Monotheism

1:22 (In »Everything is religion«)

A religion that, in a similar way to Abrahamic monotheism’s many variants, largely rests on contrafactual fairy tale material may choose to either water itself down to the point of self-annihilation and proclaim that all the old dogmas and convictions that are in conflict with accepted knowledge should be seen as historically conditioned parables that are meant to be interpreted allegorically and not literally; or else walk down the path of complete denial and fight real knowledge by any means at its disposal in order to safeguard its own survival. The latter alternative becomes considerably easier to carry out if the individual not only wields religious but also political power, which of course is the case in many countries rule by Islam where religion and law go hand in hand. But even in the democratic USA, where freedom of speech is protected under the Constitution, many Christian communities successfully choose the path of denial and the destruction of knowledge, which probably, and paradoxically, is something that is being facilitated by the network dynamics that have developed on the Internet.

2:4 (In »The three dramatic revolutions of the Internet age«)

Philosophy is founded on metaphysics, and metaphysics in turn is founded on theology. However solid the logic in a world view may seem, its logic is nonetheless based on a metaphysical assumption that is a functional but blind faith and definitely not any form of knowing. Under the primitivism of hunting and gathering, the tribe’s presumed primordial father and mother constituted the theological foundation for the collective’s ancestor worship. Primordial fathers are definitely not just any people at all, since unlike all others they lack parents – accordingly they must be a form of primitive god with extraordinary power. Under feudalism, God took over the role of the metaphysical foundation. God is the common primordial father of all tribes, the primordial father of primordial fathers. In this way, the particular stories of small tribes are bound up with the universal stories concerning human beings of larger regions and the forces that wreak havoc in their lifeworld. Monotheism is born.

2:28 (In »The three dramatic revolutions of the Internet age«)

The burgeoning netocracy, the elite that is succeeding the bourgeoisie in the new paradigm being driven by digitisation and interactivity, obviously represented a special interest group when it initially marketed the anarcho-libertarian ideology as the metaphysics of the Internet age. If truth is an act, and if truth will set us free, it follows that if the Internet is allowed to be free, it will also set us free. There is here of course an ill-concealed intention to use noble motives as a pretext for the seizure of power. The netocracy is thus acting in exactly the same way that the feudal aristocracy did when it embraced monotheism, and in the same way as the capitalist bourgeoisie did when it embraced humanism. These specific metaphysics developed as the dominant stories – and they worked! – during their respective paradigms, for the very reason that they appointed the emerging social classes as the social theatre’s new protagonists.

3:7 (In »The four paradigms in the history of metaphysics«)

The Enlightenment constructs a new humanist mythology in opposition to Feudalism’s monotheism – with the individual as the bourgeoisie’s substitute for the aristocracy’s God – while the Reformation constitutes religion’s backlash against the Enlightenment’s criticism of religion. Here, the hybrid between the God of feudalism and the new individual emerges when the Protestant theologians position the suddenly established direct dialogue between God and the individual at the centre of metaphysics. The Reformation quite simply recasts God as the perfect bourgeois individual, the atomistic God, Jesus. These consequences – fatal for the Catholic Church – of the printing press putting cheap, mass-produced, vernacular editions of the Bible into the hands of the people, were probably not something that Gutenberg, a pious Catholic, could reasonably have conceived of, which once again underlines that every dominant metatechnology plays out its hand regardless of any intentions of its inventor and other serious stakeholders. The Internet is going to do the same.

3:11 (In »The four paradigms in the history of metaphysics«)

The new power structure is strengthened by a new metaphysical narrative and vice versa. In this way, history repeats itself at every information technology paradigm shift. The tribe’s story is the foundation of paganism and its primitivist power structure. The story of God’s creation and control of the world forms the foundation of monotheism and the feudal power structure. The story of the genesis and perfection of Man as a rational being is the foundation of individualism and the capitalist power structure, while the story of how networks give content and meaning to everything in existence forms the foundation for syntheism and the informationalist power structure. Paganism uses survival as a metaphysical engine, while monotheism’s metaphysical engine is eternity and that of individualism is progress. Syntheism’s metaphysical engine is the event (see The Global Empire).

