Secularism And Fundamentalism - American attitudes to religion

I invite people to comment on America's Fundamental Sin of Abuse.

This fits into my general existential question--one that I likely share with more than one person on these forums. How can Krishna consciousness be a substitute for fundamentalist Christianity (or Islam)? Are we involved in competing "true" mythologies?

On one thread here, some are discussing the historicity of the Mahabharata war. But I know that the level of discussion there is much more detached than for many devotees who still insist on literal interpretations of nearly everything in the Bhagavatam and still react with shock or surprise at any attempts to find other kinds of meaning in these texts, meanings that are not necessarily etched in stone, but are stepping stones to personal understanding and spiritual evolution.

There is no way that I can poll these attitudes, but we have discussed Catholic/Protestant/other religious differences in converts to Krishna consciousness. We have also discussed, to some extent, American vs. non-American attitudes--Nabadip in particular spoke of the American preachers like Harikesh who dominated (and perhaps still dominate?) the European Iskcon.

There are also other individual national differences that invite discussion. For instance, the American fundamentalist attitude to KC has resonance with Hindu fundamentalism and appeals to similar narrow-minded attitudes in India. To what extent is the current strength of KC in ex-communist countries the result of a reaction to the failure of one True Religion (Communism)?

Rick Salutin, ""

Where are these "creationist theme parks"? He makes it sound like America is overrun by them.

This must be what Salutin was refering to: Darwin-Free Fun for Creationists (New York Times)

Exactly! Imagine if these photos were of American women, naked, humiliated and tortured by Iraqis. Everyone would be crying "RAPE!".

The fact remains that this is RAPE and the perpetrators should be tried with the crime of rape, sexual battery.

Also, America's concept of "democracy" has less to do with how a government is run than with the popular culture of any given country.

There are so many countries in the world with a "democratic" government. Arab/Muslim majority countries included. India is even a political "democracy".
But what I see America constantly doing is superimposing their own pop-culture "values" on other countries in the name of "democracy".

Those pop-culture values would be things like "rugged individualism", etc.

Nothing wrong with rugged individualism but politically democratic countries like India do not equate that with "democracy". Nor is rugged individualism highly valued in a country like India.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jesus/


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From a European point of view it is rather amazing how the one power that shows no or little Ethics in its political global actions, is so much penetrated with Christian talk, prayer and all this emotional religious stuff.

America is mostly an emotional country; the horoscope of the Constitution has a Cancer predominance, like Bush does also, and i think Reagan did too. It is amazing how gullible people in America are thru emotional gestures, such as someone's kiss at a convention, or a suppressed tear during a speech, or some other small thing. (I wonder how this fact affects Iskcon's perception of sahajiyaism). On one side this emotionalism - on the other side a strong bent towards ideology: beliefs as a substitute for experience.

Growing up in America means growing into a system of doing things as everyone else does too. everyone, from N.Y to Cal. sips the same type of Coke, the same kind of watery coffee, eats the same kind of bland bread, goes for dates in ways similar to others, all these stereotypes (the back of a car, the Prom night experience etc), the same type of houses everywhere, the same endlessly straight streets with rectangular intersections.

The daily experience is extremely bland there, and indirect.So they need strong ideology to deal with the lack of direct experience. Like this claim of freedom and liberty. i think no one in the developed world is as unfree as an U.S. American, but they brag about freedom, (like Iskconites brag about parampara in order to cover up the fact that they do not have any, but without really noticing that they do not have any). Simple freedom like walking where you want to walk. You can't walk anywhere in the U.S. Everywhere: No trespassing, and if you are not in a car you are not a decent citizen. Or drinking water from a fosset. Forget it. Or getting decent food in a store. Everything is reduced to a sham: extremely elaborate packageing (the ideology, advertizing, the mental stuff) without real substance (life experience, reality).

My observation is: First generation immigrants can realize a certain level of freedom, because they are not yet programmed into the U.S. ideology. It's also first generation people who made America great. The follow-up generations get fat and lazy and un-innovative. They want to enjoy rather than work. (not everyone of course)

Enough rambling and boring our good ol' American boys and gals here.

Interesting, especially the comparison with ISKCON. As Nadabip points out, the formulaic, mechanistic lifestyle--high school prom, move out to go to college, spring break, etc., the routine of holidays/shopping themes: funny costumes -> kill the turkey, watch football -> Je$u$ and obtaining consumer goods--is one of the backbones of the US, as evidenced by mass media. Perhaps it is a lack of history that has given so much power to these inane activities? In the absence of anything significant, the tendency might be to elevate the ordinary, raise it to a standard, pass it on to future generations--a pseudo history.

Apart from restaurants, I have found the US to be one of the most homogenous and unexotic countries I have visited. There are many cultures, no doubt, but little interest. When I first visited Montreal, we went to the botanic gardens and in the First Nations/American Indian garden, a women's drumming circle was going on--and the audience of around 40-50 Causcasians were singing the words to the song! Meanwhile, at the televised inauguration of the president of the United States, there wasn't even a hint that the country had once been the domain of another culture. There was no nod to that past, what to speak of celebration of diversity. Diversity appears to mean, "You were once different but are now one of us, normal--we celebrate that you are now one of us."

In the elevation of incidental or new activities to the realm of cultural landmarks, and in the almost total ignor-ance of history, I see definite correlations in ISKCON.

When I first joined Iskcon it was immediately clear that America is the source of this, not India. So I went to America instead of to India to explore Iskcon. I had had an American experience before I became a vaishnava, so I could see the American attitudes in it. I learnt to differenciate it more clearly after my experience of India, in concrete terms: Nabadwip Dham, of course. But then I was already outside of Iskcon.

