RELIGIOUS BUBBLES: Generative (en)closures vs. "Traditions" - Integral Post-Metaphysical Spirituality2024-03-28T08:52:09Zhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topics/generative-en-closures-vs-religious-traditions?commentId=5301756%3AComment%3A58420&feed=yes&xn_auth=noLooks interesting, theurj --…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-10-01:5301756:Comment:586222014-10-01T14:19:19.151ZBalderhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/BruceAlderman
<p>Looks interesting, theurj -- thank you. I will bookmark it. I also just passed it on to my friend (and an infrequent visitor here), Mark Schmanko. He's taking a course with Timothy Morton right now and is working on a paper for the class on the insider/outsider phenomenon in religious studies.</p>
<p>Looks interesting, theurj -- thank you. I will bookmark it. I also just passed it on to my friend (and an infrequent visitor here), Mark Schmanko. He's taking a course with Timothy Morton right now and is working on a paper for the class on the insider/outsider phenomenon in religious studies.</p> Balder, you might be interest…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-10-01:5301756:Comment:586182014-10-01T09:24:37.112ZEdward theurj Bergehttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/theurj
<p>Balder, you might be interested in this article I happened upon in my research, especially the last sentence of the abstract: "<a href="http://www.wwu-m%C3%BCnster.de/imperia/md/content/fb2/c-systematischetheologie/religionswissenschaft/material_zu_veranstaltungen/ws12_13/knott_spatialturn/knott_territories_and_boundaries_temenos.pdf" target="_blank">Inside, outside and the space between</a>: Territories and boundaries in the study of religion." The abstract:</p>
<p>Insider/outsider issues…</p>
<p>Balder, you might be interested in this article I happened upon in my research, especially the last sentence of the abstract: "<a href="http://www.wwu-m%C3%BCnster.de/imperia/md/content/fb2/c-systematischetheologie/religionswissenschaft/material_zu_veranstaltungen/ws12_13/knott_spatialturn/knott_territories_and_boundaries_temenos.pdf" target="_blank">Inside, outside and the space between</a>: Territories and boundaries in the study of religion." The abstract:</p>
<p>Insider/outsider issues are of central importance for the definition of religion and for the identity of religious groups, for the subjectivity and relationships of their adherents, for methodological issues within the study of religions and for the relationship between non-theological and theological studies of religion. Conceptions of ‘inside’, ‘outside’ and ‘boundary’, the emotions surrounding them, their origins in the social relations of body, family and strangers, and the metaphors used to depict and manage them all provide important insights for thinking about religions, how they are studied and by whom. A discussion of socio-spatial and cognitive linguistic theories of categorisation, containment and boundary-making is followed by several case studies in which territories and boundaries are explored with reference to the relationship between ‘religion’ and ‘magic’ in medieval Europe, the Enlightenment construction of ‘religion’, ‘religions’ and ‘non-religion’, and, briefly, the disciplinary engagement of religious studies and theology. The application of the concept of the ‘sacred’ to these boundaries and the spaces they produce is considered.</p> Nicely summarized, Bruce. On…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-09-27:5301756:Comment:583622014-09-27T19:28:29.368ZLayman Pascalhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/LaymanPascal
<p>Nicely summarized, Bruce.<br></br> <br></br> Once we see "bubbles" (in whatever version) we are already standing well beyond the traditionalist worldspace. Probably beyond the modernist worldspace as well. From this vertiginous height, we peer down tentatively at a seething and remarkable panorama. What do we see? Delicate but robust entanglements of interpenetrating zones. Each one marked at its edges by an ongoing activity of self-reference, attunement, engagement, assimilation &…</p>
<p>Nicely summarized, Bruce.<br/> <br/> Once we see "bubbles" (in whatever version) we are already standing well beyond the traditionalist worldspace. Probably beyond the modernist worldspace as well. From this vertiginous height, we peer down tentatively at a seething and remarkable panorama. What do we see? Delicate but robust entanglements of interpenetrating zones. Each one marked at its edges by an ongoing activity of self-reference, attunement, engagement, assimilation & self-defense. Atop the central spire of the largest bulge we see the flags we have inherited from the modernists -- the great "options" which they have discovered in their exploratory journeys between orthodox cultural modes. </p>
<p>We are delighted, intrigued and provoked. Perhaps we begin a new round of investigations? Our anthropologists start to dispense with the notion of a single hegemonic interpretation at the "core" of a dogmatic text. We rove about asking all the Mohammedans, Christians, Buddhists & Mosesites about their experience of their own faith. A great diversity is recorded. Look at all these difference types of that one "thing" we are studying... but truly the diversity is excessive! It overwhelms our studies. Our subject of investigation appears where it should not be and vanishes from key areas where we relied up it as a reference. The bubbles proliferates so rapidly we are left with handfuls of sheer fluid... leaking through our fingers. </p>
<p>Vexed, we resolve to climb a little higher and get a "better view". But as our altitude increases the problem only gets worse (although, admittedly, our sense of its <em>problemness</em> seems to diminish). Now the inherited labels seem arbitrary or misleading as often as useful. They retain no privilege in the categorization of the topology we are inspecting. And yet the result is not a free-for-all. Like men watching the fractals on the surface of a flower river we are clearly confronted by recurrent patterns -- even by a typology. </p>
