SPIRIT AND SPIRITUALITY

I've spent most of the past hour watching Tim Russert's program Meet the Press. He had a collection of religious types, media types, and politicians discussing the place of spirituality in America today. Many interesting thoughts and ideas were bandied about, but at no point did the group consider defining what they were talking about. What is spirit and spirituality? What is faith and where does it come from?

These concepts are accepted just as anyone wants to use them. There has never in any public discussion that I've heard been a single instance in which anyone attempted to define what the words mean. Everybody just goes about blithly using the terms in their own way without any effort at coming to a common understanding of what they're talking about, with the result that there's never any real meeting of the minds taking place, just a lot of discrete observations and ideas, but no consensus as what spirit and faith really are. This is sad and unfortunate, because I would really like to understand what the words mean. I use them too, without much understanding of what I mean.

Spirit is to me a particularly troubling concept because the term conjures up in my mind images of smoke and vapors floating about a mysterious atmosphere that has no connection with anything in my everyday life. Still, it is a term that I have bandied about as if I knew what it means, usually sneaking it into an argument in a way that precludes any opportunity for my adversary to confront me with my lack of candor about what the word means. Regrettable and dishonest, but alas true.

Spirit, I think, is one those huge words with many connotations and meanings, some of which may even be contradictory. It is related, I suspect, to intelligence, but is not the same; it is related to understanding, but is not just that; it is related to emotion, but is more than just feelings, however elevated they may be; it is not just religion and does not even have to have a religious element. So what is left for this amorphous thing?

Hanging over all this formulation is the annoying question of whether experiences of transcendent evil may also be spiritual. Is perception of evil a spiritual experience? Can evil be spiritual? Rather bothersome questions, but I suspect this may very well be the case. After all, contemplation of the evil in the gratuitous horrors perpectuated by dictatorial governments throughout history certainly elevates our awareness to truly transcendent levels.

Somewhere in one of his many books, Joseph Campbell relates spirit to esthetics, to the appreciation of whatever it is that constitutes art, beauty, goodness, grandness, and all the other transcendent levels we experience inside our minds and hearts. So far I have not been able to improve upon this way of looking at spirituality, but I keep trying, for even Campbell leaves room for more traditional religious notions of spirituality. He describes his experiences in the cathedral in Chartes as being in a spiritual place. I don't reject such a perspective, I just feel that to identify spirit and art or music or religion is too confining of the experience.

Spirit finds expression in all of these, but only when we elevate our experience to transcendent levels, I think, do we enter a realm of spirit. A purist will probably argue that this doesn't come close to answering the question as to what spirit really is, but that I have merely shifted the discussion to something called "transcendent." Well, the critic is probably right, but at the moment I can't do much better.

MEAT-HEADED PRESUMPTIONS

Robert J. Samuelson in today's Washington Post calls us a nation of "closet welfare junkies," an appellation secured on his definition of Social Security and Medicare as "our biggest welfare programs." Well, straight off, I differ with his presumption that welfare programs are shameful or undesirable. To the contrary, they are among our most civil and humane activities, and much needed to maintain a society in which all citizens can live under bearable circumstanaces. And maintaining itself at minimal levels is ultimately what life is about. Much too often, however, ideology and theology, divisive instruments of power that divide people into warring camps, define human worth and need, invalidating persons unable to maintain minimal levels of living and shaming them for accepting the just rewards of civilization.

At issue, then, at least in my mind, is the question of the value and purpose of government and civilization. Civilization has arisen over the eons as a product of humans' efforts to live together in relative peace and with the ability to provide for at least creature comforts. Civilization also foster spiritual and emotional development, learning, art, and all the other worthy endeavors by which we live out our humanness. Government, on the other hand, structures civilization, adjusting it to the needs and desires of particular groups at particular times. In this adaptive function, government provides, among other things, for the common defense and the securing of livelihoods for all the people under its jurisdiction. Whenever necessary in providing this defense and livelihood, government conscripts its citizens to warfare or provides economic resources for them to survive. Thus, the need for civilization is to sustain life; the need for government is to direct common efforts towards that end. Sadly, the power function of government usually takes over and its sustaining function suffers. To de-legitimize government's sustaining function by defining the majority of citizens as "welfare junkies" is destructive of government itself and sheer nihilist arrogance.

