💾 Archived View for envs.net › ~mukappa › 2022-05-21.gmi captured on 2022-06-03 at 22:58:30. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
This book is about how the following statement came to make sense to the hoi polloi
I am a woman trapped in a man's body
A revolution in the sense of "self" occurred starting in the Enlightenment, culminating in the sexual revolution. Charles Taylor identified a turning inward so as to find the source of morality and meaning that occurred in the transition. Before the turn, the purpose of life was largely social, after it became expressive individualism.
Basic Concepts:
Pivotal thinkers:
Purpose of the book is to help modern church understand its environment.
The self has become centered as never before on its sexual aspect.
"I think, therefore I am." has evolved into "I think I am a woman,
therefore I am a woman".
"social imaginary": Corresponds to a social theory, but not come to by
reason. "The water we swim in."
The promiscuous have always been present, but with the introduction of
effective technology to support them, they have become politically
assertive and more dominant in the culture.
Two different ways of seeing the world
The locus of control passes from the world to the individual, the shift largely due to changes in technology. "I am a woman trapped in a man's body" goes from being hopeless, to reasonbly fixable.
Philip Rieff's "The Triumph of the Theraputic (1966)" starts with Freud's theory the culture arises from sublimated lust, aka taboo. Traditional culture is formed by institutions that shape the individual. Ancient man was formed largely by his participation in politics. Medieval man by his participation in the religion of his day, e.g. Canterbury Tales. Economic man, whose value arose from making money followed, supplanted now by psychological man whose worth comes out of his pursuit of inward happiness. Economic man's job satisfaction stemmed primarily from being able to support his role as father whereas psychological man's satisfaction is more pegged to the psychic rewards of the job itself. Medieval man took his satisfaction from integration into his community, his priest served as his therapist whose aim was to teach him the rituals and roles of his integration. Starting with Rousseau the community came to be seen as a source of oppression rather than satisfaction. Later thinkers, Marx and Freud, considered society the major source of unhappiness and sought to revolutionize it, in particular with regard to sexual codes. All prior types had man fitting to his institutions. Psychological man ushered in an era in which the institutions were forced to fit their individual members. In former times, the telos of schools was to inform and educate its members. Now they are places for self actualization.