Certainly true about communism. Mao tse-tung told the young Dalai Lama, “Religion is poison.” But Marxists are not the only ones denying spirit. In effect, so does much of organized religion and virtually all of the commercial and cultural establishment. You can see how wonderfully well we are doing without it.
I just read the Steiner excerpt, and found it “right on”, and still applicable all these years later. In a conversation w/ a friend a few years back, who’d just read Christopher Hitchen’s polemic, “god Is Not Great (How Religion Poisons Everything)”, he said that “religion was solely to blame for everyone in a mental institution.” Wow, I thought, how do we get things so distorted? Similarly, a local friend who was attending our informal “Second Sunday” gatherings, had read the same book, and expressed an open hatred of religion.
Indeed, it seems that organized religion, like ego, is the current “whipping boy” for all of Humanity’s ills. I want to add “the religion of Scientism”, and even today I have a very tenuous tolerance of “organized science”. But then, by now, I’m sure I’m considered “completely nutty” by some of my (former) friends for my views, which I am only now beginning to formulate, w/out feeling “cowed” by the “experts” in any field.
So, bring on AI and robotic automation, which one “expert” thinks will replace one-third of jobs in this country, by 2045. Maybe this is a “good thing” in some cases. But for a kinesthetically-oriented person as my current Human Expression chose to be/explore, it sounds like a kind of hell. Ahh, well; us ol’ dinosaurs (such as myself) will be dying out soon enough. As another (probably former) friend said, “Money trumps everything.” Oh, how prophetic (snort) a statement!!
And I say “former friends”, as it has become necessary for me to “create enough breathing space” for MY own views, which I’ve kept hidden for most of my life (from others), save for my “soul partner”, and very few others. Time to write those dang memoirs, I guess…
Just a view from the “lunatic fringe” on a sunny Sunday…
Craig