By Franz
J. T. Lee
January 5, 2000
LUDWIG FEUERBACH,
KARL MARX & MIND CONTROL
(Scene: Philosophy Seminar)
(The students are pinning a big placard onto the "blackboard". On it is written in large capital letters: "The Opium Of The People", below are drawn two large bottles, filled with colourful pills, marked Prozac and Ritalin. Next to them appears a huge tomato, enveloped in a fog of druggy clouds. Above, in upright gait, a healthy, sane student enters the alma mater, below, with a Ph. D. university cap on his skull, void of brains, without a backbone, he crawls towards NASA.)
Coseino: What an artistic expression of today's class! Well, if Prozac and Ritalin are Food for Thought-Control, then, open the curtain! Welcome! Let's continue analysing the Religious Element of Mind Control. Indira, do you have any comments to make?
Indira: Yes, Professor. I think that the German philosopher, Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach, is essential to explain Mind Control in religious matters, at the eve of modern capitalism, in its liberal epoch. Perhaps we should dedicate our class today to his theories, and his influence on Marx in particular, and on Marxism in general.
Coseino: D'accord! Adam, please tell us something about the life of Feuerbach.
Adam: A pleasure, but other colleagues should help me, too. The 19th-century German philosopher and moralist, Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach, was born on July 28, 1804, in Landshut, Bavaria, now a Province of Germany. He died on September 13, 1872 in Rechenberg, Germany. He was the fourth son of the famous jurist Paul von Feuerbach. His father forced him to study Theology, but soon he abandoned this career, and in Berlin became a student of Philosophy under the guidance of the famous German philosopher Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel.
Karl: As far as I can remember he also studied Natural Science, and he showed great interest in topics like death and immortality.
Adam: It's true, Karl. In 1828, he began to study natural science at the University of Erlangen, and two years later, he anonymously published his first book, Gedanken über Tod und Unsterblichkeit ("Thoughts on Death and Immortality"). Exactly what you mentioned, he attacked the idea of personal immortality, explaining, that after death, all individual human qualities are being reabsorbed into the Cosmos, into Nature.
Karl: This means that already very early in his life, Feuerbach was an atheist, a materialist, attacking religious Mind Control.
Adam: Certainly. Because of my Christian family background, I am especially interested in his intellectual development. Perhaps, he could enlighten me on some basic emancipatory issues. Yes, already before 1840, he wrote:
"that Christianity has in fact long
vanished not only from the reason
but from the life of mankind, that
it is nothing more than a fixed idea."
Karl: This idea was developed in his work, Über Philosophie und Christentum (1839; "On Philosophy and Christianity").
Adam: That's true. But already in his
Abälard und Heloise (1834) and Pierre
Bayle (1838), he was introducing these themes.
Patricia: Well, this critique of Religion
was epitomized in his titanic work:
Das Wesen des Christentums (1841;
The Essence of Christianity). In this work, he formulated the theory,
that "man" is to himself his own object of thought, and that Religion
is nothing more than a "consciousness" of the Infinite.
Mahatma: His starting point was to analyse
the "true or anthropological essence of
religion."
Patricia: And, my dear Mahatma, what is that supposed to be?
Mahatma: You and I should know it. We're experts in this field!
Patricia: No, truly, I don't have the foggiest idea about such affairs.
Bill: Now, stop being so pretentious,
you two "kiss-me-curls". As "anthropological essence", he portrayed
God "as a being of understanding," "as a moral being or law",
in nuce, as " love."
It's as simple as all that, you two "love-birds"! God Is Love!
