Re: <nettime> Forget who owns the truth. Just talk about the weather.

[Joseph Rabie via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

>>  Thereby science and belief might become, not
>> antagonists as they are today in the benighted country where I live, but
>> instead, differentiated parts of a newly unified and sharable truth.
> 
> In the mail before, you demanded a place were true criticism is possible. As far as I see (as kind of a lurker in philosophy), a unified truth and true criticism are contradictions. You can have each of them, but not both. Thus I wonder how you think true critcism and unified truth together. Can you give me a hint on that? Would be great!
> 
> -- 
> Liebe Grüße,
> 
> Christian Swertz
> https://www.swertz.at



These questions, around truth and belief, raise that other question, “What about spirituality?”

Spirituality is surely one of the hot potatoes of our times, carefully eschewed by those who consider themselves rational beings. Yet at the same time, many people (sometimes the same) will define themselves as being on a spiritual quest. And while religions assert their role as purveyors of the spiritual, one might argue that they are the one place where genuine spirituality is hard to come by.

Formerly, a spiritual view was concomitant with a metaphysical conception of the cosmos. With the replacement of metaphysics by a materialist, science-based conception, the notion of spirituality has become suspect, indeed has been relegated to history. Today, we look upon those, who profess to “believing in God”, as a curiosity. (I count myself amongst the onlookers.)

Is spirituality a conceptual relic of less knowledgeable times, to be associated with less knowledgeable beings? One thinks of the Viennese architect, Adolf Loos, who declared that “ornament is crime”. Ornament was to be banished from modern architecture, as a vestige of our former primitive selves. Thus also with spirituality.

Today, the colonial view of the “inferiority” of indigenous peoples, and their apparently magical beliefs, is challenged. Their treatment at European hands (to “civilise” and exploit) has come to symbolise what has gone so terribly wrong with the intrepid project of human progress. In modern eyes, those peoples displayed a spirituality that has been dismissed as naive and nonsensical. Yet today, those societies are being reconsidered in a new light, because they coexisted “naturally” with the cosmos in a way that contradicts our voracious destructivity.

As for us, we still find ourselves facing the apparent meaningless of our existential condition. Knowing “who we are”, “where we come from”, “of what we are part”, “what is our essence” — perhaps the most fundamental questions of all — lie outside the realm of human comprehension. Maybe, as some say, we are simply automats and consciousness is simply an operating system. And “spirituality” is simply an opium.

Thus spirituality might function as a metaphor providing solace for the ontological state of unattainable knowingness that denies us access to the mystery of our human destiny. As a metaphor for transcendence, which finds expression in literature, art or philosophy, and  religion of course. But what is transcendence, anyway? Transcendence (like spirituality) speaks to a heightened state of consciousness that elevates the soul. Whatever that might be…

As with Brian, I subscribe to the view that as a species we have to reconcile ourselves with the cosmos - get closer to home, reground ourselves on Earth, as Bruno Latour put it. Perhaps that is where spirituality truly lies, in endeavouring to rebecome at one with this particular corner of the cosmos. By using our undeniably awesome human capacities to nurture it, rather than rip it apart.

Best wishes -
Joe.



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