The Ju Ju of War

[marct]

Hi Tom,

Interesting twist toward magic this thread took. Maybe it was my mention of Skorupski, but in any event, I will go out on a limb and say that in war, it is important for forces to carry with them some symbolism of divine favor. Otherwise, the opponent has an advantage. I dunno how Prof. Tyrrell will respond to this. He seems pretty smart, but as for this prof., I would argue that accoutriments and rhetoric of divine favor go a long way.

Actually, I would agree with you, but with some caveats. First off, there is the danger of making AQs charges "real" - i.e. that the Coalition is really nothing more than the Crusades come again. Second, most Western societies are secular, rather than religious (Austria is an exception, but it really isn't a major player right now). This is exacerbated in the case of the US where you have an official separation of Church and State and I'm not sure how many thousands of officially recognized religions (it was over 5,000 in 1986 and I haven't seen a number since then). What religion would provide the symbol system? While most Americans are loosely Christian, in a very broad sense, there is no overarching "orthodoxy" that could cement even core symbols (viz. Mormons and Unitarians as examples of "non-orthodox" Christians). Furthermore, I would suggest that any overt use of Christian symbolism to achieve such a purpose would be unconstitutional. So, there's a bit of a problem .

The main way of resolving it is to attempt to use some form of "secular religion" - which is exactly what President Bush tried to do, at least at the level of unifying rhetoric. I'd say the jury is still out on that one, but the close ties made between the rhetoric and the form of "victory" have, IMO, been a major problem (i.e. a republican form of government structure). It's too bad, because if he had stuck with the primary philosophy and left the form to be self determined, I think it would have worked better.

Back to motivating symbols of divine favour...

So, you have an interesting situation where there can be no official religion but you need a "religion" (in the Durkheimian sense) to act as a motivational force. Well, one option is to leave it at the individual group level, which is pretty much what has been done from what I can see, while the group uses the civil religion rhetoric. On the whole, I think that's the best balance achievable.

Again, a Durkheimian sociology of religion approach might be helpful. I often remind my students that on page 14 of Durkheim's book on religion, he says "no social institution can rest on a lie" and if a thing persists, it must be for some reason, so if you can understand the part of it (the kernel) that isn't a lie, you will truly understand the reason.

I've got my own quibbles with Durkheim's interpretation of religion. For one thing, his data sources for Elementary Forms of Religious Experience were truly terrible. To give a modern analogy, it is as if he had analyzed the war in Iraq relying solely on MSM reports. Second, since he was aiming most of his work as a foil to Marx, he was much more concerned with examining the sources of social order than he was with producing a general theory of society. Third, his entire reliance of concepts such as the conscience collectif is rather bizarre and, I would suggest, more in keeping with Von Humbolt's concept of volksgeist.

Still and all, I think that Durkheim got it about 80% correct; at least for the special case of a culture being roughly equal with a society. And this, IMO, is the greatest flaw I see in the application of his arguments to the present day: his argument that religion is society worshiping itself is only valid when you have a fairly mono-religious society (and a mono-cultural one to boot). You certainly can extend the arguments, as Mary Douglas (especially Purity and Danger and How Institutions Think) has in a number of works, but it means that you have to develop the theoretical model well beyond the special case covered by the original.

Attitude change under this conception occurs during the metamorphesis in passing from the sacred to the profane. Hence, the key to religious ritual success is bringing the other-worldly down to earth, and I would argue that interpretation or content doesn't matter because what matters is the enactment of the ritual or the sense of bonding which occurs among a group when something significant (something cosmos changing) has happened. All for one, one for all.

How very Durkheimian of you . Well, in a strict Durkheimian sense, even if we expand it to include Mary Douglas' extended form, you are quite correct. I will disagree with you about whether or not interpretation matters - the only time it doesn't is when you have an orthodox interpretation that is shared by the vast majority of the populace. As an example of why it matters, how do you think an Asatruar group would view references to orthodox Christian statements such as "we are not worthy..."? Having know a bunch of them, I suspect they would laugh themselves silly, as would most Wiccans (and in case you didn't know it, there are a fair number of both in the US forces).

Let's flip that around and ask ow many orthodox Christians wold react well, especially, say, Southern Baptists and pentecostal evangelicals, to the idea of raising a cone of power to send out a hunter-killer daemon against UBL? I'm pretty sure that the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan wold appreciate it (they're convinced he is a djinn), but I doubt that most Christians would approve.

Now, one could bring in criminology here about bond theory, but more relevant is the Durkheimian idea of a normative moral bond which consists simply in the feeling that something significant happened which had a community effect and made people feel obligated to respect it. Call it magic, or whatever, but it would work. Love is supposed to work like this, as do rites of passage and some entertainment blockbusters. Wish I could tease out some specific applications.

Check out Robert Bellah and Phillip E. Hammond, Varieties of Civil Religion for some specific case examples. I'd also recommend Peter Berger's The Sacred Canopy as a good one to get a handle on this issue outside of the Durkheimian special case. The trick is to come up with a symbol system hat is "non-religious" in the limited sense, but acts as if it were religious in the broader (Geertzian) sense.

Marc