“background belief” —- a more modernist-acceptable way to describe faith — what’s behind everything? what’s the basic nature of reality? "What I shall call “old materialism” is/was the dominant background belief for modernist peoples.
According to this background belief, reality itself non-sentient, material, made somehow of elements that formed themselves together into our conscious experience of an infinite reality. As that last sentence indicates, this “old materialist” story no longer makes much intuitive sense. Many modern aspiring people still believe it, though. This is (partially) because background beliefs have the conceptual analogy to nudity -- it makes us uncomfortable to see each other’s background beliefs in the way that it makes most non-German adults uncomfortable seeing each other naked.
As a result, antiquated background beliefs like “old materialism” dominate, and millions still have to suffer through believing their consciousness is a temporary epiphenomenal accident emitted by a highly evolved primate, itself a highly evolved organization of equally nonsentient material: a billiard ball nightmare universe that never made any sense, can’t be defended, isn’t scientific or pragmatic, but somehow still suffices for “common sense.”
This is all rude to say. Many of you old materialists identifying persons may be offended.
Yet I am writing this from Germany now, and have become partially German, so let me think, from Germany, a new Global fifth awakening of “new” faiths: new materialism, new Jew-dei-ism, 新道教 , new christianity, and many others unseeable by me. All of these new faiths are open, interfaceable with each other as part of a global effort by humans to evolve their spirits minds and souls together in more conscious relation
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New materialism is closest to my position; the “material” of my experience is visibly (a) existent, (b) conscious, (c) blissful. Religion buffs will note the analogy here to Satcitananda, the Vedantic description of ultimate relity, and also to the holy trinity. The point is that the material elements of my experience match up say (755) with existing spiritual architectures. Where it doesn’t match up are (a) in the creative, singular nature of my own religion, similar in many ways to the creativity of everyone else’s new religion (b) in the materiality of my religion, the involvement of , laptopos, watercolor paint, collective notebooks, cannabis -- “substances” that are determined by my own singular nature (c) the separation from traditiona religious narratives, and subsitution instead of a collective/individual one where I play a part....best expressed, perhaps, by a formulation echoing David Bentley Hart: “becoming gods within God.”
I also have something to say about new Judaism: the different spelling from above is intentional, because there’s many forms of this new faith. The idea here is to offer the majestic spiritual technologies developed by the jewish peopl eto all of humanity to use, to allow all to access the divine - especially, in the case of the Synagoge that I’m starting in Prague, Kaballah, and the writings of Kafka.
Let me end the piece with an annoying challenge to all who oppose the fifth great awakening. Read David Bentley Hart’s “The Experience of God” and consider, as deeply as possible, the “Christian-Vedanta” demonstration there given of God arising from nothing but the basic nature of our experience -- of all experience itself. Read this, and then write against God, but not the scarecrow god, but the best God -- argue against this God, the everything God, the one within whom you, and all beings, will experience -- can experience now - infinite bliss as gods among Gods in this strange eternal state known as xe kingdöm
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This moving back and forth between religious vocabularies will annoy many inside and outside of the fifth great awakening. There will be many cheese and awful variations on new materialism. Like all things, status hierarchies will emerge, but they will be confusing and polydimensional status hierarchies, because the experimental nature of these new faiths should direct their energy away from low-reward, high-risk competitive insult games and towards explorations of inner divine space.
as always, i’m available to hire to give orations at bar or bat mitzvahs, life transitions services, and polyamorous weddings: b.shepard at udk slash berlin dot de.