If society is God and, as a Christian, say, I give myself fully to God, I am giving myself fully to ‘society.’ At least that’s what Durkheim would argue.  But if I throw into that argument the idea that ‘my’ personality is really ‘our’ personality as I argue in a previous post on this blog following Norbert Elias, and it’s my intertwined and interconnected web of relations that is me, then to give myself fully to  God is to engage in an apotheosis, an entry into divine life.  I become one with God.  Cool, eh?  If there’s anything that turns me on its trying to figure this shit out.

So, Norbert Elias, meet Emile Durkheim.  I know, this is pretty nerdy stuff, but trying to figure out how we ‘operate’ as human beings is a daunting task at the best of times.  I’ve come to appreciate a myriad of theorists and writers in my quest.  Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx and Frederich Engels, Max Weber, Freidrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Otto Rank, Ernest Becker, Marvin Harris, Pierre van den Berghe, Norbert Elias, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Harold Adams Innis, Thorstein Veblen, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Erving Goffman, Joseph Campbell,  Fernand Braudel, Joseph Geis, Boyd Richerson, Robert Sapolski, Edward O. Wilson, Donald T. Campbell,  Patricia Marchak and Dorothy Smith to name just a few.  In future blogs, I will engage each of these authors and many more in a quest to understand the meaning of life.  No less.  Why not be bold and adventurous.  There’s nothing for me to lose.