Understanding the Extreme Left and Right Through a Religico-Political Paradigm: HARTNEY PART ONE Week One Religion as Politics (original) (raw)

See: https://thinkinc.org.au/academy/religion/ Politics as the New Religion: Understanding the Far Left and Far Right is a four-week course that illuminates our political moment by exploring how religion, politics, wild theories, and human self-awareness now intermesh. Over the past few years, politics has become particularly extreme. Elements of the Left have shifted further leftward, especially on cultural and racial issues, in what has been dubbed The Great Awokening. Elements of the Right have similarly stumbled their way into more divisive views, showing obsession with conspiracies and cultish devotion to figures like Trump. These modern tribes act in quasi-religious ways despite prevailing secularism, which begs the questions: In what ways are these movements expressions of religious impulse, or perhaps, something darker? Is this occurring despite, or because of, a lack of traditional religion? To what extent are activists (perhaps unknowingly) drawing on Christian theological assumptions? Can humans transcend prevailing religious impulses, or are they too deeply ingrained in us? What does this all mean for the human condition? These are but some of the questions that the class instructor and renowned religious scholar Dr Christopher Hartney will explore in this course. With help from selected readings of Émile Durkheim, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Peter Sloterdijk and others, Christopher will help you better understand the sometimes hidden influence of the tribal, the magical, the mythic and the religious on human nature and modern politics.