This is feminism?
Remember I told you about that Women’s Studies list I subscribe to? This week there’s been a busy discussion of ‘spirituality’ – but without ever bothering to actually say what that is. That makes for an extremely peculiar discussion, when people chat away about something that seems to change shape dramatically for each person. On Monday, after quite a few of these shape-shifting discussions, I asked what it meant. I got an answer, too.
I think that there are multiple definitions of “spirituality.” While
some might define it as religion by another name, others see it as
quite different from organized religions, or even belief in “higher
powers.” I would argue that spirituality & religion can be quite
different. Anzaldua’s theory of spiritual activism offers an
important alternative to religious spirituality, as do holistic
perspectives and social-justice theories of interconnectivity.
Then several book titles, concluding with ‘Interconnectivity is key.’ I had no more idea what the word meant than I had had before. For two days I read more messages that were along the same lines. Then there was one yesterday…
Spiritual practitioners can be activists: activist mysticism, activist prophecy.
Spirituality can be practiced by oneself and in community–chanting, praying;
speaking in private and in public, writing and publishing from a position that
promotes love, justice, and joy. And, very importantly, not simply talking the
talk but walking the walk, in other words, being a spiritual activist in every
moment of one’s life. This requires a soul-and-mind-inseparable-from-body
consciousness: it extends beyond intellectual concepts, beyond any kind of body
work, any regular attendance at a temple, church, or mosque.
Soul-and-mind-inseparable-from-body is a term that I use throughout my writing,
which is spiritual, intellectual, erotic, and very much of and from the body.
And I couldn’t contain myself any longer, I had to ask again, at more length.
So what exactly is spirituality? It seems to be more or less everything. It’s chanting, it’s praying, it’s speaking in private and in public, it’s writing and publishing from a position that promotes love, justice, and joy. What exactly is it about all those activities that makes them spiritual? And what is it that being spiritual makes them? Being a spiritual activist extends beyond intellectual concepts, beyond any kind of body work, any regular attendance at a temple, church, or mosque…so it’s everything and at the same time it’s beyond everything. How does it manage that? And what, exactly, is it? What is it for writing to be spiritual, intellectual, erotic, and very much of and from the body?
What does it mean to be a mystic in the world, what does it mean to be at once a social and a spiritual activist? In what sense are human beings divine? What does it mean to be numinous? What does ‘to be human is to be numinous’ mean?
It all sounds very resonant and deep, but it seems to have no actual meaning at all.
I can’t help thinking that feminism needs rigor a lot more than it needs hand-waving about spirituality. It’s so easy to dismiss women if they get identified with woolly empty pretty feel-good verbiage.
There was an attempt…
Anyway, if “spiritual” generally has any meaning, I think it’s often used
something like this: a transcending of the self in its narrowest, most
egotistical manifestations — fear, selfishness, delusion, alienation from
oneself, from others and from the universe.”Spirituality” might involve a
certain metaphysics, or at least metaphysics of the person. Or it might be
understood more psychologically.
There was also another list of books. So this morning I replied:
I have to say – from everything I’ve seen so far, it appears that no one knows what it is. Certainly no one has said what it is. If it takes a *whole book* to say what it is, maybe it’s not a very useful term? Maybe it’s just feel-good fuzz? If a term is useful, it’s generally possible to define it (in under 60,000 words). If a term can’t be defined, can it really do anything other than obfuscate?
That inspired a retort (perhaps the clearest thing said in the whole discussion).
Maybe it depends. Maybe the term is useful for
some people but not for others. (While for some,
the term “spirituality” might obfuscate, for
others, the term might really resonate.) I would
suggest that part of spirituality’s definition is
its slippery nature, its inability to be easily
pinned down and neatly defined.
Well that’s all very well, but the trouble is, these people are academics. They teach, in universities; their subject is an academic discipline; yet they feel quite cheerful about using words that mean everything and nothing, and they make a virtue of vagueness. And not only are they academics, they are feminist academics. Fucking hell. How did academic feminism get turned into Advanced Wool-gathering? Why do feminists think it’s feminist to make a parade of refusing to think?
It’s enough to make one despair.
There, there OB, it’s all right… I read and write science-fiction and nobody can give me a clear definition of that either.
Thinking about it, that’s probably not the only similarity between the 2…
I think “spirituality” is predominantly psychological / emotional needs (love etc) combined with a sense of awe and astonishment at the world and one’s own existence, as well as a sort of yearning for “something more”. It also seems to have a mysterian element to it: the more “un-explainable” the better.
Personally, I don’t like the word and blanche whenever I hear it, because it has connotations of the supernatural. I don’t see how anything that is not natural could exist: eveything that exists has to be natural. Even if there was such a thing as God, then it too would have to be natural. I suppose there are some aspects of the world that might be considered immaterial in the Platonic sense, but I would still say that they are natural.
