Breathing space--not the first time I've heard those words

Things are "out of control." We have a "virus." Our problem is our sinful and ongoing want for "more and more."

If this sounds about right to you, just a word-or-two of caution, if I might: this rhetoric is vey much akin to that spouted by those Michael Lerner would, be very assured, not rightly so very happy to be likened to: those darned Nazis.

Nazis?--Yeah, Nazis. When Germans got in the mood to vote this unsavory fellow in, their complaint was the Germany had gotten much too greedy (oh how the Nazis hated those free swinging swing dancers!), that it had a virus in its bloodstream, that it needed to become pure again, in touch with primal Germanic, masculine, simple and communal purity (does this have anyone thinking of another recent Tyee article?), and this required people enjoining together, and organizing some kind of very substantial purge.

So who was it in Germany that was prospering most, that engaged most successfully in professional, commercial affairs, that tended to treat their children in a more liberal, permissive fashion--the Jews. And guess who got purged so the nation could feel all stoic manly again?

Commercialism isn't the problem. Rather, it's many people's tendency to feel dislocated, out of touch, when society moves ahead too much; it's people's intrinsic discomfort with abundance, with getting what they want and deserve to possess. (For those interested in the sort of language that presaged Hitler Germany, check out the link: http://www.psychohistory.com/htm/eln06_war.html)

If some other someone wants to put forward a vision of a society that suggests that life is about ACCUMULATING, realizing growth, love, friendliness, playfulness, but that it just isn't well represented/encouraged by the kind of culture we're "in," I'll very much be listening, by the way. For what we got now, certainly ain't all that much of what I really want. I just trust about no one who rails about viruses and greed, even from someone as worth attending to as lovely Lerner most certainly is. And getting together in MOST ANY group can make you feel a sense of belonging, purpose, vitality; but group-think can make a lot of what later is understood as hugely abhorent, look in the moment all too very "hit-the-right spot" right, virtuous, refreshing--meaningful.

cont'd

Is the Tyee going to prove a vehicle for some to reclaim their lost manliness, their solid heritage of once-upon-a-time simplicity? If it does, some may stop thinking of it so much as a friend to the Left, who have historically been seen as a bit feminine and foreign, a bit luxurious in their tastes, by their more "prosaic" peers. Please don't go there. It may be that all good left-wing communal efforts talk in ways akin to how Lerner manages here. But I think it would do good to have someone write something delineating/detailing how historically, it is always the Right that most loudly rages/riots against things like commercial excess, about the ill-offerings of ostensible societal progress'. Offer some History.

Useful, perhaps, will be some offerings from the British 18th-century, when the isles got really wicked commercial, when it became a nation of shopkeepers, where everyone pretended to be gentry, in no small part owing to their possession/accumulation of all the right assemblage of fashionable goods. The Right then--the conservatives then--all said society was becoming soft, loosing all sense of real purpose and meaning, and that as consequence it would prove militarily weak and earn collapse owing to invasion, or some other widespread and total calamity. Turns out they didn't know what the hell they were talking about, with Britain fairing not so bad, overall, in subsequent centuries--even without them giving up their taste for domestic, pretty, niceties.

Of course, as mentioned, my taste for shopping excess would never, ever involve West Edmonton Mall--that elephantine pleasure-house for taste-crippled proles.

Nighty, night.

We Need Tolerance

Of our differences to start and is about as close to community and caring we are going to get in this 21St century sadly enough. As we have Willie Nillie in the background harping on the lefties in their own playing ground. Now what kinda fool does that?

William Hayes

"In both cases, I feel that the inclusion of a spiritual component adds no meaning or value and is simply redundant."

My symnpathies. Have you been blind long?

Zalm

Zalm, I thought William Hayes put it very well, since the very concept of Spirituaism allows a limitless scope for indulgence in self-gratifying superstition, meshing with any valuable societal goals only through happenstance or opportunistic convenience.

.....though you did a nice job with your Freed Willy post.

whooee

Lots of words!
Left, Right and centre.
I don't have time to read all the comments: Gotta go to "Work".
But I'll be back this evening. In the meantime the weather is fine

In my Fantasy World

I work for Ed, drink with Zalm, and court VivianLea.

All three of you are worth your weight in gold.

oh dear...

I am blushing. How unlike me.

