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Deus Absconditus and the History of the West

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posted on Aug, 7 2017 @ 02:08 PM
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Isn't it obvious that religion is borne and develops from the actions and the results of actions on our own biodynamical processing, in such a way so that each traumatized cultures attempt at "ultimate meaning" always falls short, insomuch as they necessarily do not know what only neuroscience has revealed?

The Deus Absconditus is basically the idea that God "hides" from reality, or exists apart from the world created and operated by the Deus "otiosus".

Now, I don't want to belabor the theological musing, as I think, or rather, realize, that the phantoms of the mind - or the things we ascribe real ontological significance to - necessarily moves through the semiotic structuring of processes which a culture built from the ruins of warring is able to perceive; that is, there are signs which structure feelings which "move through us" simply as a function of what naïve/ignorant/arrogant parents who aren't embodied, and aren't properly connected to their children, regularly subject their children too.

There is nothing "mystical" about trauma: its a confusing, bothersome, grating bitch-of-a-nuisance that tends to breed demons that confuse how we represent reality. Intense feeling is not "proof" of anything. Indeed, the history of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam is one long-running trauma-narrative which grows out of - quite necessarily, the realities of war in the civilizations of the near east.

Absentee Father = Absentee Father



This formula is quite obvious and sensible, but apparently, grates the nerves of people who don't want or cant accept that myth is borne from need: and need is created by the conditions we operate and move through.

Since wars are typically conducted by males, is it all surprising, given the history of our species - i.e. as evolving in a relaxed forest environment, with the genetic expectancy of "knowing" the two factors which gave birth to you i.e. the father and the mother - that certain religious attitudes exactly parallel real-life losses which act upon the lowest-levels of a humans semiosis? Indeed, growing up without a father - because the father was killed in war - is, in all likelihood, THE explanation for the formation of a doctrine of reality which places one God "outside" reality, whereas the God "within" reality, inasmuch as reality is experienced as complex, confusing, and troubling to the affective systems and the way the mind makes-meaning, since, without a father, a big gaping widing "gap" exists within the person's development, which prevents the story of ones own living from being experienced as coherent i.e. as reflecting the conception process between mother and father, and so, the early-life relational connection with father and mother.

I am not sure whether this idea has been considered before, but its seems completely obvious given all that attachment theory, developmental psychology, traumatology and relational psychoanalysis points out about the nature of development: genetic history guides expectancy processes, so that, if the expected-environment doesn't arrive, a sense of dissonance is produced.

Now, of course, I am not saying that two lesbians or two gays can't raise a child to become healthy and normal. The absentee "father" is an expression more of a breakdown in societal compassion, love, mutual support, and care for the other. The loss of fathers in war is basically tightly coupled to a militaristic, jingoistic attitude towards "others" - particularly those others who are deemed "enemies" because they are inconsistent with the traditions, views and complex traumatic histories which require interpreting and understanding reality in a particular mode.

In the end, this theory will likely emerge as a primary explanation for the existence of a doctrine that can be found in Aquinas, Nicholas of Cuna, and of course, the gnostic theologian Martin Luther.

Seeing this, or understanding that people make meaning like this, needs to be understood as a SYSTEM WIDE PROCESS, to which the human being has absolutely little leeway, barring rigorous scientific study, from effectively understanding.

Since feeling sculpts the brain, the mystic who believes he is one with the Godhead, and so, one with the real nature of reality, I would argue, is stuck in a profoundly dualistic viewpoint on reality whereby the body is dissociated from so that the mind feels "disembodied". Disembodiment, in turn, undermines social-connection, as the cues, feelings and intensity of perception (think Bran GoT) basically overwhelms the minds perceptual systems - a mind built at the lowest level by trauma i.e. fear, has fear and the other affects/feelings/needs it produces ridden, or present, throughout its speech and thinking.

Being is not mankind's enemy - it is absurd to think reality could be at odds with itself, as opposed to the far more plausible and reasonable idea that Humans, being built to make meaning according to need, and need, in turn, emerges from the nature of social-reality (i.e. the nature of the interaction therein between people) unwittingly build gods and perspectives of Gods that help them metabolize the fears and anxieties that push us out of our bodies, into the "ether", where our traumatic histories "steer" consciousness, quite often, in ways that make reality seem morbidly broken and needing human repair.

As I have said before, and I truly believe this: get OUT of YOUR HEAD, and INTO YOUR BODY: that is where happiness lies. Connecting with Others - Being with Others, indeed, is the sort of pleasure that the Hebrew word "Eden" is all about: being, as we exist in this world, is for HAVING FUN and Enjoying existence.

Of course, in invoking a Hebrew idea, I may be activating a system that associates that word in a negative way, and this is my point: our feelings are created by relationships with others; both by their affective relations to us, and the meaning they ascribe to the ideas they produce.

Idolatry is a real sin - it is basically the sin of putting your needs ahead of the needs of others. Its the sin of demonizing people in your heads, without recognizing, as reality dictates, that people act or feel the way they do as a function of the interactions and meanings they have formed.

Coherency, of course, underlies the formation of any attempt to make reality logically and semantically coherent. That it exists, that theologians, philosophers, etc, exist, points to what human minds need: a coherent narrative of the life-process. But the life process, and the narratives produced by our thinking minds, are simply EFFORTs - and efforts that necessarily exclude larger chunks of reality, and quite deliberately so: as the psychoanalyst Bromberg writes:

“Dissociation narrows ones range of perception so as to setup non-conflictual categories of self-experience” – Philip Bromberg, “it never entered my mind”, in The Dissociative Mind in Psychoanalysis, pg. 123, Routledge Press

This is basically true, and important to understand and appreciate. Mystery exists as to the "highest meaning" of reality - and so, it is largely a dissociaive preoccupation of the mind to be "stuck in its head", while not realizing how embodiment mediates empathic connection - being with others, not as a "god" or "emanation of God", but as the person with the history that you are.



 
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