To structure government so that it abrogates to just a few individuals at the top of the food chain a majority of the protections and privileges of civilization is to stand that noble achievement of mankind on its head. Civilization is for all people, and it is the function of government to assure that all peoples reap its benefits. To invalidate the claim of a portion, usually the vast majority, of a people who make claim on government's sustaining function not only defines claimants as undeserving of civilization's benefits, but even brings into question the purpose of civilization itself. This is too much meat-headed greed. Yet this is precisely what the current administration in Washington is determined to do.

VALUES

What are these things called values? Politicians keep bandying the word about, but nobody defines what values are. Republicans say democrats don't have any, and democrats say republicans have the wrong ones. Yet neither side defines what they mean.

One dictionary definition of values is the intrinsic worth of something. I once defined the term as what one considers worth working for. I suspect that at least in the sense used by politicians values simply refer to the things the speaker likes.

However values are defined, what are the units by which they are measured? The current buzz word is metrics, so what are the metrics of values? If we can't define how values are measured, how can we know if some are better than others?

A different question: Where is the intelligence in a Designer who creates life forms that can only survive by killing and eating each other? Doesn't sound like much thought went into that creative process, certainly not any compassion--let alone love.

THEORY UNDERSTOOD

Writing in the Washington Post this morning, Steve Olson explains clearly the distinction between a theory and a hypothesis (and maybe conjecture, too). I have long hoped somebody with standing would take on this task, not because hill-billy Christians who so vigorously espouse a creationist theory can understand or accept what he explains, but because maybe his essay will help people who are inclined to accept scientific explanations but who lack scientific training to understand the role of theory in scientific discourse. We've let the creationists get by too long with their treatment of theory as a pejorative term. It is not. As Olson makes clear, a theory is a long established body of research and evidence that enables us to understand aspects of the world which we inhabit. I have sent him an email thanking him for his article.

Scientific theories do not answer all questions. Some things we do not know yet, and may never know, but we are making progress in adding new details to the paradigms we have. Science allows us to continue adapting and changing our theories as new information becomes available. It is self-correcting. Creationism, on the other hand, does not allow for change or improvements in understanding. It only allows us to bury deeper and deeper into faith.

In point of fact, both science and religion are myths. I do not mean that they are lies, but myths, fundamental explanatory systems that connect our brains with the physical world (yes, religion does connect us with the physical world). For the past several hundred years in the Western world we have been in process of shifting from a fundamentally religious explanatory system to a scientific one. Presently these two myths still co-exist in our culture and generally in a relatively peaceful manner. It is only when proponents of one myth get overly ambitious and try to impose their mode of explanation on everybody else that conflict arises. We are seeing that now in the efforts of fundamentalists, evangelicals they're called, to impose creationists teachings in the public schools.

Now comes the meta question: What do we have either myth? The short answer is given above, the need to connect our brains with the physical world. But that only removes the question one step backward without adding any information. I suspect that the reason we have myths is the perennial search of the human brain for answers to fundamental questions about ourselves, how and why we got here, and where the world comes from. The drive for answers to these questions is so powerful that we will pursue the search whether we have a productive methodology or not. If our present systems of understanding are not adequate to answer a burning question, we will simply make up an answer. We do it all the time. The justifications and excuses by which we rationalize our failures and shortcomings, not to mention our efforts to influence other people, attest to the power of this answer creating process within us.

POLITICIZING AMERICA

Clearly the politicization of America is alive and well. Witness the way politics has come to completely dominate discussion of Terri Schiavo's condition. What should be a family matter has been taken over by the politicians and used for their totally selfish and nefarious purposes. Whatever happened to the kinder, gentler way we dealt with Ian Gonzales, the Cuban boy washed up on our shores? In that case, we kept our cool, seeing the situation in child welfare terms, while the Cubans wholly politicized the boy's situation, using it get in digs at Castro.

