Some Key Terms Chewed by the Meat Grinder

When I began the project, I wanted to understand the nature of renewal ideas–cycles, reform, rebirth, golden age, revolution, millenarianism–and trace their history. As I worked through the first chapter (included as a blog entry), I found that my inclinations had led me to a structural model of thought, seeking the simplest and most invariant attribute that all renewal ideas have in common; my intuition pointed to binary shifts from old to new with reference to a prior state. The reference may be something temporally or metaphysically prior or simple cyclic repetition. I sought something permanent, some piece of Being that could be exposed by examining both my own consciousness and the texts of our common history. Born of a century that achieved radical rejection of system–God, Reason, even Language–there was no metaphysical lever with which to begin. However, even though the study of history demonstrates the diversity among cultures and individuals, and it is unfashionable to speak of the nature of mankind, I persisted in tracing common shapes or relationships that inform such ideas. 

If the concept, the idea, of renewal is persistent in some way, providing categorization of its various manifestations, then it must have early origins. Guided by my mentor Gerhart Ladner, Marceau Eliade, and others toward examples of the relationships embodying renewal in ancient cultures' notional experiences and myths, I found them in cycles of astronomy, seasons, the life of plants and animals, eschatology, and cosmology. Making a short list of specifics: the sun, moon and stars; winter to summer; death to reproduction; metempsychosis and reincarnation; virtually endless cyclic spinning of generations through good and bad ages. If the significance of these origins is valid, the continuing appearance of expressions of renewal in texts over millennia reinforces their importance, and their power is, perhaps laughably, demonstrated in the more recent, redundant use in branding and advertising. How many things may be named Renewed, Revolutionary, Renaissance, or Apocalyptical?

Perhaps the cycle, this pattern-framework-structure, became an inheritable archetype (original model) through experience during human evolution, or perhaps it has some other source. Regardless, it seems to be a form of sensibility shaping intellectual experience for mankind, a pattern or relational structure by which we may understand the world, allowing us to discover it in history, business, physics, electricity, particle science, chemistry, religion, politics, mathematics, sociology, anthropology, etc . . . .

As part of my efforts, I needed to explain how renewal ideas function and how they evolve over time while maintaining their fundamental essence. This posed a challenge since I was the sole editor, and the work underwent numerous revisions. Generally, the published version maintains consistency in usage but may lack a clear explanation of the relationships among key terms. The definitions and historical chart below aim to provide clarity. The meat grinder may help in grasping relationships among terms.

Structure

A useful term for the shape of Renewal as distinguished from its function or use and allowing for cultural changes over millennia. The term “structure” is familiar within the academy, used to suggest invariant aspects of culture by the anthropologist Levi-Strauss, linguists such as Jacobson and Saussure, and others within the structuralist school. Arguably, the parent, the cycle, is not adequate to categorize the entire category of renewal ideas as they emerge over time; structure must evolve within culture, obtaining some new characteristics while retaining its core. In seeking a metaphor allowing variegation within a family over time, “structure” proved useful, and enjoyed a possible analogy in genetics where “structure of DNA” is an accepted term. It has been called an archetype or symbolic form and may be described as a pattern applied during the process of using a renewal idea in a text. It is abstract without specific content and may be compared to mathematical/logical formulae that can lead to physical statements such as F=ma. 

Another way of thinking about the structures of renewal ideas is to transform the verbs at the base of their names into gerunds: renewing, reforming, returning to a golden age, cycling, revolving. The structure implicitly requires both movement and “is-ness”, Being.

Function

The use of the Renewal Structure as it is applied within culture. For example: Description, Advocacy, Proclamation, Celebration, Prophecy, Advertising, Naming Events.

Mutation

The earliest structure of the Renewal concept was the cycle, and its original structure includes repetition, whereas later ideas such as “reform” may have only implicit suggestions of repetition. If the persistence of structure was to be retained along with changes that are inherited, then additional terminology was needed. Such language was derived from a genetic, corporal metaphor, calling such changes mutations in analogy with permanent changes in the structure of DNA. The structure after a mutation is inherited and may itself mutate and/or metastasize. Mutations may allow new functions or uses. The chart below shows important mutations as the family of related renewal ideas develops over time.

Values (aspirations or historical exemplars)

Culturally or individually relative values are inserted into an appropriate mutation of structure. This could be a goal or model for reform, such as imago Dei for an individual, or the 1950s for a group. Aspirational values such as truth, equality, peace, or racial homogeneity are used as are historical eras such as the early Church. They work like the x’s and y’s in a mathematical function, thus their name “value”, and are sometimes called floating signifiers. The terms exemplar or model were sometimes used in It’s About Time instead of “value”. For example, Rome is often an exemplar; a time of peace and plenty could be a model. Extremely important is their fill-in-the-blank character. They may be anything the individual, group, or culture desires, advocates, celebrates, or prophecies.

Metastasis

The rapid spread of renewal values that challenge cultural norms, possibly leading to the death of a culture. This was not studied in the current book because it had not yet appeared; however, as time itself seems to accelerate during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, metastasis will dominate our story in the forms of Fascism, Naziism, Communism, Jihadism, modern advertising, rampant millenarianism and an age of “strong men.” It is a symptom of the new age of the mass.

To better understand the above terms, let us imagine a meat grinder

The machine itself is a Structure. Its Function is to grind whatever is put into it to make sausage by turning the crank. The different grinding plates represent Mutations. The particular meat and spices embody cultural Values and individual prejudices. The output is the specific renewal Text or texts. 

If one were to change to an electric grinder, the speed of grinding could outrun the preparation of the meat and cause a mess of poor sausage– Metastasis. Or, perhaps, some dramatically new type of food.

                  (Coincidentally, electrical power arrived around 1900.)

The Tree of Mutations

The Cyclic Root or Parent - astronomical, vitalistic, eschatological, cosmological

First Mutations, may include explicit repetition

Sacramental Rebirth of Group {Mayday, Saturnalia, Sun Dance, etc.}

Sacramental Rebirth of Individual {Orphism, Mithras, Christianity}

Second Mutations, Monotheism and Linear Time (Judeo-Christian)

Messianic Millenarianism & Apocalyptic 

Repetition squashed 

Reform of the Individual toward “_____ ”  such as imago Dei

Free participation in determined and necessary change

Third Mutations

Institutional Reform (Initially within Church)

Celebratory Uses. Renaissance, for example

Fourth Mutations

Revolution

Liberal Democracy

Used to Name Historical Events

Metastasis 

Totalitarianism

Advertising and the Age of the Mass

Attempts to Save the Earth Through Renewal

Catastrophism

Cycles, along with all of the outlined mutations, enjoy continued use in thought and expression within our current culture. Amoung the mutations, I give particular emphasis to the celebratory uses, beginning with the twelfth century, and the millenarian ideas strengthening since the thirteenth century. The products of metastasis are, of course, very apparent in our present.

The continuing use of these mutated structures of renewal-expression reinforces my belief that they are a piece of Being.