What changes first when one joins a New-Age group like Iskcon, Osho Rajneesh, TM, etc in Europe, is the language. It gets permeated by Americanisms, like "far out", "fired up"; "ecstatic" "devotee" etc. I do not know whether there is any study that compares the common language games in different groups. I have heard these same standardized expressions in different settings, that is why I call Iskcon a New Age group along with these other ones. As far as language is concerned, there is a noticeable empoverishment of expression acquired through constantly being exposed to anglicized, improperly translated books. (Improperly means: there is no authenticity in the translated texts, they are just aped, parroted.) The brainwashing happens thru those stereotyped expressions which are univocally accepted and integrated into one's own language. The perception of reality is altered along with the acquisition of these stereotyped language games. One who is seen as being capable to reproduce the stereotypes in what looks like creative permutation, is seen as more advanced, more realized according to the standards of the newly created or claimed reality.

Americans of course, have less trouble with the stereotypes of their own language, which is why any American coming to Europe looked like "very advanced" because he could jugle those language games like a perfect devotee. This same thing is the case also with all these New Age movements, self-improvement groups, all these workshops available. It is mostly word-juglery, again affected much by Americanisms, which naturally are best integrated into an own language by Americans themselves. Americans coming here to give workshops are a great success generally.

Most European Iskconites were unaware of the American way of things, and thus took what they saw and heard as "very spiritual, very advanced devotees speaking", still long after many people in America knew already that they are as questionable as others too. When I came back after a year in San Francisco Harikesh did not allow me in his temples anymore, because he feared I would expose him to my friends who were his disciples, or tell them about Iskcon scandals there. I had no intention to do that, but this shows the differences between the two continents that he knew existed. Harikesh was aware that Europeans were naive as far as Iskcon was concerned. That lasted until he withdrew, for at least 16 years.

It is still now seen when an American comes into a European temple, how everyone thinks this is real advancement coming to their place. Same thing with Indians though. Or even stronger now, that org scandals are perceived everywhere.
Joy Nitai

How would a black American, like Sesha Das or Bhakti Tirtha Swami, rate?

So, if I understand properly, Americans still enjoy a high status in Europe, due to coming from the imperial center. Less-educated or cultured Americans are scorned, but any American with a claim to something "new"--a marketing ploy, a religion, a technology--is automatically looked up to. This is stronger in the eastern European countries, less so in places like Switzerland, Austria or France.

There was a black person, I think Devamrita his name, a sannyasi, in Scandinavia. He kept everyone in roaring laughter with extremely gross jokes about the stupidity of karmis who worked instead of enjoying life in an Iskcon temple. He was very popular.

I do not know about the Netherlands for instance, with a colonial history, but in German speaking countries we do not have any strong racial experience, esp not towards Africans. I think there is a natural curiosity, sort of like when Indians stare at Caucasians because they never see any. I remember my response versus black vaishnavas, always very satisfying. Actually I have very positive experiences with Afro-Americans, both vaishnavas and non-vaishnavas, especially simple ones (I worked once with Starving Students).

For the record, there are many Turks in Germany who would disagree with the above statement.

Finally somebody says this! It is true, you can't walk anywhere in this country, it is madening!

And if you finally manage to walk somehow in the asphalt striped landscape, you get a million dogs barking at you from every residence within a radius of 8 miles. I see Bir Krsna Goswami attempting a japa walk sometimes in the neighborhood and those dogs...

I can assure you that there are a number of Danish devotees who served when he was there who really dislike him.

Can't walk in US? I take regular long walks here. There are so many places to go.

But where do you park your Honda?

Bush Apology Sparks Torrent of Global Goodwill
IMAMS: "YOU HAD US AT 'SORRY'"

http://www.gaudiyadiscussions.com/index.ph...=ST&f=31&t=1600

Vamsidas, probably you are not aware that Turks are white people, even more white than typical Italians.

I talked about racial exposure, not racism. Of course there is racism around, and the diverse reactions towards the Turks in Germany are justified on the grounds that these people simply come to take advantage of the well-developed social benefit-system of that European country. In Switzerland, where that is even better, we see a strong influx of African people these years who do not really want to be here except for the huge amounts of money they can pocket just by crossing the border and asking for asylum. Others come as drug-dealers, not fearing the law because humanistic concerns prohibit strong action against them. The asylant migration is a problem of its own, especially in the light of the tragedy of Africa.

Nabadip, probably you are not aware that you have entirely missed my point.

It isn't clear to me whether you are trying to be patronizing, or whether you are merely succeeding in doing so. In any case, I won't press the point further after this post. Let me remind you, though, that Jews are "white people," yet many Germans 60-80 years ago certainly considered that they had a "racial exposure" when dealing with them.

Looking at how you defensively transformed an observation of German racial attitudes into a question of "asylant migration," I perceive that you aren't showing an ability to apply to Europe the same penetrating and interesting analysis that you apply to America -- a continent that has, by the way, for hundreds of years dealt with (and often conflated with troubling results) issues of immigration and race. I think there are complexities that you just don't recognize.

I have appreciated your attempts at analysis, nabadip, though there are gross oversimplifications and naîve misunderstandings mixed in with the overall very good points. I do think that you are not aware enough about how your analysis is narrowed by unacknowledged issues of class in America; my impression is that your opinions of America were first conditioned by American media, and then developed through the prism of the particular class experience through which you saw America during your time in ISKCON. Not that your experience is inaccurate; just that it's far less complete than you realize.

Anyway, I won't be responding any further to your comments in this thread, nabadip, so please don't feel any need to respond to mine. I'm done.

