The Illusion of a Pagan West

https://unherd.com/2024/09/the-illusion-of-a-pagan-west/

by bookofjoe • 2 years ago

10 5 2 years ago

codevark• 2 years ago

For $49/year, I'd rather vote for Cthulhu.

brudgers• 2 years ago

  The empire never ended.
    -- Horselover Fat

ocean_moist• 2 years ago

Really interesting modernist take.

I would say there is a mistreatment and reductionistic mischaracterization of the current age as a “void”. Further, the choice of paganism (belief) and the “void” is a false dichotomy. Post-structuralism partially developed as a response to the “void”.

I don’t think you can faithfully engage with post-structural ideas and simply write it off as nonsense—they seem to answer a lot of the questions in the article.

Particularly the part where the author suggests atheists form a sort of pseudo-religion. I think post-structuralism deals with how to operate when left only with belief and narrative (i.e. only the pseudo-pagan performance). The conclusions in the article seem very similar to post-structural first principles/common strands of thinking.

Of course, you could write off those post-structural ideas as non-sense because it attempts to make sense of nothing (literally, the “void”). Sort of a garbage in garbage out scenario.

I could probably write a whole essay in response, so to cut it short I just said “post-structural ideas”, which, in fairness, is broad, generally a very loaded term, and in need of some more elaboration.

smitty1e• 2 years ago

But we’re still, in some ways, Roman. We still valorise power and straight lines. We still have Emperors, even if we call them Presidents, and we still have Empires, even if we pretend we don’t. We still build vast amphitheatres for entertainment

As though these elements were not somehow intrinsic to pretty much every human civilization...

jemmyw• 2 years ago

I enjoyed the article but I think it makes a mistake that takes it to the wrong conclusion. The mistake is the idea that people in the past lived in religious fevour.

If we look at history though, it doesn't seem likely that they did. A minority of people were like that and those around them went along with it so that they could get on with life. In terms of the article, people already lived in "the void".

Nowadays, for whatever reason (of which we could probably speculate many causes and paths to where we are now), those with religious fevour have lost power in the West, even if they hold high office. So the majority now does not need to profess a particular faith. If we get something wrong, instead of being punished, we just shrug and say whatever.

I think there's modern examples that test this idea. In Afghanistan, under US occupation, the majority was not feverenty Islamic. They just got on with things. When the US withdrew, that religious minority took over and now we see what has happened.

The Illusion of a Pagan West

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