No good can come of politicizing everyday life. America has remained a stable democracy for better than 200 years in large part because we have not been a highly political people. In the past, we've lived our lives largely outside the political arena, leaving that to a few stalwarts who love the rough and tumble of power grabs. The rest of go about our business taking a very jaundiced view of politicians and everything they say and do. Now, however, we're getting more and more involved in political debates and turning every social issue and even family problems into political battle grounds between the right and left.

I suggest that we be careful about too much political activity. We can end up with the sort of instability that dogged some European democracies for decades. Unless elected politicians foul up too badly, we are better off to just let them do their jobs while we go about doing our jobs. Then if they make too big a mess of things, we can quietly throw them out in the next election. There is no reason to intertwine every activity of private life with political parties and partisan debates.

Question 1: How can a man who looks like a cadaver inspire confidence in the Department of Homeland Security?

Question 2: Why must jurors give interviews to the media after a trial. It seems to me that the deliberations that take place within the jury room should be confidential forever? Hard decisions have to be made there and a lot of give and take is required to arrive at a fair decision. Let that process remain with the jury members and not become the focus of media attention and second guessing.

PROCRUSTES MOTEL

One cannot through thought alone understand; action is also required. Only by acting on knowledge does it become part of ourselves; only through action does knowledge and being become one.

I know people whose minds are chock full of answers. Unfortunately, their answers have no meaning because they are not derived from questions. That is the problem with formal schooling. Formal education has little or no value if the answers it provides have not been sought.

The question on the mind of every God-fearing hill-billy Christian (read poor Republican) is "Would you want a gay man to move in next door and marry your son?"

GOBLET

Spun of the ageless sand,
Daughter of fire and wind,
In thy crystaline beauty,
A little of God
And a little of me.

EMPTY NOUNS

Morality is a useless noun with no immediate referent. So is love. This to say that these terms not only point to nothing, they are unnecessary interpositions between our consciousness and real life experiences. Morality is simply one group of people saying to another group, "Let's you folks do things our way." We would be clearer in our aims and likely to meet with less resistance if we merely point out the incorrectness of a postion or the impracticality of a proposal, instead of praising or denouncing an impulse or act because it does not conform to ways we want others to behave. In reality, we need no better guide to behavior than sheer practicality. The easiest way to deal with other people, collectively or singly, is to be completely honest. Any deviation from simple honesty inevitably creates confusion and error, which then have to be addressed in their own right. As old Ben Franklin said years ago, "Honesty is the best policy." Truth, honesty, and human decency are all the guides we need. Interposing a noun such as morality between these values and our actions not only confuses, it asserts a superior attitude that may very well arouse antagonism.

Love, too, is a meaningless noun interposed between our response to another person or thing that adds nothing to the experience or our understanding of it. Only two species are capable of the experiences to which we normally attach the word love: humans and dogs. In humans, what passes for love takes a masculine and a feminine form. For males, love refers to the desire for sexual control, nothing more. For females, love is behavioral control, nothing more. We experience both forms of control directly, and the interposition of the noun love only adds a verbal layer without enhancing the experience or our understanding of what is taking place within us.

Among dogs, what we call love is simply dependence. We need no other noun to indicate this.

Both morality and love are products of our noun-making ability. We can and do invent nouns all the time that have no referent in the real world. Advertisers do it with abandon. Ever try to figure out what "Gusto" refers to. I submit that we would be better off to drop most of these useless nouns and focus attention directly on the impulse or experience at hand. Too much generalization just fogs up the mind.

CORPORATE TAX COLLECTORS

The Bush plan to privatize Social Security adds up to a shifting of taxing authority from the government, where it is presumably used for public good, to private corporations, where it feeds corporate greed. If this scheme succeeds, it will be the biggest boon corporations have ever experienced and fulfill Bush's idea that freedom, far from providing for civil liberties, is simply the right of corporations to do whatever they want to American citizens.

