Santa Muerte and 'The Other'
- Papus79
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Santa Muerte and 'The Other'
https://wp.nyu.edu/therevealer/2016/10/ ... Xy1n-RpY90
There are a few things that really interest me about this topic, the first would be watching the viral or seeming memetic nature of this spread but also the sort of autonomy and synchronicities one would expect if something were either coming into being of its own right or landing its power in what we commonly think of as the material/physical world.
As plenty of posters who've seen my take on consciousness would probably know I'm not a reductive materialist, I side more with something like Donald Hoffman's conscious realism albeit I do so because I think it's the best explanation so far that maps on to the visible behavior of these sorts of things (ie. functionalism with multiple realizability where you can have aggregate identities take autonomous shape - although admittedly I don't necessarily know that 'beings made of people' would be the limit).
The other thing I think about - these kinds of dynamics are nature both abhorring either vacuum and social disequilibrium (ie. extreme poverty and increasing inequality as we've been taking steps toward neofeudalism, northern Mexico being destroyed by US drug policy, etc.) as well as other off-board loops in our ecosystem that we don't understand both exploiting disequilibrium and in some sense completing a loop in the ecosystem.
I think this should be a warning to people who adamantly don't believe in the power of these sorts of thing, and I don't even think you need to believe in what you might disparage as 'supernatural claims' to see that there's something to these boomerang effects and the ways they can ripple through society. Part of where we've culturally failed in the west is fantasizing that somehow we were creatures of such great reason and education that barbarism couldn't sweep us up (ie. embracing full social and economic liberalism, we're a new people whose world's on TV, completely free from history therefore nothing should go wrong if the culture becomes hyper-individualistic), and we saw social media and the way culture started going after the 2008 housing bubble burst rapidly put the lie to that. So really if we want to keep civilization in the order that we want it we need to be able to surf, surf because the powers below us are like the ocean and there's no way in hell that we can simply overpower them and do as we choose, and one can put either real or memetic gods and goddesses of this sort in that category of 'I don't know if it's literally real or just figuratively real but from it's effects that's almost an irrelevant distinction' bucket and move forward that if something would clobber you it's probably to that agencies benefit that you belittle the threat it imposes.
I'm still trying to get a better handle on how one would consider Santa Muerte's identity to fit in with historical deities. In a lot of ways, especially helping the poor and the dispossessed, she reminds me of something like an extension of Hecate. I think in this sense if we were to try and absorb her influence we have to interrogate why she's here, what her mission statement might be if we had to take it in aggregate, and achieve peacefully what she's fine achieving by the sword or gun.
I don't think it's appropriate to see such agencies as 'evil', especially when they're as multifaceted as she is, rather I think it's better to look at this as something like conscious weather patterns that are based on various types of accrual in areas where we've culturally dropped the ball, a bit like if you had an intelligence and coordinated synchronicity epidemic tied to a boomerang effect of global warming however in this case it's a boomerang effect of extreme inequality and a culture where it's been made profoundly lucrative, by the corruption of a country just to the north who uses it a bit like a toilet bowl (more than happy to destroy their economy and well being with the war on drugs, more than happy to keep buying drugs, and then more than happy to keep the war on drugs on on account of just how many of our officials are bought and paid for by the cartels).
Until we take this sort of thing seriously I think we're quite likely to be a civilization that keeps getting 'surprised' until it all collapses beneath us and if our culture falls further out of equilibrium it's quite likely to get spookier and these conscious weather patterns are likely to intensify along the way.
- Count Lucanor
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Re: Santa Muerte and 'The Other'
Marx's profound insight on the issue has stayed up to date:
That is not to say that societies that have arrived to a good state of well-being will see the disappearance of religion. It mutates to a generic form of spirituality and lives alongside its most secular manifestations.Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
- Papus79
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Re: Santa Muerte and 'The Other'
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Re: Santa Muerte and 'The Other'
That is certainly true. It's the traditions and rituals which are the residuals of the demise of religion. These have a societal function, meaning also a psychological one in preserving religion itself as a relic under the simulacrum of liturgy and ceremony which survives the passing of religious belief. They no-longer need to function as a manifestation of belief but as one of coherence conferring identity and commonality. I wonder how many still go to synagogues, mosques and churches who no-longer believe in most of the old time theological certainties yet remain comforted by its external observance. Rituals in that sense become surrogates for the belief function.Count Lucanor wrote: ↑April 26th, 2020, 8:21 pm That is not to say that societies that have arrived to a good state of well-being will see the disappearance of religion. It mutates to a generic form of spirituality and lives alongside its most secular manifestations.