3:17 (In »The four paradigms in the history of metaphysics«)

The law’s external and eternal values are pitted against the internal and arbitrary values of chaos. And the idea follows on from the principle, which says that the values of metaphysics must be external and eternal in order for the narrative to hang together, that mankind must be offered the possibility of becoming one with the law, that mankind should be able to become external and eternal in relation to the internal, mental limitation and physiological transience that she/he experiences existentially every day of the week. The idea of eternal life as the reward for the law-abiding citizen for his/her demonstrated fidelity and reliability throughout life is born, and with this essential prerequisite in place, monotheistic metaphysics, which revolves around the idea of eternity, arrives with full force. Previously every tribe had had its own mythological progenitor, but with monotheism all tribes – since they have begun to trade and communicate with each other whenever this can be more profitable than, each according to his abilities, killing each other – get one and the same progenitor, God. Hinduism in India keeps its local subordinate deities and Catholicism in Europe cultivates its saint myths, but all feudal metaphysics is based on a solid monotheistic foundation where God is the personification of the law. It turns out to be a metaphysical necessity in order for feudal society to be able to maintain its cohesiveness and endure over time.

3:18 (In »The four paradigms in the history of metaphysics«)

Capitalism is the third paradigm in the information technology writing of history. It emanates from the multifarious offshoot effects of the printing press and is characterised by the mass media, urbanisation, capital accumulation, mass education, industrialisation, globalisation and a class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the workers. The Reformation expresses the definitive deification of the printed word. With this deification, monotheism’s blind faith in the possibilities of the manifestation is replaced by individualism’s blind faith in the potential of the proclamation. Capitalism is the golden age of the printed and mass-distributed ideologies. And since new proclamations can be constructed on top of old proclamations – when yesterday’s objectives in the factory have been attained, they are replaced by today’s new and loftier objectives for tomorrow –a metaphysics evolves out of the magic of the proclamation around progress as an idea. Similar to the way in which eternity is portrayed in monotheistic metaphysics, progress is portrayed in individualist metaphysics – regardless of whether it concerns liberalism’s evolving, individual person, or socialism’s five-year plan, collective society – as the manifestation of the indivisible, as something external and eternal in relation to all of life’s obvious transience.

3:42 (In »The four paradigms in the history of metaphysics«)

If history is viewed as a Hegelian dialectics, we see a clear pattern: monotheism is the thesis, individualism is the antithesis and syntheism is the synthesis. That syntheism is the synthesis in this dialectical process is a consequence of the fact that theism and atheism can never meet; they are fundamentally and definitionally incompatible. Syntheism should absolutely not be understood as a compromise between theism and atheism – in Hegelian dialectics, a synthesis is something considerably more sophisticated than just a banal coalescence of thesis and antithesis – rather, it is a necessary continuation of theism’s and atheism’s combined dichotomy, the only possible way out of the paralysing deadlock that arises when theism and atheism are pitted against each other. As the logical synthesis of this pair of opposites (theism versus atheism), syntheism offers a possibility for the atheist to go further and uncompromisingly deepen atheism. Thus, in a historical sense syntheism is a radicalised atheist ideology. It is even atheism’s logical deepening and elaboration.

12:38 (In »Truth as an act – the road to the fourth singularity«)

Informationalism’s obsession with the event – that is, informationalism’s the event as the equivalent of monotheism’s eternity and individualism’s progress as the metaphysical engines that produce the dynamics within each of these paradigms – is driven by a greater fascination in the face of, and an obsession with, death than ever before in history. Regardless of whether we see Man’s deepest longing as a quest for survival (the driving force behind Pantheos) or as a quest for immortality (the driving force behind Atheos), we return to our obsession with death. Death as a concept thus operates constantly in the oscillation between Pantheos and Atheos. But what then does our obsession consist of? What is it that drives Badiou to turn all forms of meaning into a meaning based on a suddenly arisen truth event, which in turn reflects death?

12:47 (In »Truth as an act – the road to the fourth singularity«)

Here mathematics distinguishes itself clearly from language, and here there is thus an opening of the door to the noumenal, the door that Kant believes he has closed. However, Meillassoux ends up in a return to the Paulinist dream of merging the Jewish religion with Greek philosophy and its main current, Platonism. This is apparent in his resistance to the pagan circularity, which for many syntheists is what drives the connection back to previous monist civilisations before the growth and spread of Abrahamic, dualist monotheism. Meillassoux has a fondness for referring to Paul, while other syntheists find a compact monism within quantum physics on which to build their world view and argue that anything else would be dishonest. When other syntheists welcome God per se as Syntheos rather than God as some kind of specific property – God’s attribute is for them as secondary as the attributes of a beloved human being – he challenges us with his God as justice.

Last modified 7. August 2016 at 00:05:58