Ah...thanks, Stump.

lefty soul searching

At a forum on being the change in April I was part of a discussion on species at risk conservation and conflicts. The table had a few ecologist types like myself as well as a mix of folks from other interests or disciplines. The discussion revolved around to the issue of secularization of our attitudes to nature, caring for nature, how we protect nature as being one of the key issues of disconnect.

One of the facets that I spoke to at the forum was how I got over being uncomfortable or embarrassed as a professional to speak about my sense of divinity in nature, about messaging a spiritual perspective - a sense of something greater behind it all (sort of like string theory meets the master web of life intervener). I was asked how it was possible that I, a biologist, who dealt with scientific theory and applied approaches could possible believe in a creator concept, how I reconciled that in my work. Well I couldn’t really answer it outright, other than I don't have a sense of conflict, there is no great battle in my psyche to reconcile. Maybe its because I come from a religious background, one which still influences me today - and enriches me. I have however been supported by my same religious origins to follow an applied professional path with all the frustrations of its institutionalized and somewhat patriarchal confines. But I do not hide my spiritual side, and I have no qualms when asked by others about not being afraid to go beyond the idea that we must only rely on that which can be seen or proven (but this doesn't mean you can't still stick to the science at the same time). Sure some folks feel such a perspective is a disreputable antithesis of what professional scientists should be. But I am increasingly seeing that I am not alone, and I think collectively our ability to work some good in a "endless growth is good focused society" is made stronger for it. In my own faith this is referred to as Tikkun (a Hebrew word meaning to heal, reconcile and transform) but that is only one of many ways of ascribing it.

So while I do agree with certain aspects of what Murray is saying (and Rabbi Lerner), I don’t think Murray you are doing justice to the many interfaith movements, regular conservation types or professionals and decision makers out there who are fighting the good fight. But who are not afraid to do it with a notion that there is something more powerful than our own species survival worth fighting for, who don't just go home and turn on the TV and bemoan a sense of non-acknowledged existence.

buncha nonsense ANTI-URBAN

buncha nonsense ANTI-URBAN article - really you think this push to primitivism to be a good thing.

This article is all one needs to understand why this version of so-called left will never ever be takenb up.

This is a hatred of modernity and a hatred of urbanity.

that is all.

Go live in the Philippines, your little paradise.

MADNESS!

just to be clear, in my

just to be clear, in my opnion this is nothing more than white-guilt self loathing.

"For me, removing

"For me, removing "spiritually" from this definition removes no essential meaning."

I'm with the Iranian revolt to this degree: Time to end the dominance of the clerics/priesthood. The time of the secularists has finally arrived ... everywhere, including here, but especially the US. (The US likely being the last backward place where "the priesthood", and genuflecting to the icons of religion will hang on the longest.)

"I feel that the inclusion of a spiritual component adds no meaning or value and is simply redundant."

And it is real "meaning" and "value" precisely, which we have to add to the numbers games of capitalism and its clinging for cover to religious obscurantism , to which, as my learned friend here say, the "spiritual component", the ritualistic niceties of "faith based ideology" adds nothing. Save maybe meaningless mumbo jumbo and confusion.

This secularist's view anyway.

Time to move on and deal with the real world in real ways.

adamah

Nicely put; I enjoyed your post. The sense of wonder and exhilaration I feel at looking at the stars, or the mid-summer sunrise, or a thunder-and-lightening tableau perhaps can't precisely be labelled 'spiritual'; certainly not religious. But whatever one should want to call it, the realization that there are many mysteries is surely the quality of intelligent life.

Meaning and politics

Excellent post -- and some of the comments left here demonstrate precisely why the Left needs to do some soul-searching. Arrogance and self-righteousness repel rather than attract people.

Meanwhile, as to the role of the mass media in distracting and disempowering us, please see http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/blog/2009/07/08/feeding-frenzy-renown-michael-jackson-and-media.html

Right needs soul searching

I would say it is the right that needs some soul searching, not the left. They are the ones that are screwing us royally. Maybe Harper started by having his visit with the Pope. Let's hope some good comes from the visit and he won't try to use it for his own political future. Maybe he will learn where the idea for the host came from and he will start to share his wealth.

Mainstream politics a zero-sum (spiritual) game

Michael Lerner's generally on the money here.

Mainstream politics and politicking in North America - with Canada about to pay the piper - has devolved into a zero-sum (spiritually meaningful) game for participants and spectators, and we're going to continue to pay a heavy price for this throughout society until the situation, well, mainstream politicking, really, re-creates itself and becomes more meaningful.

In our last, bruising 9-month political season in BC - with our 3 elections - I participated very significantly in all 3 and it was my experience that all of these elections were spiritually bereft activities, the end result of which was ... increasing voter (people) alienation, cynicism and indifference. And as for me, I'm not sure I'm ever going to participate in this way again. Because I can find a lot more meaning and deeper satisfaction in ... just about anything else I choose to participate, ranging from organizing camps to music festivals to playing ultimate to my work. And this is true for almost everyone I've talked to about this, and I talked to a lot of people following the May electoral fiasco masquerading as a public participatory event.

Spirituality doesn't need mainstream politics, it's doing very well on its own these days. But mainstream politics is in dire need of spirituality to make if far more meaningful than it has become.

And there'll be hell to pay when the cows come home in the US and people learn the extent to which their new Count of Camelot has sold out to the elite. But will they take to the streets in angry protest. I doubt it, they've been too conditioned not to respond. So they'll probable just ... head to the mall.

The non-politics of Yum

In a world that revolves around false advertising - political systems and their attendant political parties, economic systems, and religious ones as well, offer us only more of the same. In fact, it is they who have blessed it with their lies.

In the end all systems are all merely vehicles.....and no matter how well-built and well-thought out they may be - ultimately, we can quite easily run a good vehicle off a cliff.... or keep the engine of a shoddy one running forever.

One person at a time....we each move step by step towards the common good.... or step by step away from it.

A good first step:

Learn how to grow things and build things yourself and share the knowledge of that and the fruit of your labours with others.

I'm not sure that spirituality has to mean anything more than just a simple sense of gratitude and awe over those same wondrous things VivianLea alluded to....

I have no certainty in that regard... and care little if I do.... but I salute the mystery.

As Tom Robbins once wrote about life:

"There are only two mantras - yum and yuck.

Mine is yum."

Yum is a very spiritual thing.

It has no left or right.

But it has enough yummy logic and feeling that it would never dream of selling a river.

Yum is delightful

marvelous, magical, mysterious...and you are so right, Lynn - it has a logic that would never dream of selling those things that can never be replaced.

I like yum very much. I believe it can be signified with a :)

"Learn how to grow things and build things yourself and share the knowledge of that and the fruit of your labours with others."

Whatever you call it, it is the march toward the common good that signifies.

Language, meaning and spirit

I propose that we consider another definition of 'spiritual'.

People have been noticing for some time now that the definitions of certain words that describe qualities of existence that cannot be touched have changed in the mouths of authoritarian organizations of all stripes, or nearly all.

Mostly nouns and adjectives, they have no physical referents, but are among the most important concepts in our lexicons. There's quite a long list of them.

Honour, honesty, God, love, truth, duty, joy, peace, loyalty, faith, faithfulness, trust, trustworthiness. I could go on and on, but you get the drift. Even the word meaning has no meaning one can put in a bag, but it clearly does have profound meaning.

Even though a strict materialist will always deny that they exist at all, without some way of dealing with them we must come to the place such people always come to, where the Communists came to, and the Fascists, and the Capitalists. Floundering in a swamp of meaninglessness, betraying the central purposes of their own existences and all they owe to others. The needs of society, our families, our duties to whatever we swear duty to, all these must sooner or later be betrayed by anyone who denies these 'spiritual' qualities.

I'd be the last person to advise anyone to trust a power that has lied in the past and betrayed these concepts before. Religion or government or any other. The best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour, as somebody once said.

But we can't remain, can't create civilization or a sane society without these words. The fact that they are spiritual ideas doesn't make them less vital.

The fact that we've been betrayed by those who claim these concepts doesn't mean we can do without them. We can't. Somehow we have to connect ourselves, our families and our wider relationships to them, or fall into darkness. As Jane Jacobs pointed out in her essay on Dark Ages, they are never far off.

If we aren't careful, we could fall very far indeed.

Bailey...

A very beautifully crafted piece of writing...one is tempted to say soulful, but that has conotations as well. But thank you for that thoughtful post.

VivianLea

It's nice to read someone else appreciates the hum of yum logic.

And no, I have not been smoking anything. ;-)

When I wrote out that quote I was prepared to post and duck thinking some may confuse Tom Robbins playfulness with a cuteness and lack of depth - when it is really the reverse of that: A playful seriousness.

His love-of-life mantra is asking the big stuff of all of us..... and of all our systems, be they economic, political or religious ones:

Are you here to uphold and sustain life on this earth - or are you here to diminish it?

I don't think it has to get much more complicated than that.

Never be embarrassed to quote Tom Robbins

Hi Lynn,

Big stuff is right. The man always deals with the central magics in ways that honour the flavour and truths of this ephemeral thing we do. Life.

I think I can credit my continuing interest in the meaning of meaning to him, through the magician John Paul Ziller in Another Roadside Attraction, and I'm still a little in love with Amanda.

Much to think about here......

"The fact that we've been betrayed by those who claim these concepts doesn't mean we can do without them. We can't. Somehow we have to connect ourselves, our families and our wider relationships to them, or fall into darkness."

You have certainly caught the drift of our times in these words, Bailey.....along with the need to reclaim what has been lost.

Lynn and Bailey

I would have written more about how you inspired me, but I'm a little (only a little) self-conscious about posting too often...

Thanks doesn't seem adequate but Yummy!
Said with all the playful seriousness I can muster...

Bailey

Somehow we are cross-posting so I missed your last post on Tom Robbins.

Just wanted to say....I'm still a little in love with Amanda, too...

and so is my husband.

Karl Marx, evangelical?

Thank you for your thought-provoking article. I've sort of picked up your ball and carried it a few more yards. You can see the result at:

http://belacquajones.blogspot.com

Are "compassion", "caring",

Are "compassion", "caring", "honour" and such as "faith" even, in specific contexts, owned by "spirituality" and devoid in "secularists"?

An answer in the affirmative, in my view, is a shallow, self-serving read of what secularism is all about, by those with a claim to all "the divine answers".

A "secular" view of the world, the life that inhabits it, and the universe which is its greatest context, at least insofar as we can now possibly know on the evidence, is simply a focus on what is and actually knowable, while even marvelling at the mysteries of the "unknowable", even what we may never know. (And there may well always be more that we do not know and can only speculate about, than we can ever possibly know.) Secularists, in my understanding of secularism/materialism merely reject the fantasmagorical claims of religion in all its many "spiritualist" shape shifting forms and tendencies, as having a special direct line communication with a hypothetical "God" or "Force", that has in turn given them an overarching insight and moral authority governing the affairs of humankind. Neither do they have a special stranglehold, monopoly claim on such life form specific "emotional/intellectual" qualities, rather than "spiritual" qualities, as compassion etc. (Often, far from it.)

Religion... Simply examine its past history and its present-, the greatest single likely predictor of its future behaviours. ...is indeed certainly not synonymous, however self-fancied, with the compassionate, caring, honour and faithful kind of "spiritualism" which many here would seek to ascibe to it. It is not so anywhere known to me. (And which is not to say that serious "caring qualities" cannot be known to ANY individuals, including religious/spiritualist ones. For such "absolutism" is not true here either. Life, and humans certainly, are more complex and varied than this.)

But what "secularism" is specifically more often about countering, especially in education, public life and policy (In Iran or Canada), is the long existing claim of religion of a special right to dictate how and what the rest of us can do with our lives and our bodies. This specifically must stop. Only in their own minds do they have any such special insights and powers, divine enough to give them such rights of interference in the affairs of the rest of us. This is not compassion or caring, but more reminiscent indeed of the Inquisition.

Be as "spiritual" as you want. Just get out of the face of the rest of us.

You're not a materialist...

You're just pissed off. Can't say I blame you. They really have behaved abominably.

But really, if you're gonna lay claim to things like faith and honour, you can't also claim materialism as well. Those things don't exist in any material way, and isms of whatever stripe are not flexible enough to allow such completely excluded complications as those.

Besides coyoteman, nobody who can use the word "fantasmagorical" in a sentence can afterward claim to have no spiritual tendencies at all. It just seems too unlikely.

You're not a materialist 2...

"But really, if you're gonna lay claim to things like faith and honour, you can't also claim materialism as well. Those things don't exist in any material way..."

Such "notions" as "faith and honour" do not, and I suspect cannot exist outside of the materiality specifically organized in such a unique way as results in "humans". Obliterate human "matieriality" and all that is left is the silence of the void... save for he unheard sound of a volcano erupting. Absent the material human body, which includes its brain, and who knows for sure, entirely likely "some" other animal/existence forms, and there is no verifiable/real material basis for such intellectual/emotional constructs to arise out of.

Such intellectual/emotional constructs as honour and compassion, like their counterparts greed and cruelty do not exist in a vacuum, or drop down out of Heaven or arise from Hell fully formed from nothing. They come into their "notional" existence out of the working and idea constructs of the real/material human/animal brain,, its experience with the world and interactions with it. While such intellectual constructs are for sure not material, in and of themselves, they depend on human/animal materiality, organized into a brain, to even perceive of them.

Absent the material brain and the chemistry/experiential reactions of the human body and brain, and there is only the silence of the grave... nothing but the unheard sound and fury of the rest of natural "materiality" going through the motions of the laws of nature to which they are subject.

Our, even other animal material bodies and brains must be here, evolved to a specific existence level, in order for such an abstract notion as "honour" to even be formed and acted upon.

My view of it anyway. :-) As much as some folks strain, as if they were having a bowel movement, to "spiritally" conceive of them with a separate existence/life of their own, separate from human materiality.

We are not Gods and Godesses. Nor, outside of blind "faith" do we even have a direct line of communication with one. We are just mortal, material men and women.

As for...

As for being "pissed off", you get conceded but this one point. We are long time close companions on life's highway. :-) We keep each other warm and motivated, like the Virgin Mary does for others. :-)

How views change

The reason these phenomena generate such deep controversy is that they are quite immaterial.

You've never experienced them, so you have no basis for belief. It would probably be a bit goofy for someone to believe in that which they cannot see, feel or control, if they never experienced it. There are other forms of evidence besides personal experience sometimes, but unless instrumentation or something else other will confirm a phenomenon, then experience is pretty much it.

So how do you prove that you had an experience, without material evidence to show? Start with a presumably material event, say an alien abduction claim. Thousands are quite adamant they had the experience, thousands of others are adamant that they didn't. Why? Why the strong feelings of doubt? There's nothing particularly impossible about the claim, but those who have no personal experience seem to refuse to believe it.

How much more unlikely would a purely spiritual experience be? How much harder to believe? Say, telepathy, or an encounter with the Virgin Mary, or a near death event. Again, thousands make the claim, but materialists just shrug and laugh uncomfortably.

Thousands again are incapable of compassion, empathy or love, and these tend to be quite sure everybody else is just faking them. Sociopaths and psychopaths, more than you'd think. Have you ever loved anyone? Do you believe in the reality of that?

It's possible sometimes to take training in the spiritual arts, and generate genuine spiritual experiences that way. Remote viewing and out of body things come to mind. Various kinds of meditation.

I think if so many people report experiences I could not have, I might pursue the matter, if for no other reason than to not be left out of such a rich possibility. Life is short, be a shame to miss such a big possibility in it.

Case Wagenvoord

Thank you for that, Case - excellent writing.

And thank you for reminding me of the Flying Spaghetti Monster - I had forgotten about my becoming a Pastafarian :-)

Different experiences...

"It would probably be a bit goofy for someone to believe in that which they cannot see, feel or control, if they never experienced it. "

For sure.

But on the other hand, I lived with an insane mother, who had her own separate "other worldly" reality, and beings/deities/devils and things that actually happened and went "bump" in the night, to her mind. They were certainly real enough to her.

Shall I conclude that they should then be real for me too.

Of bloody course not. The woman was sick in her mind... daft. She was in need of serious meds to balance out her chemistry abd thereby, alter her thinking, not the no less raving "faith" solutions of the man in her life.

Then, on the other hand, there was this other guy in the house who believed in God, the Devil and Life Eternal, the Power of Prayer and the Second Coming-, which has been damned slow coming by the way. Yet he was perceived as sane, a success in life and an entirely rational man.

I, on the other hand, was never able to see a distinguishable difference between the two of them.

So let's get serious. Poppycock is just poppycock, and wild imaginings are just wild imaginings.

Driving a False Creek bus down Granville one day, I had Jesus get on my bus. He didn't pay the fare... which I didn't give a rats ass about anyway. His explanation was that He was Jesus, come again, and because he was here to raise man up to heaven, shouldn't have to pay the fare of mere mortals. He was a nice guy, witty and funny, and joked about people's reaction to His Second Coming. Not a whole lot different from his First Coming apparently, being busted by the cops and spending time in the looney bin. We had a great time together while he was on my bus. (Though most of my False Creek passengers were a little aghast.)

