Ex Cathedra has not been in a good mood of late. I mean, even compared to my usual. Not at all. It dawned on me that in the past year and a half or so, nothing in my life has actually improved. In every way that counts, it's been losses. Some recuperation here and there, but the general trend is deconstructive. And shows no signs of altering course.
Just to make matters worse I got an email from a local school --in Marin County--connected to an alma mater of mine. It includes this activity description for one of its "centers", the one for "Cultural Healing and Social Praxis".
It is my idea of Hell.
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Just to make matters worse I got an email from a local school --in Marin County--connected to an alma mater of mine. It includes this activity description for one of its "centers", the one for "Cultural Healing and Social Praxis".
It is my idea of Hell.
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5 comments:
The MBA programme looks fine, but the psychology programme looks even better.
For instance, from the description for PSY814 »Psychology of Love and Intimacy. The longing for love and intimacy is our deepest human yearning. Yet many people pass through life deeply unfulfilled.« So true, yes?
Re ex cathedra's own idea of hell, perhaps you should take this course on evil as a refresher. It offers the best of genealogy or relativism ("evil" and "good" are "concepts" "developed" by das Man Selbst "cultures") and one-sided liberal moralism.
»PSY 813 Psychology of Evil. All cultures have developed their own conception of good and evil. Yet, the study of the nature of evil has often been forbidden. As evil has evolved and increased in complexity in our time, there is an urgent necessity to try and understand this phenomenon, as those who are attracted to manifest evil are able to manufacture and employ increasingly dangerous weaponry, both literally and psychologically.«
N.B. also the absurd, shallow claim that evil in our time is "more complex" than say during the time of Pascal, Jansen and Loyola, or the French Revolution, Hegel, Marx and George Eliot, or Jesus and the Pharisees. ... Curiously, the course apparently will treat "evil" directly, not through its legitimation persona of "darkness."
And since "transformation" is evidently always something good, you could spoof them and take one of their weekend workshops and mention that a transformation goal you have is orientation change, and this for the sake of "community," namely finding acceptance from the Catholic spirituality of your family of origin and the American community. Also, maybe you're thinking of converting to Islam, and having only homosexual desires would be inconvenient.
(An INF such as er experiences in educational formats and persons of this sort not the 'hell' that an INT experiences but a strange sort of life spice.)
What's not to get off on in this description?
»PSY 833 Transformative Power of Ritual
Ritual is a necessity. As the lungs breathe, so does the soul ritualize. Ritual has an essential role in tending relationships, families, communities, and even workplaces. The origins of art and religion are in ritual; to ritualize is to make sacred. Our ancestors knew that life is unbearable without ritual. This course explores the creative and transformative uses of ritual in our everyday lives. Potential themes for the course include ritual in times of conflict, crisis, and illness; ritual and sexual experience; and ritual and temporary madness.«
This too is sweet, yes?
»PSY 821 Culture and Consciousness
Everyday life within modernity has been a wasteland for many. Emptiness, depression, and busyness are familiar states, rather than the fullness of being. In previous centuries, the sacred was experienced in everyday life. Societies were organized around rituals which bound the lives of individuals to a religious worldview. In contemporary secular cultures, finding one’s relationship to the sacred sadly becomes the task and challenge of the individual. Essential to a culture of participation is animism as a mode of perception. This course explores the role of animism in the co-evolution of culture and consciousness. Several key texts are reviewed which offer psychological and historical perspectives on Western approaches to the sacred. The course focus is on the Italian Renaissance as an example of the convergence of art, religion, and science, within a past culture where the animated image vitalized both culture and consciousness.«
-The second sentence even implies (correctly, in a way, in terms of the presence of the God in tedium) that we should experience "emptiness, depression and busyness" as "the fullness of being."
-On the one hand, praise for "the sacred in previous centuries" implies a revaluation of ancestral Tridentine Catholicism and ancestral Calvinism (sanctification of everyday life, including through the well-known 'work ethic' vocation). But instead the "Italian Renaissance" is selected I guess because what's on offer is culture philistinism. (Galileo's embarrassment of clerics, good science. 20th-century atomic bombs, bad science. ... Evolution theory used for egalitarianism, good science; evolution theory used for social Darwminism, bad science.)
Certainly, we all know that the work of Mr. exCathedra's peacemaking is never easy. It’s very challenging to manage his small non-profit— even in a familiar and safe environment with the tools and resources at hand. We can hardly imagine the depth of spirit and body that Mr. exCathedra has had to call on to accomplish his amazing work in the isolated right-thinking communities of the West Coast.
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