I think I'll go take a walk.

Well said, Vamsi.

Too strongly domiciled nations ("old europeans") lose their vision how to successfully develop. However, the invasion of so called "effulgent" American Vaishnavas in Europe has brought only almost incurable everlasting distress. Russian Vaisnavas are facing now a similiar decision. For centuries Russians were controlled and forced to stay where they are, which makes them an easy prey for American Vaisnavas controlling their situation. Russian Vaishnavas should be warned not to fall in the same trap as western European nations and remain simple and independent.

After all, the Holy Name will spread in every town and village.

Some interesting comments, Jatayu. Perhaps you could elaborate.

Vamsidas, at least you could admit that feelings got hurt, and you are reacting to that, which I did not intend to do, and I am sorry if I did, and I think that the word "racial" in conection with my naive use of "German speaking countries" opened a Pandora's box of ghosts which haunt any intellectual debate about such issues. Sorry that you do not want to continue. I am well aware of my shortcomings of trying to understand, let alone describe a foreign culture. I have lived five years in the U.S., with no connection to any org, and 7 years in India. I know what it means to be a foreigner, and an immigrant to the U.S. How about a walk over the fields to get some flowers for Sunday?

I feel I need to add that I am writing from Switzerland, especially to an American anti-German attitude, which was also quite prominent in Iskcon and Americans placed here.

Germany is now not imposing its non-culture on the rest of the world as America does. It was solidly destroyed by allied bombers. I am glad Hitler got finished in the process, as Saddam Hussein was taken out of his country, but the price to be paid is too high. Whatever the facts of history were, and they were regretably brutal on all sides, the way personal attitudes are fostered within spiritual circles including these Holy Name orgs, also the condescending anti-German tone that I hear now from your post, vamsidas, should be discussed in a forum like this.

Let's all be careful about our sensitivities.

I think Vamsidas was sufficiently cognizant of Nabadip's positive contributions in his letter, but quite correctly asked him for a little more self-reflection. The elements he pointed out Nabadip's postings were indeed questionable and needed to be underscored.

An examination of our own predispositions, whether from ethnicity, nationality or previous religion, will make us more deeply aware of our personal identity. What we are looking for, however, is the realization of ideal or transcendent aspirations out of the raw materials that have been given us by Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and the Vaishnava tradition.

So though it may be legitimate to point out prejudices in someone else's thinking, let's be careful about falling into the kind of deepseated racial and religious antagonisms that we should be trying to transcend.

Out of curiosity, to what extent would ethnic tensions surface in European Iskcon temples?

In Montreal Iskcon, there are a few ethnic groups--French, English, Tamil, Bengali, Russian being the main ones. Though these groups tend to stick to themselves, they are fairly harmonious on the whole.

In the past, I observed a certain anti-Indian racism in North American temples, and to some extent in India also, but I haven't been to any temples lately, so I cannot say whether this has any relevence any more.

Sadhu, sadhu!

I was trying to help Nabadip see that his posts could be interpreted as displaying a condescending anti-American tone, and I found it odd that instead of reflecting on my points and his own words, he rushed to a charge of my "condescending anti-German tone." Talk about missing the point -- whether as a result of my poor communication or his poor comprehension, or both!

Anyway, in this regard I was tempted to respond to a point that Nabadip originally made in one of his most recent posts. It was a point that I could easily document as historically false.

Now I see that he has already edited it out of his post. That constitutes self-reflection, and that's what we all ought to be doing. So I am encouraged, and will let the matter rest.

In a different circumstance, I think Nabadip might be interested in hearing about my friendship with one of my university professors. He grew up in Schweinfurt (home to a major ball-bearing factory, and a major Allied target) during WWII, and over a couple of years shared his wartime experiences with me in some detail. Our friendship survived my telling him about my father, who flew a B-24 over Germany during WWII, and who may have been one of those who dropped bombs on his family and friends. My father, by the way, flew approximately 40 missions over Germany, including one that explicitly sought to destroy a civilian target. For the rest of his life, he agonized about his role in that mission; I think his angst, doubts and regrets eventually took their toll on his health, and even contributed to his death.

Perhaps these experiences are among the many reasons why I lack sufficient patience with those who display unsubtle approaches toward Europe-bashing or America-bashing.

Europe is moving toward greater unification. As it begins to flex its economic and military muscles, I hope its citizens do a better job of self-reflection than many Americans have done, lest they fall victim to exactly the same flaws that they often readily discern in Americans.

The european Vaishnavas trauma is simple. Americans are mainly ex-europeans who got the strength to uproot themselves in europe and start a new fresh successful carriere in the new world. When europe was terrorized during WW2 they showed their strength to put europe back in a state of peace. Similarly, european Vaishnavas immediately when requested installed any Vaishnava from US in a leading position. Somehow just the opposite happend, a real Holocaust happened. The reputation of Gaudiya Vaishnavism from the theological point is dead, totally dead. The word guru has become an abusive word and you wont find any presentations of Gaudiya Vaishnavism performed in public buildings like schools anywhere. Instead, feedbacks like: "Some interesting comments, Jatayu. Perhaps you could elaborate." So, please, be forbarance! Just like some jewish Americans are still feeling traumaticed after being escaped from Ausschwitz, european Vaishnavas also feel traumaticed of having lost everything to serve Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in an adequate situation.

I take a lot of walks and rides on my mountain bike, both out in the burbs where I live and in the city where I work (downtown Chicago). The only problem with the city is the noise from all of the traffic, and the fumes from the vehicles. The neighbors' dogs like to bark at me from their yards from behind those chain link or picket fences, but their tails are always wagging, which means what they want is for me to come over with a treat and pet them.

