Lodestars of Human Meaning 2: Meta-Aspect
The poles of human meaning rest on security and happiness, but it’s so simple it’s complicated.
Overview: A couple of summers ago, while taking care of my neighbor’s lawn, a pair of clean-cut business-casual dressed bible-toting teenaged Christian men came up the street going door to door. As I watched them, I admired their willingness to give their time for a cause (even if sadly misdirected), but unfortunately, they were likely ignorant of what religion is really about, and even more unfortunately, it is extremely likely that the elders who sent them also cannot see the forest for the trees. I watched them knock on my door, but of course, no one was home.
I honestly did not realize when planning this post that it would be published on Easter Sunday. But I am not going to lose any sleep (or eggs) over it.
Sections:
· Happiness is a Salve
· Aspects of Society
o Music
o Emotions
· Meta-Aspect of Humanity
o Blame Shifting
· Neurotic Religion
o Neurotic Paradox
· Temple Prostitution
o Flirty Fishing & Phoenix Goddess Temple
· Springing a Grand Theory
“Alienated from the present. There are great advantages in for once removing ourselves distinctly from our time and letting ourselves be driven from its shore back into the ocean of former worldviews. Looking at the coast from that perspective, we survey for the first time its entire shape, and when we near it again, we have the advantage of understanding it better on the whole than do those who have never left it.” – Friedrich Nietzsche.
The triumvirs between which nearly all human meanings must exist are: Fundamental Realities (‘inherited realities’), Supra-Legitimacy and Meta-Aspect. Supra-Legitimacy was discussed in the immediately preceding Post earlier this month; today, I will introduce the Meta-Aspect of humanity.
Happiness is a Salve
“The word ‘smile’ doesn’t even exist in Latin or Ancient Greek. Smiling was an invention of the Middle Ages, and broad, toothy-mouthed smiles (with crinkling at the eyes, named the Duchenne smile by [Paul] Ekman) became popular only in the eighteenth century as dentistry became more accessible and affordable.” – Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017).
Happiness is the most basic drive of humanity, both individually and culturally, from the lack of negative stimuli – lack of negative stimuli is a form of happiness – to the more abstract ideals of sapients. If you have to think too hard about that, you are not human.
Everyone has the same singular problem, regardless of how it is phrased and whether they realize it or not: None of us asked to be here. And short of death, we are not allowed to leave. Getting into a car and driving or getting on a spaceship and going out there won’t change those facts. Our problem is existence. Happiness is a salve.
Some people think that death is the singular thing that all humans have in common (and in fact, all living things); they confuse the symptom with the cause: You cannot die unless you have been alive, here in this universe. Death may be the great equalizer (omnia mors aequat), but to this I add, all are equal in life as well because none of us asked to be born and are not allowed to choose to not exist: Again, if you died, you existed, therefore I mean to choose non-existence, a paradox and causal violation (causality being our prison).
If we were each allowed to choose to have never existed (a paradox to be sure), I firmly believe that the world population would be halved instantly. Some might call that judgment day.
Aspects of Society
“Researchers, as yet, have very little ability to identify internal structures of large distributed systems like human societies, which is an important scientific problem. Genuine structural collapse seems, in many cases, the only plausible explanation supporting the idea that such structures exist. However, until they can be concretely identified, scientific inquiry appears limited to the construction of scientific narratives, using systems thinking for careful storytelling about systemic organization and change.” – Wikipedia article, “Societal Collapse,” February 24, 2015 (emphasis added)
Culture is like a multi-faceted diamond that appears differently each time you turn it slightly in the light; it is impossible to see all of the aspects of a diamond at any one time. Alternatively, consider the parable of “The Blind Men and the Elephant.” Originating on the Indian subcontinent, the parable has been adapted and used across most of the world’s religions to express pan-religious truth.
A song is a feeling, experience, emotion, moment compressed into a few minutes for eternity. Our lives have songs; human life feels like eternity pressed into a trice. Like the songs of whales, civilizations have one or more songs repeating at various cycles. Aspects are part of the songs of a civilization.
Cultural aspects are momentary glimpses of a culture (eigenstates?) which only appear at particular times, or under the correct circumstances. Aspects might represent a mood of the people, or emotion, or underlying feeling, or unspoken values, unstated beliefs, a historical movement or trend, or something not quite expected from the outward appearance of the culture, but that become apparent to the objective observer periodically. Whether such are considered rational or irrational, they exist and are real:
“Whites have to realize that African American men have a fear, and boys have a fear of being confronted by the police because of some of these incidents. Some people may consider it rational. Some people may consider it irrational. But it’s a reality. It exists.” – Rudy Giuliani, on “Face the Nation,” July 10, 2016.1
The primary quality of cultural aspects are that they are momentary, transitory; the mood changes, values recede from the forefront, times change. The following is possibly a good, practical example of the aging of cultural aspects expressed as political opinion polls:
“Back in our Dec. 2016 [NBC/WSJ] poll, respondents were asked which word best described how they felt about the results of the [Presidential] election, and the top answers (allowing for multiple responses) were ‘hopeful’ (32 percent), ‘disgusted’ (25 percent), ‘scared’ (23 percent), ‘excited’ (12 percent) and ‘relieved’ (11 percent).... But when we asked the same question about how Americans feel about Trump’s first year as president in our latest poll out this morning, here were the top responses: ‘disgusted’ (38 percent), ‘scared’ (24 percent), ‘hopeful’ (23 percent), ‘proud’ (12 percent) and ‘angry’ (11 percent).” – Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Carrie Dann, “Trump at one year: From hopeful to disgusted,” NBC News, January 19, 2018.
Music
“Music is the soundtrack of our lives.” – Dick Clark
Modern popular music can be explained by cultural aspects – performers or groups that have a few charting hits, such as contemporaries Gary Wright or Lobo and the groups Orleans, Bread, or Bad Fingers, are successful insofar as their music accentuates (confirms, exposes or modifies) an aspect of the time. “In the Year 2025” of which the most popular video on YouTube is constructed from scenes from Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent surrealist film, “Metropolis,” was the No. 1 single on the Billboards during the 1969 Apollo moon landing:
“The overriding theme, of a world doomed by its passive acquiescence to and overdependence on its own overdone technologies, struck a resonant chord in millions of people around the world in the late 1960s. The song was #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart during the Apollo 11 moon landing.” – from Wikipedia article, “In the Year 2525,” captured January 14, 2020.
