Madonna Part II

On reflection, I think the Madonna-on-a-cross image is more ambiguous than I first imagined. Anonymous convinced me that I was too quick in judging, and that this spectacle may be a spiritual feminist statement. That's what I get for being a male chauvinist.

I think the Virgin Mary on the cross is not a totally offensive thing, but there was something in the delivery that seems tacky, which, while not a major crime, is a little incongruent with the spiritual content. There is that slight dance-around-the-golden-calf feeling to the image, but then I suppose that dancing around the golden calf now and then is not, necessarily, a bad thing.

Re Marx, he said that religion was the "sigh" of an oppressed creature, not "sign;" “sigh” being much more sympathetic and nuanced.

The argument that since hunter-gatherers both a) had religion, and b) were not oppressed, ipso facto this means that oppression is not a necessary condition for religion, is interesting. Point b) is open to debate, at least in that the first people probably became aware of a new, mental life, and aware in a way different from other animals that they were mortal, in the very process of becoming human. To have human consciousness is to be aware that there is an inner and outer world, and to be aware of coming hardships, small and large, in a way other animals never were. Ergo, while not necessarily being oppressed by a sub-class of the group, the first people, I would argue, developed what has been called alienation, though it is fair to guess that these people had less of it than we do. In sum, the first person probably sighed, and maybe that was what made them turn to spirituality and religion.

Regarding Anonymous' resort to social science and the "angry face," this is similar to other methodologies that give false positives on the "discrimination" register. Maybe women are, by nature and especially by social conditioning, subtler in their expressions. Then viewers of the pictures would be right to discount the male responses to a degree, and in bringing their real-life experiences to bear they would not be discriminating. A feminist might say that this begs the question of why women should put up with social conditioning that arguably limits their allowable expressivity. But then men, with their innate and conditioned anger, go to prison, etc. in greater number than women. So, even if there was a historical moment when being a hysterical man became more acceptable than being a hysterical woman, it does not necessarily mean that it redounded to the benefit of men.