He got off on Broadway at Main, where I gave him a transfer, so that he could get out to Riverview, where he was going to see His mother, the Virgin Mary.

I believe he really was Jesus. :-) The other one was actually the Anti-Christ. He just got here first. :-)

It's funny the tricks, wrinkles and quirks that can go on in the material mind, like electronic gizmos with "glitches" or "gremlins" in them. All reality can be altered and one's perceptions of it changed. Their minds just never work or produce the perceptions of reality results they were supposedly designed to, for reasons unknown, certainly to most of us.

That's it. I'm outta here. I need some popcorn. ('sides, I have to be more careful of The Dark Side of The Force than the likes of yourself and most here.)

Always a pleasure, Bailey.

enjoyed your bit there,

enjoyed your bit there, coyoteman.

Superstition is alive and well.

AFIK, there are only two groups of people who did not develop the concept of a God of some kind.

The first is the true aboriginal, who made no permanent villages, such as the Australian Aborigine and the African San. Interestingly, because they owned and needed only what they could carry on their backs, they did not murder each other or war with other groups over territoy

The second group is the Chinese, the first, oldest, and longest-lived civilisation on earth, who instead revered (but not worshipped) their philosophers who developed rules for finding harmony with onesself and others. No pie in the sky was needed.

That did not stop their incessant warring among themselves, however, any more than our our belief in a God has stopped us.

Our modern ideas about a God have developed - more or less - along the lines of first worshipping the Sun, the obvious giver of all life, to the elements of weather, the Golden Calf, the Greek Pantheon, and on to Jewish, Christian and Muslim theories of God, with even their "Fundamentalists" having to gradually revise their "facts".

Without having those first softening-up precedents to favour the "Spiritual", no one would ever dream up the notion of a Creator complete in every possible way, but who would fashion a flawed model like we humans, and then feel diminished if we "sinned", yet be overjoyed if we made it to heaven !!

I suppose if we are ready to believe something that fantastical, it is no great jump to believe in the healing power of crystals, blessed spring water, the laying on of hands by a TV evanelist or a grilled cheese sandwhich morphing into the image of Christ.

Even so, I was surprised to see Bailey opine here re "....an alien abduction claim." ......"There's nothing particularly impossible about the claim, but those who have no personal experience seem to refuse to believe it."

"Nothing particularly impossible" ?????

Sorry Bailey, but notwithstanding any thirst for novel experiences and the requisite tolerance for crazies and their ideas, it is indulging in such nonsense that enhances our over-readiness to believe without proof, and dulls our perceptions in the search for "truth".

We can get along quite well without various versions of the X-Files, "Spiritual" or not, since we already have trouble enough trying to figure out where the reality is in what we can actually see and experience with Mr Campbell, just for starters.

The unexamined life?

Youse guys are meshing together two concepts that ought not have the slightest to do with one another.

Your internal spiritual experience ought to be kept separate from your religious experience, or lack thereof, about the wonderful mystery that we all are. That I get to get up and go to work in the morning really is quite the miracle, even if by 9 am I could do with a little less of the personal experience of the miracle.

Your religious experience of your spiritual awareness is what you try to relate to others, and what people coming together all over the world on all kinds of different days attempt to share with each other in the hope that their synergy might give them some kind of bliss and a shared understanding of the people around them that they might not otherwise experience.

And, unfortunately, as with politics, some people think they've got the answer by the tail and they run off and tell the world about it saying "This is the way that it is!" Which it isn't. It never is.

Don't mistake "Churchianity" for Christianity. They haven't the slightest to do with each other. But don't forget to develop your spiritual muscles. I can see from here how some of you have gotten fat on spiritual potato chips while sitting on Pastor Posturepedic for so long you can't even see the holes in your soul that your morals and dreams for the world are leaking out of....

What? "The wonderful mystery we all are?"

Where's the "mystery"? We are born, we grow up, we procreate, we raise our kids, grow old and then die. So does every other living thing. Are they all "mysteries" too?

We, alone among all the other species, have evolved a large brain and the prehensile thumb it employs. We are the "thinking animal", but we haven't had many millions of years to have evolved a working, sustainable relationship with ourselves, mother earth, and our fellow species that won't inevitably be self-destructive, a process all other creatures have had to go through, with some not making it.

We are just another evolutionary experiment which is doomed to failure if we can't shake the notion that our population expansion stands as proof that "God" has given us the earth to do with as we please, and that He-She-It will always "provide" - just as long as we produce ever more souls for He-She-It's delectation.