Performers who have long successful charting singles careers are those whose music most successfully match or affect cultural aspects of their time; this is nothing new, it is just a macrosocial way of stating what has been stated in documentaries, commentaries, and articles about late 1960s music and performers of the Vietnam Era, the time when modern popular music was emergent with certain sociopolitical movements, such as Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, The Who, the fading of the Beach Boys, and the musical progressions through which The Beatles passed. The difference is that by looking at cultural aspects, the effect is not confined to a certain tumultuous decade, but become cultural transmission and applies to all popular music including Taylor Swift, the split between rock n’ roll and country music (and the evolutions within each, and crossovers), to modern European metal groups (Gothic, Symphonic, or Power Metal), for example, the Scandinavian metal groups that still heavily rely on mythological imagery.
As such, it is not surprising that we like the music that we grew up listening to – my favorite music, that I still listen to, is the music that was on the radio in my youth, that my friends and family listened to, and added to it, is the music I heard and liked while I was in the service and college. At some point, most adults stop listening to new popular music (which sounds alien) and the music they like becomes the ‘music of their lives.’ We build interpretations around our favorite songs, sometimes based on incorrect hearing of lyrics (guilty as charged!).2
I am fairly convinced that we are ‘programmed’ on a certain level by the popular music of our youth, and with the advent of recording and playback devices, broadcasting (and the energy transmission infrastructure to support their regular use), the effect gained orders of magnitude, previously, music was local and live, a novelty heard in churches, taverns, parades and fairs, or sung while working or putting a baby to sleep.3 Rural people might have had less regular exposure to music than those in the city, or less complexity, and this made those in the city ‘more cultured’ as part of the effect of “the stimulus of urban agglomeration” (Edward Soja’s ‘synekism’ from Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions reviewed by Carl Grodach).4
Emotions
“But, here’s the thing: Campaigns – especially those for president – are rarely won and lost on ‘carefully thought-out policies.’ They are almost always won on emotions – positive ones or negative ones.” – Chris Cillizzia, CNN Politics, September 6, 2017.
It is important to distinguish emotions from cultural aspects, I do not believe they are lapping. An aspect is a quality of something that becomes apparent when exposed by circumstances that was not obvious before. Many abstract nouns and some verb forms that might be used for cultural aspects do not describe emotions, though they may be in some sense related, e.g., ‘pride’ – do you have it or do you feel it? Thus, cultural aspects are an overlapping subset of abstract nouns and verb forms with emotions.
Further, cultures have always evinced aspects, but the current concept of emotion is new:
“The concept of ‘Emotion’ itself is an invention of the seventeenth century. Before that, scholars wrote about passions, sentiments, and other concepts that had somewhat different meanings.” – Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017).
Problematic also are that emotions are generally regarded as phenomena of the individual human moment, see Merriam-Webster at emotion, at c: the affective aspect of consciousness: feeling, and it is difficult to expand the term to authentically describe the geist of larger and larger groups – for example, a crowd can be said to be angry figuratively but can a civilization? – and maintained over extended periods of time – minutes, hours vs. years, perhaps centuries? To the extent that something like that can be comprehensible, is the extent to which aspects may describe emotions.5
If, however, aspects are more related to ‘feeling’ – another definitional quagmire related directly to emotion, see Merriam-Webster online dictionary at feeling – then cultural aspects may relate more to zeitgeist, which Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines as: “the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era.” The ‘feeling’ of the time must be part of zeitgeist, or, putting it in the reverse, to get the zeitgeist of a historical time, one must share or sense some of the feeling or feel.
Meta-Aspect
“At the neurological level, negative emotions far outnumber the positive emotions that humans can use during interaction (indeed, four of at least the five primary emotions that have been elaborated by hominin neurology are negative [anger, fear, sadness, disgust] whereas one is positive [happiness]).” – Jonathan H. Turner and Seth Abrutyn, “Returning the ‘Social’ to Evolutionary Sociology: Reconsidering Spencer, Durkheim, and Marx’s Models of ‘Natural’ Selection,” Sociological Perspectives, 2017, Vol. 60(3) 529–556 (p. 544).
I defined happiness as the extent to which we consent to be here (our current existence) at any given moment. This unassailable definition is based on the eternal and universal bedrock of the human condition: None consented to being born. Happiness is always subjective (c.f., the similar concept of “utility” in economics),6 I have never seen anyone argue for objective happiness. Most people describe happiness as an emotion, but since it is momentary, it might also be called a qualia.
Happiness is the meta-aspect of all human civilizations and is linked strongly with supra-legitimacy, security, that is, a lack of external negative stimuli, even if that means taking food from others to avoid hunger – a negative stimulus. Thus, it is that security becomes offensive rather than merely a guard of happiness, and thus the main component of supra-legitimacy described in the preceding Post. “Meta” as a prefix here is used in the usual sense of ‘beyond,’ ‘behind,’ ‘transcendent’ (see Merriam-Webster online dictionary at meta- prefix at 2 and 3) thus ‘happiness’ is the transcendent aspect of humanity – both being non-apparent, momentary and transitory – the service of which is the main function of organized religion and spiritual beliefs.
Happiness (and its little cousin, love) is the singular obsession of humans individually and because we have convinced ourselves of its existence (mostly without tangible proof), we find it very difficult to explain exactly what it is (or what love is) or why; as G.K. Chesterton observed, “It is very hard for a man to defend anything of which he is entirely convinced.” (Orthodoxy, Ch. 6 (1908)). G.K. Chesterton was, unsurprisingly, engaged in Christian apologetics, and if the masses are convinced of the existence of happiness (and love), then the function of religion is the mystical happiness of the adherents: the connection of petty human need to the greater cosmic order, to raise icons, ideas, images, between us and the existential void (e.g., birth, marriage, ethical code, holidays and meanings, religious services, afterlife, ritual burial).7
One might imagine another alien species having a different meta-aspect, but nearly every alternative humans can formulate – work (unless the race is a bunch of bees without free will), cosmic crusade, moral civilization, or whatever other terms are used – generally reduce to the human concept of happiness; that is, if those things were considered meta-aspects of an alien civilization, they would essentially translate to a form of happiness. Perhaps this is because happiness is so vague and poorly defined among humans (the weak case) or because we are simply ‘hard wired’ to seek happiness above all else (the strong case).
Most religious text is either history or instructions (incl. ethics) on and discussion of happiness, or both which included a connection to a supernatural meaning, and literature follows generally in the same pattern. The struggle between religions and denominations, in a solely religious context, exists between happiness and avoiding the existential void, but of course, various factors of civilization are usually in play.