At any rate, with respect to this topic, I am very disappointed with our current situation here in the US of A. Everywhere I see trash littering the forest preserves, parking lots and just about anywhere that is not someone's own yard. Mayor Daley spends millions of dollars a year (his wive's idea) planting lavish gardens all along the highways and in the city parks, but there does not seem to be any budget for the trash cleanup. Every time I walk past office buildings there is a handful of people out in front of each of them smoking and smashing out the butts on the sidewalk and leaving them there. With such a mentality, perhaps it is no wonder that there are international policies by our government that treat other nations in the same manner - use them up for whatever we can get from them - crude oil or some manufactured goods, and just discard them when we are done. Right now I am in the middle of going through a huge pile of junk mail that has been accumulating for a few weeks, most of which will end up in the paper shredder.

For more on this matter check out my book review on Greider's new book on this site. Better yet, get the book and read it.

Joy Nitai. I welcome discussions on any point given, especially pointing out errors of description. I felt, that you, Vamsidasji, were shooting back on a personal basis, rather than addressing statements. I saw that I got a general condemnation along with general appreciation. I did not see you, vamsidasji, adressing individual points, which may be too much asked, because uninteresting or boring or too complex or whatever. Instead i got threats of not discussing any further, of not even needing to reply. (Seconded by Jagatji.)

Your answer is beginning with a polite threat, without giving me a chance to even understand what you mean.(The threat was about your not going to press the point after it). I have a chronic problem with the English use of the word patronizing that you use. I have no idea what you are talking about there. Could you circumscribe that in other words, and then tell me the difference between "trying to patronize", and succeeding to do so?

For me your jump from Turks of the present to Jews of the past is inacceptable. (To do so at any given point is to me equal to expressing an anti-German sentiment.) When I was speaking I was doing so of the common experience at the present time. We are not exposed to black people, so we, at least here in Switzerland, have no clear racial prejudice against them. (Maybe to be really sure about this I should only speak of myself. I could safely include my friends etc, villages in the country, perhaps exclude some city like Zürich where the drug-market is in black people's hands and where the police is helpless to do much effective about it.) However, as soon as the Jews of the past Germany (the present one is a democratic state since 1948) are referred to, any discussion ends. That is an absolute dogma, an ever ready instrument of insinuating racism in a partner, finishing someone with just a short out-of-place reference.

There is a huge asylum seeker problem here, extremely difficult to deal with, on humanitarian and political and economical levels. I was referring to that to acknowledge the complexity of talking about these things, and not to evade anything.



I fully agree to this statement, vamsidasji, simply because Europe is much too complex, all the different states have completely differing perspectives and problems, that i do not kow. The U.S. is a more or less unified whole, I can dare to narrow down in a few sentences the life experience there.

My main proposition is that it is the life-experience that shapes religious choices. The way immediate needs are filled, the way nature is experienced, language is formed etc. That is why I addressed common things of life. But certainly not enough to give a picture of a complete life. I hope that the life-experience of someone growing up in the U.S. and never knowing anything else is richer than what the world looks like there.

I have to admit to my anti-americanism. I confess to that without a problem. I like American individuals, blacks, and others. I can love the ignorant and the fat and the arrogant, the intellectual and the rich as individuals without a problem. But the U.S. as a collective is an unpleasant entity, to say it politely. What the world has to suffer for those barely 250 million people is indiscribable. The way U.S. policies, and the ideologies treasured by the masses, are destroying the world is just sad. And I hate the way ACBS bought into the American way of doing things and jeopardized the Gaudiya tradition along with it. I guess, I have to be as thankful for that, as I have to be thankful for what happened in WW2, because without the U.S.A. being so big and fat, I might not have heard of the glories of Sri Nitai-Gaur and Radhe-Shyam.

Joy Nitai.

Nabadip,

Please accept my dandavat pranams.

Putting other rhetoric and apparent misunderstandings aside, I believe that the crux of our differing perspectives comes down to the above-quoted points.

You admit that in Europe, you see that "all the different states have completely differing perspectives and problems." Yet you see the United States as a homogenous whole.

By contrast, I see some commonalities among the European states, along with their differences, and I see some similarities in their various perspectives and problems. I believe that these commonalities can aid our understanding.

I also see that the U.S. is not a monolith as you perceive; there is much to learn from its tremendous internal differences (and even contradictions) as well as its obvious commonalities.

I think you are missing out on much when you write, regarding the U.S.:



Yes, the life experience of David Rockefeller, in his Manhattan penthouse, has a great deal in common with an unemployed Native American mother living on the reservation outside Gallup, New Mexico. Both of these have a great deal in common with a successful Hanafi Muslim architect living on the outskirts of Washington, DC. All three of these have a great deal in common with a teacher at a "fundamentalist Christian" high school in Dallas, Texas. And all four of these have a great deal in common with a senior citizen in southern California who leaves his job as a Wal-Mart greeter to accept employment from a Vietnamese family whose retail business is prospering.

Obviously, there are huge similarities and commonalities that run through American life. But there are also huge differences that, if not understood, can cause the viewer to miss out on the "big picture."

As I said before, your posts lead me to suspect that you undervalue the importance of class in your analysis. And there is the whole matter of international corporations; a top Daimler-Chrysler executive may reside in Stuttgart or Saginaw, but will you peg him as "American" or "German" or something else altogether?

Finally, as Europe becomes more and more "unified" and thus takes on characteristics more like the "United States," I suspect that analyses like yours will become more and more obsolete. The EU in many ways aspires to a collective vision of itself that will bring many of the same perils that you rightly decry in the U.S.

