The break from the supposedly culturally-narrow religious bases of knowledge in favor of supposedly trans-cultural scientific bases of knowledge served as the self-justification of a particularly pernicious form of cultural imperialism.
Interpretation
The quote critiques the idea that scientific knowledge is universally superior to religious knowledge, suggesting this belief can lead to cultural domination.
Immanuel Wallerstein addresses the conflict between cultural and scientific understandings of knowledge, implying that the dismissal of religious perspectives in favor of scientific ones is not a neutral stance but a form of cultural imperialism. This viewpoint promotes the idea that Western scientific knowledge, often regarded as universal, can unjustly overshadow and undermine other cultural worldviews, leading to a one-dimensional understanding of human experience.
In practice
In a lecture discussing the impact of science on culture, this quote can emphasize the need for inclusivity in knowledge formation.
If we return to the two faces of individualism - individualism as the spur of energy, initiative, and imagination; and individualism as the limitless struggle of all against all - it can be seen how the two practices emerge from and limit the extend of the disequilibrating impact of the contradiction involved in the geocultural agenda.
Scientific culture created a framework within which individual mobility was possible without threatening hierarchical work-force allocation. On the contrary, meritocracy reinforced hierarchy. Finally, meritocracy as an operation and scientific culture as an ideology created veils that hindered perception of the underlying operations of historical capitalism.
This is a steady, ceaseless process, impossible to contain as long as the economy driven by the endless accumulation of capital. The system may prolong its life by slowing down some of the activities which are wearing it out, but death always looms somewhere on the horizon.
What is different in capitalist civilization has been two things. First, the process of meritocracy has been proclaimed as an official virtue instead of being merely a de facto reality. The culture has been different. And secondly, the percentage of the world's population for whom such ascent was possible has gone up. But even though it has grown up, meritocratic ascent remains very much the attribute of a minority.
Historical capitalism is a materialist civilization.
It is this third consequence that has been elaborated in greatest detail and has formed one of the most significant pillars of historical capitalism, institutional racism.
There are an awful lot of people who despise government precisely because it opened the door for common citizenship for people of all races and all natures in the United States.
Anything that you resent and strongly react to in another is also in you.
You have no idea how much nastier I would be if I was not a Catholic. Without supernatural aid I would hardly be a human being.
Each small task of everyday life is part of the total harmony of the universe.
The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not “the thinker.” The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated. You then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence. You also realize that all the things that truly matter – beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace – arise from beyond the mind. You begin to awaken.
It would be curious to discover who it is to whom one writes in a diary. Possibly to some mysterious personification of one's own identity.
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