Contrarian writer Theodore Darlymple often portrays psychiatry and psychology as simply the new religion.8 It is thus unsurprising that – at the very bottom – mental health professions are continued medicalized arguments about individual human happiness sans divine or cosmic pretense:
“If all of Dalrymple’s copious writings have a central theme, it is the destructive power of bad ideas. And for Dalrymple, the most destructive bad idea of all, common to utopian political thinking and some schools of psychiatry, is that we can reshape human nature. To reshape human nature means that we can transcend the limitations of our personalities, avoid both the need to take responsibility for our actions and the necessity to make judgments, and above all, eliminate unhappiness.
As Dalrymple points out, the word ‘unhappy’ has been all but banished from the language. Instead, we say that we are ‘depressed’: If someone admits to unhappiness, it might be that his own ill-conduct, foolish or immoral, has contributed to it, but if he is depressed [he] is the victim of an illness, of something which, metaphysically speaking, has fallen from the sky. ...
Elevating ordinary forms of discontent such as winter blues (‘seasonal affective disorder’) and ingrained personality traits like shyness (‘social anxiety disorder’ or ‘avoidant personality disorder’) into psychological disturbances not only allows us to assume that we can have a life free of unhappiness, it also leads to a tendency to medicalize everything.” – John Broening, “Book Review: ‘Admirable Evasions: How Psychology Undermines Morality,’ by Theodore Dalrymple,” The Denver Post, June 4, 2015.9
Thus, with the diminishing influence of religion compared to previous centuries, the human obsession with happiness has simply shifted to new forms,10 as well as being the continuous subject and commentary underlying nearly all literature, politics, music, movies, television shows, and generally, all of the fictional stories our society tells. In whatever form human society exists, wherever we are in the universe, in whatever condition, as long as we can be called “human,” the meta-aspect will remain the grounding for all human meaning and interpretation.
Blame Shifting
“Did I request thee, Maker, from my Clay, To mould me Man, did I sollicite thee, From darkness to promote me, or here place?” – John Milton, “Paradise Lost” (1667), Book 10, 743-745.
Every religion has a creation story describing how some supreme being or force or spirit or whatever is the case, put us here. Maybe it also vaguely describes how the rest of the universe was created, but the point of all of them is that we were put here. That is all we are really interested in hearing anyway.
All creation stories (and afterlife concepts) describe a situation in which our consent is irrelevant, which parallels the fact that we are here, were born into this world, into existence, without our consent. This creates a blame-shifting mechanism that absolves our parents of our birth and absolves us when we become parents (e.g., the “Genesis Mandate”), because that is just the way life works, the way it was created for some higher purpose that we don’t know, and that religion discourages us from guessing at by telling us that the universe (or God) works in mysterious ways. The recent final narration of the 2018 movie Constantine is telling:
“I guess there’s a plan for all of us. I had to die – twice – just to figure that out. Like the book says, He works His work in mysterious ways. Some people like it. Some people don’t.”
This blame-shifting mechanism by creation stories is one of the major services religion provides as the agency of the human meta-aspect (‘happiness’).
Since 1982, in a few states, a child who has an inherited genetic defect or disability that was known in his parents before birth can sue his parents for being born. The key for the ‘Wrongful Life’ case is the foreseeable, preventable ‘harm’ of being born, and actual harm from being born. The 2018 Lebanese documentary-like fictional film Capernaum tells the story leading to why a 12-year-old boy sued his parents for being born into poverty.
On February 7, 2019, the BBC ran a story about an Indian-born man Raphael Samuel (not to be confused with the British Marxist historian) who is suing his parents for being born:
“In a statement, his mother Kavita Karnad Samuel explained her response to ‘the recent upheaval my son has created.’ ‘I must admire my son’s temerity to want to take his parents to court knowing both of us are lawyers. And if Raphael could come up with a rational explanation as to how we could have sought his consent to be born, I will accept my fault,’ she said.” – Geeta Pandey, “Indian man to sue parents for giving birth to him,” BBC.com, February 7, 2019.
Anti-natalism is, of course, a secular philosophy and as is well-documented, and long-noted, secularism has replaced religion in much of the world, it is a pillar of modernity. Although most people still vaguely believe in some sort of creation – usually a mishmash of religious notions with modern science – the retreat of religion (along with the 1970s spread of contraception and possible global apocalypse) has pushed aside the traditional blame-shifting mechanism, bringing us starkly to the edge of the existential void.
Neurotic Religion
“I’m swimming in a circle, I feel I’m going down.” – Peter Frampton, “Show Me the Way.” (1975).
Psychology Today explains neurotic/neuroticism in this way:
“Neuroticism has been defined somewhat differently by different psychologists, but at its core, it reflects a general tendency toward negative emotions. The term derives from the historic concept of neurosis, which referred to a form of mental illness involving chronic distress.”11
Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines “neurosis” as:
“a mental and emotional disorder that affects only part of the personality, is accompanied by a less distorted perception of reality than in a psychosis, does not result in disturbance of the use of language, and is accompanied by various physical, physiological, and mental disturbances (such as visceral symptoms, anxieties, or phobias)”
Is religion possible without being “neurotic”? Is neurotic religion a modern thing? The late Romans were a bit neurotic about their religion, e.g., the cults, but was it something spread by contact with Abrahamic religions, were the ancient Greeks and Persians neurotic? Now, there are people who will immediately jump in to say that I am assuming without foundation that religion is neurotic – a sort of circular argument – but just go with it for now and follow the line of thought; the idea has been around for a long time, to wit:
“In Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices (1907), his earliest writing about religion, Freud suggests that religion and neurosis are similar products of the human mind: neurosis, with its compulsive behavior, is ‘an individual religiosity,’ and religion, with its repetitive rituals, is a ‘universal obsessional neurosis.’” – from Wikipedia article, “Sigmund Freud’s views on religion,” citing to Peter Gay, Ed., The Freud Reader (1995).
Individual and cultural obsessive focus (to the point of distress) on negative emotions is not surprising in light of Professors Jonathan H. Turner’s and Seth Abrutyn’s quote in Meta-Aspect discussion above that “four of at least the five primary emotions that have been elaborated by hominin neurology are negative,” with happiness being the only positive.
