Spirituality

[NewLeft]

Is spirituality a construction? Does it have an evolutionary advantage?

I was reading quotes and this quote from Gould caught my attention:

Yet I also appreciate that we cannot win this battle to save species and environments without forging an emotional bond between ourselves and nature as well—for we will not fight to save what we do not love (but only appreciate in some abstract sense). So let them all continue—the films, the books, the television programs, the zoos, the little half acre of ecological preserve in any community, the primary school lessons, the museum demonstrations, even […] the 6:00 A.M. bird walks. Let them continue and expand because we must have visceral contact in order to love. We really must make room for nature in our hearts.

[MotherCossack]

i think that real spirituality is a natural part of us.
there is possibly a whole heap of contrived, artificial stuff that has been constructed to try and control, modify, synchronise us all.
real spirituality is something else... pure, animal, primal..... its all about celebrating our place in nature, our rightful and wonderful space that we have largely vacated in an attempt to conquer the whole earth.
if you ask me.... i am surprised that there are not more nutcases and suicides ...

if our spirit was a foot we are surely languishing somewhere in the xxth chinese dynasty and our feet would all be bound to within a millemetre of our lives.


my instincts have evidently teamed up with the guys at common sense.. and gotten help from good old soul to come up with this conclusion....

[Ostrinski]

Spiritual people are weird.

[Grenzer]

Spiritual people are interesting, in a "Wow, people actually believe this crap?" kind of way.

[The Jay]

Whilst spirituality as you seem to mean it: emotional ties to objects, people, and patterns, could have advantages in preserving the things that we find important, such a thing may not even have anything to do with the supernatural as you seem to be implying. Such bonds with things as they are is as useful as common sense - nil. A more useful way to build those ties is in the arts, sciences, and philosophies that can further enrich the world and one's own life. The belief in the supernatural - as spiritual is usually meant - does not rely on logic, but faith. To answer your questions, yes and who cares.

[trubkin pipeface]

we can have some super rad and seemingly inexplicable experiences from various chemicals and mindstates and environments, but people who attribute them to "spirituality" instead of "our brains are pretty cool and can do fun things. Let's explore them" are basically weirdos who like making things up, and I think they cheapen the experiences they seek to explain.

[Prometeo liberado]

I'm not trying to make light of any of this but how do you define spirituality?

[NewLeft]

I'm not trying to make light of any of this but how do you define spirituality?

Not entirely sure what spirituality is.. I just think of it as anything that has to do with that abstract feeling of "connectedness" with nature and what not.

[Prometeo liberado]

Not entirely sure what spirituality is.. I just think of it as anything that has to do with that abstract feeling of "connectedness" with nature and what not.
Thanks, I was struggling over something along those lines and the western religious definition.

[MotherCossack]

we can have some super rad and seemingly inexplicable experiences from various chemicals and mindstates and environments, but people who attribute them to "spirituality" instead of "our brains are pretty cool and can do fun things. Let's explore them" are basically weirdos who like making things up, and I think they cheapen the experiences they seek to explain.


i agree with your definition of what spirituality actually boils down to... it is just a bunch of little electrical impulses and chemical reactions... and chaotic happenings.... for sure that is true.... but you know what....

SUCH IS LIFE.... ALL OF LIFE IS a wonderful coincidental plethera of just such unimportant but mind blowing little sparks and twitches in the wind.

that established.... dont you all agree we should stand in wonder at the glory of any of it happening at all ...and make the bloody most of it... and treasure it...
doesnt matter one bit it you choose to de-value the whole thing and deny that it is a gift from nature..... only thing that will happen is you might have very slightly less fun and you wont feel so special.
but seriously... the sparks and twitches will carry on absolutely regardless ... cos they are a hell of a lot bigger than anything we can comprehend.... after all their mum and dad were the big bang after all!

[MotherCossack]

b.t.w. what i am talking about is what i consider spirituality to be.....
not some superficial recent construct... which probably exists in many forms around the world.
some of which probably does help people get through their lives in a strictly escapist fashion... but since i have a big problem suspending disbelief i cant really partake.

YOU SHOULD HAVE A LOOK AT THE THREAD 'ON BEING DEAD'..... WON'T DO YOU ANY HARM AND IT DOES DISCUSS ALL THIS STUFF FROM THE : "WE ALL DIE SOMETIME" STARTING POINT.
.i've found it very interesting.

[Ose]

If you're looking for an analysis of the origins of spirituality as you define it, then I'm sure it's possible to link it with our instinct for self-perpetuation. If we adopt a teleological conception of natural systems and processes, then seeing ourselves as part of this can make us feel as though our lives have some significance which will still be relevant even after we are dead.

I don't think it has any evolutionary advantage, and in any case, it's nonsense.

[blake 3:17]

Spiritual people are weird.

People who call themselves `Spiritual`are usually very weird.