Re “numinous”: Sam Harris talks about it in Part 1 of the discussion between himself, Dawkins, Dennet and Hitchens called “The Four Horseman”. Try this adress: http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=-869630813464694890&q=dawkins+dennet+hitchens+harris&total=5&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=4of
Sometimes I worry that the next major religion will be called “Hippy”!
“Well that’s all very well, but the trouble is, these people are academics. They teach, in universities; their subject is an academic discipline; yet they feel quite cheerful about using words that mean everything and nothing, and they make a virtue of vagueness. And not only are they academics, they are feminist academics. Fucking hell. How did academic feminism get turned into Advanced Wool-gathering? Why do feminists think it’s feminist to make a parade of refusing to think?
It’s enough to make one despair.”
Hope not, particularly in your case Ophelia.
Yoga is in my experience a great and beneficial practice. It apparently originated in the Indus Valley Civilisation (c. 3300–1700 BC), and in the forms practised in the West has been shorn of most of its Hindu and other religious trappings.
A yoga teacher I once encountered said that the Yoga tradition teaches that there are four aspects to all-round human development: the physical, the intellectual, the emotional and the spiritual. By the latter he did not mean what a priest (for example) would take to be the meaning. It means as far as I can tell something like zest for living, enjoyment of life, and outgoing optimism as distinct from something like self-obsessed pessimism.
I took on board what that teacher said. I am not religious, but in that way I can relate to ‘the spiritual’.
You quoted: “I think that there are multiple definitions of ‘spirituality.’ While some might define it as religion by another name, others see it as quite different from organized religions, or even belief in ‘higher powers.’ I would argue that spirituality & religion can be quite different. Anzaldua’s theory of spiritual activism offers an important alternative to religious spirituality, as do holistic perspectives and social-justice theories of interconnectivity.”
Abstract nouns and other abstract words have the greatest imprcision of meaning, highlighted by substituting the word ‘blab’ each time one of them occurs, and examining the result:
‘I think that there are multiple blabs of “blab.” While some might define it as blab by another name, others see it as quite different from organized blabs, or even belief in “higher blabs.” I would argue that blab & blab can be quite different. Anzaldua’s blab of blabual blab offers an important alternative to blabious blab, as do blabistic blabs and blab theories of blab.’
Sorry, but I can’t remember who first used that approach to clarify such passages. But it works a treat in my opinion.
It’s wymyn’s thinking! Good and irrational!
Looks to me like your correspondents are using ‘spiritual’ to mean ‘deep’ and ‘deep’ to mean ‘good’. A classic piece of unexamined semantic slippage, and very little else…
I’d like to see an argument for the numinosity of an entirely materialist appreciation of the universe, and of life on Earth – as per PZ Myers, Carl Sagan, etc. I suspect there would be little difference in concrete terms. Just that the ‘spiritualityists’ wouldn’t want anything to be concrete…
Let’s spit at -ualities.
‘It apparently originated in the Indus Valley Civilisation (c. 3300–1700 BC), and in the forms practised in the West has been shorn of most of its Hindu and other religious trappings.’
Shorn of ‘most’ of its Hindu trappings; 1 religious trapping remaining suffices to get me scared.
Many things apparently originated in BC something & are suspect because of it – it is bogus to believe old wisdom has a value because it is old. Knowledge only has value if it is true.
OB – as you know this ‘spiritual’ mumbo jumbo came to high prominence in feminist politics in the UK in the 80s at Greenham Common peace camp.
It strikes me as a political form of narcissistic self-destructiveness, as in adolescent self-harming. The self harmer feels that they, through self harming, ‘control’ the pain and violence they suffer; delusionally, the power dynamic is perceived by the victim as redressed and in their own favour.
The ‘feminist’ version here is a mercurial, nonsense language, where “imperialists” of any stripe don’t and can’t control the dialogue, not least because there aren’t any actual rules to it. You just buy into it or you don’t. It is a sophistic device perceived by some academics as a useful – or even ultimate weapon – against threats posed by “imperialism”. It’s a kind of code, but not a useful one. You couldn’t launch a revolution with this rhetoric; you couldn’t tell an unemployed and oppressed garment factory worker where she’d been going wrong for forty five years. All you could offer is patronising there-there noises.
I think this utter meaninglessness has been alluded to if not admitted by your last correspondent. But it is just woeful guff, and as you say, more’s the pity it’s got a hold in academia.
Hmm. My second paragraph appears to contain a contradiction, for wouldn’t it be reasonable to attempt to *supply* a definition for a term that lacked one?
What I was really trying to say is that the term “spirituality” doesn’t lack a definition or criteria for use because of some academic oversight, it lacks a definition because it’s not possible to provide one. To get all Wittgensteinian on the matter, it’s a ‘family resemblance’ term (which is why an attempted definition runs to 60,000 words) and worse, one that has as its subject matter a whole bunch of other family resemblance terms (e.g. ‘mind’) and ineffable concepts.