While Freud, et al. theories of religion have been subjected to fierce criticisms and may seem to contradict each other, they have not gone away because they are not mutually exclusive but are rather, each an aspect seen by each theorist in their own times:
“Freud famously showed how religion was merely the result of deep-rooted neuroses and before him Karl Marx demonstrated how it was the consequence of socioeconomic injustice. In the 20th century, BF Skinner contended that it was essentially a kind of cosmic behaviourism, primitive societies justifying and enforcing their ideas of good and bad through concepts of ultimate reward and sanction. Today it is popular to argue that religion is an evolutionary phenomenon, the result of (some combination of) our developing minds, recognising agency, fearing death, and needing social cohesion.
This is not an altogether happy history – posterity has been none too kind to Marx’s, Freud’s and Skinner’s theories – but there has, at least, been some sign of progress. The direction of travel has clearly been towards seeing religiosity as something intrinsic to human nature rather than something forced up-on it by adverse social, political, familial, or personal circumstances. Such deep roots in human nature, coupled with the fact that demographic data repeatedly show that the religious outbreed the irreligious more or less anywhere you go in the world do rather seem to suggest that religion is unlikely to disappear in the near future.” – Nick Spencer, “It seems religion is not a neurotic accretion on human nature,” The Guardian, January 8, 2011.
A pragmatic view of ancient religious history is a struggle against neurotic religion in the form of rituals, offerings and animal/human sacrifices as symbolic acts connecting the people to their deities; a sort of cultural obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). In India, it was the evolution away from ancient Vedic bull-sacrifice religions (and the Brahman priests who derived their power from it) in stages through Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism; in the West, it was the rabbinic struggle in Judaism against the Sadducees (the temple priests), and in this vein, also Egyptian religion and Roman state religion.
“Animal sacrifice is the ritual killing and offering of an animal usually as part of a religious ritual or to appease or maintain favour with a deity. Animal sacrifices were common throughout Europe and the Ancient Near East until the spread of Christianity in Late Antiquity, and continue in some cultures or religions today. Human sacrifice, where it existed, was always much more rare.” – from Wikipedia article, “Animal Sacrifice.”
Securing the parental favor of a supernatural is a happiness salve, but how far would you go? It is hard to think that “pets” were being sacrificed. Animals we attach to make us vicariously happy with their simple adoration which makes pets an extension of human happiness. Their company vicariously supplies a simple happiness and contentedness we crave and/or cannot feel ourselves. Lacking reproductive consciousness, extended self-awareness and probably lacking autobiographical memory (à la Professor Damasio), pets’ simplicity captures the parental care of normal humans; Roger Caras noted in A Cat is Watching (1989), “The relationship between humans and cats will be forever infantile.” He could have said, ‘warm-blooded pets.’
Thus meta-aspect in large part explains the keeping of pets from which we seemingly receive no material benefits for the cost. It also explains ancient animal sacrifice. A common farm/frontier story scene is the dinner where the children have to eat the family cow to which they attached the adoration of a pet (or in Giant (1958), the family turkey). Were they sacrificing their happiness to connect to a deity? Abraham almost did, unless he hated his son.12
Once a ritualistic sacrificial religion (whether animal or human) is established politically in a civilization, what ruler or leader can risk opposing it (the erasure of Akhenaten from the record began with his son, King Tut)? Any ill event (in the case of Akhenaten, an epidemic in his last years) will be blamed on the interruption of the established priestly rituals (OCD is within the anxiety/neurotic disorder spectrum) to the point of catastrophe:
“It is around this time that the gravest of omens took place. This spiritual crisis involved the daily sacrifice of lambs to Yahweh. Like clockwork, the priests [Sadducees] had upheld the Holy Rite of Talmud amidst the bloodshed and starvation of the siege. But on the 5th of August, the last of the sacrificial lambs ran out. Now, at the height of the siege with the Romans advancing, the Jews lost their connection to God.” – from “The Siege of Jerusalem (70 AD) – The Great Jewish Revolt [FULL DOCUMENTARY]” Invicta YouTube Channel, August 11, 2019.
Ironically, however, by destroying the Second Temple, the Romans destroyed the Sadducees and forced the Judaism reformation in favor of the rabbinic ideal of prayer and devotion over sacrificial offerings, which carried into Christianity, overwhelmed and outlasted Rome. The neurotic urge still exists even in Christianity and has been long exploited by the Church.
The triumph of the Pharisees and rabbinic Judaism is proved thus: It is inconceivable to us – silly and shallow seeming even – to hold that the inability to sacrifice a lamb daily severs a people’s connection to God. It also seems an unnecessary cruelty to animals and a terrible waste of food. The viability of Sadducee Judaism seems to hinge faith on the neurotic paradox of a daily symbolic act: The ritual sacrifice of animals to God.
Neurotic Paradox
“Well, I’m not surprised, Mr. Goldsmith. I’m not surprised at all. You see, off Lake Erie we’ve got a pack of wierdies up there that bay at the moon once a week. And then around what used to be Chicago, man, we’ve got a real swinging cult goin’ there. They’ve built themselves a statue made out of fissionable lead. This is their ‘deity.’ What do we have here? We have an invisible old man in a cave.” – Major French, Twilight Zone episode, “The Old Man in the Cave,” (1963). (concept reused in Beneath the Planet of the Apes)
Neurotic Paradox can be defined as:
“The persistence of neurotic ... symptoms or behaviour despite their distressing qualities and the desire of the afflicted person to be rid of them. For example, a man with obsessive-compulsive disorder may wash his hands many times a day until they bleed, and may consider this behaviour unnecessary and maladaptive, or even ridiculous, yet feel compelled to continue doing it, and this appears paradoxical.” – from the Oxford Index, citing to Andrew M. Coleman, A Dictionary of Psychology (3rd Ed, 2008).
Arguably every current religion began as a ‘cult’ (depending on your definition of cult) of unhappy people that gained mainstream support, respectability, power, and became significantly entwined with, and indistinguishable from, their civilization, i.e., no religion instantly began with hordes of followers. There is no riddle here. Those ‘susceptible’ to cults (and radical ideologies) are those who want external help in shaping a new internal meaning, new worldview, in opposition to current prevailing worldview, in which they can find a special place, hold, and internalize as faith rather than on the basis of reason and learning. That is, they don’t want to question it and they don’t want anyone else questioning or rejecting their beliefs; such a desire naturally links to violence (especially in the mainstreaming process of cult to religion) and in some cases, mass suicides when externally threatened.
The Order of the Solar Temple was a neo-Templar cult that committed mass suicides in 1994 and 1995 at several locations, some of the victims may have been murdered instead.
