I don't know how far I can pursue this thought, which has been percolating in my mind for years. Suddenly I see it as connected to religiously inspired terrorism, but I don't know whether I can articulate the connection.
In my years of association with religious people, I have come to see them as being of two kinds: the literalists, who believe in the absolute truth of their religious creeds, and the figuratists (of which I am one, if I can call my self religious at all), who understand that their religious observance is metaphorical and stands for an ineffable spiritual truth (which is shared with other spiritual traditions).
Literalists believe, for example, that God revealed himself at Mount Sinai and gave the Torah to the Israelites, just as the event is described in the Bible. Religious people of the second type might say, "something must have happened at Mount Sinai," or that the story is a myth -- not a "mere" myth, but a powerful, formative myth. For figuratists, the historical truth, if it is ever discovered, is of little relevance. It doesn't matter whether the exodus from Egypt actually occurred. What matters is that this is the way the JeWe see wish people understands itself, and the way Christianity subsequently used the story of the Exodus, and its use in literature, drama, painting, and so on.
There is no common language between the first and second kind of religious people. The figuratists understand religion as a collective work of art, created by communities over centuries. Thus, since religions are works of art, their inner ideational structure (one can't use the word "logic" here) is the associative, creative, mysterious structure of dreams. Religions, for us, are systems of symbols, and symbols are not real the way nature, for example, is real.
The literalists live in the dream world of religion, and it is more real to them than what we figuratists call "objective reality." And this is the meaning of the violence of religious extremists, not a rational meaning, but an expressive meaning. They do not draw any distinction between what we figuratists call symbols and empirical reality. Everything is symbolic.
We figuratists are mystified by religiously inspired violence, because it doesn't serve any discernible rational purpose. It is not calculated and political, like the Russian encroachment on the Ukraine. Nor is it what a figuratist would call symbolic, in that for the literalists, everything is symbolic, which means that nothing is symbolic in contradistinction to what is not symbolic.
We figuratists see the killing of innocent people, whether they happen to be standing next to a terrorist when he is assassinated by a drone, or whether they are attending a concert in Paris, as an act of unspeakable cruelty. For the literalist, we are all actors in a cosmic drama, and our lives and deaths are part of the plot. Killing people off is hardly different from getting rid of a character in a TV series.
In my years of association with religious people, I have come to see them as being of two kinds: the literalists, who believe in the absolute truth of their religious creeds, and the figuratists (of which I am one, if I can call my self religious at all), who understand that their religious observance is metaphorical and stands for an ineffable spiritual truth (which is shared with other spiritual traditions).
Literalists believe, for example, that God revealed himself at Mount Sinai and gave the Torah to the Israelites, just as the event is described in the Bible. Religious people of the second type might say, "something must have happened at Mount Sinai," or that the story is a myth -- not a "mere" myth, but a powerful, formative myth. For figuratists, the historical truth, if it is ever discovered, is of little relevance. It doesn't matter whether the exodus from Egypt actually occurred. What matters is that this is the way the JeWe see wish people understands itself, and the way Christianity subsequently used the story of the Exodus, and its use in literature, drama, painting, and so on.
There is no common language between the first and second kind of religious people. The figuratists understand religion as a collective work of art, created by communities over centuries. Thus, since religions are works of art, their inner ideational structure (one can't use the word "logic" here) is the associative, creative, mysterious structure of dreams. Religions, for us, are systems of symbols, and symbols are not real the way nature, for example, is real.
The literalists live in the dream world of religion, and it is more real to them than what we figuratists call "objective reality." And this is the meaning of the violence of religious extremists, not a rational meaning, but an expressive meaning. They do not draw any distinction between what we figuratists call symbols and empirical reality. Everything is symbolic.
We figuratists are mystified by religiously inspired violence, because it doesn't serve any discernible rational purpose. It is not calculated and political, like the Russian encroachment on the Ukraine. Nor is it what a figuratist would call symbolic, in that for the literalists, everything is symbolic, which means that nothing is symbolic in contradistinction to what is not symbolic.
We figuratists see the killing of innocent people, whether they happen to be standing next to a terrorist when he is assassinated by a drone, or whether they are attending a concert in Paris, as an act of unspeakable cruelty. For the literalist, we are all actors in a cosmic drama, and our lives and deaths are part of the plot. Killing people off is hardly different from getting rid of a character in a TV series.
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