In object-oriented programming terms, “spirituality” is a huge, monolithic class lacking any meaningful cohesion, mired in obscured inheritance and using composition to include a whole bunch of other equally badly designed classes. The whole thing is a train wreck in dire need of refactoring down into far more cohesive units.
The linguistic police should surround the word “spirituality” with blue and white striped tape emblazoned with “semantic crime scene – do not cross”.
(Sorry, by “My second paragraph” I was of course referring to my comment preceding my previous one.)
I still think they are thinking “spiritual=deep=good” and it doesn’t go much further than that. The rest is just a woofing noise.
Anthropologically, it is also an expression of the fundamental belief that reason=instrumentalism=nuclear weapons=Auschwitz=rape, which it would probably not take you too long to find accepted wholeheartedly in some depts of women’s studies [some of whom would probably insert ‘grammar’ and ‘legibility’ at some point in the equation].
Politically, and this is where it really begins to annoy me, it’s a disempowering strategy – by retreating into toxic bullshit, they decline to engage ‘the Man’ on his own ground, and thereby think they have won some great victory, whereas in fact they have just reduced themselves to a bunch of pointless nutters – ones, moreover, whose very existence is evidence of the overwhelming repressive toleration practised by said ‘Man’. Wrapped in paradox they are, which for a postmodernist is a cozy place to be, but for anyone who actually wanted to change the world, is ****ing useless.
“Spiritual activism”???
Saints preserve us!
;-)
> but if the users of the word understand what they mean by it, what is the problem
i) It’s clear from Ophelia’s quotes that they do not understand what they mean by the term.
ii) You can’t make political and legal decision on the basis of a concept that has no clear definition. You may as well legislate for “niceness”.
While “spirituality” remains a private matter you can say and believe whatever you want about it. When it “reaches out” into the wider public realm, and becomes the subject (or should I say ‘object’) of legislation, then we need to be very clear what we are talking about.
This mawkish emotionalism that’s gaining acceptance within our public ethical discourse is making our culture look bad.
Also amos, apart from perhaps UCLA circa 1966 I doubt if any university school has imbedded ‘Cool Studies’ in their curiculum. I’ll have to check my Doonesbury to be sure though…
;-)
These folks are not good at saying what they mean, but that doesn’t mean “spirituality,” the underlying experience, is just for dummies. I suspect the underlying experiences are “awe” and “elevation,” things very well and scientifically described by Jonathan Haidt in “The Happiness Hypothesis.” He’s an atheist admirer of such things. Most people are not good at talking beyond their own intellectual circle. Philosophers, despite their good grip on language and logic, are actually appallingly bad communicators most of the time.
amos, no doubt but that isn’t a reason to keep this specific bullshit without comment.
@ Jean K
At root, these issues are not about ‘intuitive thinking’ versus human electronic calculators, this is about legislating for emotionalism.
Legislation and rights are everyone’s business, because it effects everyone. And it’s perfectly reasonable that the people effected demand to know why their ability to, for example, lampoon and ridicule, is being curtailed. On what basis? Because someone’s feelings are hurt? Come on, we need to be grown up. Surely we’ll demand that a much stronger case be made than that before granting and enshrining rights?
> People can understand what they mean by a word without being able to define it precisely.
I agree Amos, but no one is trying to limit my rights, or grant them to others, on the basis of interpretations of the word “romantic”.
“Freedom of thought” *already* protects all of the issues we are talking about here. What else is required?
You seem to be defending not only freedom of thought, but also freedom from criticism/lampooning/ridicule. That’s just childish, sorry, don’t mean to sound personal, but no one should have the right to publicly proclaim ideas and be protected by the law from critical comment, however merciless.
That’s just line-in-the-sand stuff for me.
Oops. I’ve just realised that I’ve conflated two seperate discussions. One about legislating for respect and the other about the meaning of “spiritualism”.
Apologies for being so woolly. These issues ultimately collapse into the same thing for me (they certainly involve a lot of the same arguments).
amos, I stand corrected. I just googled “Cool Studies”… yikes.
“These folks are not good at saying what they mean, but that doesn’t mean “spirituality,” the underlying experience, is just for dummies.”
I didn’t say it did mean that. But I think the fact that these people are so very not good at saying what they mean is catastrophic – given that they are academics, teaching in universities, and feminist academics at that. If they were just a random group of people chatting about spirituality, I would ignore them, but they’re not.
“Let’s not begin to complain about the decline of language in our old age. I agree that spirituality is bullshit, but there has always been a lot of bullshit around.”
I have a better idea; let’s not tell me what to complain about. In any case this is not just a generic complaint about the decline of language (I’m tempted here to lapse into a complaint about the decline of reading skills), it is a complaint about extremes of woolly thinking among feminist academics. As a feminist who thinks universities and education matter, I find woolly thinking among feminist academics well worth attention and concern.
