Okay, so I was talking about "collective effervescence." Weber's a sociologist, so he takes the perspective that "society" (as a whole greater than the sum of its parts) is an entity of its own. I am perhaps misappropriating a water metaphor to describe his thoughts, but it seems easiest to use it. Society, like water, is hard to contain in a limited vessel; it always "leaks", it always "overflows." Similarly, although society ideally wishes to see itself as a united and unitary entity (it is this continual attempt that "binds" society together), it repeatedly eludes containment, it continually leaks out of the definitions it makes for itself... So society is at once both a holding together and a falling apart...
Where does the idea of "collective effervescence" come about? Okay, I'm getting to that. There are certain situations in which individuals congregate. And in this congregation, there is a high concentration of "energy" (for lack of a better word). It is in such situations that Weber's phenomenon of "collective effervescence" occurs, in which the concentration of individuals spontaneously "effervesces" into a collective awareness, an awareness that is greater than the sum of its parts.
I remember one of the students made a kind of visual joke about this concept. She said our class was like the congregation, and every now and then, "POP!" one or two people would jump up, just like soda bubbles...
simul iustus et peccatore - Latin for "simultaneously just(ified?) and sinful." This, I believe, was a statement written in one of the theological congresses (I can't think of the proper Catholic terminology). I (mis)appropriate this to describe the paradoxical "position" of man, as both a justified (through Christ) and sinful (as mortal man) being. Paradoxical, and absurd...
es gibt - Latin for "it gives." What gives? What gives indeed.
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