4 ms·
It's kind of sad how much nuance and meaning modern humans are able to crush down into words like "religious practices". It makes me wonder what parts of our pr
by voldacar 7y ago
It's kind of sad how much nuance and meaning modern humans are able to crush down into words like "religious practices". It makes me wonder what parts of our present world will be compressed or misunderstood or glossed over by people in 1000+ years
- derefr 7y ago"Religious practices" has always seemed like a coherent concept to me, the way anthropologists use it—but one that doesn't really fit the label we've given it. It's almost a diagnosis of exclusion: "religious practices" are everything about a culture, other than its economy (trade, productive marketable craft), and its politics (tribalism, war, game-theory). Most art and music in modern culture would fit neatly under the "religious practices" anthropological aegis. Which isn't a bad or wrong thing, I don't think! The category is a correct and natural division, and anthropologists are right to group "all that stuff" together. The label on the grouping is what's silly.
- voldacar 7y agoNo I think you are very right. It's just all too easy for us, who inhabit a mostly secular public sphere, to apply our own mental/linguistic concept of "religious || non-religious" when thinking about cultures that probably did not apply such a rigid sort of filter to the world around them. I guess that is a challenge in any kind of historical context.
- derefr 7y agoI find it tempting to try to come up with better labels for the concept, despite it being unlikely that the greater anthropology community will ever shift to using them. Spiritual zeitgeist might fit, I think—it describes the motivation behind most art that’s not associated with a particular coherent artistic movement. It’s “what people were feeling—and wanting to commiserate about feeling—at the time.”