“One interesting side bar of the investigation of [the Order of the] Solar Temple is knowledge of the demographic composition of the group. Cults are typically perceived as largely consisting of young people, and/or people who are overly susceptible or even stupid. Solar Temple members simply don’t fit these stereotypes. The typical member was middle-aged and middle-class Swiss and Canadian citizens (Introvigne 1996:3). There were also several persons who were accomplished citizens including Camille Pilet, a recently retired director and international sales manager for the Swiss multinational watch company, Piaget. Other members included Patrick Vuarnet, son of the president of an international fashion company and former Olympic champion Jean Vuarnet, and Robert Ostiguy, mayor of Richelieu, Quebec (Introvigne 1996:3-4). There were reports that Princess Grace of Monaco was involved, but Introvigne disputes that in a press release for CESNUR.” – Jennifer Sloan, University of Virginia, “Order of the Solar Temple,” on the WRSP website (https://wrldrels.org/2016/10/08/order-of-the-solar-temple/), updated July 24, 2001.
How many sad post-breakup love songs have vowed never to love again? Is the human need for happiness neurotic – in which case meta-aspect or supra-legitimacy can be considered the neurotic core of sapience – or is it more like needing food and water which almost no one calls neurotic unless it is clearly excessive and harmful?
Addiction (and its cousin consumerism) is the modern human neurotic paradox, both individually and as a civilization. Love is the ancient human neurotic paradox, especially when we take the forever vows; what could be more paradoxically neurotic than humans vowing forever?
“How can you help it when the music starts to play, And your ability to reason is swept away, Oh-oh-oh, heaven on earth is all you see, You’re out of touch with reality.” – The Main Ingredient, “Everybody Plays the Fool” (1972).
Neurotic religion forms the current human vision of love and mating (just listen to our songs, watch our movies); a neurotic religion (and neurotic paradox) of what we think of as our perfect mate. A particular form of neurosis distinguishes Abrahamic religion from those that came before. The language of religion has crossed over into the language of love songs, e.g.:
“There’s something in my eyes, you know it happens every time I think about a love that I thought would save me.” – Jim Croce, “Operator” (1972).
Countless thousands of popular love songs – just about every other song – have the ‘personal savior’ theme somewhere in the lyrics, stemming perhaps from late Victorian ideals of the woman as the gentle savior (‘better half’) of each man through marriage and family. One should not miss the forest for the trees here, it is not surprising that the current version of neurotic religion of the mate are related to both the parental god of the Abrahamic religions and the early adult transference of bonding from parental love care to intimate love mate.
This is what anarchist free-love ideas sought to separate: neurotic love from sexual intimacy and reproductive drive; most people don’t know that Free Love was a French anarchist idea – Émile Armand – in the early 20th century, but if you think about it for just a moment...
Temple Prostitution
“What is India’s Devadasi system? The centuries-old practice finds its origin in the legend of the goddess Yellamma whose temple in the town of Saundatti is at the center of this practice. Devadasis were seen as mediators between God and his devotees who would appease God through their dance and music. Their performances for the deity would also attract the gaze of temple priests, rich landlords, upper-caste men and kings. Devadasis would also engage in sexual relationships with men from the dominant caste and class. Until the 19th century, Devadasis enjoyed a high socioeconomic status.” – Midhat Fatimah (Ed. Keith Walker), “India: The plight of young girls forced to ‘marry gods,’” DW, April 19, 2023.
Many, if not most, people ‘confuse’ sex with happiness, just as they do morality with happiness, and sex with morality, and all of it with mortality – in the sense that the boundaries are often fuzzy in sapient life. Sex, like morality, seems simple and wonderful in the idea, but is rarely so in actuality. It is not surprising thus that there is a long practice of temple or sacred prostitution throughout history, granting respectability and support to the prostitutes (sometimes making them priestesses), and control to priests, and intertwining sexual release and satisfaction with ritual and cultural sense of happiness and mystical cosmic transformation.13
The current discussion of temple prostitution centers on India because it is the last place it has recently been in practice. “There were 46,600 Devadasis in Karnataka as per the last government survey conducted in 2008.” Id.
It is probable that the early Israelites learned temple prostitution from the Canaanites and continued the practice; alternatively, they learned it from places such as the Temple of Ishtar in Babylon. Of necessity however, religious scholars dispute the assertion, and the matter is not settled currently. Temple prostitution was practiced among the Greeks, the Romans, the Mesopotamians, the Egyptians, the Aztecs – for the benefit of the elite – each with their own local meaning and form attached:
“The world of ancient Rome, after all, was one in which initiates of one cult bathed in the spurting blood of a freshly slaughtered bull. Those of another passed the night in temples awaiting divine revelation and sleeping with the sacred priestesses.” – Prof. Michael Kulikowski, “Christians were Strangers: How an obscure oriental cult in a corner of Roman Palestine grew to become the dominant religion of the Western world,” Aeon, January 30, 2017.
The Aztecs provide a highly-developed example of early Bronze Age temple or religious prostitution:
“Having said this, let’s go back to Pre-Columbian Mexico, more specifically, to the golden age of the Aztec empire, between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. War was a central factor in the cosmogony of this culture. In fact, because of this focus on war, they managed to rule over smaller groups for a long time. The importance they gave to war was such that they believed that when warriors died, they would go to Tonatiuhichan, a heaven that was reserved for those who died in combat or sacrificed themselves, as well as for women who died during childbirth, because they thought their death was just as honorable and required the same strength as going to war.
This vision of the world influenced many of their activities, including, of course, prostitution. Aztec prostitutes, also known as ahuianime, were mostly associated with Xochiquetzal, the goddess of flowers, beauty, love, art, and sex for pleasure, which made her the patron of both artists and prostitutes. This goddess was depicted as a young, beautiful, and cheerful woman who seduced men and inspired the pleasure that’s found in beauty (that’s why she was also associated with art, especially weaving). Ahuianime were identified by the way they resembled their patron goddess: unlike the rest of Aztec women, they would wear their hair down or wouldn’t even comb it. They’d paint their faces with a yellowish ink, adorn their bodies with lots of jewelry, and perfume themselves with fragrant herbs and flowers. The sacred link between them and their patron goddess also connected them to the Aztec religion, to the point that they even had a role as priestesses in rituals, especially those involving human sacrifice.
