Thanks Gary, allow me to take care of a few spelling errors and missing words
corrected in the text below. It was written late at night. Maybe I should have
brought up the question of if we could integrate democracy, spirituality and
science with capitalism too?
Søren
Fra: Gary Richmond [mailto:[email protected]]
Sendt: 30. januar 2016 18:20
Til: Peirce-L
Cc: Søren Brier
Emne: Can we encompass spirituality, democracy and science in one culture?Re:
[PEIRCE-L] Individual universal spirituality and mutual respect.
Stephen, List,
I have taken the liberty of cutting and pasting Soren's post which, I agree,
deserves broader distribution. While the post is itself not specifically
Peirce-related, in the context of Soren's work in this area, one can certainly
see the deep connections.
I have changed the subject line, using Soren's good, final question in the
post. Thanks for pointing to it, Stephen.
Best,
Gary R
Dear Dr. Bhakti Niskama Shanta
It is well-known that the dominant form of science in the world today is
established in Europe and later in the US and therefore based on the tradition
from the Greek philosophers, which are famous for starting their Deliberation
on the Cosmos first and the divine later. This was developed further with the
birth of the empirical science from the renaissance and on with Galilei and in
the Enlightenment science released itself from the philosophical influence and
political power of the Catholic church. Modernity is characterized by a spilt
between religion, science, art, money and politics. Thus we no longer have a
center in our democratic society based on a divine Pharaoh, Kaiser, sultan,
king og Rajah that has the religious, political, economic, juridical and
violence power concentrated in one person at the center as the Dalai Lama had
before he denounced his political power and encouraged democracy. Niklas
Luhmann conceptualized truth, love, power, money as symbolic generalized media
of communication that are autopoietic self-organized and therefore closed to
each other but compete about who should have most influence on the cultural and
social idea of rationality.
Democracy is not a part of the Vedic teaching at all. It is interesting to see
how Dalai Lama and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi dealt with this. Both of them let the
social organization to the political and economic forces in democracy and
established the spiritual dimension in its own autocratic organization. They
also let science develop in its own system. Even the catholic church has
recognized evolution (and ecology)as the scientific view of the living world as
well as the big bang cosmogony. Now we know that theories of science do not
represent the only form of knowledge in society and certainly not the final and
absolute truth, which you seem to claim for your philosophical-religious
system. The spiritual truth you speak about is something else than what true
science seek. The deep problem is how we deal with these different types of
knowledge because your idea of truth is not the scientific one.
Anyway the Vedic view of these things has to prove itself and the nation India
built upon this philosophical-theological culture and being the biggest
democracy on earth still needs to prove itself as having a superior knowledge
that can produce a superior culture. But maybe you think this is only possible
by going back to the pre-democratic structure of culture? We see movement like
that in Russia and the orthodox church with Putin as a king or new Czar and in
Islamic State attempting to establish the old sultan reign. The two attempt
appear very violent and not very productive and beneficial for the common man.
So can we encompass spirituality, democracy and science in one culture, do you
think?
Warmest
Søren Brier
[Gary Richmond]
Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
C 745
718 482-5690<tel:718%20482-5690>
On Sat, Jan 30, 2016 at 9:14 AM, Stephen C. Rose
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
This is a reply I wrote to Soren's note to a Google group I do not belong to. I
hope he posts it here as it is interesting.
Soren Brier wrote“spirituality, democracy and science in one culture,”
These are keywords of an emerging universal and global culture. The binary
activities of Putin and ISIS and elements within democratic societies are
gradually doomed to give way to a more reasoned approach. The underlying reason
for this transition is the accelerating movement toward what Peirce offered as
the linchpins of an evolutionary agapistic reality: a sense of fallibility and
a sense of continuity contributing to the gradual decline of religion and its
replacement by individual universal spirituality and mutual respect.
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