To expand the point a little.
“but if the users of the word understand what they mean by it, what is the problem?…Was our culture ever more precise in its use of language, by the way?”
As Roger pointed out, they don’t understand what they mean by it; they all talked about different things. And I said in the post what the problem is: the users in question are academics. I’m not talking about the culture as a whole, I’m talking about academics and a particular academic discipline (or in this case, it would appear, ‘discipline’) and also about feminism, i.e. women’s rights.
Get real. What if the discipline were economics, or geology, or history. Would you ask what the problem was if economists discussed opportunity costs on an economists’ mailing list without being able to say what the phrase meant and referring to something different with each post? Academics are supposed to be able to do a little better than some teenager burbling about astrology at MySpace. At least I sure as hell hope they are.
I took it that your reaction involved skepticism about spirituality itself, as well as the inability of these people to explain themselves clearly. Your comments to the list seemed to be in a debunking spirit, not just about these people’s powers of expression.
My comments to the list seemed to be in a debunking spirit – could that be because you read my comment through the lens of your hostility to my putative ‘debunking spirit’? The comment itself is all about what people on the list said; it makes no generalizations about spirituality the thing as opposed to the word. What was that you were telling me a couple of weeks ago about reading charitably…?
I like debunking. Really, I do. I loved Sam Harris’s book and Richard Hawkins, and I’m a secret fan of Christopher Hitchens’ The Missionary Position. Some funny stuff there.
I’d be very surprised if I was the only one who detected a note of hostility toward spirituality in your message. And why not? Some of what people call spirituality is nonsense, but some isn’t (which is my point).
The feminists need to read Jonathan Haidt on awe and elevation and the final chapter of Sam Harris’s book The End of Faith. Then they’ll be able to talk more intelligibly and get past the gobbletygook.
But if you really only meant to say that academic feminists don’t express themselves well, I agree 100%. I once taught an entire course on feminist philosophy, and it was an excruciating experience. I never want to read a word of that stuff again, to be perfectly honest.
What an apt reposte OB! I spent more years than I care to remember in the church, and the same kinds of questions tended to occur to me in relation to what people said about the ‘presence of god’, ‘the sense of the spirit’, ‘god moving amongst us,’ and that sort of thing.
There are boo words and there are goo words. Spirituality finds its place in the goo category — slippery, undefined, maudlin, ungraspable, but approving, trasncending, meaningful, profound, deeply personal, and of course warm, fuzzy, cosy, and life-affirming.
Priests when they are first ordained are very ‘spiritual.’ You can tell by the way they kneel, by their simpering faces, which look as they had just taken an anal suppository by mouth, by exaggerated signs of piety, like huge signs of the cross, and an exalted voice, which sounded as though they were speaking inside an empty oil tank.
“Why do feminists think it’s feminist to make a parade of refusing to think?” Far be it from me to speak for women, but it may be because they think they have to play their ‘spiritual’ card to the masculine practical or realist one. But men can be simpering idiots too. The ones, whether men or women, who really count, are the ones that make sense. In my experience all the feminists in the church went running after things like aromatherapy, quantum transcendence (don’t ask!), feng shui, and things like that. The academics are clearly not all that far behind.
Ah – sorry, I misread you!
That really is what I meant to say. The repeated refusal to be precise or even coherent drove me nuts.
Feminist philosophy…tell me about it. I’ve read Sandra Harding, and the experience was indeed excruciating.
This is not my feminism! Awkkkk!
“all the feminists in the church went running after things like aromatherapy”
Aaaaaaargh!
Yeah, I agree, that’s kind of pathetic if you couldn’t get any real response to that question. I can see where imprecision might be a virtue–if reality is inherently imprecise (which it sometimes is), and if precision actually leads to inaccuracy. Sometimes we can delude ourselves through false clarity as much as we can through being woolly. But I have seen fairly precise definitions of “spirituality” from people, and that these feminists can’t come up with one is disturbing.
If it makes you feel any better, I doubt the woolliness is specific to feminist academics. I’ve seen plenty of woolliness from academics of all stripes! (Which is also depressing but not in a specifically feminist way).
Boy, have I gone ’round and ’round on this one with people. That part of the conversation has, through long practice, now gotten very short. Someone uses “spirituality” or one of its cognates. I object, and ask for a definition of the term. They muddle around, and maybe come up with something. I point out that – whatever their definition – it doesn’t seem to be the one being used by lots of other people. They then offer something along the lines of, “Well, yes, people do use the term ‘spirituality’ in lots of different ways. But for me, spirituality means…”
From there, the conversation diverges. If the person is willing to stop making ANY GENERAL CLAIMS WHATSOEVER about this multi-faceted, mysterious, not objectively specifiable or definable concept “spirituality” and speak only about their own idiosyncratic, personal views, then we can continue to have an intelligent (or at least intelligible) discussion. If the person keeps trying to make any sort of general claims about “spirituality” after having admitted that it’s completely undefined (possibly even undefinable) and is used completely differently by different people and therefore cannot be talked about in general terms at all, then I find a way to put the conversation out of its misery (or at least, out of my misery).
