Forall didn’t like it that people keep trying to find a self everywhere. However he trains us, we still mostly end up trying to find a self in us that is the real me and would make me happy if I could just find it and live by it. It’s weird to write that and see how it makes no sense. I mean, who is this me who isn’t the real me and why is the real me hiding from me? I wish I could see that while I’m doing it. (But what does that even mean?)
He said that another way we try to find a self is to search for the universal hypostasis, the one true thing that is the basis of everything else. He didn’t seem to like that we do this either.
In terms of history, he would often give the example of some people who say that technology drives history. That all that’s really happening in history is people are tinkering and when they invent something that works, that changes everything. He tried to be clear that this isn’t a deep true aspect of history that exists on its own without being dependent on anything else. He would often say, OK, that does change things, but why did anyone care about that? Those people’s values made them tinker, and changed how they tinkered. The easy example is that some people didn’t tinker at all for thousands of years. Other people tinker all the time. Why? Because some value tinkering and others don’t. That they value it is a value. Values underlie technology. The Church can change what people in a society value. So the Church changes technology.
Other times, he’d get annoyed that people would say that the Church controls everything. Like some people say that history is guided by God’s will. Well, yes, but then God’s will must support some people to make more money so they can control other people. Beyond the level of the individual, money changes which Church gets power, since the Church that supports those who make money will gradually gain more resources. So the Church that proclaims the values that support the economy will become the main Church. And now that we’re humanists, we say that history is guided by human will. Or even by tinkerers.
The State needs to keep everything under control, in order, in alignment. So it wants a Church that will keep order and will stop people from asking too many questions. This is really hard on the Church, because most Churches hold the deep goal of getting people to question everything. I’ve heard lots of people protest this. They’d disagree in the Q&A after his talk. And even though he’d explain that Churches want you to question everything but they are hindered in this goal because they need to offer order to the State to gain its support, in free time they’d still say they didn’t believe it. But I think it’s too simplistic to say the Church is just out to control you. They’re good people, too. They’re not that different from you.
He’d say that the issue for us to look at, as we design the next Church, is that the Church depends on the State for funding and protection. The only Church that really matters in any society is the one supported by the State. For example, humanism for the past few hundred years in the US. (He occasionally makes fun of us for believing that “Separation of Church and State” line, when it just means that Monotheist religions are kept separate from the State’s coffers, whereas humanist and materialistic religions get more funding than any other Churches in history.) The State depends on the Market for resources, and on the Church for authority. The only State that matters is the one supported by the Market in terms of resources and the Church in terms of the authority to use force and extract taxation. And the only Market that matters is the one supported by the State in terms of providing order so economic growth can continue, and the Church in terms of giving it direction by teaching people values for them to work toward.