I'm an Atonist
I consider myself an Atonist, for the most part. I subscribe to many of the Atonist values--rationality skepticism hard work seriousness science--and while I can easily name a bunch of writers in the english literary tradition, I'd be hard pressed to name even 1 from another culture, least of all from anywhere on the African continent. Not to mention, I couldn't carry a tune to save my life, and the sight of me dancing could easily be mistaken for the random twitching of muscles that comes from being electrocuted.
However I do disagree with the Atonists on a number of points. They seem so obsessed with stamping out African culture for no reason I can relate to. Just because I can't dance, that doesn't mean that no 1 can. No 1 thing (culture object etc.) is inherently better than another. (What does it mean for a thing to be inherently better or worse? That combination of words seems like gibberish to me.) A thing can only be better than another thing for achieving an end a purpose a goal. If our goal is to get to school on time, putting my sister behind the wheel is better than putting me behind it, because, well, she can drive and I can't.
It would be silly to claim that any 1 value is inherently better than anything other. However, with certain goals in mind, many of the values held by the Atonists are probably better to have than the values that oppose them. For instance, the sciences seem to do a better job of modeling nature than mysticism does. If you were sick with pneumonia you'd probably want scientific medicine not spiritual healing. More importantly, if you want to have the fewest unfounded beliefs it'd be better to be a skeptic who proportions the certainty of any beliefs to the available evidence than to blindly accept the beliefs of others.
No goal is inherently better than another. There is no sound reason that the goal of having the fewest unfounded beliefs is inherently better than the goal of gaining the most power possible. But there some goals that many of us share. We want to be happy and we want the people around us to be happy. The thing is much of the unhappiness conflict and strife in the world comes from our unfounded beliefs. The skeptical side of the Atonists means that our beliefs are constantly evolving. More than almost any other culture, the Atonists of today don't take the wisdom of our elders to be unconditionally true, and that allows us to examine ourselves.
On a more personal level, most of the unpleasantness I've experienced have come from the huge influence of the emotions--specifically anger--on what we say and do and think. When we are angry, we act in ways that are contrary to our own goals and the goals of the people around us, and everyone ends up unhappy as a result.
In other words, the values held by Atonists seem to be effective for achieving the goals that many of us--even those in other cultures--share. When Atonism is criticized, rationality and skepticism and science are attacked just as much as the tendency of Atonists to destroy other cultures. But in a number of ways, rationality skepticism and science are better ways to achieve the goals that many of us share. I guess the belief system I subscribe to could be called Post-Atonism. I am of the opinion that African culture is just as compatible with rationality skepticism and science as western culture is, but rationality skepticism and science are still extremely important to have if we want to work towards achieving many of the goals we share.
However I do disagree with the Atonists on a number of points. They seem so obsessed with stamping out African culture for no reason I can relate to. Just because I can't dance, that doesn't mean that no 1 can. No 1 thing (culture object etc.) is inherently better than another. (What does it mean for a thing to be inherently better or worse? That combination of words seems like gibberish to me.) A thing can only be better than another thing for achieving an end a purpose a goal. If our goal is to get to school on time, putting my sister behind the wheel is better than putting me behind it, because, well, she can drive and I can't.
It would be silly to claim that any 1 value is inherently better than anything other. However, with certain goals in mind, many of the values held by the Atonists are probably better to have than the values that oppose them. For instance, the sciences seem to do a better job of modeling nature than mysticism does. If you were sick with pneumonia you'd probably want scientific medicine not spiritual healing. More importantly, if you want to have the fewest unfounded beliefs it'd be better to be a skeptic who proportions the certainty of any beliefs to the available evidence than to blindly accept the beliefs of others.
No goal is inherently better than another. There is no sound reason that the goal of having the fewest unfounded beliefs is inherently better than the goal of gaining the most power possible. But there some goals that many of us share. We want to be happy and we want the people around us to be happy. The thing is much of the unhappiness conflict and strife in the world comes from our unfounded beliefs. The skeptical side of the Atonists means that our beliefs are constantly evolving. More than almost any other culture, the Atonists of today don't take the wisdom of our elders to be unconditionally true, and that allows us to examine ourselves.
On a more personal level, most of the unpleasantness I've experienced have come from the huge influence of the emotions--specifically anger--on what we say and do and think. When we are angry, we act in ways that are contrary to our own goals and the goals of the people around us, and everyone ends up unhappy as a result.
In other words, the values held by Atonists seem to be effective for achieving the goals that many of us--even those in other cultures--share. When Atonism is criticized, rationality and skepticism and science are attacked just as much as the tendency of Atonists to destroy other cultures. But in a number of ways, rationality skepticism and science are better ways to achieve the goals that many of us share. I guess the belief system I subscribe to could be called Post-Atonism. I am of the opinion that African culture is just as compatible with rationality skepticism and science as western culture is, but rationality skepticism and science are still extremely important to have if we want to work towards achieving many of the goals we share.
I really enjoyed you courage in playing Devil's Advocate, and the insight you brought into the conversation about Atonism. I also really like the pastiche of Reed's writing style.
ReplyDeleteYou make several interesting points here about Atonism, that it isn't all bad. I definitely agree with you in that if someone was sick, I wouldn't give them an ancient tribal remedy. In my opinion, you couldn't possibly be the biggest Atonist out there; after all, you still disagree with them on several issues - like that one thing is inherently better than the other. But good luck if you receive that invitation.