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Re: Santa Muerte and 'The Other'
It seems to me that blithely 'reading' the minds of most of the people in the world - iow positing what they really believe and what they are really doing when they engage in religions - is not the best way to put forward your criticisms of religions. Of course it is possble to believe one has psychic abilities while not believing in God, but it likely needs a bit of justification.Jklint wrote: ↑April 27th, 2020, 12:49 amThat is certainly true. It's the traditions and rituals which are the residuals of the demise of religion. These have a societal function, meaning also a psychological one in preserving religion itself as a relic under the simulacrum of liturgy and ceremony which survives the passing of religious belief. They no-longer need to function as a manifestation of belief but as one of coherence conferring identity and commonality. I wonder how many still go to synagogues, mosques and churches who no-longer believe in most of the old time theological certainties yet remain comforted by its external observance. Rituals in that sense become surrogates for the belief function.Count Lucanor wrote: ↑April 26th, 2020, 8:21 pm That is not to say that societies that have arrived to a good state of well-being will see the disappearance of religion. It mutates to a generic form of spirituality and lives alongside its most secular manifestations.
- Terrapin Station
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Re: Santa Muerte and 'The Other'
If there's really some consistency in a "Santa Muerte" figure historically--which I sure as hell can't tell from that article--I agree that it would be interesting to examine and trace the cultural passage of the idea insofar as that would be possible. But that's an article your friend didn't write. One big problem, by the way, is that he shows no indication at all of skepticism or critical thought regarding whether we're really talking about the "same idea" in different geographical locations at different times.
- Terrapin Station
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Re: Santa Muerte and 'The Other'
- Papus79
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Re: Santa Muerte and 'The Other'
Yeah I should clarify, the guy I'm friends with on Facebook is not the author, I probably should have said 'shared' instead of 'posted' and I get where that would be misleading.Terrapin Station wrote: ↑April 27th, 2020, 9:06 am Your friend has that rambling, endlessly "name-dropping" (or rather reference/allusion-dropping), run-on-sentence-loaded-with-prepositional-phrases style that was really popular among Village Voice authors, for example. I'm not a fan of that style of writing, if that wasn't clear already.
- Papus79
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Re: Santa Muerte and 'The Other'
I'm not saying I know that last part about the author, it's just that some of the illustrations he was trying to draw, such as with his fellow holding cell inmate getting a rosary in the mail with some verbiage from a mystical experience or NDE he had - sounds like something crazy and to be immediately ignored if someone is certain that such things don't happen and that these are simple social embarrassments on the part of the person sharing them (ie. disparaging their own intelligence and critical thinking capacities in the process) whereas if a person has already broken that dam and such things don't seem unusual anymore it's a bit like their way of noting symptoms that it's a social movement with a complex feedback loop rather than just a social movement (it's communication that's not intended to bridge gaps and which remains agnostic, even apathetic, as to whether the reader's metaphysical views prohibit said suggestions or ideas).
- Terrapin Station
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Re: Santa Muerte and 'The Other'
I'm not saying anything about the content of beliefs with "skepticism" and "critical thinking." I'm saying something about epistemic methodology--and basically whether there is any epistemic methodology.Papus79 wrote: ↑April 27th, 2020, 9:29 am One other thing, I don't mean this in a snarky manner but it may come off that way, I'm curious on what terms and conditions the readers to the reductive materialist side of analysis would think of skepticism or critical thinking being present if and when the author's conclusions veer off from their own metaphysics. Clearly there are times when someone links two dots a football field away from each other and through Dunning Kruger think they've found something great (hopefully anyone whose not afflicted with paranoid schizophrenia can indeed spot that), at the same time I get the sense that someone thoughtful whose both a skeptic and materialist on their way to no longer being a materialist would be different to read than someone who was previously, say, a skeptic and materialist but perhaps as of the last decade or two was no longer a materialist and at most grappling with maybe some conservatism as to when or where they're seeing something over and above what would be considered normal - ie. their style of criticism or the leaps they'd make might seem strange and perhaps non-critical when really they're just not unpacking how they got there or what specifically about what they're seeing suggests that it fits a schema that they've seen on repeat in other places.
I'm not saying I know that last part about the author, it's just that some of the illustrations he was trying to draw, such as with his fellow holding cell inmate getting a rosary in the mail with some verbiage from a mystical experience or NDE he had - sounds like something crazy and to be immediately ignored if someone is certain that such things don't happen and that these are simple social embarrassments on the part of the person sharing them (ie. disparaging their own intelligence and critical thinking capacities in the process) whereas if a person has already broken that dam and such things don't seem unusual anymore it's a bit like their way of noting symptoms that it's a social movement with a complex feedback loop rather than just a social movement (it's communication that's not intended to bridge gaps and which remains agnostic, even apathetic, as to whether the reader's metaphysical views prohibit said suggestions or ideas).
I also wasn't thinking about anything like spiritual conclusions in the first place. I was referring to, for example, the fact that the author concludes that the 14th century "La Parca" is the same idea as the 20th century "Santa Muerte," with zero apparent question as to whether they really amount to the same idea in the relevant persons' minds. Articles like this need to show that they considered doubts that some particular conclusion is the case--it doesn't matter exactly what the conclusion is. What matters is how the conclusion was arrived at.