As for the specific context of your post, well, I’ve said it before and I at least consider it worth repeating: Feminism is far too important to be left in the hands of postmodernists. ‘Nuff said.
Snort! Yup, that was it all right – every message used it in a different way, yet they all went merrily on, discussing away as if they were talking about something coherent.
[shouting] Give me back my feminism!!
How can anyone detect hostility against spirituality in Ophelia’s post when the entire point she made was the doesn’t know what it is, and no one will define it? I don’t know what it is either. I might be hostile to it, or not, but who the hell can tell based on that vague fluffery OB posted from her discussion list.
This thread is starting to remind me of another one about “respect.” If I recall, no one was able to define that either, yet they were right there to suss out “hostility” to it.
Words really do need to mean something, and adults in conversation really do need to agree to use common definitions. This isn’t a difficult concept, but it seems to elude so many.
Josh, Ophelia already said she didn’t mean to convey hostility. But you’re wrong to think she just couldn’t have, because the word “spirituality” isn’t well-defined. People have views about all kinds of things before having crisp definitions. Things like justice and equality, for example, are extremely difficult to define. Most of us are for them even as we struggle to figure out exactly what they are.
Of course, if you have absolutely no clue what justice is, you can’t be for it. And maybe some people at B&W are truly in the dark about spirituality or respect. Those people really would be irrational to have opinions. I’m not in that category on either matter and I don’t know that Ophelia is either.
Don’t you think its just a routine way of creating a whole series of ‘Women’s Studies nods’? A hook for mouthing group-identification slogans and bidding for status within the group?
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0IUK/is_2001_Spring/ai_75453031
You are welcome to your rational feminism by the way. It rules.
There’s mild spirituality, the stance that there are aspects of the universe that we humans currently don’t understand completely. In that sense, I’m spiritual, but I’d reject that label, because of the other kinds. Such as bitter spirituality, the stance that there are aspects humans will never understand. And aggressive spirituality, the stance that I am nebulously (and always unverifiably) ‘in touch’ with these aspects, while you, a clodhopper, are deaf to them. And poisonous spirituality, the stance that I, a shaman or channeler or pope, have arcane knowledge of these aspects, which you had better ‘respect’, or else.
The ‘you’ in the second para is of course the usual general ‘you’ – you who read this, you who are familiar with my (cough) acerbic nature.
I thought you’d disavowed hostility because you said your comments to the list were not in a debunking spirit. You wrote
“My comments to the list seemed [to you] to be in a debunking spirit – could that be because you read my comment through the lens of your hostility to my putative ‘debunking spirit’?”
Methinks they were a little debunkish…which is not a bad thing. But if you’re going to debunk, isn’t it inevitable that some good Samaritan is going to come along and try to help the poor bruised victim? I mean, not always–I’m not going to help out Scientologists and Mormons … really, there are limits.
But I did think the folks on that list could have done a better job of defending their spirituality talk. They’re probably too used to talking to each other and getting validation for certain kinds of jargon (numinous, etc). So, in a spirit of pity, I attempted to lend them some assistance.
I think you can probably translate a certain amount of “spirituality” talk into sentences that make good clear talk. But yeah, a lot of it is not so appealing. I don’t call myself “spiritual” but I think I do feel some things that go under that heading. I like mountain tops, I like a sense of shared purpose with a group (has to be the right group, of course), preferably with a bit of singing thrown in. Inventing rituals is fun, as long as no dead animals are involved. Stuff like that.
I do too. Amusingly enough, the one reply to the list that was somewhat clear said pretty much that, along with noting that the author is an atheist, and I replied saying I like all that too, and even gave some examples (stars, Kings College Chapel, Shakespeare); I said I not only like such experiences, I seek them out. I was told by the same author that that didn’t qualify as ‘spiritual.’ Which made me laugh. I really don’t know what the difference is – why her version is spiritual and mine isn’t (isn’t what she means by ‘spiritual’).
But as for Samaritans coming along and helping the poor bruised victims…well, I must say, I hope not. If I get things wrong, sure, but just helping the poor bruised victims because I’m too hostile – I hope not.
I’m not coming to the defense of just anyone. I’m not coming to the defense of Mormons and Scientologists… or abstinence educators, just because you’re so mean to them. So yeah, it’s not just a matter of pity for the pummeled…
I came to the defense of the spiritual feminists only because I thought they weren’t making their own case well, so their “spirituality” talk was coming across as more hopeless than it really needed to. These people needed help explaining themselves!
But maybe they wouldn’t want my kind of help. Based on that person’s comments, it’s possible for some people you can’t be really spiritual unless you throw around words like “numinous.”
