This post is explaining (as well as I can) a problem that I see. It doesn’t provide any solutions, but I hope you will agree that it is an important problem; and share through the comments any ideas or approaches you may have to the problem.
What’s my problem? My problem is that I don’t know if the language for talking about spirit exists – as a public language.
This seems ridiculous doesn’t it? There is much talk about spirituality – I even saw an article talking about ‘spiritwash’ – the spiritual equivalent of “greenwash”. Spiritwash is where a company tries to project itself as being concerned about spirituality – without actually changing how they operate.
Here’s what I’m trying to say. Can you imagine a politician getting up and giving a reason for not doing something that invoked spirit or spirituality. Societies have, in the past been held together by religions (often enough very unspiritual in their practice) but today this isn’t so much the case. Although we could say that ‘the market is god’ I suppose. But this god has little tolerance for our spirit.
I think most of us have experiences of spirit. Not necessarily life changing or overwhelming, though they can be, but as ‘strange things’; things that we don’t necessarily talk about much, but that we carry at the back of our minds. We can talk about these (usually to trusted friends) as personal experiences. And this is is important and worthwhile.
But what implications do these experiences have for the rest of our lives? And what language exists for the public discussion of these things. Other than resorting to the language of one particular kind of spiritual tradition (from fundamentalist to new age).
My problem is that we don’t have a public language in which to speak of spirit. That we won’t do something because it is not economic is an argument we accept. I can’t imagine someone in public life saying that we won’t do something because it is not of the spirit. I can’t even imagine what words they could use.
So this is my problem – we can’t discuss spirituality as other than a private affair. And so public discussion is carried on in the terms of crass materialism.
I’m afraid I can’t offer any solutions. But I do look forward to hearing your thoughts on this. If you think I’ve just got it wrong and the answer is obvious I’m happy to hear this too.
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Now that you mention it, you’re absolutely right. I hear people using the term ‘spritual’ all the time (I do myself) and it seems to be able to be bent into whatever shape the speaker needs. Somehow it sees wrong that such a ‘big’, important word has little shared meaning.
Is it something that could benefit from some rigourous thought, do you think? Then we’d at least be able to say, “Well, I know what Evan means by spiritual”. Or would that be against the spirit (!) of the matter?
(Thank you very much for the generous mention, by the way.)
Well, I love having agreed definitions. It saves so much time and effort that is otherwise wasted I think.
For me the dimension of us that I call spirit is the one that responds to meaning and purpose. This has relevance to our other dimensions (my rough and ready list is: physical, emotional, mental and social).
Would love to have more discussion about this.
Ironically enough, bringing the topic to the table for discussion is the way to work past this problem. This won’t go away over night, but given time, the spotlight of discussion will chase away the shadows, and give shape to the vague definitions we use today. It’s long. It’s messy. But it also has a singular benefit: As long as discussion continues, it works
Thanks John.
I hope you’re right. I can see I’m going to have follow up this post – not sure how yet though!
Ideas from others most welcome.