To any who are tempted to look upon recent positive events in the Middle East as indications that Bush policies for that area are succeeding I would suggest consulting Gandhi's answer to the age old question of whether ends justify means. Gandhi said that if the means are honorable, the end cannot be anything but honorable. In no sense has Bush's lies and deceptions about his pre-emptive war and subsequent polices in the Middle East been honorable. Therefore, in Gandhi's formulation, there is no way anything honorable or, I would add, anything of value, can result from America's recent activities in the Middle East.

PROCRUSTES MOTEL

One of the reasons working in a bureaucracy is so mind-numbing is that we have no heroes. There is no great bureaucrat, past or present, that we can look up to and emulate. Instead, we are beset by thousands and thousands of hunchback, souless gnomes who from years of terror that they might be noticed have suffered irreparable brain damage.

Enough of Dan Rather. Not to worry, though, I'm sure another light pole in another hurricane awaits him somewhere.

This has been a morning for dashing about. We completed some errands but before we finished had to pop back home for a bathroom stop. Poor Master can't get three errands out of one pee.

Bush claims that his policy is to expand democracy all around the world. But wouldn't it make more sense to work to extend human rights? After all, democracy is desirable precisely because it fosters human rights.

Around here yard sales are practically a cottage industry. Back in India before I took up with Master, we just gave away whatever we didn't want or need. Here, however, Americans with their accountant mentalities have contrived the yard sale. The last laugh is that the same old junk still remains in the neighborhood.

Procrustes Motel

Bureaucracies were invented to punish people who are probably going to heaven, but don't deserve to.

Ever notice how the boss's mistakes are called "typos?" If you have, you're not a boss--you've too much self-awareness. Find another job before you give bossing a bad name.

Oh, how I admire big strong feet and detest little weak feet. You can't do anything with little feet; with big feet you can run and walk all day. Little feet tire easily. I wish I had big strong feet. Master says he too would like to have big feet.

Of all the fools in the world, surely the greatest is the fool who starts across the street knowing he won't get all the way, stops midway, then stands there fully exposed to two lanes of fast traffic.

There is a hell,
Where demons shriek
And sinners groan,

But which is it,
To bear eternal misery,
Or to inflect unending pain?

Lifting the Tree

Once upon a time a man was walking in the woods when a tree fell on him. A neighbor passing by and seeing him lying under the tree said, "Lift it off." No one can deny that this was precisely what needed to be done. Unfortunately, the tree was bigger than the man and he couldn't lift it off.

Is this not the situation when people tell us not to be afraid, or not to get angry, or that we should love our fellow humans?

The New Serfs

As is our wont, Master and I popped out of bed bright and early this Sunday morning to read the Washington Post. Well, actually, he reads and I help him with the hard words. Big words like watermelon. Anyway, the story that set him off this morning was about people caught up in a web of credit card debt and their valiant efforts to extricate (whew!) themselves. Seems some people get in so deep and remain in so long that they can never get out. Just like the old time tenant farmers in the deep south that I've heard about.

Poor master gets worked up that credit card companies can use every advertising trick in the book to lure naive souls into signing up for their cards and then amassing huge debts that they can never repay. And when they do try to pay off the debt, some new gimmick, a late charge or an additional fee, is thrown at them and the poor card users are worse off than before they ever made a payment. What makes this so bad, and set off poor master, is that the federal government is a party to the scam, making laws that favor the credit card companies over the poor, lone individual. It's an alliance made in hell, government and corporations joined together to create a new class of serfs. Sad. But, Master says, that's what the "ownership society" is all about. It is an alliance between corporations and a compliant government designed to strip individuals of all control over their lives. These credit card scams are just the tip of the iceberg. If I can get this stupid blog to work for him, Master says he will continue ranting about such asymmetrical arrangements now facing middle and working class Americans.

I may go back to India!