I should add if I were on that list I might have a much lower tolerance and mightjust be challenging them too. I think it’s different as an outsider looking in.
OK, time for a ritual called “reading a book.”
I don’t know exactly what to expect when someone promises some event will be a “spiritual” experience, but what I have learned to expect is a bait-and-switch.
What is “spirituality?” It’s a love and appreciation of beauty, and sense of purpose and joy, an ability to experience the wonder and mystery of life. So it’s fine if I, an atheist, join in? Oh, absolutely. You, an atheist, can be a very spiritual person, too. You will fit right in.
Then comes the switch. God. Guardian angels. Reiki. ESP and PK and OBEs and NDEs. Mystical awareness. Evolution is progress to higher levels on the Great Chain of Being. Teillard de Chardin. Templeton Foundation. Cosmic consciousness. Homeopathy. Past life regression. The power of crystals. The divine essence. The Goddess. Psychic detectives. A Course in Miracles. Positive Thoughts cure cancer. Scientists such as Deepak Chopra. Quantum proves reality is all Mind. The Secret. The Law of Attraction.
And they mix it in with stuff that makes sense.
And after I’ve had as much as I can take I slowly begin to argue and bring up rebuttals and defend science and reality and nobody likes my negativity and close-mindedness because it’s so “unspiritual.” I’m not celebrating diversity and respecting other views. I’m being different and passionate and judgmental and that is so the opposite of spiritual.
I suspect you suspect the truth, Ophelia. They keep it vague so they can believe in crap and then blink and say it’s no different than “caring about the universe.” The same sort of thing, really. All of a piece.
Nowadays, when I hear the word “spiritual,” I reach for my gun. Along with “holistic” and “ways of knowing.”
We are meat – there is no such thing as ‘spirit’. So extensions like ‘spiritual’ have no meaning. Hence the feminist confusion.
But with all due respect, what is the point of helping people who aren’t making their own case very well when the whole point of my post was that they weren’t making their case very well? I can see undertaking a program of remedial education for them, but I can’t see the point of ‘helping’ them explain themselves here. (I agree that they need help explaining themselves, but I don’t see that commenting on a post of mine is the way to help them.) They don’t need help on my account! I don’t feel a real need to know what they meant by spirituality (and anyway I do know, they said, it’s just that it was wool); I could come up with something clearer myself; I wasn’t hunting for a discussion of awe and elevation, which I don’t consider spiritual. What is the point of coming to their defense? (It’s highly unlikely that any of them will be reading this.) My point was to say that they don’t explain themselves well. They don’t. They still don’t. Someone else coming up with a clearer explanation that they could have made but didn’t doesn’t make them look any better. If anything it makes them look worse.
I think the point was just, again, to tell me I’m too combative. I’m tired of it. Can we just agree to disagree again? I’m combative. I’m going to stay combative. I don’t much like being frowned at for being combative.
“I’m not claiming to be an entirely rational or consistent person. “
QED
Sastra: I agreed with every word you wrote.
Ophelia: I experience consternation on a regular basis when people who should know better start spouting “spiritual” waffle. I’m starting to agree with Hitchens when he says that humanity will never grow out of it’s proclivity for religion etc. However, he goes so far as to say he hopes it never does, because he loves debunking it.
How about you? Would you prefer “spiritual” thinking as exhibited by the academic feminists died off entirely or do you enjoy the battle? (Personally I wish it would die off because I find it threatening and worry about a dystopian religious future like that described in Margaret Atwood’s “Handmaid’s Tale”.)
Amos, for what it’s worth I always enjoy reading your contributions. I find you interesting and often amusing. I’m sure lots of people do.
Ophelia, I’m not sure if your 2:39 was a response to my 21:35, but if so…no, my point was not to call you combative. I thought in your comments to those folks you’d dismissed spirituality too fast. Sure it’s a criticism, but no, nothing personal. I’m sure we’ve spent more than enough time now on the appropriateness of my point. Time to enjoy the rest of the weekend.
I didn’t reply adequately to Amos’ point above about a term not needing a precise definition to be meaningful.
“Roger: People can understand what they mean by a word without being able to define it precisely.”
As I stated above, I agree with you. A blurry photograph of a person is, of course, still a picture of *that* person. But in the discussion, excerpts of which have been included by OB in her post, it’s simply not clear *who* the person in the photograph is (or indeed, even if it’s a person at all). Hence the question in the first place.
Well, Jean, if your point wasn’t to call me combative or similar, I don’t know why you talked of a debunking spirit, a note of hostility, of poor bruised victims who need a Samaritan to try to help them, of a spirit of pity, of me being so mean. If you’re not aware that your comments frame me as nasty and you as compassionate – I think you’re not paying enough attention.