This last point is one of the reasons why the Aztec war-centered view of the world gave prostitutes a sacred role as well as protection in their society. More than just giving sexual pleasure, some ahuianime were also trained to entertain both soldiers and future victims of human sacrifice with other arts, such as music, dance, cooking, and, according to a research by Geoffey G. and Sharisse D. McCafferty, some of them even went to war with soldiers to ‘cheer them up’ during battles and motivate those who were scared. Also, during a feast called Toxcatl, the ahuianime, assuming a role similar to that of Xochiquetzal, had sex with an impersonator of the god Tezcatlipoca who was meant to be sacrificed, and afterwards, they were rewarded with all his belongings.” – Andrea Mejía (staff editor), “The Sacred Role Of Prostitution In The Aztec Civilization,” https://culturacolectiva.com/history/ahuianime-sacred-prostitution-aztec-culture, November 3, 2017 (italics in original). (see also ‘Flower Wars.’)
Desiderius Erasmus, a fierce critic of late medieval monastic Christianity,14 writing about Martin Luther and his wife, (alleged) former nun, Katrina von Bora, noted:
“There is no doubt about Martin Luther’s marriage, but the rumour about his wife’s early confinement is false; she is said however to be pregnant now. If there is truth in the popular legend that Antichrist will be born from a monk and a nun (which is the story these people keep putting about), how many thousands of Antichrists the world must have already!” – Desiderius Erasmus, Letter to François Dubois (13 March 1526).
Flirty Fishing & Phoenix Goddess Temple
“What do a Christian overnight camp, abstinence-only sex education, and pro-marriage advertisements all have in common? They’ve all been funded with money that used to provide cash assistance for low-income families.” – Zach Parolin, “Welfare money is paying for a lot of things besides welfare,” The Atlantic, June 13, 2019.
Perhaps inspired by the history of sex related to religion, the Children of God (aka Family of Love) cult in the 1970s, preached “Flirty Fishing,” and were ridiculed by those willfully ignorant of the history of their own religion. In some places, the “Children of God” is called a cult, and MS Bing Co-Pilot AI boldly labels “flirty fishing” as “religious prostitution.”
“Flirty Fishing (FFing) is a form of evangelism by sexual intimacy practised from around 1974 to 1987 by the cult Children of God, currently known as The Family International (TFI). Female members of Children of God, or ‘fisherwomen,’ would apply their sex appeal on ‘fish’ — men from outside the cult (often, but not always, having sex) – using the occasion to proselytize and seek donations.
Children of God have defended it as a way of ‘bearing witness’ for Jesus to people who would not otherwise be open to it. According to some sources, over 200,000 men were ‘fished’ and over 10,000 babies were born to cult women between 1971 and 2001. The practice was curtailed as sexually transmitted diseases spread through the cult, and then abandoned in 1987, reportedly because of the spread of AIDS...
Though the cult had no problem ignoring Christian norms on fornication, it did follow Christian beliefs when it came to birth control. Sources differ on whether birth control was forbidden or simply discouraged. The practice also resulted in numerous pregnancies, the offspring of which were termed Jesus babies by the organization.” – Wikipedia article, “Flirty Fishing.”15
But when practiced by a non-Christian sect in the same country that produced “Flirty Fishing”:
“But then it all came crumbling down. On an afternoon in early September 2011, a SWAT team of police officers raided the Phoenix Goddess Temple and two affiliated locations in Sedona. It was the dramatic culmination of a six-month undercover investigation into whether the temple was a house of prostitution disguised as a church – a question that first arose after New Times published a story in February 2011 accusing it of being a New Age brothel. ...
For her role in operating the temple, [Tracy] Elise was charged with more than 100 criminal counts of prostitution, maintaining a house of prostitution, illegal control of an enterprise, money laundering, pandering, racketeering, and conspiracy. When the state looked at a session in the Phoenix Goddess Temple, it saw an often topless practitioner ... giving a seeker ... a sensual coconut-oil massage followed by some sort of sex act that usually included a ‘happy ending.’...
There is nothing technically illegal about two consenting adults having sex, but since seekers usually left money after their sessions, this was a black-and-white matter of prostitution as far as the state was concerned. Elise maintains that seekers were told before a session that there was no guarantee anything sexual would occur and that any money they decided to leave was purely a gift intended to ‘bless the temple’ and ‘further the ministry.’ To her, the charges and the subsequent criminal trial weren’t about prostitution. It was a battle for religious freedom and the ability to help heal men and women through Tantra.” – Miriam Wasser, “The Trouble With Sex: Why Phoenix Goddess Temple Founder Insists She’s a Priestess, Not a Prostitute,” Phoenix New Times, April 13, 2016.
Tracy Elise was found guilty and sentenced on May 19, 2016, to 4½ years in prison. The Phoenix Goddess Temple closed in 2011. The World Religions and Spirituality Project notes:
“The organization had already received IRS 501c3 non-profit status. It appears that the Goddess Temple operated openly and with limited opposition for several years. ... The case dragged on for about five years before a trial was actually conducted. In 2016, after a trial that lasted over forty days, Elise was convicted on nineteen counts of criminal conduct. Sentences for the various offenses were allowed to run concurrently, which meant that Elise was sentenced to four and a half years. Since she had already served 305 days of jail time, her additional prison sentence was three and a half years. She was also ordered to serve four years of probation following release from prison. Elise was released after serving her sentence in March 2019.”
Following her release, she “continued her efforts to protest and overturn her conviction.” Id.
Would it be prostitution of the practitioners didn’t receive any tangible benefit or payment for their services? Prostitution for charity and religion? I have not heard or read that any woman was charged with prostitution for ‘flirty fishing’ or that they personally received any compensation for their evangelistic sexual efforts.
Springing a Grand Theory
“The problems with grand theorizing are not so much that they are (or were) ‘grand’ and seek (sought) to explain a large part, if not all, of human social organization; rather, the problem has been their execution. ... And so, most sociologists today believe that grand theorizing is one of those mistakes of the past and, moreover, that sociology has moved beyond such theoretical blunders by positing more manageable and testable (and narrow) theories. Thus, the intellectual climate is not right for yet another effort to present a grand theory, and perhaps the iconoclast in me has chosen just this moment to break with current conventions and propose a general theory of human social organization.” – Jonathan H. Turner, Theoretical Principles of Sociology, Volume 1 Macrodynamics (2010), pp. vii-viii.
Seems we are sprouting a grand theory of sociology – probably a Banyan tree – and the sprout is budding some branches. Grand Theorizing in Sociology was discussed in the June 2, 2024, Substack Post, “Games People Play.”
‘Grand theory’ is an animal of sociology – a term coined by C. Wright Mills – such that it has its own Wikipedia article, and while there are other forms of grand theory in the search results, such as ‘grand theory of nursing,’ the sociology term is the first to come up in both Google and Bing searches for “grand theory definition.”
The Axiom of Human Meaning checks the boxes of grand theory: It is a broad, overarching framework that seeks to explain how society works as a whole, focusing on general principles and fundamental aspects of human behavior, institutions, and social structures. And it is highly abstract and relies on conceptual frameworks rather than direct empirical observation. Like Col. Troutman said in Rambo, “I’d say that makes him mine.”
Unfortunately, as Professor Turner pointed out, grand theorizing is a pejorative label in sociology:
“What I have found curious is that the grand theories of the early classical thinkers – at least Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and Mead – are still worshiped for their brilliance, whereas similar efforts among contemporary theorists to develop ‘grand theories’ are viewed with a certain skepticism, if not outright derision. A new age of skepticism about the scientific prospects of sociology now pervades the discipline, often bordering on a smug cynicism. Moreover, even those committed to the epistemology of science are, to say the least, suspicious of general theories. For those adopting the epistemology of science, a new age of specialization and middle range theorizing has replaced the impetus to think big and to ponder the nature and dynamics of all social reality. Indeed, grand theorizing has become a pejorative label in sociology, and from my perspective, this new cynicism has kept sociology from realizing its promise as the social science that could unlock the mysteries of the social universe.” – Id. Jonathan H. Turner, p. 3. (emphasis added)
Which is one reason why I am writing on Substack instead of for a peer-reviewed journal. And my fellow Substackers would be Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Mead. And probably Spencer.
Preceding Substack Post: “Lodestars of Human Meaning 1 – Supra-Legitimacy,” https://charleswphillips.substack.com/p/lodestars-of-human-meaning-1-supra
As an apologetic for inflicting a Rudy quote on you, I collected and used this quote back before Rudy Giuliani lost his mind. It is important to look at quotes for what they say and not who said them or the current perception of the speaker; even Hitler could be correct as evinced by the current widespread media use of his term “the big lie” after the 2020 election and especially after January 6th. No matter what the perception of Giuliani is now, what he said in 2016 rings true and points out that feelings are real (and cannot be dismissed), don’t need to be rational, and shape our interactions. I use the same test when quoting Wikipedia articles, which can change due to editing, and are subject to derision for that fact alone, and I think that those who deride and dismiss Wikipedia quotes out-of-hand are committing an error of judgment.
Thanks to The Eagles playing on the radio when I was young, I thought there was a “cheat’n side of town.” I had little idea of what that meant in 2nd grade, but I thought it was real – I probably pictured something from Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam cartoons. I remember asking my mother where it was, which direction ... I don’t think she answered because she was too busy cracking up with laughter. I might have thought it was the Fourth Ward bar down on the corner which I was not allowed to go near.
Recording and playback technology might be as important and revolutionary as the printing press. It allows us to violate mortality in the same way as the invention of writing, except that the voice we hear is outside our heads and not inside. Some people find this is a fundamental problem with modern civilization, always longing for the next distraction.
Historically, we know of famous urban theatre performers and singers of the late 19th Century who were said to be the greatest of their time, the best ever and other puffery, but we do not have any recordings of them to compare or enjoy. The only recording of Scott Joplin are seven (error-filled) piano rolls from 1916 when he was ill. So we are now about five generations into building a storage of recorded performances and the new literary format, movies. We have been digitizing, remastering and recoloring older recordings of earlier technology.
Recording technology has allowed Natalie Cole to sing a striking, ‘timeless’ duet with her deceased father, Nat King Cole in 1991. While it gave some listeners pause for a moment and passed by, some others may have seen the deeper implications.
Holograms have allowed us to ‘resurrect’ Tupac Shakur and Michael Jackson (with live choreographed dancers), and the news has hinted at holograms of deceased performers Selena, Ronnie James Dio and Amy Winehouse. This was enough to give people some pause (and chills), and it is still new enough to be an event. We don’t even know where this is going yet, but a video on YouTube by Popsugar points out that a hologram of an anime character (Hatsune Miku) is selling out stadiums performing with live musicians on stage.
“According to Professor Nicholas Conard of Tubingen University, this suggests that the playing of music was common as far back as 40,000 years ago when modern humans spread across Europe. ‘It’s becoming increasingly clear that music was part of day-to-day life,’ he said. ‘Music was used in many kinds of social contexts: possibly religious, possibly recreational – much like we use music today in many kinds of settings.’ The researchers also suggest that not only was music widespread much earlier than previously thought, but so was humanity’s creative spirit. ‘The modern humans that came into our area already had a whole range of symbolic artifacts, figurative art, depictions of mythological creatures, many kinds of personal ornaments and also a well-developed musical tradition,’ Professor Conard explained.
The team argues that the emergence of art and culture so early might explain why early modern humans survived and Neanderthals, with whom they co-existed at the time, became extinct. ‘Music could have contributed to the maintenance of larger social networks, and thereby perhaps have helped facilitate the demographic and territorial expansion of modern humans relative to a culturally more conservative and demographically more isolated Neanderthal populations,’ they wrote.” – Pallab Ghosh, “‘Oldest musical instrument’ found,” BBC News, June 25, 2009 (emphasis added).
The connection between individual human mental phenomena and cultural phenomena may be demonstrated by popular team sports: The game consists of hundreds of determinative individual player vs player encounters but the game is of two teams cooperating to forward progress or defend and competing for the prize.
“In economics, utility is a term used to determine the worth or value of a good or service. More specifically, utility is the total satisfaction or benefit derived from consuming a good or service. Economic theories based on rational choice usually assume that consumers will strive to maximize their utility.
The economic utility of a good or service is important to understand because it directly influences the demand, and therefore price, of that good or service. In practice, a consumer's utility is usually impossible to measure or quantify. However, some economists believe that they can indirectly estimate what is the utility of an economic good or service by employing various models.” – Investopedia, “Utility in Economics Explained.”
A fully developed human religion has four essential parts: Creation and cosmology, life and death, moral and ethical codes, and symbols and rituals. All of the world’s major religions cover these areas, any belief system that does not is not generally a religion.
