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Religion is to God as Sci-Fi is to Science

Limbo said:
Stranger in a Strange Land is a sci-fi classic and one of my favorites, so I am familiar enough with it to deconstruct it quickly. Then I'll move on to Battlestar Galactica.

The main character is Valentine Michael Smith, a human raised by Martians. He comes to Earth and finds himself a stranger among his own people. Smith is an example of the modern shaman of the ET mythos - he is a mana-personality and liminal figure, a perfect example of a shaman who derives his spiritual authority from his own experience, rather than from a social institution. He is set apart from his people by virtue of his experiences being raised by Martians, just as a shaman is set apart from his people by virtue of his initiatory crack-up. Martians are the modern 'tribal gods' of the modern shaman that is Smith.

Battlestar Galactica will be my next post.
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Well done sir!!!!:):):):)
 
Limbo said:
Stranger in a Strange Land is a sci-fi classic and one of my favorites, so I am familiar enough with it to deconstruct it quickly. Then I'll move on to Battlestar Galactica.

The main character is Valentine Michael Smith, a human raised by Martians. He comes to Earth and finds himself a stranger among his own people. Smith is an example of the modern shaman of the ET mythos - he is a mana-personality and liminal figure, a perfect example of a shaman who derives his spiritual authority from his own experience, rather than from a social institution. He is set apart from his people by virtue of his experiences being raised by Martians, just as a shaman is set apart from his people by virtue of his initiatory crack-up. Martians are the modern 'tribal gods' of the modern shaman that is Smith.

Battlestar Galactica will be my next post.
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Should note,btw, that re:the revised(i.e. like Heinlein meant it to be issued originally but not available till many years after the revised but first published version's initial publication), it is made clear by the end that the Shaman has all the power and the martian gods will fail in their plans.
 
Limbo said:
Stranger in a Strange Land is a sci-fi classic and one of my favorites, so I am familiar enough with it to deconstruct it quickly. Then I'll move on to Battlestar Galactica.

The main character is Valentine Michael Smith, a human raised by Martians. He comes to Earth and finds himself a stranger among his own people. Smith is an example of the modern shaman of the ET mythos - he is a mana-personality and liminal figure, a perfect example of a shaman who derives his spiritual authority from his own experience, rather than from a social institution. He is set apart from his people by virtue of his experiences being raised by Martians, just as a shaman is set apart from his people by virtue of his initiatory crack-up. Martians are the modern 'tribal gods' of the modern shaman that is Smith.

Battlestar Galactica will be my next post.
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Subtle hint, BSG is Lord of the Rings. For special points, who is Galadriel, who is Tom Bombadil, who is Aragorn??? And, a reverse, Who is Susan Ivanova ? Interestingly, there is no Sauron as such though there are his shadow minions.
 
Limbo said:
The sci-fi/comic book genre is to science as religion is to God.

There is a secret history to the sci-fi/comic book genre and it involves the paranormal, just so with religion too. Sci-fi/comic books inspire us, and sometimes that inspiration influences science. We write sci-fi, and sci-fi writes us. Just as we wrote religion, and religion wrote us. Sci-fi/comics are our modern secular mythology. Under the surface, all the elements of religion are there.

The difference is, we don't think of Clark Kent as a historical character. We think of Clark as a mere fiction. But what if Clark is more like a kind of trojan horse? Out of it jumps a mystical metaphor... an archetype of the collective unconscious.

"Absolutely. I mean, again the phrase, “the “human as two”” is meant as sort of the balancing point because of course the history of religion, the history of these experiences were usually understood to be some kind of God or deity or transcendent world intervening in the life of the person, wherewith these modern mystics, these authors and artists, they’re usually suspicious of those kinds of religious projections. They don’t see these experiences as proving the existence of God, per se, or some Heaven or some Hell.

They see these experiences establishing that the “human as two”, not that the human being is experiencing God but that the human experience of God is actually a human experience of some other aspect of the human being. God is, if you will, a name previous cultures and eras have given to this other part of who we actually are. So this ends up effectively divinizing human beings, but not the social self or the ego, not what I call the “Clark Kent” aspect of who we are but this sort of secret self, the other side of it that peeks through very rarely but fairly consistently throughout human history. So it’s really a way of trying to humanize and bring down the divinity into human experience." -Jeffrey Kripal

http://www.amazon.com/Mutants-Mystics-Science-Superhero-Paranormal/dp/0226453839
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I see words that I understand individually, but I can't make sense of the post.
 
Actually I did not put it together until the Bombadil character showed up. 5 minutes into his part I said unto myself " Damn!!! These guys have stolen LOTR" - and recognized from that most of the who is who's right then/there. Note that does not mean that every character in Bab5 is a LOTR analog - though many of the majors are clear ones nor that every situation comes straight from LOTR BUT it was clear that a lot was.
 
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The sci-fi/comic books etc are presented as fiction. Religion is presented as truth by it's believers. I don't think the comparison works.
 
The index (courtesy of amazon.com) has no entries for Asimov, Sturgeon or Zelazny. I wonder what it's about? :confused:

Someone wants a book to deconstruct? How about Stapledon's Last and First Men?

(One of Arthur C Clarke's favourite three authors. Or so he said in a talk I attended in 196mumble mumble.)

Happy to help. :book::w2:

I also note that it is highly recommended by Whitley Strieber. :eek:
 
Gord_in_Toronto said:
The index (courtesy of amazon.com) has no entries for Asimov, Sturgeon or Zelazny. I wonder what it's about? :confused:

Someone wants a book to deconstruct? How about Stapledon's Last and First Men?

(One of Arthur C Clarke's favourite three authors. Or so he said in a talk I attended in 196mumble mumble.)

Happy to help. :book::w2:

I also note that it is highly recommended by Whitley Strieber. :eek:
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Sorry about that last, but Stapledon did indeed work to show the big picture on this. A subtle suggestion is coming:http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias=stripbooks&field-keywords=Olaf Stapledon

the subtle suggestion: get and read all of them.
 
Limbo Deconstructivist formula:

[Noun] is the shaman/liminal/mana-personality because [reasons sought to fit].

i.e. Hero is the hero. Cue harp.
 
OK I finished watching the original BSG pilot episode of the classic series. I'm ready to present my deconstruction.

At first glance, it's a telling of the 'ancient astronaut' theory, Erich Von Daniken style. Under the surface, it is an iteration of the archetype of the apocalyse.

The Council of Twelve and their respective Battlestars represent humanity as a whole at the end of an age. Baltar represents the social institutions of religion, he is appointed by 'providence'. Adama represents the shaman who bypasses the social institutions and recieves the 'revelation' (apocalyse as revelation) directly by descending into the 'underworld'.

The Galactica and the rag-tag fleet of 220 ships represents the 'total man', (22 as Master Builder) who desends into the underworld and Adama & crew represent his personality aspects. He desends into the underworld at the moment Starbuck builds the 'perfect pyramid' in his poker game and wins the gold.

They travel the underworld, pursuing and finding the 13th colony (13 as change) and then return from the underworld to the world of the living, and bring the 'elixer' or medicine to heal the Wasteland, resulting in a new heaven and a new earth. Classic shamanic formula of initiation, revelation, return.
 
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Darat said:
I am not going to buy and read that book merely to be able to know if your first claim is true or not.

There certainly is no secret being revealed in the blurb to the book so please provide a synopsis of this "secret".
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The secret history of the sci-fi/comic book genre revolves around the paranormal experiences of many of the grandfathers and giants of that genre. An obvious example that many of you are familiar with is Philip K. Dick. Just as a religion revolves around the paranormal experiences of their founders.

"Kripal’s approach to science fiction literature and comic books is multifaceted. Without ignoring the standard academic treatment of matters such as authorial background, historical setting, and cultural trends, Kripal brings in a neglected additional element that transforms those details while integrating them into a wider whole. His focus on the experiential element of sci-fi and comic books is one that is less frequently done justice to – at least, in the academic treatments of this topic with which I am familiar.

Kripal explores the ways in which many science fiction stories and themes give expression to a view of the world which their authors experience as real, sometimes even including specific details from their own individual experiences – whether mystical, psychological, or psychedelic in nature (assuming one considers such distinctions to be at all meaningful).

The book is structured around what Kripal calls the “Super-Story” which provides seven “mythemes” that pervade not only science fiction and comic books but much else in the realm of popular culture in the United States (pp.26-28). These seven elements (Divinization/Demonization, Orientation, Alienation, Radiation, Mutation, Realization, and Authorization) provide the titles for chapters in the book, but in fact pervade each of them, as they are inextricably intertwined.

The chapters tend rather to use specific examples from the biographies of creators of this literature – whether the story of Ray Palmer, Stan Lee, Philip K. Dick, Whitley Streiber, or any of the others whose experiences and resulting worldview found expression in their literary products – to explore the intersection of the narratives of their personal experience and fictional output – time and again noting how many of the authors in question challenge that very distinction."

Source: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/explor...of-mutants-and-mystics-by-jeffrey-kripal.html
 
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I Ratant said:
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OH YES!!!!!! :D
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I haven't read it, but since you are so excited about it I took a look at the wiki page. It looks pretty straightforward.

Severian starts out as part of a social institution, it is where he gets his authority from, just like a priest. Then through a mystical experiece of his soul (symbolized by Thecla) his mercy is awakened... he is initiated by the Sacred Feminine, his Anima. He is then incompatible with the orthodoxy of his time and place. Then the classic monomyth formula of departure, fulfilment, and return seems to unfold.

It looks like a good book.
 
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Limbo said:
The Foundation Series boils down to an orthodoxy and it's rejection and demonization of the shamanic mana-personality: the Mule. It's the opposite approach of Stranger in a Strange Land, wherein the mana-personality prevails over the orthodoxy.
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I am sorry to say but I think you are full of it
 
MG1962 said:
I am sorry to say but I think you are full of it
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Well, that's ok. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Hari Sheldon is the founder of an orthodoxy, and he establishes it with science not mana. The danger to that orthodoxy is the Mule, who uses mana not science.
 
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