So Many Worlds, So Little Time

Davie writes that "Although Christian theologians have frequently spoken of the Unacknowledged Christ of the Vedanta, they have been strangely silent about the Unacknowledged Vedanta behind Christianity."

This is unfortunate, because, as alluded to yesterday, the metaphysical principles embodied in Vedanta -- i.e., the Upanishads -- "can be shown to supply the logical precondition of orthodox Christianity."

Certainly they provide a better fit than, say, the dualistic Platonism that some of the early fathers over-relied upon in order to make sense of their new revelation.

More generally, if Christianity is truly universal, there can be no objection to assimilating ideas and concepts from other cultures in ardor to advance our understanding.

True, Christianity is also a historical religion, which can at times work counter to the idea of universality. For example, if the arc of salvation runs only from Jerusalem to Rome, that excludes an awful lot of history. Perhaps we need to reframe the command to preach to the four corners of the world.

World.

There is the exterior world, of course, but more importantly, there is also the interior world. If you take the command literally, you might as well stand alone on top of a mountain in some far off corner of the earth, yelling into the wind.

No, the point is, you have to reach the people who inhabit those corners.

We've all heard about the "first world," "second world," "third world," etc. Every once in awhile it occurs to me that I need to write a post about how there are also various internal worlds in different stages of development.

Starting back-to-front, Professor Wiki says that the 4th world consists of socially excluded sub-populations (even if living in the first world), and hunter-gatherer, nomadic, pastoral, and subsistence farming peoples living beneath the modern industrial norm.

Third world peoples have entered history, and are at least starting to develop, while first world countries are completely there. The second world might be thought of as an attempt to arrest time -- as in the case of contemporary progressives -- via a planned economy.

But as we know from baneful expedience, any effort to control a self-organizing structure from the top down results in chaos, so the second world ends up tending toward the third, as we see in Obamaworld -- e.g., record numbers of people on food stamps and disability, millions giving up on finding work, etc.

How would the above scheme apply to the interior worlds? I suppose you would say that progress in this domain represents a conquest of dimensionality, as we have discussed in the past.

I'm starting to run out of time, but it occurs to me that the interior analogue of the second world would also tend toward the third and fourth, as it involves a rejection of time and of verticality. As we know, there is nothing progressive about progressivism.

Hmm. While searching for something else, it occurs to me that I might have adequately discussed all this in the past, e.g., Pimp-Slapping Obama and Conserving Our Metaphysical Dream of Progress, Universal Religion and the Many Worlds Hypothesis, and Just One Thing I'd Like to Know, How You Stay High, and Live So Low.

Down to 12 minutes. Time enough to say that the fourth world is diffuse mythological/magical, the third world centralized mythic/magical authoritarianism, the second world progressive / leftist / fascist / socialist / atheist statism, and the first world the vertically informed horizontality of American-style classical liberalism.

No time to read them, but probably some more relevant posts under this heading.

And now 5 minutes to spielcheck.