ReplyDeleteIts interesting to think about where we fall on the scale. I'm honestly still struggling to definitively define attonism or its counter part, but I think most people today have a mixture of both, or as you say, a "post-attonist" outlook. We tend to look to logic, science, and facts that we have proved to be true to solve issues. But I think we are more open-minded that previous attonists, and more conscious of the other cultures and worlds around us, although we still struggle with that. I don't know if being attonist entails racism, or if it is just the idea of using logic and science more than emotion and faith and culture when it comes to solving issues and making decisions. To be honest its hard to pinpoint what attonism really is and what it looks like today, but I like how you thought about it.
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting post. I agree with you in that there are many good qualities that post-atonism can contribute to an ever-changing world. I'm going to have to think about just how to separate Atonism and positive atonist qualities from the stamping out of African culture - it seems like Reed really connects those two. I also want to ask (and it's not rhetorical, please respond!) what you mean when you say "in a number of ways, rationality skepticism and science are better ways to achieve the goals that many of us share"? Which goals are you talking about? Because I think that it's different for everyone if we are talking about life in general. I would say for me, there are many goals that I can achieve with a more post-atonist outlook (like using logic to figure out a math problem, or to rewrite an important sentence) but at the same time there are others I could not imagine achieving without Jes Grew (singing a song, or crying during a movie (specifically Shape of Water)). I think that some of the most desirable goals for me need a little bit of both (writing a piece of creative work or having a supportive and healthy friendship).
ReplyDeleteI'm glad the post interested you. In response to your question, when I say 'goal' I talk of a scope much larger then the examples of goals that you gave: not 'solving a math problem' or 'rewriting a sentence' but rather 'happiness' or 'equality' or 'health'.
DeleteIt's pretty clear, I think, that societal goals (equality, safety, population health) are better served by Atonist values. To figure out what policies we should have to increase public safety or achieve equality, for instance, we really should look to statistics, not to one's feelings about an issue.
That personal goals (happiness, success, individual health) are better achieved through Atonist values is less clear. All I can say is that in my life I've found that most of the unhappiness has come from people's emotional reactions--namely anger. Emotions are meant to be shortcut reactions for evolutionary reasons, so that a species does not have to think about every little thing to achieve evolution's goal, which is namely, to pass on genetic code. But our goals and the goals of the people around us are not to pass on DNA, so our other goals tend to be thwarted rather than achieved by the emotions.
In the article I read for my panel on Mumbo Jumbo, the author defined Atonism as not being able to understand/appreciate other cultures and ideologies. That is why it was portrayed so negatively in the book, because in order to preserve Atonism you have to attack all other cultures. That being said, I think the fact that you don't agree with the Atonists on a lot of thing sets you apart, because you are able to recognize the value of many different cultures and ideologies instead of just subscribing to one.
ReplyDeleteYou bring up a good point about atonism - that it is defined as something actively trying to stamp out jes grew. Based off of that definition, I can't decide how I feel about this "post-atonism" you describe. On one hand, it's true that if someone does not actively try to destroy jes grew they are not like atonists like Hinckle Von Vampton or the Wallflower order. But I don't know if just that separation makes someone not an atonist all together. If jes grew needs to expand and be free to exist, and can't be constrained by western societal norms, then isn't any action that tries to prescribe reason, order, or logic to a situation inherently going against jes grew, and so is atonist? I'm honestly not sure which version makes more sense - I guess it depends on the actual definition of atonism, and that isn't clearly stated in the novel. Anyways, great, thought-provoking post!
ReplyDeleteAtonism vs Jes Grew is a very interesting debate. I agree with you an all of the other commenters above as well. I agree that Atonism as portrayed by Reed is a loaded term, and so I think if you boil it down to the bare minimum, Atonism vs Jes Grew is reason and facts vs emotion and feeling. I personally think often the best people in their fields often use a marriage of both Atonism and Jes Grew. For example, Duke basketball Coach Mike Krzyzewski uses ration and reason to call plays to highlight specific matchups. However, he uses "feelings" to figure out when to call a timeout to stop momentum or when to substitute a player when they are playing poorly. Another example is Warren Buffett. He uses data and analytics to try to predict whether stocks will rise or fall. However, when he actually has to make a transaction, he goes off what stocks "feel" right as well. There are many more examples of this, but I think it's an interesting way to look at the debate between the two schools of thought
ReplyDeleteWhen Reed criticizes Atonism, I don't think he's necessarily criticizing the entirety of Atonist values, but rather the way in which Atonism works to undermine African culture. It's also important to note that Reed isn't a wholly uncritical supporter of jes grew, since he criticizes the Harlem Renaissance at several points throughout the novel. So I don't think he's exactly saying that everything related to Atonism is bad, but rather that the core of Atonism is a lack of respect for other cultures, and that's what's so evil about it- so I'm definitely a lot more in favor of your post-atonist world, which disregards that aspect of Atonism. But I think that we need to acknowledge that rationality, science, anti-skepticism, etc, are oftentimes used not as objective tools to move society forward, but rather a means to oppress- I'm thinking about things like phrenology and the Tuskegee syphilis experiment.
ReplyDeleteSomething about explaining an Atonist point of view in Reed's tone seems bizarre to me. If Reed was trying to make Mumbo Jumbo itself a Jes Grew text (a whole argument in itself, but at the very least he's pointedly trying to make the book *sound* different) then its tone is Jes Grewish too. Imagine Mumbo Jumbo written entirely in scholarly, white English. ..Besides that weird contradiction, you make a lot of great points. I suppose it all just depends on your definition of Atonism: If Atonism is just facts and logic, then it is useful. But if it inherently includes refusal of other cultures (because it is the antithesis of free-form, spirited, *accepting* Jes Grew) then it's more problematic than anything. The general consensus of these comments and your post, I think, is that a balance is best. Skepticism and logic are good, but maybe with a little more feeling and a little less blatant culture bashing. Which could be post-Atonism or maybe just a mix of the two "schools of thought," if you can call them that.
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