Nabadip,

Here is another important difference between your perspective and mine. In the U.S. there are differing opinions as to what constitutes "racial prejudice." Your above statement would be interpreted, by some Americans who are comfortable with a diverse and multicultural society, as hopelessly naîve and at least latently racist.

I do not believe you are a racist. But I want to make sure that you understand that with your above statement you have illustrated one of the differences within the U.S. that someone like yourself may not otherwise be aware of.

Returning to the original topic of Jagat's thread ("Secularism and Fundamentalism"), I find your above statement particularly fascinating. In America, your statement would be typical of many fundamentalists, while many secularists in America would read your words and be inclined to wonder whether you harbor some degree of unexamined racism.

Again, please understand that I am not calling you a racist. I am merely pointing out that (to generalize a bit) your expressed attitude is one that you have in common with America's fundamentalists, and is an attitude that puts you at odds with America's secularists.

You may be more "American" than you realize!

And this is a bad thing, right?

Vamsidas, I agree to the class difference perspective. But I continue to naively insist in the basic commonalities, the kind of choices that are available in a country where you find a sharp difference between civilisation and wilderness, and in expressions of the constitutionally codified right for "the pursuit of happiness" at any cost. The relationship of man to nature, the way it is learned in childhood; the way reality is commonly perceived, that is in America mainly thru glass windows, namely the TV and the car (and now the PC as well). Everyone has also other means to relate to reality according to ethnic, religious and class differences, but TV, car and PC are major commonalities which shape a type of consciousness and attitude, by reducing subjectivity to functionality and operationality. (I wonder what the general experience in Canada is like, since they have probably the same kind of basic situation of culture versus wilderness in a huge area.)

On my first trip to America in 1978, when Iceland-Air was the cheapest connection, Luxemburg-Reijkiavik-New York, I met an ITT executive on the plane who had no other choice than travel in tourist coach since there was no other flight from Iceland to N.Y. We got to talk about life in Europe and the U.S.; he told me had grown up in England and migrated to the U.S.; he vividly expressed his happiness of being American, as in contrast to the petty differences within Britain, let alone the rest of Europe. At one point he shouted out loud: "We are all Americans". And I got to see what he meant. I arrived at night at my destination in Albany, the capital of N.Y. state. When I woke up in the morning and stepped out of the Howard Johnson's motel, the first thing I saw was a huge Lincoln parked at my door, with the licence plate saying: Live free or die.

These contrasts are archetypal expressions of U.S. Americanity reflecting an inborn experience of what it means to be American to many. The idea of freedom, expressed with a huge luxury car that means so much exploitation, starvation and death to others, it may be a little more refined today, but Bush is acting on the same paradigm, as is your Walmart senior citizen, or the Mexican illegal farm labourer and the N.Y. Times editor. I know well how seducing that feeling is. I love the welcoming attitude of Americans. They always assume you are a citizen, no matter how much your accent is showing. (With me some say I sound like I'm from Boston. That will mean more to you than it does to me.) I love to be in a country where they do not recognize ever where you are from and where you can act as though you are a part of it since the dawn of creation. It feels great, that's why "everyone" loves Mac Donald's, the Disney World, Coke and the rest outside the U.S.

The franchise, by the way, is a characteristic American post-war invention, that made Iskcon the success it became. As you can step into any Mac Donalds and participate in the basic bland American experience, you can step into any Iskcon temple and get that bland version of Indian spirituality, nicley packaged and sold in (un)palatable bites.

Race is one of the "no-no" words that have become extremely difficult if not impossible to use. It is too much fraught with experiences of blood-shed, suffering, repression and social unhappiness in general. Very difficult to address without stepping into traps, because everyone has different connotations with that word. I realize I was using it too naively on an international forum. I am living in a country, where you find differences of coustom, language, name, and identities associated with the differences, every few miles. Switzerland is probably the most diversified country next to India and perhaps Brasil. Perhaps Russia too, since that is so big. Ultimately we find diversity everywhere, depending on the screen we apply.

The unfortunate thing that has happened in America, and is now happening in Europe too, is that increasing take-over of economy as the culture-forming factor, and the reciproque loss of subjective value experience. This destruction of culture is happening now the world over, especially also in India which was forced by U.S. led institutions to open its markets to the U.S. and other market forces, in 1991. The Americanization of the world is progressing.

I am sure you have seen the result for instance when you step out of the Nandagram Mandir and face a whole wall of a house turned into a Pepsi-bill-board, right next to an altar with little Gaur-Nitai murtis. The slow but unhaltable destruction of Vrindavan thru the Iskcon-franchise at Ramanreti, their invasion of the markets, and the new standards that every old temple access needs to be in new marble to be honoured by pilgrims. (Sure there are also positive sides, Paramadvaiti's proposal to building a canal for the sewage parallel to the Yamuna for instance.)

My over-all concern for the immediate future is the question of the accessability of the Holy Dhams according to the policy changes of the changing Indian governments which reflect the perception of the foreigner, especially the American, in India. America is now set for tremendous reactions from the Muslim world. If the Indian Muslims get affected by it as well, and they are a much-feard stronghold of voters for prospective governments, then we might get seriously affected as well. Let's hope for the best, and pray to the protector of the Holy Dham.

