Western inquiry must rid itself from the Christian notion of God

[naomi klein, the shock doctrine – part II from & where do all these highways go now that we are free by anirban (Continued from part one.)

Mark C Taylor’s Confidence Games: Money and Markets in a World without Redemption (which I have spoken of before) is an important corrective to Naomi Klein’s book. Taylor’s book, which charts the complex interrelations of money, markets, art and theology over two centuries, ends up taking a pro-free-market position by arguing, basically, that in a postmodern world without grounding, theological certainties of the past are gone. The world without redemption is a confidence game and we have to accept that. Problems with such a thesis notwithstanding, what Taylor’s meticulous work shows is that economics is not as narrow as Klein and many others would have us believe. …

Taylor argues interestingly, that the advent of ‘complexity studies’ in the field of economics occurred at the same time that Robert Venturi published his landmark book, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. …

What Taylor’s book shows quite well is the rise of a complexity-based economic system where market fundamentalism reappears in different forms – often adapting itself to the latest and most interesting philosophical and scientific trends.]

Social sciences pretended for a long time that they are independent of ontology. Clearly, that was an adolescent’s attitude and the elders within them knew that such a view of the world won’t endure. Several calamities later, some signs of maturity have surfaced. But the dominant thinking in the West is still burdened covertly by the Christian notion of God. Most secularists, rationalists, & atheists are incapable of forgetting what they learnt as children.  

Western inquiry has conquered dizzy heights in all spheres of life which is a tribute to the power of human thought. What chains it down, unfortunately, is a two millennia old mythology. The thought revolution unleashed by The Mother & Sri Aurobindo, alone, can redeem the present impasse. Savitri and The Life Divine, therefore, should be upon the desk of every intellectual. [TNM]