[Deicide]

I think the Quantum Woo spiritual stuff is fucking hilarious.

Deepak Chopra Interview with Richard Dawkins

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-FaXD_igv4

Physicist Leonard Mlodinow vs. Deepak Chopra

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-y5D7q1O1Uk&feature=related

:laugh:

[Zostrianos]

I find spirituality very beneficial. It's hard to explain, but I would define it as a reverence for something greater than yourself, and it doesn't have to be a deity or hypothetical entity, it could be the universe, nature, etc. I don't think it really has an evolutionary advantage, but came about as a result of our enlarged brain and consciousness (just like culture and arts), and our superior intelligence which gives meaning to life, a meaning that goes beyond mere animal survival. And as neurological studies on meditation have proven, spirituality can bring great advantages to one's life. A few years ago I had come across a few articles on this this topic and had saved them on file. Here's a good excerpt:

Intelligence, instead, is merely a tool that makes awakening possible- if only we grab hold of it and apply it to that purpose. Though survival can be regarded as important, spiritual awakening arises when biological motives take a back seat to new ones. There is a new way of life possible for each of us, if only we can rise above our genetically programmed imperatives. This is the secret human potential (hidden in plain sight) that appears to have come about by accident. A summary of its evolution can be summarized thus:

1. The harshness of physical laws made intelligence necessary for DNA's
survival.
2. DNA generated said intelligence as its own way to ensure that survival.
3. Intelligence makes it possible to awaken motives that exist above survival.

Eating and reproduction may still be important, but it just might come to pass that there's more to explore than that. There are other worlds lying dormant within a human being. Intelligence may be subservient to biology, but it has the ability to transform that biology and to liberate a treasure from within.
Such an awakening has little to do with a molecule's peculiar talent for making copies of itself. But here we are now, on this planet, contemplating our own existence, wondering if there is more to life than food, bank accounts, and breast implants. A human being's intelligence can be manipulated in such a way as to bring about a mysterious transformation. There are exercises that can be utilized to make this happen. As the old saying goes, "Knock, and it shall be opened to you." Clearly, in most of us this self-liberation has not happened yet. The possibility, nonetheless, is earth-shattering.

[Mr. Natural]

Some appear to be confusing spirituality with religion. Spirituality reaches out in connection to other things; religion tends to be a closed, dead, dogmatic system.

Spirituality emerges from a sense of belonging, of community, whether it is human community, the community of living beings, or the cosmic community.

Marx, German Ideology: "Only in community [with others has each] individual the means of cultivating his gifts in all directions; only in the community, therefore, is personal freedom possible."

This is a spiritual as well as a philosophical and political observation.

[Dean]

Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and also the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
To abolish religion as the illusory happiness of the people is to demand their real happiness. The demand to give up illusions about the existing state of affairs is the demand to give up a state of affairs which needs illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the criticism of the vale of tears, the halo of which is religion.


For Marx, spiritualism itself is not a negative. In this, he develops a parallel between spiritualism and happiness, and earlier spiritualism and human essence.


Our society closely associates religion and spirituality. This is a dangerous conflation; in fact, the very term religion is an example of a term which did not used to strictly refer to supernaturalism. Its important to appreciate what assumptions you are making - the OP doesn't indicate any superstitious, supernatural ideas, so its not really related to those ideas that most of the replies are trying to refer to.

[Book O'Dead]

Not entirely sure what spirituality is.. I just think of it as anything that has to do with that abstract feeling of "connectedness" with nature and what not.

If the quote you cited at the starter of this thread was from Stephen Jay Gould, I say congrats and THANK YOU!

Along with Carl Sagan, Gould was one of America's most lucid minds in matters of science and society in the 20th Century.

What informs my personal view on spirituality are the writings of another exceptional mind of the 20th; Eric Fromm, who pointed out that along with the inevitable alienation of the species by capitalist social relations was an incapacity to love. That is, he said that our inability to express compassion, sympathy and solidarity was the greatest obstacle to our emancipation as a race.

For me, and after studying Fromm, the meaning of true spirituality is discovered along the road as we attempt to put into practice those uniquely human virtues: Compassion, Sympathy, Solidarity and Love

[MotherCossack]

For Marx, spiritualism itself is not a negative. In this, he develops a parallel between spiritualism and happiness, and earlier spiritualism and human essence.


Our society closely associates religion and spirituality. This is a dangerous conflation; in fact, the very term religion is an example of a term which did not used to strictly refer to supernaturalism. Its important to appreciate what assumptions you are making - the OP doesn't indicate any superstitious, supernatural ideas, so its not really related to those ideas that most of the replies are trying to refer to.

this marx geaser sounds alright to me... i agree with him.

To equate real spirituality with the restrictive practises, unhealthy emphasis on personal conformity and denial of what and who we are... that almost always dominates organised RELIGON, is a huge mistake.
Apart from anything else it cuts us off from such a lot of what it means to be us.