As for ‘dismissing spirituality too fast’ – I thought we’d already agreed that the subject was actually what people call spirituality, or one or some of the many things that people call spirituality, rather than ‘spirituality’ itself. You did say you don’t use the word yourself. I’ve already agreed that I don’t dismiss awe and elevation; it’s just that I don’t think they are spiritual because I don’t believe in spirits.
Rose, interesting question. I suppose I wish ‘spiritual thinking’ would at least retreat and shrink and atrophy a great deal, and become considerably more humble in the process.
The stuff about coming to the aid of the bruised and battered feminists was supposed to be funny. Yeah, I thought you were a little rough on them, but that doesn’t mean I seriously think you’re mean and I’m compassionate. You had some fun in your post, I was merely having a little fun myself. Fun over now, I think.
A close friend was married to a woman who was spiritual, into crystals and chakras and auras what-all else.
As he was dying of cancer she kept bringing around her woo chums to see if their voodoo would succeed where medical science had failed.
Towards the end he told me that it had actually helped – sheer bloody irritation had kept his mind occupied in constructing acerbic put-downs.
So spirituality has its place, even if it does invariably bring to mind Madeline Bassett.
“Towards the end he told me that it had actually helped – sheer bloody irritation had kept his mind occupied in constructing acerbic put-downs.
So spirituality has its place, even if it does invariably bring to mind Madeline Bassett.”
I thought at first that “Bassett” was a typo and you had meant “Bunting”!
I see what you mean – someone telling me that the stars were God’s daisy chain would at least raise my blood pressure for a few minutes.
http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/P_G_Wodehouse/Right_Ho_Jeeves/Chapter_10_p2.html
“Every time a fairy sheds a tear, a wee bit star is born in the Milky Way.’ Have you ever thought that, Mr. Wooster?” [said Madeline Bassett]
I never had. Most improbable, I considered, and it didn’t seem to me to check up with her statement that the stars were God’s daisy chain. I mean, you can’t have it both ways.” [said Bertie Wooster]
You’re in a bad way if you can be taken to task for your illogic and self-contradiction by the silliest ass in fiction, Bertie Wooster.
The silliest ass in fiction, and yet one with a functioning bullshit detector. Interesting, that.
You people who don’t believe in spirits don’t know what you’re talking about.
There’s vodka and rum and tequila and ouzo and… There’s so many different spirits, it’s hard to list them all! This is why precise definitions become difficult, OB.
“Spirituality” is when you use spirits to spread peace, love, and happiness in the universe. Duh.
-CM
See I always thought the word for that was spirituosity. No wonder I’m so confused!
Bravely addressed, OB.
JoB: Right near the start of this thread you said “Many things apparently originated in BC something & are suspect because of it – it is bogus to believe old wisdom has a value because it is old. Knowledge only has value if it is true.”
I would agree. The antiquity of a tradition tells us little about its validity – numerology, astrology etc go a long way back. But yoga, like the martial arts, depends on a continuity of instruction from teacher to students (some of whom become teachers) and so on. Only if people find that it improves their lives somehow will it survive, because it cannot be learned from books (unlike numerology, astrology etc.) Thus its antiquity does say something for it.
Ian: “The antiquity of a tradition tells us little about its validity – numerology, astrology etc go a long way back.”
You’re correct. You should stop here.
“But yoga, like the martial arts, depends on a continuity of instruction from teacher to students (some of whom become teachers) and so on. Only if people find that it improves their lives somehow will it survive…”
The continuity of which you speak means nothing. Reiki depends on the same continuity. Homeopathy, too.
FWIW, I suspect yoga has validity as a practice, but that validity has nothing to do with its age, unless tha age contributes to a placebo effect that is additive to the effect of the practice itself.
-CM
Ian, I don’t understand what yoga has to do with any of this. You said (way above) that “the Yoga tradition teaches that there are four aspects to all-round human development: the physical, the intellectual, the emotional and the spiritual…[meaning] something like zest for living, enjoyment of life, and outgoing optimism as distinct from something like self-obsessed pessimism.” I don’t see any reason to call zest for living and the rest of it “spiritual,” so I don’t see the relevance of yoga. Maybe I’m missing your point?
I don’t see any reason to call zest for living and the rest of it “spiritual”
I don’t either, as far as “zest for living” goes. Bbut I do see “spiritual” as an apt description of a deep-rooted sense of awe and peace and joy. It’s distinguished from plain old “emotion” because emotion can be fleeting and shallow and volatile, while “spirituality” is none of those things. Also “emotion” is neutral: it can be good or bad, for you or for other people. And “emotion” is often non-cognitive: if you feel angry, you didn’t necessarily think things through and realized you had a right to be angry. Your anger might have been purely instinctive. Whereas “spirituality” involves reflection. So “spirituality” can be thought of as a narrow subset of “emotion”: it’s an awed, peaceful attitude that is deep-seated, enduring, the result of (among other things) cognition, and that inspires you to live a moral and happy life.