Coseino: Brilliant! But the true consequence of this view is the idea that God is merely the extensive self-projection of man's intensive nature. In other words, Man, Big Brother, the Illuminati, is the creator of God, and not vice versa. Religion is a fantastic mental invention of Man The Ruler; of course, these "innovations" include a "free trial" of Heaven, Hell and Purgatory, and some "shareware", i.e., its myriad of souls, spirits, angels, saints and popes. We need not study medieval life, in order to note how these were utilized to mind-control the impoverished serfs and peasants. Until today, these sickening spectres spook around in our minds. These keep us in "good spirit", they keep our "spirit high". As bourgeois liberation, Feuerbach suggested that Man should reappropriate his essence, which he had ripped from himself by hypostatizing it in the fantastic religious idea of God. This explanation of religion is so obvious, yet billions just cannot grasp its emancipatory essence; they prefer to clothe their dear "souls" in foggy, smoggy array.
Karl: But Feuerbach himself denied, that he was an atheist.
Albert: Abandoning Hegelianism and attacking religious orthodoxy, he stated expressis verbis, that the God of Christianity is an Illusion! Of course, Marx criticized this strange materialism in his famous Thesen über Feuerbach (written 1845/46). Besides, Feuerbach published other works, like Theogonie (1857) and Gottheit, Freiheit, und Unsterblichkeit (1866; "God, Freedom, and Immortality").
Jeanette: If it was not connected to God, to any divine essence, what then did Feuerbach consider "consciousness" to be? This question is extremely important for education, for conscientization, for emancipation. For Feuerbach, which are the basic elements of Consciousness, that either could generate Mind Control, or resist it?
Martina: (triumphantly) Reason, Will and Love. Mahatma and Patricia, you surely have received a full dose of these orgonic, erotic tranquillizers!
Jeffrey: (definitely, deeply touched) What a remarkable Trinity! A Mighty One!
Karl: (with a Mephistophelic smile) For sure, such an Emancipatory Trinity could blow the Illuminati off the Information Highway, out of the Milky Way.
Coseino: (desperately trying to stop the laughter) Calm down, students! The matter is not all that simple. The Encyclopaedia Britannica gives us the following summary of the essence of this philosophic issue:
"Feuerbach interpreted the Christian mysteries
as symbols of
the alienation of human properties absolutised
as divine attributes,
and he criticized the contradictions of theology
that are found in
such concepts as God, the Trinity, the sacraments,
and faith. Man's
reappropriation of his essence from such religious
alienation is
consummated in the "new religion" of humanity,
of which the supreme
principle is that "man is God to man."
Adam: I can see very clearly now. A "new religion", religious "symbols" and holy "mysteries" can be extremely dangerous things, allowing Mind Control to sneak in through the back door.
Coseino: Indeed,
that is very true; we are still filled to the brim with religious relicts.
It reminds me of the Venezuelans who call their dearest "Mi Negra", and this
is supposed to be a most loving, tender term; however, at the same time they
make jokes about "Negroes": His Name is "Negro", and his Surname is "Mierda"
(Shit). No Venezuelan would accept that their dearly beloved is Mr. or Miss
"Shit"; yet, they can't fathom, can't grasp, that they are fully mind-controlled,
filled with racist ideology. Similarly, we talk about our wonderful "spirit"
or "soul", and we try to convince ourselves that it is original, authentic,
that it has no relation whatsoever with religious entities, and yet,
surreptitiously, we are victims of intellectual fraud, in other words, we
bamboozle ourselves. We could just as well say, that we are sweet "nazis"
or loving "Pharisees". Concepts like the "Soul" and the "Spirit", the
"One", are quintessential terms for ideology, idealism, religion and
theology, in one word, for Mind-Control!
Jeffrey: Did I understand correctly, that Feuerbach proposed that God was the extension of human aspirations, and that Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and others held similar views?
Coseino: Yes. For Christians, God is Sustainer,
Creator and Judge! Of course, many thinkers and writers protested against
these justifications of God. Literature, drama and plays are full of examples
in which writers, although influenced by Christian culture, attack
such justifications. A classical example can be found in the Russian novelist
Fyodor Dostoyevsky's treatment of the misery of children in
The Brothers Karamazov.
