Abstract
Philosopher William Hazlitt once observed that ‘Without the aid of prejudice and custom I should not be able to find my way across the room’. 1 That simple phrase in fact says something quite profound about the human mind, and hence about human behaviour. Walking across a room was his metaphor for living through the events of everyday life. He was talking about the inner mental map each of us constructs out of our familiar surroundings and in which we live: the synthetic worldview which is a biased, shorthand reconstruction of ‘out there’. What exactly this worldview is and how each individual acquires it is the subject of Chapter 8. Here it is sufficient to reflect on Hazlitt’s words, ‘prejudice’ and ‘custom’.
It is the function of the prophet to show reality, to show alternatives and to protest; it is his function to call loudly, to awake man from his customary half-slumber. It is the historical situation which makes prophets, not the wish of some men to be prophets. Erich Fromm, 1981†
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Notes and References
Erich Fromm, On Disobedience (New York: Seabury Press, 1981) p. 43.
W. Hazlitt, quoted by W.H. Auden, p. 13 in A. Freemantle (ed.), The Protestant Mystics (New York: New American Library, Mentor, 1964).
The Oxford English Dictionary gives both relegere, to read over again or recite, and religâre, to bind or constrain, as possible etymological origins of ‘religion’.
Inscription found at Eleusis; translation by S. Angus, The Mystery Religions and Christianity (New York: C. Scribner, 1925) p. 140.
See Yu-lan Fung, Chuang-Tyü 2nd edn (New York: Paragon Book Reprint Corporation, 1964) ‘Introduction’, pp. 3–23, for an interpretation of the essence of Tao.
F. Waters, ‘Part I. The Myths: Creation of the Four Worlds’, in Book of the Hopi (New York: Penguin, 1963, 1970 printing) pp. 3–27.
E. Hyams, Soil and Civilization (New York: Harper & Row, 1976) p. 276.
A. Aveni, ‘Tropical Archeoastronomy’, Science, 213 (1981) pp. 161–71.
K. Birket-Smith, The Paths of Culture (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1965) p. 403.
R.A. Williamson, H.J. Fisher and D. O’Flynn, ‘Anasazi Solar Observatories’, Chapter 14 in A.F. Aveni (ed.), Native American Astronomy (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1975) p. 212.
K. Frazier, ‘The Anasazi Sundagger’, Science 80 (November-December 1979) pp. 56–67.
B. Cobo, Historia del Nuevo Mundo (1653) (Madrid: Bibliotica Autores Espanoles, 1956) vols 91 and 92, pp. 173–4. Translated by A. Aveni, Science, 213 (1981) p. 166.
K. Birket-Smith, The Paths of Culture, pp. 403–5.
J.T. Fraser (ed.), The Voices of Time (New York: G. Braziller, 1966) p. 388.
J. Friberg, ‘Numbers and Measures in the Earliest Written Records’, Scientific American (February 1984) pp. 110–18.
H. Jensen, Sign, Symbol and Script (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1969) p. 27.
Jensen, Sign, Symbol and Script, pp. 54–73.
H. von Wissmann, ‘On the Role of Nature and Man in Changing the Face of the Dry Belt of Asia’, in W.L. Thomas, Jr (ed.), Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956) p. 286 f.
K. Birket-Smith, The Paths of Culture, p. 200.
M.D. Sahlins, ‘Poor Man, Rich Man, Big-Man, Chief’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 5 (1963) pp. 285–303.
See also: L. Mumford, The Myth of the Machine vol. I (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967) p. 168 f.
Mumford, The Myth of the Machine, p. 215 f.
Mumford, The Myth of the Machine, p. 259 f
Attributed to Chief Seattle in an 1854 message said to have been sent to President Franklin Pierce, and reprinted in Outdoor California (California State Department of Fish and Game) (November-December 1976) pp. 1213.
E. Langton, Good and Evil Spirits (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1942) pp. 90–4.
For a general discussion of animism, see Sir James G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, abridged edn in two volumes (New York: Macmillan, 1951).
S.M. Zwemer, The Influence of Animism on Islam: An Account of Popular Superstition (New York: Macmillan, 1920) p. 14. There are similar examples throughout the book.
R. Cavendish, The Great Religions (New York: Arco, 1980) p. 59.
H.G. Creel, Chinese Thought from Confucius to Mao Tsê-tung (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1953) p. 17.
Creel, Chinese Thought, p. 98.
From The Writings of Kwang-zze (Chuang Tzû) translated by James Legge, in Sacred Books of the East XL (Book XXII, Part II, Section XV, 2) (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1966) pp. 60–1.
Cavendish, The Great Religions, p. 135.
The Holy Bible Psalms viii, 4–9.
Cavendish, The Great Religions, p. 149.
R. Shaull, Heralds of a New Reformation: The Poor of South and North America (New York: Orbis Books, Maryknoll, 1984) p. 49.
M. Midgley, personal communication. See also R. Graves, The White Goddess (New York: Octagon Books, 1972) p. 393 f.
Cavendish, The Great Religions, p. 239.
These words appear in John A.T. Robinson, Bishop of Woolich, Honest to God (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1966).
In this hotly debated treatise, Robinson is attempting to do away with the concept of a supernatural deity. See also James A. Pike, Bishop of California, If This Be Heresy (New York: Harper & Row, 1967).
L. White, ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis’, Science 155 (1967) pp. 1203–7.
This article has been rebutted and its argument modified by L.W. Moncrief, ‘The Cultural Basis for Our Environmental Crisis’, Science 170 (1970) pp. 508–12. For further Biblical references see The Holy Bible Genesis, especially i, 27.
R.N. Bellah, R. Madsen, W.M. Sullivan, A. Swidler and S.M. Tipton, Habits of the Heart (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985).
P. Tillich, The Protestant Era (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957) p. xi.
J. Bronowski, Science and Human Values (New York: Harper Colophon, 1965) p. 70.
D.H. Meadows, ‘What Will Your College Bring to the Future?’, Keynote Address to the 27th National Institute, Council of Independent Colleges, 14 June 1982. Dr Meadows is at the New Policy Center, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH.
R. Heilbroner, Marxism: For and Against (New York: W.W. Norton, 1980) p. 86.
Shaull, Heralds of a New Reformation, p. 39.
Robert McAfee Brown, Making Peace in the Global Village (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1980).
Economic Justice for All: Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy (Washington, DC: US Catholic Conference, 1986).
P. Lernoux, Cry of the People (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1982) p. 31.
Shaull, Heralds of a New Reformation, p. 20; quote is of O. Gottwald.
Shaull, Heralds of a New Reformation, p. 13; quote is of Pablo Richard. I.F. Stone, writing in The Nation (26 September 1987) p.293, observes that Christian metaphysics — the Trinity, the Eucharist, the virgin birth and original sin — are not to be found anywhere in the New Testament gospels which are strictly concerned with justice for the oppressed.
Shaull, Heralds of a New Reformation, p. 56.
Lernoux, Cry of the People, p. 137.
E. Mortimer, Faith and Power: The Politics of Islam (New York: Vintage Books, Random House, 1982) pp. 360 ff.
J.A. Bill, ‘Resurgent Islam in the Persian Gulf’, Foreign Affairs (Fall 1984) pp. 108–27; quote is from p. 108.
Bill, ‘Resurgent Islam’, p. 127.
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© 1989 Mark E. Clark
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Clark, M.E. (1989). Religions and Worldviews. In: Ariadne’s Thread. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20077-1_7
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