F Scale Reading Group/Summary and Discussion Thread

Thank you all for coming: wonderful discussion again today

I’m using this post to start discussion threads regarding three topics that we touched about during the Reading Group today.

Of course, people should feel free to bring up any issues we didn’t cover in the comments.

Sacrifice

Mimesis

Disenchantment

Our next meeting will be December 31st, 2023, at 8:30 am. We will be discussing the second half of D of E

Juliette or Enlightenment and Morality

Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception

Elements of Anti-Semitism or the Limits of Enlightenment

Also if you want to read about the politics of Western attitudes toward Tibetan Buddhism, Prisoners of Shangri-La. Buddhism might offer some solace to earthly suffering, but the mode of production was agricultural with a dominant class of priests and aristocrats and those who worship the Dalai Lama in the West want feudalism for others and modernity for itself.

I also talk about Adorno, irrationality and astrology in American Idyll:

Carl Jung was a Nazi sympathizer and loved regressive forms of belief and his influence on ego syntonic New Agey, Robert Campbellesque ideas is immeasurable. His theories about archetypes has been criticized, but every generation now seems to have to reinvent the wheel on this one since I’ve been told Jungian inflected superstition is a big part of Tumblr and now Tik Tok.