Karl: What was Marx's position vis-a-vis Religion? Did he also see it as a genre of Mind Control?
Elvis: At the time, when I was in Germany, where I had to soothe the minds of the GI's with my songs, my mother, who was very religious, died, and I tried desperately to find religious solace. Yes, I felt like a "Hound Dog", hounding a divine phantom. In a Bavarian bar, I met one of those staunch German communists; he tried to liberate me from my illusions; all in vain. At least, relieving me from my cosy "Teddy Bear" syndrome, he encouraged me to see stark reality "In The Ghetto". Now, many years later, I really would love to know, what Friedrich wanted to explain to me in those critical days. Could anybody introduce me to Marx's critique of religion?
Max: Following the Marxian tradition of "Critique of the Critical Critique", in my Critical Theory, developed by "Teddy" and me, we are dealing with this religious phenomenon.
Coseino: Before we deal with that central issue, I just want to make some comments about religious "prayer", which is an important device, within the context of Mind Control. The very Feuerbach remarked:
"The most intimate essence of religion is
revealed by the most simple religious act:
prayer."
In evolutionary terms, historically, prayer appears to be neither
universally progressive
nor progressively regressive. Whether mystical, ceremonial or personal, prayer
expresses the individual or collective experience of the unknown, of cosmic
mystery, that inspires or threatens the dependent "creature", it corners
him, but also surpasses his imagination; however, by means of prayer, he
tries to seek and to establish a dialogue with the transcendental or supernatural.
Exactly this faculty Mind Control is destroying, perverting it, deviating
it towards economic consumption, social perversion and mental slavery. By
rote, prayer inculcates Mind Control in the very "soul".
Now, the young religious Marx had his first "critical" experience when he met Hegel in Berlin. At first, the Christian Marx felt Hegel as being "sickening"; in fact, -- he really became ill, -- and the reason, in a letter to his father, he gave as follows: "from intense vexation at having to make an idol of a view I detested." Marx joined the "Doctor Club" of the Young Hegelians, who were moving towards atheism, and there he was "converted" into a "Feuerbachian". Now again, let the Encyclopaedia Britannica tell us about Marx's critique of Hegel, aided by the philosophy of Feuerbach:
"To Marx's
mind, (Feuerbach)
successfully criticized Hegel, an idealist
who believed
that matter or existence was inferior to and
dependent
upon mind or spirit, from the opposite, or
materialist,
standpoint, showing how the "Absolute Spirit"
was a
projection of "the real man standing on the
foundation of
nature." Henceforth Marx's philosophical efforts
were
toward a combination of Hegel's dialectic
-- the idea that
all things are in a continual process of change
resulting
from the conflicts between their contradictory
aspects -- with Feuerbach's materialism, which
placed
material conditions above ideas."
Adam: And what did Marx say about Religion?
Coseino: I'll quote some passages from memory:
"Man makes religion, religion does not make
man,
religion is indeed man's self-consciousness
and
self-awareness as long as he has not found
his feet in
the universe. ... Religion is the general
theory of this
world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic
in
popular form, its spiritual point'd honneur,
its enthusiasm,
... It is the fantastic realization of the
human being inasmuch
as the human being possesses no true reality.
The struggle against religion is therefore
indirectly a
struggle against that world whose spiritual
aroma is religion."
And now, here is Marx's precise definition of religion:
"Religious suffering
is at the same time an expression of
real suffering and a protest
against real suffering. Religion
is the sigh of the oppressed
creature, the heart of a heartless
world and the soul of soulless
conditions. It is the opium of
the people."
Allow me, just to add: "It's the prozac of, by and for the people!"
Students, therewith we have dealt sufficiently with the Religious Element of Mind Control. Next week, we'll deal with Ideology.
(With high "spirits", the students march out of their classroom. Another "critical" experience has been won; however, as always, in this "heartless world", under these "soulless conditions", he who controls everything, the real winner, takes it all.)