religion and spirituality

[REGINA SEWELL]

Ivo,

The issue that you bring up...  it reminds me of Marx's declaration that religion is the opiate of the people.  I live in Columbus, Ohio and have a sense that Marx is wrong...  the Opiate isn't religion, it's football....  except when the buckeyes lose, which they just did...

But seriously, you raise the issue of religion/spirituality, but I think that the issue is broader...  it has to do with people getting stuck in a cultural conserve.  And while the downside of religion as cultural conserve of choice are easy to point out (you did in the example of John Travolta's son, and on the surface, we can blame religion for much of the blood that's being shed all over the planet), my sense is that people flock to religion and stay with it because it works for them somehow.  It gives meaning to what may otherwise be a frightening, overwhelming, pointless existence.  It gives them what Joseph Campbell dubbed "Myths" to help them navigate their world.  And it gives them rules for living.  Though we break them all the time, it's easy to see how the "thou shalt nots" of the Abrahamic religions helped to keep societies from killing each other...  

Campbell also notes that perhaps the problem with religions today is that they myths have not caught up with the economic and social realities of the world in which we live.  Perhaps what we need are new myths.  Oddly enough, some of the new science and new religion is backing up what the Mary Baker Eddy prosletyzed to her masses -- the power of prayer, of "energy" and intention.

So perhaps we should take to heart the words of Bruce Springstein on his album "war"  "Blind faith in anything will get you killed."

According to the press:

"A post-mortem examination determined last night that John Travolta's
chronically ill son died of a seizure, as controversy erupted over the
Scientologist actor's handling of the boy's medical condition. According to
the family, Jett, 16, suffered a seizure and hit his head on a bathtub at
their holiday home in the Bahamas, where he was found dead on Friday."
...Travolta
and his wife, Kelly Preston, issued a statement saying they were
"heartbroken that our time with him was so brief. We will cherish the time
we had with him for the rest of our lives." The couple said that Jett
suffered from Kawasaki disease, a condition that causes inflammation of
small and medium-sized arteries. The disease affects the lymph nodes, skin
and the mucous membranes in the mouth, nose and throat. Experts said that
the disease was rarely fatal and seldom affected children over the age of
8....Critics of Scientology suggested yesterday that Jett may have been
suffering from autism, a condition that the church does not recognise
because it considers mental illness to be psychosomatic and argues that it
should be treated through spiritual healing...." From The Times January 6,
2009

Well, I will not discuss the way this church or others deal with humans. I
think that the problem is deeper than this and deserves an urgent and
serious consideration. My question is: What are the political consequences
of spirituality? I will not bother you with this historical problem, but
with the clear fragmentation between Governments and Institutions related to
"faith" and "Spirituality" a big and increasing hole is there for we all to
see if we want and have the courage to see it. The consequences can be
disastrous if all remains the same. Governments can not pretend that the New
Age Movement doesn't exist as a genuine mode of discourse or other types of
movements that are pupping up now. With post modernism the respect for all
kinds of truth are being mistaken for all truths are equal. And We all know
this is simply not truth in our relative world.  Note the paradox. They say
"All kinds of truth are equal" forming in that very moment another kind of
truth. I will attempt to say that in our relative world there are not only
various types of truths but various degrees of truths. I will call this
degrees simply Evolution, defined as a truth that emerge, transcend and
include the previous truth (but the topic is too complex to expose it here,
I think, because it would divert from the real intention of my e-mail)

Spirituality have to enter in the political discourse again, I believe,
simply because spirituality, by whatever name is an intrinsic part of a
human being, and the bad use of it makes the world poorer. By political
discourse, I mean in the broadest sense of the world, including the explicit
consequences of the work and the understanding of science, of arts, of
culture, etc that have to result in a better informed political decisions.
This, I believe, can only be met by a real transdisciplinary approach. Is
Sociatry Era coming at last?

regina sewell, Ph.D.


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