Charles Hartshorne, Brand Blanshard, William James and Alvin Plantinga are examples of great critical thinkers who are very religious and who are at least partially known for their religious/spiritual views. I don't agree with their religious beliefs, but that makes them no less fine as critical thinkers who show plenty of skepticism and fine epistemic methodology in their work.
- Papus79
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Re: Santa Muerte and 'The Other'
TY, that is helpful. I'd agree that said link to the past gets skipped over rather quickly and I'm not exactly sure why that is except that when I did a Google search for those two terms it sounds like it's rather commonly accepted. Might not have been good form on his part to do that but it seems like the most likely reason.Terrapin Station wrote: ↑April 27th, 2020, 10:18 am I'm not saying anything about the content of beliefs with "skepticism" and "critical thinking." I'm saying something about epistemic methodology--and basically whether there is any epistemic methodology.
I also wasn't thinking about anything like spiritual conclusions in the first place. I was referring to, for example, the fact that the author concludes that the 14th century "La Parca" is the same idea as the 20th century "Santa Muerte," with zero apparent question as to whether they really amount to the same idea in the relevant persons' minds. Articles like this need to show that they considered doubts that some particular conclusion is the case--it doesn't matter exactly what the conclusion is. What matters is how the conclusion was arrived at.
Charles Hartshorne, Brand Blanshard, William James and Alvin Plantinga are examples of great critical thinkers who are very religious and who are at least partially known for their religious/spiritual views. I don't agree with their religious beliefs, but that makes them no less fine as critical thinkers who show plenty of skepticism and fine epistemic methodology in their work.
- Count Lucanor
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Re: Santa Muerte and 'The Other'
It's a common theme in most, if not all the social sciences and related disciplines, that individual thinking and action is socially conditioned, therefore when one looks at shared meanings in intersubjective interactions, one finds the key to personal meanings, even if they are just tendencies. It doesn't take psychic abilities or rocket science to figure that out.Karpel Tunnel wrote: ↑April 27th, 2020, 1:12 amIt seems to me that blithely 'reading' the minds of most of the people in the world - iow positing what they really believe and what they are really doing when they engage in religions - is not the best way to put forward your criticisms of religions. Of course it is possble to believe one has psychic abilities while not believing in God, but it likely needs a bit of justification.Jklint wrote: ↑April 27th, 2020, 12:49 am
That is certainly true. It's the traditions and rituals which are the residuals of the demise of religion. These have a societal function, meaning also a psychological one in preserving religion itself as a relic under the simulacrum of liturgy and ceremony which survives the passing of religious belief. They no-longer need to function as a manifestation of belief but as one of coherence conferring identity and commonality. I wonder how many still go to synagogues, mosques and churches who no-longer believe in most of the old time theological certainties yet remain comforted by its external observance. Rituals in that sense become surrogates for the belief function.
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Re: Santa Muerte and 'The Other'
I agree with you on this. My reason for differing on the assessment is noted in the first line of the quoted information.
The Marx quote starts out: "Man makes religion, religion does not make man." Everything that I have learned says that this is true. The problem seems to arrive when people carry it one step further and believe that man makes religion and religion makes "God". This is not true.
Religion interprets "God". It may seem to be a small difference, but it is a significant difference. We don't actually create "God/s", we interpret something that we are sure exists -- this is why we make religion. imo
Gee
- Papus79
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Re: Santa Muerte and 'The Other'
My own take/riff on this concept - although some ancient thinkers and philosophers were pantheists or panentheists it doesn't follow that bits of evidence (ranging between high-volume anecdote, statistical suggestions, and strange low-N medical events) which would lead one, or lead various researchers, to similar conclusions are inflicted on us by having had our foreground polluted ahead of time by historical tropes. It's part of why the word supernatural tends to bother me, it shoehorns what should be a search to understand what appear to be non-mythic black swans into a mythic bucket.
- Count Lucanor
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Re: Santa Muerte and 'The Other'
Even at the most basic level of social practice, beliefs in gods is related to some form of organization, which we can generally call "religion". Man makes religions when man makes gods. This is most strikingly obvious in religions with a "personal god".Gee wrote: ↑April 27th, 2020, 6:10 pmI agree with you on this. My reason for differing on the assessment is noted in the first line of the quoted information.
The Marx quote starts out: "Man makes religion, religion does not make man." Everything that I have learned says that this is true. The problem seems to arrive when people carry it one step further and believe that man makes religion and religion makes "God". This is not true.
Religion interprets "God". It may seem to be a small difference, but it is a significant difference. We don't actually create "God/s", we interpret something that we are sure exists -- this is why we make religion. imo
Gee
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
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