<p>As we slowly familiarize ourselves with these previously obscure types of patterns, inventing new terms as we go, there begins to appear an astonishing and imposing vision. These types-of-religion are appearing sometimes near the rituals, practices & conversations of traditions... sometimes far away... but always in a great mutuality with each other. They are active according to their own natures and from whatever context they emerge from within. Yet they are not independent. From this height it is appears clear that they are immediately mutually supportive -- counterbalancing each other in great variety -- and progressively self-similar. Each one that thrives does so by expanding into mutations and assimilations which approximate the expansion patterns of the others. Yes, they are idiosyncratically emerging and diverging but they are also cooperating with each other and enfolding each other in ways that push them forward toward a seemingly totalized manifestation.</p>
<p>Now we feel that we behold the rise of universal religion -- not by the conquest of one nominal tradition nor by their cooperation (although both factors play a subordinate role) -- but as a kind of botanical phenomenon operating at a level more frequently resembles "generic human culture" than "popular notions of religion". And yet its religiousness is amplified, enhanced. It is building a force, and operating through mechanism, appropriate to the sheer planetary (and perhaps interplanetary) nature of its task.</p>
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</blockquote> We might envision 'nominal t…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-09-26:5301756:Comment:582752014-09-26T23:46:40.395ZBalderhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/BruceAlderman
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<p>We might envision 'nominal traditions' as foam-like identity clusters, or cultural-linguistic clusters, which consist of numerous 'religious bubbles' -- partly overlapping, contiguous, or connected-at-a-distance -- each of which maintains itself through practices and forms of religious speech. If we take the generation of coherence and surplus meaningfulness as at…</p>
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<p>We might envision 'nominal traditions' as foam-like identity clusters, or cultural-linguistic clusters, which consist of numerous 'religious bubbles' -- partly overlapping, contiguous, or connected-at-a-distance -- each of which maintains itself through practices and forms of religious speech. If we take the generation of coherence and surplus meaningfulness as at least two characteristics of spiritual and religious activity (and there may be other important ones to consider), we must also recognize that this coherence itself is a multiplicity of 'coherences' -- of forms and modes of flowering, integration, becoming-whole -- that might be sought and enacted by practitioners belonging to any particular religious bubble. The "dharma" of different bubbles may be to attend to and exercise different lines, in other words, or cultivate different states, privilege different perspectives, seek different levels of maturity and visionary-ethical embrace, etc.<br/><br/>But if we consider that 'nominal traditions' may also include 'bubbles' which no longer function <em>religiously</em>, at least from an integral perspective; and also that religious bubbles also form well outside of the nominal religious traditions; and <em>also</em> that different nominal traditions may include bubbles that are rather structurally and functionally similar to (or homeomorphically equivalent to) religious bubbles outside of their boundaries, then ... well, this foam is quickly getting out of hand!<br/><br/>Keeping this visualization going, we might imagine injecting medical dyes into this giant foamy mountain, with different colors to indicate the 'territory' claimed by any nominal tradition as well as those religious bubble-territories that lie outside of traditional boundaries. Each of these colored swaths may overlap or intersect at various places of homeomorphic equivalency. If we further imagine that the bubbles can be differentiated along soteriological, developmental, and other lines -- the forms and styles of being they seek, the lines they exercise, the perspectives they privilege -- then we may dye the bubbles in additional colors, until they all begin to shine with rainbow iridescence, each bubble reflecting the other teeming spheres. In this foamy topography, we may still be able to pick out differently hued swaths that correspond roughly to the various traditions and lineages we first marked -- different continents, islands, and currents of opacity and radiance in the teeming mound -- but at the same time, we will be able to discern entirely different strands and masses of color, new geographies which have little to do with the old circles of belonging. Rising up high enough to capture such a global view will likely impact us the way our first vision of Earth did: we can no longer view or inhabit our 'countries' in quite the same way, if we feel inclined to identify with them at all.</p> Ah, the Buddy Jesus! He is a…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-09-26:5301756:Comment:581902014-09-26T21:52:59.259ZLayman Pascalhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/LaymanPascal
<p>Ah, the Buddy Jesus! He is a good icon for Green-level religion. That whole film (with its moral about "it doesn't matter what you believe in as long as you believe in something" & "god is female or indistinguished or inconceivable") presents a lot of the elements required for a valid Postmodern religiosity.</p>
<p>Ah, the Buddy Jesus! He is a good icon for Green-level religion. That whole film (with its moral about "it doesn't matter what you believe in as long as you believe in something" & "god is female or indistinguished or inconceivable") presents a lot of the elements required for a valid Postmodern religiosity.</p> He's especially fond of # 7!tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-09-26:5301756:Comment:583562014-09-26T05:37:30.522Zandrewhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/andrew
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2505376998?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2505376998?profile=original" width="241" class="align-full"/></a>He's especially fond of # 7!</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2505376998?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2505376998?profile=original" width="241" class="align-full"/></a>He's especially fond of # 7!</p> Ciao Bruci!
