For a Radical Reconception of Spirituality...
October 2008
We take a break from the financial situation so I can place this proposal on record.
Spirituality is one of the few words for which there is justification to retain the word while redefining it. As a result, usage will lose its connection to etymology and to dictionary meaning.
Vaguely, spirituality connotes a "psychic" exaltation which is correlative to personhood, dignity, love, nobility (and honor?). ('psychic': we mean "of consciousness.") That vernacular usage is so important that there is no point in looking for another word as a substitute.
But the dictionary tells us that 'spiritual' means "concerning religion." And the etymology tells us that the point of the word is to counterpose the psyche to the flesh: to the discredit of the latter.
We want the word 'spiritual' to point to "high spirits," to "lifting the spirits," to psychic exaltation.
We want to disconnect the word from religion. To be succinct, a word which connotes high spirits and lifting the spirits, and which is correlative to personhood and dignity and nobility, should not be a label for institutions which pander to wish-fulfillment, credulity, and infantile or visceral preoccupations. (Blood sacrifice as magic, etc.)
Spirit and flesh as enemies
In the etymological meaning, spirituality means that the human has a soul which is imprisoned in the tomb of the body, the evil body. For example, Buddhism has no role model for a human life except that of the ascetic, the monk. (Even though there are Buddhists who lead mercenary lives.)
The encompassing Indo-European notion is that if the soul can be freed from the flesh, it can achieve a disembodied life of eternal bliss. This notion that personality or personal identity is an entity which can, by some trick, uncouple from a body and flit about in the ether is anachronistic superstition.
But there are complications to be addressed. Ancient people not only imagined that the personality could go on living after the body died. Ancient people were also ready to believe that the mind had perceptual and effective powers which do not require sense-organs and muscles. Well, dreams and hallucinations—"internally supplied worlds," in today's reality-picture—lend themselves to this interpretation.
To make short work of classic "magical" clairvoyance and so forth, If they have anything to offer, it is skimpy. Transmutation of the elements offers us a lesson in this regard: it can and is done, but trying to do it by magic is a waste of time.
We do not exactly want to ridicule the notion that the flesh is a problem for the spirit. When we elaborate, we will explore this notion carefully. After all, the flesh is heir to sickness and death, and that is only the beginning of it. But religion seizes on these circumstances to pander to wish-fulfillment. An honest treatment would admit that the psyche is heir to amnesia, senility, dementia, coma—not to mention crimes against wisdom. Are the vulnerabilities of the flesh so much worse than those of the psyche? Are flesh and psyche separable when we come to seduction, addiction, and so forth?
The advocates of "the spirit" (none more ardent than Plato) thought of the achievements of the mind as deathless. (No glorified body at the End of Days for Plato.) The mind was the human portal to Eternity. But even if one believes that, "deathless thoughts" cannot save a particular human being who is afflicted with amnesia, senility, dementia, coma, or the like. The mind can die before the body does. The tradition of pandering is so shallow that it disregards this.
Does sensuality tend inevitably to depravity? Does exaltation require the repression of the sensual? These questions are not silly. When we elaborate, we will review these problems carefully.
But in general, we assert that the contribution of "the flesh" to high spirits, to lifting the spirits, should not be denied. The traditional notion that one was better off by making the mind and the body into enemies was perverse—or, as they say about Roman Catholic celibacy, psychologically unrealistic. Forbid something people are wired for, and it just crops up in socially disreputable ways. The body is the precondition for perception, emotion, kinesis, and the realization of choices. We don't want a "lifting of the spirits" that has no place for this living activity. The inherited meaning of the word embodies an ill-conceived asceticism. So it is that a reconception is demanded.
For us, "Bo Diddley" by Bo Diddley is a premier contribution to spirituality. It uniquely lifts the spirits for those who can appreciate it: via a composite musical quality which I label 'bounce'. Actually, Diddley was so far out ahead of the public that even though he is a rock icon, others did not learn from his precedent as they should have. He deserved to have a school, the same way that music which swings comprises a school. Instead, the tributes to him merely covered the eponymous single.
There is more to Bo Diddley's contribution than music or entertainment. The capacity to resonate with his communication is as palpable as the capacity to understand words—or to see by opening one's eyes. There are many things humans need to do which are "invisible" or "nonmaterial," as the vernacular has it. The exponents of scientism who have tried to make a world-outlook out of mechanistic materialism, and who consequently deny consciousness and so forth, declare themselves to be deficient in human faculties and place themselves outside the tent.
If the scientific materialists are as insensitive as they claim to be (if they are androids, or electric fans, as they claim others are), then realistically, they are severely impaired. (Perhaps they are.) Actually (I don't want to digress too much) when we learn something about who the mechanistic materialists are, we discover that their reductionism is as insincere as hell. As I never stop saying—and as most of my hearers never stop being deaf to—the mechanistic materialists are utterly sententious when it comes to human transactions involving them. They want themselves and theirs to be treated by other people not only civilly, but reverently. Not only that, they are deeply invested in the "non-universal loyalties" such as nationalism. Needless to say, none of this squares with their mechanistic materialist agenda. The mechanistic materialists ought to be run off the road in public debate. They are not, because political correctness forbids us to point to their hypocrisy.
To return to the main line of thought, spirituality comes with a puzzle. For us, the flesh makes a contribution to spirituality which should not be denied. But one does not simply obey "the flesh." We socialize children. We instill sublimation and curb impulses. Otherwise, presumably, society would not be possible. There is no guarantee that uncurbed impulses will have outcomes that deserve to be called dignified or noble.
Attitude?
Does spirituality have anything to do with attitude? What of hope, what of equinamity—what of equinamity's dispirited cousin, resignation? What of awe, what of humility? All these questions belong to a later elaboration.
