"The Christian fear of the pagan outlook has damaged the whole consciousness of man"
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David Herbert Lawrence's quote, "The Christian fear of the pagan outlook has damaged the whole consciousness of man", is a reflection on the tension in between Christianity and paganism, and its influence on human consciousness. This statement can be unpacked by exploring the historic and cultural contexts in which Christianity typically found itself in opposition to pagan beliefs and practices.
Lawrence suggests that Christianity's apprehension towards the pagan point of view has caused a restricted and perhaps distorted understanding of human awareness. Historically, as Christianity spread, it typically entered dispute with existing pagan customs, which were viewed as threats to its religious supremacy. These pagan customs were generally polytheistic, earth-centered, and celebratory of natural phenomena and human instincts. Christianity, on the other hand, emphasized monotheism, the afterlife, and typically related to earthly satisfaction with suspicion.
The "fear" Lawrence mentions could refer to Christianity's attempts to suppress or demonize pagan practices and beliefs. This suppression may have included labeling pagan practices as heretical or immoral, resulting in a cultural shift that moved far from a more holistic and integrated understanding of mankind and nature. By doing so, crucial aspects of human experience that were celebrated in pagan cultures, such as the connection to nature, the body, and the cycles of life, were decreased or disregarded.
This worry and subsequent suppression of the pagan outlook may have added to a detach within human consciousness-- a split in between the spiritual and the natural, the mind and the body. Lawrence might be recommending that this division has led to a type of cumulative amnesia about the richness of human experience, where factor and spirituality overshadow instinct and feeling.
In essence, Lawrence's quote is a critique of how the historical conflict between Christianity and paganism has formed human self-awareness. It invites a reconsideration of how incorporating varied spiritual point of views can cause a more well balanced and enriched understanding of what it implies to be human. In advocating for this, Lawrence calls for a reintegration of the primal, natural components of human awareness that were respected in pagan customs however feared and suppressed in Christian contexts.
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