You're coming close to the "cause of all causes"? The central bank system was created to control the worlds economies through control over the creation of currency by private banks posing as psuedo state owned banks. Federal reserve is a privately held corporation, it was called federal in order to conceal this fact to the general public, it is as federal or state owned as federal express, similiarly is ECB a privately hold coperation by the same clan members. While exposing american soldiers as the cause of all evil, the new Iraqi currency is secretly being installed to be controlled by pushing an up and down button in NY.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/wor...ency-reform.htm

To get back to the original topic of this thread, Christian fundamentalism, its American version and its relation to neo-Hindu organisations, I’d like to propose the following outline of an analysis:

If we accept the paradigm of evolution in socio-religious development, we can see a progress from archaic man for whom the world of experience is wholly noumenous and man participating in that sacred nature; to the man of Magic, where man and the world are separated but reconnected through ritual action; to the man of Myth, in which the consciousness awakens into the polarity of gods enacting the play of good and evil and man playing a role also, told in stories about the creation and so on; to the man of Mind, who develops philosophies about reality and an explicit theology about the nature of one God…

What we see is an increasing profanization of an experience of the world as a sacred place. The Latin word Profanum means pro=in front of, fanum, from fari, to speak in ecstasy; the profane is the place outside the temple, outside the place where the sacred is revealed. In the archaic experience the world of man, his village in the forest and his hunting area, is sacred. In the temple the sacred gets objectified, while the world of experience is enlarged to the polis, and in Rome to the imperium.

In the context of Christianity the profanization process becomes secularization, from Latin saeculum, originally the century, taken as the worldly time in contrast to eternity, applied to things handed over from the Church to worldly powers. The Catholic Church made the Holy Mass its central instrument of the re-enactment of participation with the divine; the mass consisting of a language based part and a ritual based part. The services of the church were required for man to find grace and redemption from sin, and participation in the ritual was mandatory for salvation. The Reformation ended that. Martin Luther’s slogan “sola scriptura!” (only the scripture) opened the flood-gates for individualization of the religious experience and the re-interpretation of what constituted participation with God and salvation.

I think we can see in this process of profanization /secularization an increasing drive towards language-based religiosity. The Catholic Church holds kind of a balance with magical rite, mythical story and mental explanation. In the Protestant environment the balance shifts to the mental explanation side of the mythical stories; rites are reduced or eliminated, pictures allowing identification are abolished. The model of the Preacher is born: Everything depends on what someone says and the response he gets, the evoked religion is completely language-based.

What is specific about the American type of Protestantism? The pragmatic use of mass-media? The proselytation? Where does that conviction come from that God is on the side of America, that this is God's own country?

So how do you envision the bhakti path, in terms of the analysis you have just given? How do you see devotees positioning themselves on this spectrum?

I am not quite sure how your analysis is meant to bear on the American kind of fundamentalist religiosity or nationalism. The last paragraph unfortunately comes across as something of a non-sequitur.

I'll reserve further comment for later, if possible.

What seems to happen in America is a generalized re-sacralisation of life and living-space, mainly on the basis of declaration, of language alone. It results in a kind of metaphysical nationalism, an ideology of being chosen to show the rest of the world the real path to peace and prosperity. It does not necessarily include that everyone has to be Christian, but certainly the own experience shows that assumed moral superiority.

(Some commentators here in Europe say that this scandal in Iraq is so shattering to American believes because the common people assume a certain moral strength, to be of an exemplary nature for everyone. Now that the opposite seems to be shown, the belief in an hightened self-worth is shattered. Many things of ordinary life in the U.S. have a para-religious aspect. I am not familiar enough with the details to point that out now at length. Just one example is "the worship" of the flag, and the oath of allegiance. When I first heard that that existed, that every child grows up saying that prayer every day in school, I was shocked. Not having been exposed to such kind of indoctrination myself, except a short time in Iskcon, I cannot really relate to what that does to one's consciousness.)

One point I would like to come to, is how the special U.S. American situation invites the type of preaching that was developed in Iskcon, and then exported to the rest of the world. Another point is the potential that Bhakti-practices offer to re-introduce a multi-dimensional religious experience (magical(ritual)-mythical-mental), and the conflicts with the existing model of experience (language-based religiosity).

Of course, I am aware that I am arguing on a model basis, reducing or ignoring a lot of complexity involved. Religion is the most complex reality of human existence.

As Max Weber's "The Protestant Ethics" has shown, worldly activity, especially earning money, has become part of the religious activity for the protestant believer. The U.S.A. as a capitalist society (again a reduction) offers a different type of religious experience than does India or another country. It creates its own space for its own variety of religious experiences. When traveling to different countries I feel exposed to influences that are particular to that country. In other words, my larger religious experience is different, depending on the place I am staying (with larger religious experience I mean aspects of religiosity that are outside of my direct sadhana practice, but may be the framework-condition ((German: Rahmen-Bedingung)) for that practice).

There is an interesting concept that Satyanarayan das refers to in his book "The Yoga of Dejection" (a commentary on the first chapter of the Gita). He mentions how different places have different effects on the consciousness of a person. He mentions a story of the Pandavas, when Bhima, otherwise a faithful follower of Yudisthira, crosses a river, and starts to criticize and blame his brother for the calamity they are in. Y. then calls B. back saying he is standing on land that pulls his consciousness down into unwholesome activity. When B. is back from the other side of the river he feels at one again with his brothers.

My thesis: The country we are staying, the local ideology, has an effect on our approach to religion. That is most likely a reason why sojorn in the Holy Dham is a requirement for the sadhaka. The activity itself is transcendental, but the environment is the basis for any life-expression. The American protestant type of Christianity is a largely language-based kind of religion (subjective experiences induced by objective preaching). Bhakti-orgs have accepted some of those characteristics, while themselves presenting a multi-dimensional model for religious practice/experience. The GM-offshoots are perhaps a little more on the side of language-based religion, in terms of their stressing reading books, preaching and proselytation, while the traditional Gaudiyas are more in balance in terms of ritual-mythic-mental dimensions of religion. Socially they are a highly individualized bunch, thereby connecting to the extreme individualism promoted by post-modern societies.