An important inqu…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-09-25:5301756:Comment:584322014-09-25T17:44:24.276ZLayman Pascalhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/LaymanPascal
<p>Ciao Bruci!</p>
<p>An important inquiry, si si.</p>
<p>1. Every religious bubble, being a generative enclosure, is also a Causal Entity. It is has an aspect which is irreducible, indefinite, autological. It contains a perspective from which it is self-experienced as self-determined. And is possesses an open-ended potential to be unpacked in ways that are not technically predictable.</p>
<p>2. Every religious bubble is a many-one monad which can be characterized by at least some version of…</p>
<p>Ciao Bruci!</p>
<p>An important inquiry, si si.</p>
<p>1. Every religious bubble, being a generative enclosure, is also a Causal Entity. It is has an aspect which is irreducible, indefinite, autological. It contains a perspective from which it is self-experienced as self-determined. And is possesses an open-ended potential to be unpacked in ways that are not technically predictable.</p>
<p>2. Every religious bubble is a many-one monad which can be characterized by at least some version of the quadrants inherent to a holon. That means they are describable as a definite singularity co-arisen from a plurality and existing in resonant and structural relationships.</p>
<p>3. Every religious bubble is always actively creating itself. It consists of this activity.</p>
<p>4. Every religious bubble creates or is a field of intensified coherence which operates AS IF it had a semi-permeable membrane operating in multiple dimensions (energetic, material, linguistic, psychological, etc.)</p>
<p>5. Each religious bubble may be increasing or decreasing its integrity and empowerment. Mere repetition is equivalent to degeneration since these bubbles exist only insofar as they are actively self-generating.</p>
<p><br/>6. A religious bubble operates culturally (in the broadest sense).</p>
<p>7. The spiritual life of individuals represents a critical genre within religious bubbles.</p>
<p>8. Symbolic referencing (talk, assumption of normative categories) and social habits (rituals) can operate as elements of the practice of sustaining a religious bubble or as elements sustaining alternative "talk bubbles" or neither.</p>
<p>9. Talk is religious when it contributes to the productive of more "coherence" in the bubble and bring level-appropriate intensified cooperation between contemporary social genres. This is the standard of religious speech as distinct from poetic speech, scientific speech, therapeutic speech, etc.<br/><br/></p> Hi, Pascalakirti, I admire th…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-09-25:5301756:Comment:584202014-09-25T05:29:14.385ZBalderhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/BruceAlderman
<p>Hi, Pascalakirti, I admire the prodigious amount of deep and often luminous content you can deliver, seemingly always on-tap. Your amended opening post offers a lot to engage with -- and often, I am silent in the face of such longish documents because I don't have much time, unfortunately, to take up all the threads that catch my interest ... so I sometimes just take up none. But here I am swimming against the tide of my other obligations today because I really think this inquiry is…</p>
<p>Hi, Pascalakirti, I admire the prodigious amount of deep and often luminous content you can deliver, seemingly always on-tap. Your amended opening post offers a lot to engage with -- and often, I am silent in the face of such longish documents because I don't have much time, unfortunately, to take up all the threads that catch my interest ... so I sometimes just take up none. But here I am swimming against the tide of my other obligations today because I really think this inquiry is important, for this forum, for our joint reflections on metatheory and emergent integral/dionysian culture, for our mutual interests in integral spirituality and religiosity, etc.<br/><br/>Okay. So.<br/><br/>A generative (en)closure is formed through the communal establishment of a "membrane" which serves as a protective, unit- or field-defining boundary as well as a means of interface, for the enactment of a domain of distinctions (i.e., a worldspace). As a "bubble" or "globe" in Sloterdijk's sense, it establishes an immunological zone which, the stronger or more vital it is, the more it enables the (en)closure to interact with diverse cosmic beings without risk of compromising its integrity. While generative (en)closures are fragile and impermanent compositions, they are also ir/reducible in Latour's sense: not finally reducible to anything else, and yet always (through effort, with some loss, always via some 'transformation') indefinitely reducible or relatable to other things. One way to express this