Morality?
Does spirituality have anything to do with morality? At their cores, spirituality and morality point in different directions. Morality gives orders: it orders you not to injure other people for a selfish reason, for example. In the first instance, it is a curb. Spirituality, to repeat, connotes for us a lifting of the spirits, an exaltation, a so-called altered state of consciousness. The core meanings, then, diverge to the point of being difficult to compare.
Morality, in the first instance, is obedience. It poses the question what command should you obey, and why? For the thinker, morality is exposed most deeply by a moral revolution, when the public changes its norms of what is and is not permitted. (Human sacrifice. Slavery. Abortion. Smoking.) As for spirituality, it is a privilege. A reasonable antonym for spirituality is dreariness.
Does a person have to be decent in order to be spiritual? It is not a ridiculous question—but the real answers will not look like the platitudes. How about rulers in the Muslim world who showed extraordinary esthetic sensitivity in matters associated with religion, while acting ruthlessly and cruelly in policing their empires?
Not only that. If somebody wants to make 'spirituality' a slogan for social benevolence, we disavow it. Spirituality is more difficult and more important than social benevolence, and we will never find it by using it as code for social benevolence.
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Nice and nasty
Let us proceed to another reconception. Traditionally, the word 'spirituality' is exclusively laudatory. I find that ridiculous and stupid. This usage must be superseded. There is spirituality nice, but there is also spirituality nasty. That is the other problem with the sanctimonious cliché that it is the same to be spiritual and to be good. In fact, one can be very spiritual and very malevolent.
Caution: Every time I have said this publicly, somebody in the audience wants to it to mean that we should mix spirituality nice and spirituality nasty like a cocktail (not to say that we should get our spirituality from evil people). That's their problem. Their fancy about mixing spirituality nice and spirituality nasty makes no sense.
Spirituality nasty is premier evidence that spirituality is palpable—and that that its reality-type challenges the philosopher profoundly. Rationalistic depersonalization, mercenary depersonalization, purposelessness, boredom, degradation, cynicism, despair and so forth are utterly palpable, even if they are "invisible." (Arrogance is not on this list because we consider it a failure of wisdom. So what is the relation between spirituality and wisdom? Still another question for a later elaboration.)
Do we call the nasty modalities real? That is not the half of it. Everywhere we look, we see people drowning in them. The point is that these modalities must presuppose the same human palette presupposed by spirituality nice. To put it philosophically, spirituality nice and spirituality nasty are at least of the same family as to reality-type.
So: what is spirituality's reality-type? Whatever conclusion we reach, spirituality nasty points to it as much as spirituality nice does. An electric fan does not know depersonalization, purposelessness, boredom, degradation, cynicism, despair. If we can explain wherein these qualities are possible, we have gone a long way in understanding spirituality.
"The flesh" is complicit in some forms of defilement. However, we should not underestimate the importance of "rational" depersonalization—or better, of depersonalizing sophistry. Plato glorified the mind, but things can go as badly wrong with the mind as with the body (and did so in Plato's doctrine in particular).
Nasty spirituality self-defeating?
At face value, it would seem that spirituality nasty would be like auto-immune disease. Purposelessness, boredom, hopelessness would undermine; they would impair. But that inference which seems formally correct amounts to a vast miscalculation. People animated by nasty spirituality can possess immense social competence. One would expect nasty spirituality to make an individual a poor student—but it doesn't. People animated by nasty spirituality can galvanize other people and place themselves at the head of armies that can "win." On the face of it, this is a paradox. That is why it needs to be probed incisively.
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Spirituality is heterogeneous
The last novelty here is that we define spirituality so that it is not an "it." Since I am a musician, it is vivid for me that important musical effects do not consist in the treatment of some one parameter, but arise from the integration of distinguishable techniques. Swing is a premier example. Atonality does not swing (the attempt to write atonal jazz always comes across as a parody). Some timbres do not swing. Triadic harmony alone does not swing. Many musical features have to cooperate to yield swing.
Spirituality, we say, integrates modalities which are distinguishable and which are not reducible to each other. In other expositions, we spend a lot of time on these modalities.
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People, it is said, need to believe that they are a part of something bigger than themselves. Most people, it is said, cannot take the responsibility for their morale entirely on themselves. The manifest significance of death is unacceptable to them. There are challenges which they must overcome which they cannot overcome by their own will-power.
A few people are insightful enough to realize that resentment is pragmatically dangerous to themselves. (Well, as with nasty spirituality, whether to encourage resentment or to discourage it depends on who you want to be and what you want to do. Resentment can supply one with a lucrative career. Because of that, the rest of what I say here is said to the choir.)
If an attitude is pragmatically dangerous to you, then we say that it is foolish. But the conclusion that it is foolish (which will sound ironic to those who thrive by cultivating resentment) may not help to relieve you of the attitude. A few people wish to evaporate their resentment. (Those are people I would associate with if I could find them.) The lesson is: one cannot evaporate one's resentment by willfully repressing it. Some other avenue is needed. That is a priceless discovery.
To anticipate a later discussion, I have sometimes wondered if a group activity—the available word is "a service"—could be helpful in detoxifying the psyche. But when we consider Westerners who participate in Eastern "services," we realize that it's not that easy. For example, to be taken on an emotional ride is not enough. A supposed social circumstance may underlie resentment, and it needs to be addressed by factual cognition, not ignored. As for the Eastern "services," they can be a charade. They put the acolyte through a serenity charade, and give the acolyte a certificate of serenity—while the acolyte remains in the grip of folly in real life. One meets Westerners who have Eastern credentials who brandish them as a certificate of enlightenment even as they remain unable to address their resentment or absurd self-importance.