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Something I've been thinking as it involves physically developing horses (dressage) working through trauma physically, and getting ready to write about it, and listening to this (glad I found you again Cadell) :
Every science needs a soul, and every body needs a core.
Otherwise repressions/external rigid structures are required as crutches,
and come into the body and mind automatically (yet pathologically) as self limiting range of motion/ thinking/experiencing.
It takes time and very specifically developed systematic training to develop a core, if we are to be able to overcome a problem (ei a trauma, or the problem for the horse of carrying the weight of the rider)
I was actually just in Ireland and Northern Ireland all August.
Loved Ireland a most beautiful country, I miss it!
With Saint Stephen's University, studying Peace and Liberation Theology!
Some of my fellow students mentioned Peter Rollins with high regards.
And I was like wait I know that name, from my political studies!
Funny the strange connections we don't know, lol.
Do you Peter Rollins know Jonny Clark!?
Bro chose to become a meth addict? No way that worked out for him.
Was on the fence about joining the course, but after this talk, it's a no brainer. There were two points that I really resonate with and have come across in my current readings. In bell hooks' All About Love, she quotes a definition of love as "the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth", this explains love as two-fold, towards oneself then to others. I thought of this When Peter mentioned the primary narcissism of the child and says how it's necessary to become a subject so that then "when we love we pawn a little bit of our narcissism." I thought this was a great explanation of the two-fold nature of the other, 1. deep inside of ourselves and 2. out amongst other people.
The other point you made was about hip-hop and it's roots in "black culture which is (was) excluded from mainstream American culture." I very much appreciate this perspective, as I'm sure you are aware, there are not a lot of black voices in this space, likely due to the nature of the relationship of black culture and the church, but that's for another time. I've been reading Toni Morrison's writings lately and I am realizing that they contain a language that expresses the lack that is experienced due to the history of African-American's in America, the experience of being an outsider. They also contain the language of response to this oppression, which is echoed in the blues and jazz that are the roots of hip-hop. Morrison's writings and other writing of the black experience are “about love or its absence", she herself says, "“Black people never annihilate evil, they don’t run it out of their neighborhoods, chop it up, or burn it up. They don’t have witch hangings. They accept it. It’s almost like a fourth dimension in their lives." My overall point here is that the black experience, specifically in Morrison's writings can be, just as other great text, wrestled with in order for both individuals and groups to develop the ability to thrive as an outsider, existentially.
This "language of lack" is important in that it allows us to confront the lack in our own lives and learn to live with it and embrace. I am very much looking forward to this course and the opportunity to better understand this language and mode of being. Great work!
Finding atheism at the core of Christianity is indeed what makes the Christian Atheism project radical. Could it be a Badiouan Event similar to the protestant reformation? We'll only know in retrospect, but I do know there's something traumatic to it, too. For instance, I've been sharing a lot of Peter's work with my Christian friends (I, too, am some kind of a Christian), and despite Peter being one of the most cordial individuals and his public talks are always affable, most of the people I've shared his work with are antagonistic towards Pyrotheology and the like. The reason, in my view, is because Christian Atheism is an immanent critique (much like what Hegel does with presuppositionless metaphysics), and so finding this atheism within Christianity is diametrically opposed to an atheism imposed from the outer, which we see from the New Atheists and this immanent atheism does more violence (in the good sense) to our subjectivity leading to alienation (again, a good thing). In that vein, despite you or Peter not particularly using this language, I think Christian Atheism is a deeply ethical project.
This feels like I am watching the history of ideas unfold in real time, what an exciting time. Thank you both for all of your work!
Why does Ireland produce so many great writers?