Hmmmmmmmmm.............. couldn't it just be that Bhima had an honest and justifiable gripe with his brother and his brother didn't want to face the music?

Maybe, but the point here was that different types of places have different effects on people. One notices this also with mountain-people versus flat-landers, more narrow, more rooted people versus more open, more flexible ones.

In your part of the world, which of the two, mountaineers or flat-landers, tend to be more open minded?

Flat-landers are more open in the sense of being more exposed to a variety of world-views, with a tendency to be more superficial. But this has also to do with urbanity. Cities are more in flat-lands than in mountaneous area. In a larger perspective one can observe in Europe a divide in terms of flat-landers that accepted the Reformation and mountain-people who remained Catholics. This divide is not 100%, but there is a tendency like that. Bavaria, for instance, a mountaneous part of Germany is strongly Catholic, and on the other extreme the flattest land in Europe, Holland is mainly Protestant.

Certainly there are other factors as well. Mountain-people are more depth oriented and slow to change, more conservative, more observing nature, because mountains are dangerous, especially in winter because of avalanches. In Switzerland people know of generational avalanches, that are avalanches that come once every fourty or so years. If the knowledge of this observation is forgotten and people start to build houses in the way that avalanche is known to take, then catastrophe is programmed. That is one example why observation, preservation of knowledge, and strict up-keep of tradition is vitally important.

On the other hand the experience of a mountain (like hiking on a mountain) gives different vistas every few steps. That experience makes for more differentiation in one's view.

I had little exposure to mountain-people in the two places on earth where I lived outside my home-country, Switzerland - the U.S. and India. One of my few experiences was the one when I lived in Ashland, Oregon, which is kind of in the mountains, right after the border to California, even though nothing like the real mountains in the Rockies. Ashland is a place of a lot of differentiation (College-town, Shakespeare-plays, inspite of a pop. of less than 20'000). The only mountain-people I know in India are the ones living at mount Goverdhan

Certainly there are some differences in attitudes between Europeans and Americans, but is there such a gulf between us? Maybe I missed something. When I lived in Europe in the late 70s, I did not find it to be all that different from America. I think there is danger in generalizing. I see a huge number of subcultures and gradations within each subculture over here. America has been called the great melting pot for a reason. The media would have us believe that there is something called 'pop culture', but that is also largely a myth. It can only by partially supported by statistics on market share for various products and box office numbers at the movie theater, but there is a quite a difference between a Republican Senator in Washington D.C. and a pot smoking Deadhead (Grateful Dead fan) from the Bay area of the same age group, even if both of them own Grateful Dead records and even of both of them wear the same brand of blue jeans (although its only on weekends for the Senator). And what about the Native Americans and their culture? The support for the Iraq war is hardly unanimous. The latest polls only show slightly more people for it than against it.

There are many problems to solve on a global scale. My personal disappointment is in America, among other major world powers, in being a true leader in addressing those problems. Environmental, health and population issues cannot be ignored, because they affect every man, woman and child on the planet, what to speak of future generations.

Why having to be a leader? Let it just be one of the many nations in the world. You know, that is the error infiltrated into your brains and hearts, that you are to be leaders, you are so great, so that you should be exemplary. America is on a false guru-trip. No one in the world accepts the U.S. as guru really (only if money as a reward is involved), but would happily accept you as a friend.

The last few days have completely changed the tone of discourse. Things that hadn't been discussed from some time are being brought back to the fore. I was just listening to Robert Fisk of the Independent on CBC describing an American convoy on the highway to Baghdad, silently watching the display of military might rumble by, shaking the ground below, while Ray-ban wearing soldiers peer down their automatic weapons from their perches on top of tanks and APCs. He said, I could imagine the same scene taking place 2000 years ago, standing by the side fo the road watching the Roman legions go by.

A powerful image with a clear message--and the point was that this was precisely the message that was being sent.

And this article by John MacArthur, which goes right to the heart of the "moral defense"--making the world "safe for democracy."

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Cut and run, and do it now

To hell with Wilsonian crusades -- the U.S. must get out of Iraq. The longer it stays, the worse things will get for everyone, says JOHN MacARTHUR

By JOHN MacARTHUR
Saturday, May 8, 2004 - Globe and Mail
Not long before U.S. soldiers made news with their sadistic, co-ed photo shoot of Iraqi prisoners, I dined with a small group of pedigreed New York liberals -- the ones known as Bush-haters -- and a ghost.

The conversation was following a predictable course -- contempt for the President pouring forth as freely as the wine -- so I didn't think twice about proposing a unilateral withdrawal of U.S. troops, the very opposite of saving face, and a strategy already labelled "cut and run" by Karl Rove.

All the living beings at the table were old enough to remember the crazy rhetoric of Vietnam troop escalation, as well as the cruelly absurd policies of de-escalation, Vietnamization and peace with honour, so why the awkward silence when I had finished? Suddenly the ghost spoke -- through the medium of a law school professor, who informed me that America had a "moral obligation" to remain in Iraq. Before the medium could go on, his socially astute wife aborted the seance, and we moved on to safer topics.