is that the irreducibility of a holon or generative (en)closure is found precisely in its indefinite or inexhaustible reducibility. Or we could understand this using Bhaskar's frequently paired terms, <em>concrete singularity</em> and <em>dialectical universality</em>. Taken together, they suggest that holons or generative (en)closures are not only irreducibly particular (concretely singular), but also intimately enfolded within and co-present to one another (in potential if not in actuality for any particular being at a given time). In Morin's terms, a generative (en)closure (of the kind we are interested in here, such as religious or spiritual generative (en)closures) is autopoietic or auto-eco-reorganizing -- self-producing and deeply participatory, in both embedded and enactive senses. <br/><br/>A healthy or generative (en)closure (as opposed to a degenerative (en)closure) circulates and amplifies meaning or information, allowing for greater 'field' coherence, and greater potential for any element of the field. I understand your differentiation between spirituality (which furthers integration and generates surplus coherence for the individual) and religion (which blends genres and generates surplus coherence in the socio-cultural domain). We might then talk about different generative enclosures, or we might talk about generative (en)closures in their spiritual and religious functions. In my view, a religious generative (en)closure can serve both to provide 'hothouse'-like space for cultivating and encouraging the full flowering of individual practitioners, and -- in its religious function per se, if we use your terms -- to perform those creative acts of meshworking and translation to foster inter- or trans-genre alliances and fusions.<br/><br/>I agree we can distinguish "talk bubbles" from "religious bubbles" (here, meaning, not only 'practice' or 'ascetological' or 'anthropotechnical' bubbles, but those bubbles which foster integration and spiritual flowering), since sometimes people may talk in religious words but not in a way that is generative or genuinely religious in the sense we mean here. But granting this, I don't want to suggest with that that "talk" is merely incidental to religious generative (en)closures, or that "talk"/translation can be cleanly separated from "practice"/transformation. While I think Latour's understanding of religion and spirituality is seriously limited (he seems only to reference conventional Catholicism in his reflections), he makes a distinction between religious and other types of language that is useful here. He says that we make a mistake to treat religious language as if it were similar to the scientific language of reference, whether describing this world (which science just gets wrong -- the earth is only 6000 years old!) or else describing a metaphysical world instead of this physical one. Instead, religious speech delivers "a type of original truth which gives meaning to the predication only if it creates anew the person to which it is addressed." Here, words, concepts, stories, and so on, are not ghostly abstractions 'about' being, but are beings themselves, angels or dakinis themselves: they are part of the composite that constitutes any given generative (en)closure.<br/><br/>As zones of translation as well as practice, religious generative (en)closures are rehearsal and performance halls for the practice of the onto-choreographic arts. It is where we practice a local dialect of the pluri-univocal speech of Sophia, so we can prepare ourselves to sing to her, and entice her to sing for and through us.</p> Really nice thinking on this,…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-09-23:5301756:Comment:581772014-09-23T16:12:26.585ZBalderhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/BruceAlderman
<p>Really nice thinking on this, LP. I don't have time to respond immediately but will try to do so tonight. Some of what you are suggesting here appears to align with the "foamy" Sloterdijkian approach I've been taking recently to this topic, and to my current project on Bhaskar's (perichoetic) concept of co-presence, which I've been applying to religious systems, so I'll discuss that a bit then.</p>
<p>Really nice thinking on this, LP. I don't have time to respond immediately but will try to do so tonight. Some of what you are suggesting here appears to align with the "foamy" Sloterdijkian approach I've been taking recently to this topic, and to my current project on Bhaskar's (perichoetic) concept of co-presence, which I've been applying to religious systems, so I'll discuss that a bit then.</p> tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-09-23:5301756:Comment:581752014-09-23T02:54:54.895Zandrewhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/andrew
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