[Jewelry making - Article 00664] - Re: [Orchid] Universal interfaith symbol

[Lisa Orlando]

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    The only post I made to this thread--requesting that Orchidians
    consider eschewing the use of the male generic--doesn't seem to have
    made it. Having reviewed several days I missed, I've noticed a few
    excellent posts, but I particularly liked Lee Einer's, which raised
    the point that this discussion might be an artifact of Western
    civilization. 

    So many modern "Western" people have such a sense of superiority
    when it come to the "primitive" beliefs that sustained our ancestors.
    This is as true for "people of the Book" (members of the three
    Western "Great Religions") as it is for what I think of as "people of
    the books" or "superstitious rationalists"--those for whom science is
    god and nothing is real that can't be demonstrated empirically.
    Fortunately, this belief is part of a dying scientific paradigm--I
    know an experimental physicist who feels more akin to ancient shamans
    than he does to most people who consider themselves "scientific." And
    I'm one of those people who hope the "formal religion" paradigm is
    dying, too--I like to believe that fundamentalism is "reactionary"
    and a sign that I'm right. 

    When I read some of the posts, I felt like saying, "What do you mean
    'we', white man?"--except that there are a lot of women involved, and
    who knows how many people of color. (This was my response when I
    first read philosopher Marshall Berman's assertion that, of course,
    "we know there aren't spirits in trees." I also threw the book across
    the room.) For example, I find it disturbing when the notion of the
    healing power of stones is relegated to the category of New Age
    nonsense--tell it to the Navajo. And, whatever its philosophical
    status, the "default human condition" is animism. 

    Yes, it's wonderful that I live in a country where (at least for
    now) everyone is entitled to her or his own religious beliefs or lack
    thereof. This is also a country where mines are dug in what
    indigenous people consider sacred land. Would I give up the first to
    prevent the second? I guess that's a post-modern question. 

    I would love to see someone like Dr. Denayer unpack the word
    "universal"--give it a history and a context, point out its internal
    contradictions and unintended consequences. "Interfaith" has a
    history, too--not a bad one, actually, but it isn't very universal.
    It's hard for me to know if the original impulse for this thread was
    grounded in the history of the interfaith movement--which I would bet
    already has its own symbols--or was actually an attempt to be
    universal. If the latter, I'm afraid we're heading toward what Hegel
    called (in a slightly different context) "a night in which all cows
    are black." Maybe we can avoid getting sued by Target if we make the
    symbol a circle that's been blackened. 

Humanly (and animistically) yours,

Lisa Orlando
Aphrodite's Ornaments
Benicia, CA


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