/lit/ - Literature

>>12921321
what happens when there is *a war among mediators?* the Protestants were right to rebuke the Catholics over indulgences (among other things) - after all, they had monetized sin. and they had wielded the ban-hammer of excommunication, i suspect, a little too comfortably. and yet the Catholics are saying, in turn, hey, you can't tell us what to do. we're the guys who do that! and then all hell breaks loose.

i think the future looks bleak for anything like moderation, things that prevent the escalation to extremes. but this is a challenge and a puzzle, not necessarily a giant Game Over screen. in many ways the wars of religion are necessary for demonstrably showing that in the years going forward religion could not be allowed to play *such* a major role in political life. the Age of Reason followed, and the Enlightenment in turn - which includes, sadly, the Terror and the guillotine and much much else. we almost never solve any of our problems but with larger problems. we're funny like that.

but our challenge today i think is to wrestle with the ghost of postmodernity such that it doesn't simply become a kind of means by which to re-weaponize every batshit insane ideology we have ever invented, and to corrode reason, trust, discourse, charity, empathy, tolerance, or lots of other things. i understand what Land would say about these things, of course - and i'm not only a guy who has drank his koolaid, i've fucking bathed in it. my skin is now a florid orange for having done so ad nauseam. and to me Land is like a plague doctor trying to warn people about the total futility of trying to experiments with the Black Death and thinking you won't catch something off of it.
>i don't think that's how plague doctors worked
>never mind that. look it's an analogy okay

capital is the driving motor in a lot of this stuff, but what has to be done is finding some way of *deactivating* the infernal machine, or at least bringing it under control in some sense, without pretending to think it can be completely shut off by anything short of meltdown.

(cont'd)