Dear John,
Are you a crazy leftist? I doubt it.

The real issue I suspect for you is in the assertions I’ve made before about post-secularism and its implications for the ideas inherent to the Enlightenment. Given that you value the Enlightenment, at any given moment, depending on the crowd and event, you might even find yourself standing up against left leaning violence (violence here to include intimidation of people and aggressive interruption of their free speech).

I could get into very tall grass and go on and on and on trying to present the argument for post-secularism and it’s implications for politics, international relations, economics, sociology, psychology (as in research), and psychotherapy.  I would not be able to do the topic justice in this limited media (email).  I am writing a book about it. But that’s going to be completed later on.  If you want to read about the topic, try the following:

Post-Secular Society (Mynas, Lassandder, & Utriainen (Eds). Routledge, 2012
Explorations in Post-Secular Metaphysics. (Bengtson). Palgrave McMillan, 2015
Post-Secularism and International Relations, (Mavelli & Wilson, in Routledge Handbook of Religion and Politics) Routledge, 2023 (available online through the university of Groningen— https://core.ac.uk/reader/148314810)
Enter the Post-Secular (Rethinking the Secular), by Michele Dillon (https://tif.ssrc.org/2012/08/16/enter-the-post-secular/)

As I said, the subject is huge and not simple.  That is post-secularism could just as easily be seen to champion ideas inherent to the Enlightenment. But it is no uncommon to see people questioning some of the ideas of the Enlightenment that resulted in modernity, because modernity failed. We see, for instance, Husserl writing against what some these days would call “scientism” and others just plain old positivism (which he also identified with a naturalistic attitude). That attitude is still alive in experimental psychology.

I am attaching three documents some may find interesting. All this “stuff” relates to the updating of the Enlightenment.

Phil



> On Feb 13, 2024, at 10:00 AM, john wymore <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> ATTN:  Phil
> 
> 
> 
> Oh my goodness. Am I one?  Could be, I guess.  After all, I live in and am a citizen of what is known as a liberal democracy.  It is that because it was founded on principles of The Enlightenment which are said to be secularism, reason, social juistice, tolerance . The Constitution , its Preamble, and the Declaration of Independance codifiy them.  The Revolution, the Civl War, the Civil Rights Movement, the Equal Rights Amendment (which I think has still not been ratified) represent our moral commitmenmt. And confrom our liberal values. So any American loyal and committed to those values is just a middle of the road American, a centrist.   What exactly then is a crazy leftist ?
> 
> JW  
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______________
Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L, and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives.