Non-Poisonous Religion

My last post suggested that religion serves a purpose by collecting and transmitting some of the best aesthetic and moral insights of humanity. But having said that, the fact remains that the examples of poisonous behaviour on the part of religions simply should not be "swept under the carpet" by people of good will. Unfortunately, this seems to be the response by almost every religious person I know. I think that this comes about for a variety of reasons.

Unfortunately, there has been a great "sifting out" of religions congregations and institutions over the last 50 years or so. People who have a tendency towards critical thinking, who have a natural curiosity towards the foundations of faith, and, who have a sense of moral courage and outrage towards institutional injustice seem to have, bye-and-large, collectively decided that there is no room for them in religion and have left the institutions. I hate to say it, but I think that a case can be made that the people who are left tend to be individuals who are unsophisticated, intellectually incurious, moral cowards and/or compulsively drawn to not make waves. (Please feel free to throw brickbats at me for this wild over-generalization.)

I think that this is what has fuelled the huge rise in the number of people who say that they are "spiritual but not religious". Unfortunately, people who fall into this category end up facing a few problems.

Some of them still feel a need to be involved in some sort of community, which leads them to end up in some sort of "New Age" group. Unfortunately, these organizations often end up being, if anything, worse that the churches that they left. Even if they don't end up being dangerously crazy whackos like the Heaven's Gate group, they almost invariably end up having theological ideas that are even more illogical than anything that mainstream religion can come up with. Moreover, many of these groups are led by charismatic individuals who have no institutional oversight, which is an open invitation for financial and sexual exploitation that makes the Catholic sex scandals look tame in comparison.

If a person doesn't "hook up" with a new group, then they end up being totally isolated from any sort of community. People in this situation will often have to live a "double life" in that their friends will tend to either consist of people in mainstream religious groups who will not listen to any criticism of their faith; or; totally secular people who think all of religion is a crock. This type of isolation can be similar to that experienced by gays who have yet to "come outside of the closet".

A third problem comes from the extreme cultural fragmentation that comes about from people either choosing to join some sort of independent group or going it totally alone. If a large part of the value of religion for society is the way it creates an aesthetic and moral bridge with the past traditions of human society, this fragmentation leaves leaves the individuals who have left traditional religion behind floundering in some sort of aesthetic and moral "limbo".

I think that it is because so many people are stuck in this existence where there are no traditions to hold onto, that some grab onto and try to appropriate the trappings of other cultures. They can't stomach what the "gate keepers" of their own traditional culture have done to it, but neither can they stand the empty world of secular society---so they scour the world's religions in an attempt to find something else to latch onto. (This certainly explains some of my own personal motivation.) Unfortunately, many, if not most, of the people who follow this path end up finding out that exactly the same problems that drove them away from the old tradition also exist in the new. (I would suggest that those who do not simply haven't looked deeply enough into their new faith.)

So, if "going it alone", creating something totally new, or latching onto some other version are not very desirable options, what else can a person do?

I'm not sure that there really is any answer. I certainly don't suggest that people follow the path that I am on, as being a hermit simply isn't open to any more than a small number of people. But I do have the consolation of being able to think of Earth as being a realm where the Dao is working through issues---over the long haul. So I do believe that eventually religion will "get its act together". I suspect that this will not happen until long after I am dead, though.

As for now, at least I can "do my bit" by trying to spell out what a non-poisonous religion would look like.

Experienced, not Revealed

One of the ways in which different flavours of religion can be divided is along the axis of whether it was revealed to a small number of individuals who had a privileged access to the source of the faith; or whether the information gained is available to any and all members of the religion who are willing to invest the necessary discipline and effort. Christianity is an example of the former, whereas Buddhism is representative of the latter. (There are streams of each tendency in all faiths. Moreover, this characterization is grotesquely over-simplified. But for the sake of illustrating the point, I'm giving a two-dimensional picture of these two religions here.)

Revealed religions are inherently authoritarian because there literally is no appeal beyond the statements of long-dead individuals as recorded in ancient texts. If someone doubts the veracity (at least in the sense that is critical to the "believer") of the Bible, it is hard to understand why they would be a Christian. This means that whomever wrote the Bible (and creates the dominant interpretation) ends up "owning" the faith and dictating what it believes pretty much forever.

In contrast, the Buddha specifically suggested that people should be a "light unto themselves" and test all his teachings in order to see if they made sense. More importantly, intellectual adherence to the teachings of the Buddha will not bring any sort of salvation. In order to be a Buddhist, one has to put in the effort to try and become a Buddha too. But once once follows this path and puts in the effort, the believer can---at least theoretically---gain enough insight to speak with authority equal to the Buddha himself. This is very different from Christianity, where no believer would ever say that their practice allows them to speak with authority equal to the Bible.

This makes experiential religions, at least in theory, inherently more democratic than revealed ones because all individuals have the potential to gain the authority necessary to speak on an equal footing with the founders of the faith.

Tradition, not Authority

In effect, my support for religion is an argument that religions are useful vehicles to create and preserve cultural tradition. If so, I think it is important to understand that there is a difference between this and ecclesiastic authority. It is easy to confuse the two, but the results can be terrible.

Consider the case of Papal "infallibility".

A great deal of the appeal that the Roman Catholic church has for its members is the fact that it stretches back through the centuries in an unbroken lineage to the time of the Roman Empire. Unfortunately, this respect for tradition gradually morphed into respect for the authority of the Church. And this morphed into respect for the hierarchy of the Church. And this again, morphed from respect into submission to the authority of the bureaucracy of the Vatican. And this emphasis on submitting to the ecclesiastic authority has allowed the Church to not only hush up outrages like the abuse of children, it has also allowed it to defend absurd ideas like celibacy for the clergy, opposition to birth control, refusing ordination of women, etc.

A non-poisonous religion would have to create the proper mechanisms to be able to separate respect for tradition from respect for a bureaucracy.


Form as well as Substance

At the same time that religions are reforming themselves by removing authoritarian elements, there is also going to have to be some movement on the "left" of religion too. The greatest appeal of conservative religion has been that it has refused to rip away the art, music and liturgy in a misguided sense of egalitarianism. Indeed, egalitarian religion often not only does away with the "smells and bells", but it also turns up its nose as things like meditation and contemplation. Instead, it tends to emphasize active engagement in things like helping the poor and fighting oppression. In the process of doing so, however, it is operating on an impoverished theory of the human psyche---one that leaves no room for either aesthetics or the interior life.

I'm not saying that social engagement isn't important. In fact, I think that it is the equivalent of sparring in the martial arts: it is the test that proves or invalidates a religion's value. (I think that the inability of Western Buddhism to develop some sort of social engagement is one of its greatest flaws.) But this needs to be balanced by an understanding that people also have a hunger for beauty and wisdom besides bread.

The Part of Religion That Isn't Poison

I just got finished reading Christopher Hitchen's book God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. It is a very persuasive polemic against religion that argues simply by pointing-out over and over again examples of practical viciousness in its practice. I have done an enormous amount of research on the subject, which means that there were very few sources that Hitchens quotes that I have not read----and as near as I can tell, he got it all right.

Yet, I still see a role for religion in human society. Why?

Primarily, I have a deep and abiding skepticism about the completeness of the role that reason can play in organizing either an individual human being's life or an entire society. I say this as someone who has a Master's degree in philosophy and who has even taught symbolic logic. I believe that reason is absolutely essential to the good life. Yet I see time and time again that it isn't sufficient to organize human existence. We also need things like art and emotion, not merely to be "complete", but to be anything at all. And religion serves and important role in society as a repository of collective emotional and aesthetic decisions.

The rituals and art of a religion are not "just" epiphenomenon, they are an integral part of what it is all about. Gregorian chant is not just a cool thing that Benedictine monks do, it is the axis that their entire life revolves around. Zen gardening is not just something that grew out of the fusion of Buddhism and Daoism and makes their Temples look really cool, it illustrates, illuminates and exposes a key element of Zen (and Daoism too.) In a more simple, homespun example, the plain, yet elegant functional design of Shaker furniture shows something absolutely essential to the Shaker experience.

This is why religious institutions in all countries and all societies have put enormous energies into building artistic superstructures for their faiths. The European Cathedrals,



the Daoist Temples,



the Islamic Mosques,



the Sikh Gurdwaras,



etc, all embody the unifying principles of the faith. Moreover, the rituals, music and art of these religions are also not mere epiphenomenon but absolutely essential to the way these institutions created a collective aesthetic vision for the people.

If a society doesn't have something like religion to unify people's artistic vision, it ends up being defined by some other force. In totalitarian states, such as the Soviet Union, this inevitably means that the vision flows from the whims of politics. If the "head honcho" likes gingerbread, we end up with buildings that look like giant wedding cakes, as in Stalinist Architecture.



If, contrast, the ideal is to make people feel like ants about to be squashed by the boot-heel of the "master race", we design buildings that are huge and inhuman looking, like in Nazi Germany.





In liberal democracies, where no such unifying force exists, the marketplace ends up in control. That means we end up with the sort of ugly mess that is known as a "strip mall"---Walmarts next to MacDonalds next to Speedy Muffler,



or, miles and miles of vile suburban sprawl.

More to the point, aesthetic visions are mutually exclusive. You simply cannot fuse, for example, Victorian clutter with Zen minimalism. Nor can you mix together Daoism's attempt to fit into and harmonize with nature with Brutalism's use of massive, concrete geometric shapes. Moreover, these types of arts embody very different visions of how to live in the world. People who live in Victorian clutter will always believe that more is better, whereas people with a minimalist mindset will honour the space between things more than the objects themselves. Similarly, Daoists would honour and respect the trees that the brutalist would bulldoze in order to build his concrete slabs.

Aesthetic world-views aren't interchangeable because each embodies specific visions of what is important. For example, Christianity puts the human community first and foremost. For liberals this means social justice. For conservatives, the right to life. In contrast, Daoism put humanity into an environmental context (e.g. the "Dao") and argues that while people are a valued part of both Heaven and Earth, they do not have a place so privileged that they have any right to abuse any other inhabitants. Buddhism posits that mind is the absolutely key element of existence, if for no other reason than all our experience is mediated by it----honour and understand the Buddha-mind and all else becomes easy.


What I am getting at is the idea that morality is ultimately a branch of aesthetics. That is that ultimately the only real reason we pursue a difficult moral path as opposed to simply the line of least resistance is because we find the life lived on moral values to be more beautiful than the one that follows mere expediency. And just as some people have no sense of taste, so some people have a terrible sense of morality. Religions exist to a large extent to codify and perpetuate a specific aesthetic tradition, one that has huge impact on how we order our lives and related both to other people and the greater world around us.


It might be that we can replace religion with something else, but as a practical fact, I simply cannot think of what that might be. If we replace it with politics, we end up with totalitarianism or some sort of Ayn Randesque utopian/dystopian vision of the market. History teaches us that whenever a government has tried to do away with religion, the movement supporting it increasingly takes on the trappings of the religion that it sought to eliminate.


Please note, however, that even though I see an inevitable role for religion in human society, I do not think that its present form is viable. The excesses that Hitchens catalogues in his book simply cannot be ignored and they flow directly from certain key elements in religion as it currently exists. If it is going to continue---and I cannot see how it cannot---it is going to have to change mightily. Perhaps in a future post I will try to identify what religion might look like if it is going to co-exist with the modern world.

Environmental Vow: Part Seven

Faith

The Monks of St. Benedict serve as a salient example of good that has come from religious faith. In fact, there is a very strong argument that much of modern Western Europe was created by them. Everyone knows about the role that Benedictines served in preserving the learning of the Greeks and Romans. But far fewer are aware that when the order was first formed much of European geography had declined into a howling wilderness because of the centuries of barbarian invasions and genocidal wars that brought the end of the Western Roman Empire. St. Benedict's rule ordained that men (and eventually women) should live together under a regime that was not so strict as to styfle their interest in bettering themselves, but with an emphasis on physical labour that ensured that the monks did not isolate themselves from the world around them.


Monks would move into an area of desolation, drain swamps, clear forests, and, eventually build an abbey with strong stone walls. This would be a place of refuge from brigands, which meant that people would have a chance that the fruits of their labour would not simply be stolen from them at first opportunity. The monastery would also have an infirmary for the sick and a herb-garden where trained monks would grow medicine. These would attract peasants in search of land, then craftsmen, then merchants, which would eventually lead to the creation of a new town or city. Create enough towns and cities, and you have a nation instead of a wilderness.


Bound together in a network with other abbeys, important technical information would be shared between monasteries on new agricultural methods, and, varieties of crop and livestock, which in turn would be shared with the surrounding peasants. In effect, each Benedictine Abbey served the same role as a modern agricultural college. Later on, they also became centres of excellence for metallurgy and industrial machinery. (The first really large scale uses of water power were all at abbeys.) Even into the modern era Benedictines still continue this tradition. For example, the famous Brother Adam (the “Bee Monk”) at the Buckfast Abbey in England devoted his entire life to breeding varieties of bees resistant to trachea mites. And Sister Noella Marcellino (the “Cheese Nun”) at Regina Laudis in the USA, has become equally important in the world of cheese making through her work recording and reviving traditional artisanal methods.


The Benedictine “movement” simply made sense in the context of Dark Age and Medieval Europe. But practicality doesn't explain why it thrived then and continues to exist to this day.


Anyone who has attempted to live in a communal situation realizes how quickly the petty squabbles and different agendas of any group of people can blow apart any project based on simple self-interest. These men and women were able to work and live together because they believed that what they were doing was not just serving their own personal needs, or even the needs of society---but because they thought that they were serving their God. The glue that held these orders of monks or nuns together was faith.


But it needs to be said that this type of faith was and is probably quite different from the “faith” of ordinary believers. Put most ordinary Christians---or even most ordinary Catholics---in a monastery and chaos would result. What inspired the solidarity that drained the swamps, created a new type of agriculture and built Europe? I would argue that it came from the monastic structures, rituals and routines that governed life in Benedictine communities. The Benedictine life re-arranged the “common sense” worldview of the monks in a way that allowed them to live together in a shared purpose. As such, they created a new and special type of “faith” that was different from both the one held by ordinary believers and even non-monastic clergy during the Middle Ages. Moreover, it was and is significantly different from the faiths that sustain most moderns—even fundamentalists.


First of all, all the communities were celibate. It is true that sexual relations are a release of pent up energy, but it is far more true that sexual relationships usually create far more tension between people. Moreover, where there are relationships, there are children. And children always cause problems because they are not voluntary members of the community and must be provided for in terms of education, employment, etc.


Secondly, while it is true that the Abbeys were (at least in the begining) governed by democratic decision-making through “chapterhouse” meetings, this democratic rule was limited to ensure stability in the community. The membership of the community was segregated into two groups: “postulants”---people who were interested in joining the community but had not yet been formally accepted---and full-fledged brothers who had voting rights. Moreover, the decision to accept a member was made by the already existing members through a process of voting. In most communities a small minority in opposition (and in some, even one vote) to accepting a postulant as a brother was enough to “black ball” the person. This meant that the community didn't bring in new members that grated excessively on the existing community.


Secondly, the Abbot of the community was generally elected for life. This meant that while there could be, and probably was, a lot of politics involved in the process of electing the Abbot, this generally happened at very infrequent intervals. And while the power of an Abbot was theoretically immense, in actual fact these tight-knit communities could only function properly on the basis of consensus-building anyway. In fact, an Abbot tended to have a group of trusted advisors that helped him with his work. As a result, while innovation was accepted from time to time, there were no wild changes in Abbeys as one faction versus another gained power due to shifting support amongst the brothers.


Beyond these structural factors, there were also cultural ones that build a strong sense of solidarity. First of all, the lives that the monks lived were very structured. Every day, all the monks were expected to drop whatever they were doing at regular intervals and head off to the chapel to sing the Gregorian Chants. Not only did this break up the work day, it even occurred in the middle of the night, where monks would rise from their beds, sing the Gregorian chants, and then go back to get a few more hours sleep before it was time to get at the day's labours. This externally-imposed discipline (plus the celibacy) tended to select for people who were really committed to the monastic life. More importantly, it created a sense of routine that would get monks over the petty problems that often break up intentional communities. Even more to the point, the beautiful music that the monks participated in through the long hours of practice (which people still experience today when listening to recorded chants) brought the monks together and gave them a sense of exaltation as a community.


This last point needs to be emphasized because it can easily be missed by people who live in our current world. Before the time of recorded music---let alone Ipods---people did not live their lives in a pool of recorded sound. Musical instruments were very expensive and trained musicians very rare. Only the very wealthy, who could afford to support court musicians, could listen to music when the mood struck. For everyone else music was a very rare treat that usually didn't go much further than the odd bagpiper at the village fete or, if they lived near a relatively big church, a pipe organ on Sundays. Walking into an abbey and hearing the monks---some of whom had been practicing daily for decades---probably seemed like gate-crashing heaven. Not only would this create a bond between the community and the abbey that would go beyond the practical benefits describe above, it would also create a strong bond between the brothers, one that would go a long way to minimizing petty squabbles.


Even more to the point, the plainsong liturgy that the Monks and Nuns followed on a regular basis is a form of meditation. And the goal of meditation is ultimately that of learning to control the way that one's mind operates. In the case of these religious people, one of the goals of the plainsong method of meditation is to learn to control the individual's passions so they do not harm the good of the group. A choir only works if the individuals are willing to sing specific parts of a collective good. If you are part of a Monastic choir singing like a group of angels, this subversion of the individual in favour of the collective seems a fair trade. Similarly, life in a monastery can seem like a good thing if you also believe in the result.

Loneliness for Hermits, Sadness for Ministers

I recently got involved in a minor controversy over planning in my town. The Sikh community wanted to buy some land and build a Gurdwara. The people who would be neighbours to this group made some wild accusations about the seating capacity of the building and things boiled over into an ugly local racist drama. Ultimately several people, including myself, decided to make presentations to city Council supporting the proposed building.

Before we went to City Hall, we met for a potluck dinner.

It was one of those profoundly lonely moments that happen to me once in a while. Everyone else was "chit-chatting" about all and sundry, and I had nothing to say. I could respond to people's questions, but the ability to spontaneously "yack" with strangers about not very much of importance is something I have never been able to do. I used to try and "force it", but that would invariably result in me embarrassing myself because I say or do something that is wildly innappropriate.

As far as I know, all of these people were members of religious groups, successful at their careers and happy in their family life. In contrast, I work at a "slacker" job, will probably never be in any sort of relationship for the rest of my life, and, have never found a religious community that I felt comfortable in---even though I have tried time and again to "fit in".

And yet, there is something that is a bit of a consolution.

I don't think that these people see the world that I do. The introversion that dominates my life and creates a barrier with others I think allows me to see things that these people cannot fathom. I'm not talking about the ability to fart lightning bolts or regress to past lives. Instead, I'm thinking about, amongst other things, the way our society molds us and holds us tight in its fist.

After the event a couple aquaintances who are associated with one of the major Christian denominations came over to the pub with me for a pint of ale. One of them was a bit low as a result of church politics and was---in his words---"venting". It became very clear to me that even though he genuinely likes the people around him, he pays an enormous price for being an engaged member of his religious community. In particular, he has to be totally circumspect about what he says in public events about various elements of denominational orthodoxy. (I've had more than a few clergy tell me how carefully they have to mask what they think from various elements of their flock---this is a very common complaint.) The other fellow talked about the same thing from a historical perspective by illustrating time and again the ways in which the ecclesiastic hierarchy had styfled the free expression of ideas.

By the time it was time to leave, I had come to the conclusion that deeply religious people simply have to pay a huge price in life. Either they opt for being in congregations and thereby have to subvert the dearest part of their souls to the viscissitudes of ecclesiastic politics (this can be as big as the entire denomination or as small as the petty snits in a monastery.) Or, like me, they have to purchase their freedom at the price of finding themselves excluded from the warmth and comfort that comes from being in a community.

Sadness from thwarted passion, or, extreme loneliness from spiritual isolation. It seems to me that the genuinely religious person will always find his passion. In Christian terms, it is picking up the cross and following Christ. In Daoist terms it is burning away all your impurities in Old Lao's furnace.

Environmental Vow: Part Six

The Emotional Response

Despair


The preceding description of the crisis that we face is not primarily meant to convince the sorts of folks who would be interested in reading this essay that an environmental problem exists. That shouldn't be necessary because any intelligent, sensitive, well-read person who has been reading the newspaper, listening to the news, or, conversing with friends already knows that something is very deeply wrong. Instead, it is meant to be a recapitulation of commonly-known facts plus some logical inferences aimed at inducing a specific emotional response. I want you to take a moment and observe the sorts of feelings that you are experiencing as a result of reading the above. I suspect that you are pretty depressed. More to the point, I would suggest that after years of learning about global warming the feelings of most sensitive, engaged people has passed beyond mere depression and gone into the realm of despair. To be blunt, a large and increasing number of people simply cannot see any hope for the future and have no reason to believe that anything that they can do will avert catastrophe.


