Back at Williams College, in the Religion Department, there were a few "catch phrases," meant to capture/evoke key ideas in our readings. Here are a few examples (unfortunately, I can't recall exactly where they came from, or, for that matter, what their true significance was):
"obligatory excess" (mentioned a lot in Mark C. Taylor's class): basically, that in certain contexts, it is "obligatory" (i.e. socially forced and ENforced) for you to be "excessive" ("break the law"). The example of this is when most of the people do something "illegal/immoral", and then they say, "Come on! Do it! Everybody's doing it!" The reason there is an "obligatory" quality to such transgressions is that if EVERYONE does it, it is no longer "wrong." I.e. there is no one left who is free of guilt, and therefore, there is no one who can condemn the rest. I recall the Bob Dylan song: "Everybody must get stoned!"
"collective effervescence" (mentioned by Max Weber, sociologist, in "The Sociology of Religion"): this was a seminal text in our Sociology of Religion class. To be quite honest, I can't remember a lot of it, but I do recall key concepts being related to "concentration", "dilution", and, of course, "collective effervescence."
-well, the SPED class (interesting again) continues, so I will post more later.
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