Understanding, historically, at what point our paths divided feeds my desire to live appropriately amongst our Glocal neighbours.
Deepak Lal has recently scratched some of my proverbial itches. He writes (p45) " The Great Divergence of Western Europe from the other Eurasian civilisations occurred because of a change in cosmological and material beliefs, mediated by the Catholic Church … by Pope Gregory I in the sixth century on family matters (Goody 1983) and the second those by Gregory VII in the eleventh century on property and institutionally related issues (Berman 1983) … to put the west on a different economic trajectory than its Eurasian peers ".
Was organised Christian religion really the root of the individualism that separates the West from more communalist cultures?
Is the notion of exporting the Pursuit of Jesus and the kingdom of God across this divide, without exporting Western Individualism, an atavistic fantasy?
[1083:3846]
1 comment:
I had never heard the word 'atavistic' before reading Lal's repeated use of it.
I find the concept of atavism fascinating. Obviously, in the marketplace, products or services which are 'newer' are marketed as 'better' or an 'improvement'. Which, on buying, may or may not turn out to be true - depending on what variable I am measuring.
So in the marketplace, atavism can be considered as a derogatory notion.
But as far as belief systems are concerned, and in particular 'new' revelations about what God is like, how we might interpret religious writings and how these things might affect the ways that we behave towards both each other, and God, I do not believe that 'newer' necessarily means 'better'.
Post a Comment