The ghost was Woodrow Wilson. Sadly, every debate on Iraq is dominated by his notion of moral obligation, not by George W. Bush's lies about atomic-bomb threats; not by the mounting corpses; not by the foolish distraction from tracking al-Qaeda; not by the war profiteering by Mr. Bush's friends and patrons; not by the violation of the U.S. Constitution and the Geneva Convention; not by the waste of money that could rebuild the United States's degraded public school system; not by the lessons from Vietnam. The Democratic "opposition" carps, but its presidential candidate suggests escalation -- more troops (some in different uniforms) to stabilize a situation that cannot be stabilized.

Mr. Bush and his friends from Halliburton are busy looting Iraq to enrich their temporal bank accounts, but Wilsonian liberals remain preoccupied with their immortal souls. The high-spirited U.S. volunteer army builds pyramids out of terrified, naked detainees, and John Kerry insists that "we cannot let the actions of a few overshadow the tremendous good work that thousands of soldiers are doing every day in Iraq and all over the world."

What will people say about us if we pull out? Last week, a Democratic congressman too young to remember Vietnam even told me that U.S. credibility is at stake in Iraq, that "we can't leave . . . can't cut and run."

Who says we can't leave? Sir Woodrow of the 14 points, that's who.

Liberals rarely invoke Mr. Wilson by name, yet I can always hear the pious, self-righteous and intolerant intellectual from Virginia creeping into their voices. If ever there was a time to argue against Mr. Wilson's faith-based ideology, it's now, before too many more people die guarding gas stations and oil-field contractors.

Mainstream historians typically attribute Mr. Wilson's simplistic, Manichean view of the world to his fervent Presbyterian beliefs -- what political historian Walter Karp summarized as "Wilson's tendency to regard himself as an instrument of Providence and to define personal greatness as some messianic act of salvation." Mr. Wilson's relentless perversion of Enlightenment ideals struck a chord in predominantly Protestant America, this country having been formed partly on a Calvinist idea of an elect people. At the same time, he sought to impose Rousseau's and Paine's rights of man on the non-elect peoples of the world, whether or not these noble savages wanted any part of them. "The world must be made safe for democracy," he famously cried in his war message to Congress in April, 1917.

Forcing democracy down the throats of tribal-based Arab clans was likely not at the top of Mr. Wilson's agenda at the Paris Peace Conference, but his lofty language masked the essential contradiction of ordering self-government at the point of a gun.

(When they colonized Iraq, the British didn't hesitate to borrow Wilsonian rhetoric about self-determination and liberation from Turkish despotism.) Mr. Wilson had made a test run of his ideals with his senseless and bloody interference in domestic Mexican politics, at Vera Cruz in 1914, but it was the U.S. intervention in the First World War that set the course of 20th-century U.S. foreign policy.

Most Americans wanted to remain neutral in the European butchery; indeed, political self-interest compelled Mr. Wilson to campaign for re-election in 1916 on a promise to keep us out of the Great War. But before long, on the grounds that "the right is more precious than peace," Mr. Wilson was sending unwitting farm boys off to inhale poison gas and die in the trenches of Flanders.

Didn't the Wilsonian Bush-haters like my dinner acquaintance note Mr. Bush's cynical invocation of St. Woodrow during his state visit to London in November? Referring to the "God-given [not secular law- enforced] dignity of every person" Mr. Bush observed that "the last president to stay at Buckingham Palace was an idealist, without question." Mr. Wilson, he recalled with misplaced irony, "made a pledge; with typical American understatement, he vowed that right and justice would become the predominant and controlling force of the world."

Mr. Bush's smirking pieties fall flatter with each wasted life of an American soldier, with each dead Arab woman or child. But they also reveal both his insincerity and his grandiose identification with his predecessor.

He has no intention of establishing anything more than a puppet government in Iraq; when it comes to sheer effrontery, George Bush has perhaps only one peer: Woodrow Wilson.

Even severe critics of the Iraq fiasco, like Peter W. Galbraith, feel obliged to endorse the smug Wilsonian premise of the invasion. (Does anyone remember that Hitler initially achieved power through the democratic "process"?) Writing in the latest New York Review of Books, he flatly states that "except for a relatively small number of Saddam Hussein's fellow Sunni Arabs who worked for his regime, the peoples of Iraq are much better off today than they were under Saddam Hussein."

How can he be so sure? A recent USA Today poll found that 46 per cent of the Iraqis surveyed felt that more harm than good had come of the invasion, with only 33 per cent responding that more good than harm had been done. More than 56 per cent thought U.S. and British forces should leave promptly. Unable to answer pollsters are the uncounted thousands of dead Iraqi non-combatants; are they better off today than they were under Saddam? It doesn't matter too much to the Wilsonians; they always mean well when they spill blood.

Count me out of the Woodrow Wilson brigade. Maybe there is a role for the United Nations in Iraq, although I suspect that occupying soldiers wearing different uniforms will be taken about as seriously as a League of Nations mandate. We do have a moral obligation: to withdraw from Iraq as soon as possible, not build a Potemkin village and call it democracy.

I understand that full-scale civil war between Sunnis and Shias may well break out after we leave, with or without UN peacekeepers. Of course, I hope that author Mahmood Mamdani was correct when he told Bill Moyers in a recent interview, that everything becomes negotiable (even elections) once the United States announces a genuine withdrawal because "it will separate the terrorists from the nationalists . . . the nationalist then has no reason to confront the U.S. militarily; the terrorist does."

In the event of civil war, we must assume a second moral obligation: to accept as many refugees as possible, just as we did with some of the non-communist Vietnamese who fled Hanoi's advancing armies. We welcomed President Nguyen Van Thieu and Gen. Nguyen Cao Ky; we should even find a place for stalwart members of the Iraqi Governing Council.

John R. MacArthur is publisher of Harper's Magazine.

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