[lit-ideas] Re: The Religious Right Isn't What It Used to Be

  • From: "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 14:10:31 +0900

On 10/29/07, Andreas Ramos <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
>
> The hypercapitalism and excessive technology of China and other Asian
> countries may be what sets off the next wave of spirituality. But it
> probably won't be Christian.


Possibly.

Whereas the rest of the world has become more rationalist, since the 80s the
> US has suffered a resurrgence of irrationalism in religion, tarot,
> astrology, various cults, and so on. The rightwing personality cults are
> also irrationalist.
>

That, however, is pure superstition of the educated class variety. The new
literati who are doing very well out of globalization don't like to talk
about it and may have been taught that it's all superstition and doomed
anyway--just like the products of higher education in the U.S.A. But the
fact of the matter is that the same sorts of "superstitious" belief and
behavior are enjoying a huge resurgence throughout Asia. China, for example,
is seeing a boom in temple construction, cult formation and pilgrimage
tours, not unlike the "edifice complex" that led to the building of so many
new churches in the U.S.A. after WWII.
If you want to understand why, you could do worse than read German
sociologist Ulrich Beck's Risk Society and compare the world he describes to
that of traditional Chinese religion (the topic on one aspect of which I
wrote my Ph.D. dissertation).  Beck is concerned with a world in which we
find ourselves more and more surrounded by invisible threats (plague,
radiation, chemical contamination, global warming, etc.). To identify and
ward them off we depend on experts, whose often conflicting opinions leave
those without expertise at a loss about what to do. So we turn to family and
friends of friends in search of people who seem to know what's going on and
possibly what to do about it. Sounds to me a lot like the world of the
Daoist healer whose rituals I studied for my thesis--also  the world of
Japanese advertising in which I make my living.

Cheers,

John



John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
http://www.wordworks.jp/

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