Nationalism and religion
Mar. 11th, 2008 12:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
leftyjewSo the world is twofold in accordance with humankind's twofold views. Apparently Soleveitchik and Buber agree on that. They disagree with what those two folds are. I'm reading Halakhic Man right now and it's fun to see R' Soleveitchik pick up on other philosophers (Buber, Kant, Hegel, talmud, and others that fly over my head because I haven't read them) and spin them around to his own thing. I wonder if I read more philosophy how much more I would recognize in philosophy. This is sorta converse to what Avi was saying months ago about art being dead. For a while, art's purpose was to find the boundaries of art and to define itself. Once art learned that it had no boundaries, it effectively died. Philosophy can spiral into itself and continue to play off of themes and consistently redefine the world in light of new ideas or new plays off of old ideas. I should talk with philosophers more often.
But the title of this post was related to conceptions of nationalism. Tibetan Buddhism has been consistently nationalistic since (maybe before) the advent of nationalism. Growing up in China-controlled East Asia, but living outside of the system for so long really gets you accustomed to being on top of the world, so to speak. Tibet ruled others (pre-Genghis Mongolia, northern South Asia) and itself for a long time, and not so nicely. Now (read: post-Great Leap Forward) they're threatened by China.
Israel has never really been powerful unless we're to believe in the inconsistent Davidian legends. Arabs in that part of the world were never really powerful, either. They were generally ruled by foreign powers (Persian, Roman, Greek, Ottoman, Babylonian...).
I'm interested in these two causes as foils. I'm not quite sure it's appropriate, but it's interesting to see the differences and similarities here. Because depending on what your two folds are, your world folds differently.
But the title of this post was related to conceptions of nationalism. Tibetan Buddhism has been consistently nationalistic since (maybe before) the advent of nationalism. Growing up in China-controlled East Asia, but living outside of the system for so long really gets you accustomed to being on top of the world, so to speak. Tibet ruled others (pre-Genghis Mongolia, northern South Asia) and itself for a long time, and not so nicely. Now (read: post-Great Leap Forward) they're threatened by China.
Israel has never really been powerful unless we're to believe in the inconsistent Davidian legends. Arabs in that part of the world were never really powerful, either. They were generally ruled by foreign powers (Persian, Roman, Greek, Ottoman, Babylonian...).
I'm interested in these two causes as foils. I'm not quite sure it's appropriate, but it's interesting to see the differences and similarities here. Because depending on what your two folds are, your world folds differently.
