I distinguish liberal and non-liberal forms of human social orders. The non-liberal form I can also typify as ‘sacrificial’. I have based this little theory on the work of René Girard.

The two types of order are distinguished, in my view, in the following way:

The sacrificial order allows, and most of the time essentially needs, the issuing from the authorities a positive proscription concerning violence. Example: kill the infidel. Slaughter a bull every full moon. Cut the tongue of a liar.

The liberal order is based around the idea that the authorities can never issue a positive proscription concerning violence. To do so, would be against the ‘rules’ of liberality.

Does this mean that no violence exists in the liberal order? Of course not! The order protects itself with police, army ,… But what makes it different is that in the rules of the liberal order never can this order legitimize or utilize any positive proscription concerning violence. All violence is essentially reactive, protective against violence initialized by a criminal.

Any ideology or religion that still holds that there are positive proscriptions regarding violence, cannot be integrated into the liberal order. It would be a total contradiction and an undermining of the liberal order.

Is coercion into a formal acknowledgement of a convention synonymous with the recognition of the validity of this convention? I believe it isn't. The whole world can tell me I live in Belgium, but perhaps I don't really believe this is the case, perhaps I only play along because I fear the coercive force of the law were I to really challenge the convention.

Funniness and the sense of uncanniness often derive from an unexpected juxtaposition of the natural and the spiritual. For example, one introduces genitalia (nature) in a context wherein the convention reigns that genitalia are not shown (spiritual/discontinuity). This will usually be funny. Unless it becomes too 'intrusive'.

On the other hand, when one introduces unexpectedly, the suggestion of spiritual intention into something that is usually believed to be merely natural/mechanical/unspiritual, one can also achieve a humorous or uncanny effect. Uncanny: for example HAL in 'Space Odyssey'.

Perhaps the common element is the disruption of the categories of life and death that is implicated in these unexpected juxtapositions.

According to Freud, the pleasure in laughter derives from the avoidance of energy expenditure. In the case of uncanniness, perhaps the unpleasure we feel in that case, derives from an unexpected all too elevated demand of energy expenditure: something which is usually repressed (which we pay for with energy expenditure) is made irrepressible (for example our tendency to think animistically, which comes natural to us as children, but which we had to inhibit in order to count as 'adults', is provoked by the semblance of intentionality in mechanical objects), creating intrapsychically the need to expend even more energy, beyond our capability.

Unspiritual music can not become uncanny when one digitalizes it, because it is merely mechanics mechanized further.
Spiritual music, Bach, Beethoven, can be 'uncannified' through digitalization, since here there is a juxtaposition of spirit and mechanics. Cf the music of Wendy Carlos.

Was, from a historical perspective, puritanism the consequence of the Gutenberg revolution? The untrained immediate access to the word of god leads to a fanatical, literal-minded conscience, untrained in a more dialectical, mediated approach to the word of God?

Is today's islamist ressurgence likewise correlated to the digital revolution?

Harmony oriented architecture respects humans qua humans: it acknowledges transcendence and leaves the suggestion of horizon intact. A harmony oriented building acknowledges that it is an element of certain surroundings, of an environment, with which it has to compromise and which it must respect. It acknowledges that it is 'borrowing' space, by allowing for example ornamental carvings, in which space is here and there made empty again.
A perverted architecture robs us of the suggestion of any horizon, and therefore it robs us of our humanity. It imposes vulgarity, calculation, a simplistic, protohuman, utilitarian conception of geometry. 'Perverted' always mean something that is cut off from any true relation to the other.
To be 'human' means to be able to negotiate with the other.

Honor killing: in order to escape eternally returning vendetta's, these communities have learned to shift the aggression from the rapist to the victim. Because once the victim is dead, the gods are nourished. No need for disintegrative, chaotic violence over many generations. More economic. The great importance attached to the sexual purity of women in these cultures, is a correlate of their method of defending themselves against disruptive, chaotic violence.

The difficulty for me is, that in postarchaic societies the rape victim still feels the need to punish himself, even without any cultural incentive to think of oneself as 'soiled'... This, to me, suggests, that there is something deeper going on than simply a cultural scapegoating mechanism...