“Contrarian Theodore Dalrymple ... has frequently described modern psychology as a modern religion, or pseudo-religion. The medical establishment is the brave new priest class, while the anxious therapy patient replaces the penitent sinner. If so, then Dalrymple must be a heretic of the first order. On March 24, Encounter Books will release his latest ... in which he contends that psychology has done more to impede human self-understanding than to advance it. Moreover, deference to psychology has led to a culture of self-obsession and diminution of personal responsibility.” – Spencer Case, “Doubting Psychology,” [Review of Dalrymple’s Admirable Evasions: How Psychology Undermines Morality (2015)], National Review, March 21, 2015.
“A change in the English language attests to this medicalization of ordinary life: The word ‘unhappiness’ has almost fallen out of common parlance in favor of the medical term ‘depression.’ While Dalrymple does not deny that the term has legitimate applications, its overuse subsumes all human dissatisfaction under medical dysfunction.” – Spencer Case, “Doubting Psychology,” [Review of Dalrymple’s Admirable Evasions: How Psychology Undermines Morality (2015)], National Review, March 21, 2015.
“If there is a blurry line between psychology and reductionism, then psychologist have themselves, in part, to blame, because too many of them have been eager and uncritical in their embrace of reductionist accounts of the mind. At the dawn of the 20th Century, many people were enamored with the ideas of Sigmund Freud, who treated everything noble in human thought as disguised impulses toward sex and aggression. Unsatisfied desire was supposed to be the source of much – not to say the root of all – evil. Dalrymple alleges that Freudianism is not only false but harmful because it provides a scientific rationale for destructive self-indulgence. ... Today, neither Freudianism nor behaviorism is taken seriously. Psychology students have difficulty understanding how either came to have such sway over ostensibly scientific minds. But the storm hasn’t passed. Dalrymple wants to persuade his readers that the reductionism that gave rise to both remains as entrenched as ever, and may even be gaining ground.” – Spencer Case, “Doubting Psychology,” [Review of Dalrymple’s Admirable Evasions: How Psychology Undermines Morality (2015)], National Review, March 21, 2015.
“Neurotic means you’re afflicted by neurosis, a word that has been in use since the 1700s to describe mental, emotional, or physical reactions that are drastic and irrational. At its root, a neurotic behavior is an automatic, unconscious effort to manage deep anxiety.
In 1980, the American Psychiatric Association removed the term neurosis from its diagnostic manual as part of a revamp to standardize the criteria for mental illnesses. Today, neurosis is not a stand-alone mental condition. Instead, doctors most often put its symptoms in the same category as anxiety disorder. In other words, what used to be called neurosis now falls under the umbrella of anxiety.” – “What is Neurotic Behavior?” Medically Reviewed by Smitha Bhandari, MD on July 19, 2023, Written by Alyson Powell Key, WebMD.com.
“At first glance, Titian’s famous depiction of a scene from the Book of Genesis, Sacrifice of Isaac (c 1542-44), in which Abraham is commanded by God to kill his son, may seem at a far remove from this week’s photo of a father protecting his child. Look again, and the opposing images unlock levels of emotion in each other.
So fatigued have our eyes become by the rote repetition of this biblical narrative (recited endlessly by every artist from Caravaggio to Rembrandt, Tiepolo to Chagall), they’re numb to the true horror of the infanticidal story and how profoundly Abraham’s compliance with God’s instruction to murder Isaac violates a parent’s most deeply encoded instincts. Time has slowly transformed the terror that Titian’s painting ought to evoke into the blasé blinks of bored school children who troop past it every day.” – Kelly Grovier, BBC Culture, “The second a father saved his son,” March 11, 2016.
The most common regret of aging – aging and death being another popular pillar of religion – is the inability to continue having sex. On the one hand, this must be a truly universal human experience throughout the ages, and in all places, regardless of culture:
“It was that voice, and his hands – pinching my bottom, if I wasn’t careful – that helped me imagine what he must have been like, before. ... I was afraid and a little bit philosophical, so I asked him how he felt about death. ‘I prefer to die than to be weak,’ he said. ‘When you’re old, you’re weak. Sexually. Your knees don’t carry you. What’s the point of living?’” – Nadja Kornith (quoting Gadalla Gubara), “The Omega Man – Gadalla Gubara and the half-life of Sudanese cinema,” Bidoun (bidoun.org), Issue 20, Spring 2010.
On the other hand, it is also probably part of our current cultural obsession with sex, sex objectification, sex symbols, heartthrob male and blonde bombshell female celebrities; beyond sex, in old age, we have provided no alternative framework or meaning – only loss remains.
Discussing celibacy and monastic orders, to wit:
“There are monasteries where there is no discipline, and which are worse than brothels – ut prae his lupanaria sint et magis sobria et magis pudica [“So that brothels may be more sober and more modest than these.”]. There are others where religion is nothing but ritual; and these are worse than the first, for the Spirit of God is not in them, and they are inflated with self-righteousness. There are those, again, where the brethren are so sick of the imposture that they keep it up only to deceive the vulgar. The houses are rare indeed where the rule is seriously observed, and even in these few, if you look to the bottom, you will find small sincerity. But there is craft, and plenty of it – craft enough to impose on mature men, not to say innocent boys; and this is called profession. Suppose a house where all is as it ought to be, you have no security that it will continue so. A good superior may be followed by a fool or a tyrant, or an infected brother may introduce a moral plague. True, in extreme cases a monk may change his house, or even may change his order, but leave is rarely given. There is always a suspicion of something wrong, and on the least complaint such a person is sent back.” – Desiderius Erasmus, Letter to Lambertus Grunnius (August 1516).
Supposing the rest of the letter was not written in Latin, the only reason to have used the Latin phrase was so that a non-Clergy or Church-educated person (maybe a messenger or untrustworthy servant) would not be able to read his comment. Erasmus must have known that the addressee of the letter could read Latin.
Despite receiving permanent special dispensations from the Pope, Erasmus wisely traveled the circuit of northern France, the Low Countries, and southern England, staying well away from the Pope and deeply Catholic areas and avoiding the explosive powder keg of Lutheran Germany.
Did anyone else ever get the sense in the 1980s that the Christian fundamentalist were actually deeply pleased and maybe even happy about AIDS? Did they – especially the ones who called Chevy vans ‘adultery wagons’ (after popular 1973 song “Chevy Van” by Sammy Johns) – feel vindicated, vindictive, and supremely righteous, did they think it was divine intervention to save the Christianized ‘nuclear family’ (an early 20th century social sciences term that predates nuclear weapons and is thus, not related)?