Whispers from the Axial Age
Dissipating the Religious-Secular tension
...the philosophical detective ruminates on a series of clues whose ideal interrelation they intuitively grasp but through which they must circulate via novel linguistic permutations in order to attain a moment of resolution in which the various threads are woven together.
Maxwell, Integration and Difference, pg 256
...a philosophical theory is an elaborately developed question, and nothing else.
Deleuze, Empiricism, pg 106
As one dwells on a subject, he's confronted with ideas and concepts that he can't fully express but they feel like they're on the tip of his tongue. This is because he has some clues but something's incomplete, usually there's a word, concept, experience, or relation, which would concretize the idea.
The thinker who likes finding missing pieces or is passionate for learning about a topic begins anticipating the unwoven threads and is excited by their prospect. The thinker becomes even more excited if he finds others working on the same problem and asking the same questions without a conclusive answer.
If the thinker thinks on his own and with others for a long enough time, then specific inexpressible threads will reveal themselves as important. The most important threads haven't been cohesively expressed by anyone, but an up-to-date thinker can notice when someone tries to express an inexpressible thread that he's been thinking of.
I've been increasingly confronted by people in-person and online who are circumambulating around the same inexpressible threads populating my mind and after seeking for missing pieces, nobody seems to have them all. This leads me to intuitively grasp that I might be participating in developing an emergent worldview seemingly similar to a synthesis of the binary concepts of religion and secularity.
But aren't we all kind-of participating in the development of an emergent worldview seemingly marked by the synthesis of binary concepts? I bet. So, before I ask the big questions, we gotta get on the same page, and it'll take at least six more posts to get there.
Here are some questions I intend to answer in the following posts:
What is a Belief System?
What is Religion?
What is Faith?
What is the difference between Myth and Religion?
What is exoteric and esoteric religious practice? Can you have one without the other?
What is Mysticism? And, is it the same thing as an esoteric practice?
I don't intend to revolutionize the above topics. Instead, they should serve to show my work. Hopefully, after reviewing the basics, we'll all be asking the same questions.
Here's the video that inspired me to start typing on this one:
The biggest hint I can give you is what isn’t in the list of questions above. Whether a god or pantheon exists isn’t something I find interesting for this conversation and it doesn’t matter if you believe in one or not to follow along. Ultimately, I’m going to bring it back to wellbeing and what it means to live meaningfully, and who isn’t looking for something like that?