We live in a time when it is plausible to ask about every thought that comes into your mind, “who wants me to think that?” And, then, once you realize that, to inquire into the various means by which those others might be inducing you to think that. But things don’t stop there, because maybe those lines of inquiry themselves fall into the category of things others want me to think for reasons that, precisely because I am trying to sort out what is mine and what is theirs in my thinking, I will never discern. But, then, if this is our contemporary condition, we can then ask, compared to what? Thinking always comes from the center, and the center, as the depository of converged and abstracted discourses mediated by various chains of command, is always ahead of us—those who once lived in a mythico-ritual world were certainly not “thinking for themselves.” But it is possible to redeem the idioms one circulates within, even if their origins and logics exceed one’s own position within the circuit, insofar as one can test, refine and revise the imperatives issuing from the authorities we are bound by. The wildest “conspiracy theorists” not only do not set aside formal, established authorities, but organize all of their theories upon the discrepancy between what those authorities are authorized to do and what they in fact do. We can’t think outside of the powers that would set the terms of any adjudication we might enter or be drawn into, but we can think their outside by entering the space of judgment and recording where justice is done or denied, and getting more precise about what would count as “justice” by working with the assumption that anything we call justice must be doable. This requires intellectual discipline, and the creation of at least preliminary or virtual disciplinary spaces.
This one was particularly striking to me. I appreciate the line there about the British initiative in the "American project" being some line of credit-ritual. (You say 'subordination to central banking with unlimited credit', in this case.)
It reminds me of the same (not so coincidental) relationship Amos Funkenstein was drawing out in Theology and the Scientific Imagination. There he was drawing out the parallels for how God (and increasing literacy) sets the path for the basis of scientific thought. He has a lot of interesting arguments that seem to be cross hatching in my head, reading this article.
You'll see along the lines of other historians (when attempting to map out the theoretical boundaries of disciplines of religion-qua-religion transitioning to religion-qua-science) the introduction of "the infinite". To me, it seems like essentially we could replace, let's say, literacy devaluing God, or the concept of the infinite de-moralising nature (and making theology materialistic), with ultimately what you talk about there with the kingdom now being "subordination to a central (data) bank that presupposes infinite data".
In this case, rather than say infinite data, I suppose we could either posit 1) a disciplinary space where the central data-bank has "currency", or "meaning," and 2) an imperative to expand that disciplinarian space, or meaning, to all potential spaces.
This one was particularly striking to me. I appreciate the line there about the British initiative in the "American project" being some line of credit-ritual. (You say 'subordination to central banking with unlimited credit', in this case.)
It reminds me of the same (not so coincidental) relationship Amos Funkenstein was drawing out in Theology and the Scientific Imagination. There he was drawing out the parallels for how God (and increasing literacy) sets the path for the basis of scientific thought. He has a lot of interesting arguments that seem to be cross hatching in my head, reading this article.
You'll see along the lines of other historians (when attempting to map out the theoretical boundaries of disciplines of religion-qua-religion transitioning to religion-qua-science) the introduction of "the infinite". To me, it seems like essentially we could replace, let's say, literacy devaluing God, or the concept of the infinite de-moralising nature (and making theology materialistic), with ultimately what you talk about there with the kingdom now being "subordination to a central (data) bank that presupposes infinite data".
In this case, rather than say infinite data, I suppose we could either posit 1) a disciplinary space where the central data-bank has "currency", or "meaning," and 2) an imperative to expand that disciplinarian space, or meaning, to all potential spaces.
Good article, anyways.