Some intellectuals and scholars have a personal quest for minimizing magical thinking when it comes to the theoretical objects of their study.
Many more 'scholars' identify as minimizing magical thinking more generally.
I think that there is a persuasive enough 'soft' (non-mathematical) proof that magical thinking cannot be individually avoided. I think there is also another soft proof that human behavior theories must all be reduced order, to be communicated between humans, and maybe to be understood by humans.
(Choice of magical thinking matters.)
Lots of folks identify as believing in 'the science' and 'expertise', because they have internal magical formulas that are very important to them.
Shared rituals, and a basis in shared magical ideas seem to be required for populations to share enough magical theories of harms to have a consensus to allow (relative) internal peace. You get at least low level endemic warfare where ever every little war band is free to decide that they have been witched, and that the resolution is in blood.
Secular peace rests on the assumption of shared disbelief in witchcraft harms. At the population scale, this was never entirely secular; The 'silent majority' of conservatives were also quietly religious in a conventional way. Their Christianity or their Judaism by the time of the industrial revolution tended to also result in a complete disbelief in traditional magical theories. (and replacement by alternative magical theories)
Critical theory is in the Marxist tradition of alternative magical theories, and is a religious practice. It is a conspiracy theory that holds that peace and civilization were evil magics worked in ancient times, and that they are now righteously at war to restore a lot era of goodness.
2020 demonstrated remarkably that expert training institutions were so corrupted by religion of savagery and barbarism that the complete professional institutions are seemingly captured by savages and barbarians. As did 2021. 10/7/2023, and 2024 continue to demonstrate this.
There are answers. When the university theology departments were corrupt, US denominations split off and created replacement bible schools.
There is a chance that engineering programs at universities can be salvaged, but I understood 2020 and 2021 as the death of the university. May have been catastrophism.
The phenomenalogy of the old 'secular consensus of experts' involved 'hidden' Jews and Christians. The communists, technocrats, and totalitarians already had some influence over publicly facing information, and used that to minimize the signatures of their opposing faiths. What we have now is them infecting enough experts, of having so little competition in the lives of 'experts', that they saw themselves as having won. The first magic they did was to change their own minds. In this delusion of victory, they once more stepped beyond the bounds of civilization and of peace, and are perhaps being rejected again by the civilized and peaceable.
When I was younger I attended that Temple of Reason called the liberal-arts college where at least once a semester we engaged in the modern ritual known as The Protest:
First, there was the issue/pretext/cause, usually served up by the press and/or an organization dedicated to Human Rights (whose leaders all made claims about the Brotherhood of Man and our duties to the poor and oppressed, yet who also claimed to be anti-Christian atheists);
the cause often revolved around some sort of Victim class/group, who through their suffering had been redeemed and remade into the center of our moral universe and who were now the spotless guides and shepherds who would lead us all to Justice, if we only prayed/protested hard enough on their behalf (they were dying for our sins!);
our protest ritual usually involved taking over some part of the campus while marching, singing, holding hands, lifting our voices in unison as we chanted our prayers and demanded divine Justice, while denouncing the evil politicians and Pharisees who not only caused human suffering, but callously profited from it;
then once we got either a college bureaucrat or maybe a local politician to thank us all for our passionate devotion to the cause and laud us for being the great leaders of tomorrow, the protest would wrap up with a few cheers and chants and everyone would leave to go get wasted and/or laid, while still high from the glorious buzz of righteousness.
This is one of the newest strongest rituals of the West, especially for our secular leaders of the future, who are desperate for rituals of communion and salvation and have found these in Left politics and its eternal crusade for humanitarian egalitarianism. That this seems to be an ersatz form of Christianity, or even a Christian heresy, is probably obvious to everyone except the people involved.
The Pharisees. And likely, the Inquisitors and prosecutors of alleged witches.
As long as tradition does not descend into worshiping the form but denying the substance, it has value as a reminder of the substance.
But tradition can also mislead one into thinking they are living out the substance when they are just going through the motions. And a lot of rot can hide behind tradition, in a manner reminiscent of how Hamas hides behind innocent people.
Yeah.
My view somewhat parallels.
Some intellectuals and scholars have a personal quest for minimizing magical thinking when it comes to the theoretical objects of their study.
Many more 'scholars' identify as minimizing magical thinking more generally.
I think that there is a persuasive enough 'soft' (non-mathematical) proof that magical thinking cannot be individually avoided. I think there is also another soft proof that human behavior theories must all be reduced order, to be communicated between humans, and maybe to be understood by humans.
(Choice of magical thinking matters.)
Lots of folks identify as believing in 'the science' and 'expertise', because they have internal magical formulas that are very important to them.
Shared rituals, and a basis in shared magical ideas seem to be required for populations to share enough magical theories of harms to have a consensus to allow (relative) internal peace. You get at least low level endemic warfare where ever every little war band is free to decide that they have been witched, and that the resolution is in blood.
Secular peace rests on the assumption of shared disbelief in witchcraft harms. At the population scale, this was never entirely secular; The 'silent majority' of conservatives were also quietly religious in a conventional way. Their Christianity or their Judaism by the time of the industrial revolution tended to also result in a complete disbelief in traditional magical theories. (and replacement by alternative magical theories)
Critical theory is in the Marxist tradition of alternative magical theories, and is a religious practice. It is a conspiracy theory that holds that peace and civilization were evil magics worked in ancient times, and that they are now righteously at war to restore a lot era of goodness.
2020 demonstrated remarkably that expert training institutions were so corrupted by religion of savagery and barbarism that the complete professional institutions are seemingly captured by savages and barbarians. As did 2021. 10/7/2023, and 2024 continue to demonstrate this.
There are answers. When the university theology departments were corrupt, US denominations split off and created replacement bible schools.
There is a chance that engineering programs at universities can be salvaged, but I understood 2020 and 2021 as the death of the university. May have been catastrophism.
The phenomenalogy of the old 'secular consensus of experts' involved 'hidden' Jews and Christians. The communists, technocrats, and totalitarians already had some influence over publicly facing information, and used that to minimize the signatures of their opposing faiths. What we have now is them infecting enough experts, of having so little competition in the lives of 'experts', that they saw themselves as having won. The first magic they did was to change their own minds. In this delusion of victory, they once more stepped beyond the bounds of civilization and of peace, and are perhaps being rejected again by the civilized and peaceable.
When I was younger I attended that Temple of Reason called the liberal-arts college where at least once a semester we engaged in the modern ritual known as The Protest:
First, there was the issue/pretext/cause, usually served up by the press and/or an organization dedicated to Human Rights (whose leaders all made claims about the Brotherhood of Man and our duties to the poor and oppressed, yet who also claimed to be anti-Christian atheists);
the cause often revolved around some sort of Victim class/group, who through their suffering had been redeemed and remade into the center of our moral universe and who were now the spotless guides and shepherds who would lead us all to Justice, if we only prayed/protested hard enough on their behalf (they were dying for our sins!);
our protest ritual usually involved taking over some part of the campus while marching, singing, holding hands, lifting our voices in unison as we chanted our prayers and demanded divine Justice, while denouncing the evil politicians and Pharisees who not only caused human suffering, but callously profited from it;
then once we got either a college bureaucrat or maybe a local politician to thank us all for our passionate devotion to the cause and laud us for being the great leaders of tomorrow, the protest would wrap up with a few cheers and chants and everyone would leave to go get wasted and/or laid, while still high from the glorious buzz of righteousness.
This is one of the newest strongest rituals of the West, especially for our secular leaders of the future, who are desperate for rituals of communion and salvation and have found these in Left politics and its eternal crusade for humanitarian egalitarianism. That this seems to be an ersatz form of Christianity, or even a Christian heresy, is probably obvious to everyone except the people involved.
Who else was big on tradition?
The Pharisees. And likely, the Inquisitors and prosecutors of alleged witches.
As long as tradition does not descend into worshiping the form but denying the substance, it has value as a reminder of the substance.
But tradition can also mislead one into thinking they are living out the substance when they are just going through the motions. And a lot of rot can hide behind tradition, in a manner reminiscent of how Hamas hides behind innocent people.