The only "mystery" is why, with our large brains, we can't see the fatal error in our logic.

Because of that, Zalm, I think you're holeyer than me :-)

More on Me2...

"I suppose if we are ready to believe something that fantastical, it is no great jump to believe in the healing power of crystals, blessed spring water, the laying on of hands by a TV evanelist or a grilled cheese sandwhich morphing into the image of Christ"

I think, from my own view, that this stuff you have written Me2, is excellent, well explained stuff.

"We are just another evolutionary experiment which is doomed to failure if we can't shake the notion that our population expansion stands as proof that "God" has given us the earth to do with as we please, and that He-She-It will always "provide" - just as long as we produce ever more souls for He-She-It's delectation."

No doubt there are two competing "notions" of "spirituality" attempting to secure favour here, over "mundane materialism"-, though I am of the view that one spiritualism is just fallen a little further from the tree. One is cruder, or more primitive "ritualistic stuff", while the other is somewhat more intellectually "sophisticated".

Which is not to say that such idea notional constructs as honour, love, compassion etc. do not exist. Clearly they do. The point is, however, that they are not some kind of "fantastic", eternal values floating in some divine ether, but arise out of and serve the interests of materially formed humans in one way or another.

There is no divine mystery around material humans having formed "values". Even though we may not, as I started out saying, fully understand all the minutia of how they arose in our material brains thought processes. But what is clear is, or at least there is no verifiable contrary evidence, that as near as we can know, short of "blind faith", you cannot separate such intellectual constructs from the material brain that gave them rise and may or may not act upon them.

Some folks just can't seem to find meaning in life, or a reason for living, without trying to graft on some kind of supra-material idea/being construct from outside the material human experiece of all of us. No matter how sophisticated though, it is the fertile ground out of which all the various priest and priestesshoods arise to serve ruling elites, bamboozle and fleece we mere ignorants without divine knowledge.

For some of us, we are just going to have to agree disagree, and see if time and further evolution resolves the issue.

The "left" is fine

Leftist values -- compassion, cooperation, transparency -- drive the human-rights agenda worldwide. From grassroots NGOs in our communities to the UNHCR, these values are prospering and growing.

This has very little to do with the NDP's chronic inability to form Her Majesty's government. There are two reasons for that. The first is that our liberal-democratic capitalist system, while of course very flawed, is the best one going and unlikely to be replaced in the foreseeable future. If, as seems reasonable, voters will prefer that the capitalist system be led by actual practicing capitalists, every governing party will be a business party, as opposed to the NDP's tenuous amalgam of unions and intellectuals. This is why it is important to get more Gregor Robertsons in front of the voter, because Robertson can point to his having to make payroll and balance his books.

The second is that the left, being naturally suspicious of abuse of all authority, does not naturally spawn a leadership caste. The left tend to create better critics than followers, so it's harder to unite them.

Warm Fuzzies...

…to "Take Over the State of California"?
To give it back to First Nations or is more fundamental than that?

Isn’t “secular fundamentalists” a contradiction?

We know the dangers that come with thinking our beliefs or thoughts are the best.
Brilliance is its own game...

It is human to belong; there is nothing radical or new about it; we need it, crave it and would do anything to belong, some posts here illustrate that well enough.
I’m not religious but I am spiritual…and I’m hardly alone.

It’s the same, however you say it:
…if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem
…if you can’t say something good, don’t
...and so on.
But where is it written the destruction of the community began 30 years ago?
I’d disagree and go much farther back.

I’m surprised Lerner even thinks “ordinary” people choose right or left…not.
He is clouding his own waters while showing how removed he is from the real world.

The all comments....

The all comments section is not accessible on this thread...can only access best comments.

L.

'Left' and 'Right' needs a natural disaster for a human course

correction!

I dispair that only an earthquake or something similar will get us off the treadmill of consumption and live within nature a nurture the connections between us.

Until then I will only vote locally as our provincial and national 'Leaders' are visionless, because it is too hard to see through dollar bills!

The 'We's' outnumbered by the 'Thems'!

Why do we design cities we need to flee on weekends?

Why do we drive our car to go ride a stationary bike?

Silly humans!

Legal Mary Ju Wanna might help spirtualize the masses Mon!

Puff, puff, pass! (to de left hand side Mon!)

what happened to the all comments?

what happened to the all comments on this thread?