly, is politics.
We are a “political” society where individual human beings put themselves in right order through alignment via correct political thoughts and actions. This is why Obama supporters are so happy, with Bush at the helm they could not ever properly orient themselves. They need to be aligned via political organization, but the control of those levers and instituions by Bush made that impossible.
Their feelings were akin to what a devout Catholic would feel if he went to Mass and the priest had been replaced with a gay woman in biker gear. Not just deep disapointment, but massive anger at the world’s lack of order, and a personal longing for return to the ideal.
It is hard for conservatives to empathize with this on the political level. Even for political junkies of the right, politics isn’t life. It’s how we organize the government. If we have a Conservative who disapoints, it’s like a corporation having a bad CEO. We are content to merely replace him with someone better.
The left, who view politics as the prime way to make the universe coherent, and thus to make themselves “right,” really are ecstatic now, and really do see Bush’s mistakes as “crimes.” He broke everything. (You hear this in their wailing cries, which are continuing.)
To conservatives this is a horrible degraded state of pure materialism that both 19th and 20th century philosophers understood was the terrible crisis of our era. Sadly we’ve slipped so far into it handly anyone even notices anymore.
LA replies:
That’s a fascinating insight.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 19, 2009 02:22 PM | Send