On Religion as Means of Humanization and Dehumanization
By Glenn Plastina
Sociological and cultural panorama presents religion as a human project. Humanity possessed intuition for protection, survival, and order; religion was a necessity to fulfill that inner intuition. The back draft of chaos as context for this intuition was juxtaposed to the threat of humanization. In the sociological process of externalization, objectivation, and internalization, religion came into a nominizing being. But this reified object became the “otherness” that somehow, unfortunately, possessed a risky personality that eventually dehumanizes its creators. Though created, along with culture, religion’s potential power to dehumanize a group of humans is deemed consequential.
In the negative sense, religion’s manipulating power endangers the lives of its adherents even if it is part of their world construction and maintenance; religion’s legitimizing ability and ontological precariousness were often seen as historically fatal and dangerous. If money has been one of the sociological elements that dehumanize persons, religion carries the same potential to dehumanize many persons, especially those who seek refuge in religion for answers and certainty for life and hereafter.
Religion not only dehumanizes its practitioners, but also their confused promoters and priests for their deception of imposing to others what they themselves were oppressed in observing. False consciousness, of course, can play a vital role in this alienation and hypocrisy. Other element includes: religion objectivises a person. Religion was supposed to be a self projection, but its repercussions alienate its makers. As a result, it swallowed and made its makers less human or presumptuously divine—two extremes which deny humaneness. Internalization of religion can dehumanize person in submitting to its humanly imposed ontological status.
Through sociological process, reaching towards the final stage of nominazation alienates humanity to the superimposed rituals that were initially used to remind people for order and protection. What was meant to be a weapon against fear of disorder has enslaved the practitioners to fear of not maintaining the rituals and offending the ontologically elevated status quos of the sacred few—i.e. persons, things, places, and objects. Alienation was the eventual tragedy that enslaved a person to nothing less an object, not a person. But the other side, however, of ritual was its power to set order in the midst of fear for chaos. This could not be undermined also. Apart from nominizing order, anarchy will prevail—a situation no society will ever be humane. Nonetheless, well systematized religious systems can be oppressive for its tendency to systematically oppress human freedom.
It could be well said that limitations were good as it serves it genuine intention for order, but when its limitations oppresses people, it is legitimizing evil. Suffice to say, if a new definition of evil is anything that dehumanizes a person, religion is a strong candidate. If there is one avenue that dominantly dehumanize a person—it’s religion.
Somehow, major questions are also considered. Was the religious idea of transcendence threat to humanization? On the other hand, was immanence the answer to humanization? It is here, in not being afraid to face self-criticism, that integrative reflections are helpful. Self-evaluation of Christian thought is never the enemy for truth; it’s the objection to honest pursuit for truth.
Sociological and cultural panorama presents religion as a human project. Humanity possessed intuition for protection, survival, and order; religion was a necessity to fulfill that inner intuition. The back draft of chaos as context for this intuition was juxtaposed to the threat of humanization. In the sociological process of externalization, objectivation, and internalization, religion came into a nominizing being. But this reified object became the “otherness” that somehow, unfortunately, possessed a risky personality that eventually dehumanizes its creators. Though created, along with culture, religion’s potential power to dehumanize a group of humans is deemed consequential.
In the negative sense, religion’s manipulating power endangers the lives of its adherents even if it is part of their world construction and maintenance; religion’s legitimizing ability and ontological precariousness were often seen as historically fatal and dangerous. If money has been one of the sociological elements that dehumanize persons, religion carries the same potential to dehumanize many persons, especially those who seek refuge in religion for answers and certainty for life and hereafter.
Religion not only dehumanizes its practitioners, but also their confused promoters and priests for their deception of imposing to others what they themselves were oppressed in observing. False consciousness, of course, can play a vital role in this alienation and hypocrisy. Other element includes: religion objectivises a person. Religion was supposed to be a self projection, but its repercussions alienate its makers. As a result, it swallowed and made its makers less human or presumptuously divine—two extremes which deny humaneness. Internalization of religion can dehumanize person in submitting to its humanly imposed ontological status.
Through sociological process, reaching towards the final stage of nominazation alienates humanity to the superimposed rituals that were initially used to remind people for order and protection. What was meant to be a weapon against fear of disorder has enslaved the practitioners to fear of not maintaining the rituals and offending the ontologically elevated status quos of the sacred few—i.e. persons, things, places, and objects. Alienation was the eventual tragedy that enslaved a person to nothing less an object, not a person. But the other side, however, of ritual was its power to set order in the midst of fear for chaos. This could not be undermined also. Apart from nominizing order, anarchy will prevail—a situation no society will ever be humane. Nonetheless, well systematized religious systems can be oppressive for its tendency to systematically oppress human freedom.
It could be well said that limitations were good as it serves it genuine intention for order, but when its limitations oppresses people, it is legitimizing evil. Suffice to say, if a new definition of evil is anything that dehumanizes a person, religion is a strong candidate. If there is one avenue that dominantly dehumanize a person—it’s religion.
Somehow, major questions are also considered. Was the religious idea of transcendence threat to humanization? On the other hand, was immanence the answer to humanization? It is here, in not being afraid to face self-criticism, that integrative reflections are helpful. Self-evaluation of Christian thought is never the enemy for truth; it’s the objection to honest pursuit for truth.
posted by GlenPlas @ 12:16 AM
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