It doesn’t bother me in the slightest that there are no “spirits” in the sense of phantoms, because the word “spirit” is as likely to refer to character and attitude as it is to a supernatural entity. More likely, in fact.
This definition of spirituality is far from idiosyncratic. I don’t know a single person who would disagree with it, and my social circle includes people with a very wide range of opinions on religion. I’ve also read it very frequently used in this way. That’s why I’m actually surprised that these academic feminists can’t come up with one definition between them. Maybe it’s because the postmodernist side of academia is too set on being “inclusive” to actually define their terms, because defining a word inherently involves ruling out other definitions. I have noticed this tendency in all sorts of discussions with postmodernist types. As I said earlier, sometimes leaving things undefined can be good or even necessary. But in that case you need to honestly admit that’s what you’re doing and explain why.
Okay – I’ll buy that. I wouldn’t suggest the definition myself (if only because of all the room for ambiguity) but I get what you mean. That’s by far the most complete definition I’ve seen yet. (I’ll buy it I think partly because of Jane Goodall – I’ve found myself tempted to use it of her because it seems to describe her quite precisely in a way that no other word does. She does convey a deep-rooted something – a mix of compassion and steadiness and strength – that seems to fit.) And given that spirit can refer to character, as you say, even I could use it. (I still won’t, because it has the woo-woo connotations. But I could.)
That’s interesting about Jane Goodall. I’m not familiar with her work, but she’s been on my reading list for some time. And I’m certainly not insisting that everyone use the word “spiritual” personally (why would I?). But I’ll defend its use.
As I’ve said, the really interesting point here for me is why these academics can’t define the word on their own, even though they use it. I’m not particularly embarrassed by it as a feminist (for one thing, feminism is vast and contains multitudes, and for another, therapeutic feel-good stuff has been a part of feminism, and legitimately so) but I am curious about it as an academic phenomenon. I’m not sure if it means anything for academia per se, but it would be interesting to find out.
CM: “The continuity of which you speak means nothing. Reiki depends on the same continuity. Homeopathy, too.
“FWIW, I suspect yoga has validity as a practice, but that validity has nothing to do with its age, unless that age contributes to a placebo effect that is additive to the effect of the practice itself.”
Age is neither necessary nor sufficient for validation of a practice. Nothing would ever have got started if that was not true. Also, once started, any practice would continue regardless and indefinitely. I suspect that the well established placebo effect explains a great deal about reiki and homeopathy, unless there is an extra dimension to biology and its underpinning sciences of which we are presently unaware (of low probability, but which cannot be dismissed per se.)
Some years ago I had a (very) small part to play in the setting up of The Questacon, (http://www.questacon.edu.au/) an interactive science museum in Canberra. The theme of the place was, and still is as far as I know, an aphorism not of Newton or Einstein, but of Confucius: “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”
In my experience, very true. Yoga and the martial arts cannot be learned from books, but only by doing, and having an expert instructor helps enormously. Thus the importance of tradition.
Translating this to the modern context in which B&W operates, liberalism it appears is learned best (though not necessarily appreciated best) from within an established liberal tradition. Liberalism wherever it is found in Muslim populations is struggling to get airborne: a bit like a fly that has landed in a glass of beer. Until there is a tradition of it, there won’t be liberalism: which is why the most authoritarian regimes restrict the importation of ideas from abroad where such traditions exist.
Serafina (supported by OB): I agree. Talking about ‘the spiritual’ has validity if one is talking about one’s inner life. External spirits, ghosts, angels etc are something else again. One can talk of one’s own inner spirit without implying that it is immortal and set to join a crowd of external others in an afterlife. But the two concepts of ‘the spiritual’ are easily confused.
I would equate ‘spirit’ in this sense with the Chinese concept of ‘chi’, which does have useful practical applications.
Serafina, that thought about Goodall came not so much from her work as from seeing a documentary about her a few years ago. She does much less field work now, rather she spends a lot of time on the road working to improve animal welfare. It’s obviously an exhausting grueling draining project – and I was struck by Goodall’s, what, fortitude. She radiated a kind of rock-like calm that had nothing whatever to do with indifference. It was extraordinarily impressive. (It’s an excellent quality for an animal observer. I don’t know if she learned it by being one or if she has always had that quality, or maybe both.)
Although when we refer to a horse or other animal as ‘spirited’ we usually mean exactly the opposite.
“Spirituality” emerges from people who don’t know (1) math, (2) logic, or (3) how to make useful things. It provides them with something to do that takes time, and can be discussed ad naseum with no provable/disprovable conclusion. It is sort of like card games, except that card games have real rules, and some are even amenable to stragies. It is a way to pass time, and if possible, control other people (in the ultimate religious application)
Yeah…the connotations of ‘spirited’ and ‘spiritual’ are quite different. Well, as I say, I would never use the second word (without irony or quotation or some other distance) myself.