|
Excerpts from Chapter Eight. Transformative Vision
From the 19th century on, this refurbished religion united thinkers of the most diverse temperaments, backgrounds and superficial beliefs: minds as different as Marx and Ricardo, Carlyle and Mill, Comte and Spenser, subscribed to its doctrines... ... from the beginning of the 19th century on, the working classes, finding themselves helpless to resist these new forces, countered the capitalist and militarist expressions of this myth with myths of their own -- those of socialism, anarchism, or communism - under which the machine would be exploited, not for a ruling elite, but for the benefit of the proletarian masses.... Against this machine-conditioned utopia only
a handful of heretics,
In terms of the larger process of human and global transformation, the "handful of heretics" who dared to hold out, whether they be called artists or poets, constitute the seed-nucleus of a new religion, one that will in time supersede the "religion" of technological progress. The basic principles of the new religion are defined in part by the repressed components of the present one; if technology denies the reality of a subjective world of emotions, thoughts, and transcendent intuitions, then it is precisely this "subjective" realm of psyche that will constitute the core reality of the new religion or world view... If Blake was not the Moses of the religion that is just now dawning, he was certainly one of its most singular and powerful prophets - an exemplary heretic dissenting not only critically but creatively from the prevailing technological order. Blake's achievement and life are so extraordinary that it is difficult, even impossible, for a mind trained in the orthodoxies of the present cultural viewpoint to assess them with justice. To speak of him only as an artist or a poet is to miss almost entirely the significance of Blake's effort. Chapter 8. Transformative Vision. page 1..2..3..4..5 < < b a c k < < |: Table of Contents :| > > Chapter Continues > > Learn more about this book > >
|
...
The process of mechanization was furthered by an ideology that gave
absolute precedence and cosmic authority to the machine itself.
When an ideology conveys such universal meanings and commands such
obedience, it has become, in fact, a religion, and its imperatives
have the dynamic force of myth...
