{"id":10563,"date":"2017-10-17T02:54:04","date_gmt":"2017-10-17T02:54:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=10563"},"modified":"2017-10-17T02:56:21","modified_gmt":"2017-10-17T02:56:21","slug":"1789-and-all-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/1789-and-all-that\/","title":{"rendered":"1789 and All That"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"It\u2019s not hard to draw a line between messianic Judaism and (obviously) Christianity and from that on to later millenarian variants such as Marxism, but this review<\/a> in the New Statesman<\/em> by the British philosopher John Gray of Forgetfulness: Making the Modern Culture of Amnes<\/em>ia by Francis O\u2019Gorman adds this twist:<\/p>\n

The end result of a systematic devaluation of the past, however, is a condition of confusion not unlike that experienced by those who suffer from Alzheimer\u2019s disease. As O\u2019Gorman puts it, \u201cWe may be terrified of dementia because it is widespread and its effects catastrophic. But the fear arises also because we are half-conscious, as dutiful forward-facing citizens of modernity, that we figuratively have it already.\u201d Rather than enabling human beings to fashion new identities, a willed collective amnesia leaves them with no identity at all.<\/p>\n

Many forces have combined to create this condition. Acutely, O\u2019Gorman identifies one of the sources of the modern narrative in early Christianity. Announcing itself as the bearer of \u201cgood news\u201d, Christianity \u201csplintered the conception of human life based on sustaining a localisable past\u2026 The new faith, which must have seemed first of all a new Middle Eastern cult of the son of Joseph the Carpenter, not only discouraged acts of devotion to what had happened long ago\u2026 but also explicitly reorientated its followers\u2019 minds to the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here, O\u2019Gorman elides the original teaching of Jesus, which continued the traditions of charismatic Judaism, with the universal religion invented by Paul and Augustine. Yet the point remains valid. Christianity has always included \u201cinstructive rites for rejecting history\u201d, acts of confession and penitence that are supposed to erase yesterday\u2019s sins.<\/p>\n

A Christian narrative of redemption in which past evils and crimes could be nullified by a dramatic act of moral renovation has inspired many modern revolutionary movements. \u201cChristianity began the process of moving us toward the future,\u201d writes O\u2019Gorman. \u201cThe French Revolution from 1789 to 1815 (which was, ironically enough, violently antagonistic to Christianity as belonging to the past) clinched secular expectations about the relative values of tomorrow and yesterday.\u201d When they sacked churches and defaced graveyards, the Jacobins were re-enacting a Christian rite in which history could be stopped and purified of sin, then begun anew.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And the Bolsheviks?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s not hard to draw a line between messianic Judaism and (obviously) Christianity and from that on to later millenarian variants such as Marxism, but this review in the New Statesman by the British philosopher John Gray of Forgetfulness: Making … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[90,711],"tags":[143,358,1211,390],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10563"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10563"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10567,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10563\/revisions\/10567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}