This is the same process that happens when a person is repeatedly confronted by beggars. One destitute person is someone we can help---scores or more are simply beyond our resources. And if it becomes clear that even that one has psychiatric or substance abuse problems beyond our ability to help, then even helping her becomes impossible. In this situation it is just an exercise in self-flagellation to spend any more than the minimum energy contemplating the situation. Avoiding painful thoughts is a normal and healthy response to a hopeless situation. If people don't do it they run the risk of becoming incapacitated by the horrors of human existence. They would become like soldiers who suffer from battle fatigue.


Feeling despair is not “just” a mental state. It is an actual feeling of pain. And sane people turn away from pain and follow strategies designed to avoid feeling it again. Just like the child who learns not to touch the hot stove, many people have learned to avoid paying any attention to the news casts, television documentries and lectures that tell them how bad things are in the world. Even worse, these people have taught themselves the trick of not thinking a lot of things through to their ultimate conclusion. What does, for example, a young parent of today honestly think the world is going to be like for her children? This creates real problems for the earth, however, because it means that large numbers of people who could potentially be doing a great deal to make things better are instead following strategies aimed at lessening their personal pain instead of working to solve the collective problem.


Unfortunately, some environmental activists simply do not seem to understand this human mechanism. Instead, they see society's innaction as being primarily because of ignorance about the state of the earth. For them, the way to mobilize the public is simply to explain how bad things are and how quickly they will soon be getting worse. Unfortunately, for people who are in the grips of despair, this usually has the opposite effect and encourages people to divert their attention even more.


Another misread of the situation is to think that the general public is apathetic. This fuels anger on the part of activists, who simply cannot understand how ordinary people can be so immoral as to continue to support “business as usual”. This anger sometimes manifests itself in the form of sabotage, but more often just bitter rhetoric. Unfortunately, however, this also just serves to alienate the public from the issue. If contemplating the future is so depressing that people choose to turn away and look at something else, violent words and violent action are not going to do anything more than reinforce that avoidance strategy.


Many people do realize how debilitating bad news can be. This is why there have been so many books and magazines devoted to “telling the good news”. Usually this consists of reporting the heroic efforts that one individual or small group of people are making to live in harmony with nature. But this is not helpful because these sorts of news stories are not much more than trying to create a false sense of cheerfulness----whistling past the grave-yard. Global warming is not an individual problem but rather a collective one. That means that if a small group of people do even an extra-ordinary amount to reduce their footprint the result is totally irrelevent as long as others are not stopped from ramping up their attempts to increase theirs. For example, if a large group of people totally swear off the automobile in favour of the bicycle, all this means is that the price of gasoline will go down fractionally---which will allow others to burn even more of it in their SUVs. This “Tragedy of the Commons” means that there simply cannot be private solutions to this sort of public problem. If you point this out to the people who are trying to follow the “good news”approach, they will often agree but then ask “what else do you suggest?” There may not be any easy answer to that question (this essay is an attempt), but false bravado is a very poor response to despair.


Despair is something that existed long before the threat of global warming. It has existed as long as human beings have had any sort of consciousness of the future, the world around them, and, their place within it. When a human being thinks about her death her rational mind collides with the instinct for self-preservation and the result is anxiety. Indeed this feeling was the inspiration and key theme of the oldest piece of literature that still exists: the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Beyond the issue of personal death, many people have felt enormous anxiety about the people they love: children going off to war, to the sea, to emigrate and so on. Men worried about their wives dying in childbirth. Entire families starved to death in winter, villages were pillaged by the Vikings, rampaging soldiers destroyed entire countries. At one time it was common on sea voyages for half the sailors to die of scurvy. In many ways these people faced dangers as awful, on a microscopic scale, as any we face on a macro scale through climate change.


What sustained these people? What kept them from suffering from debilitating battle fatigue and giving up? Why did they continue to have children, go to sea, march off to war, and so on? If you read the books that they wrote about themselves two answers immediately come forth: faith and honour. These two concepts motivated people in a way that most modern people cannot even begin to understand, let alone emulate. And, it is my opinion that part of the reason why society has not developed anything like a concerted approach to our environmental crisis is because it has no sort of similar unifying cultural force left that would similarly push people towards dealing with the challenges we face as a species. There are very good reasons why these two terms have become debased currency in people's minds. But, I suggest, doing away with them without creating any sort of substitute has sapped our civilization of a great deal of its vitality and has made us incapable of dealing with this most critical of problems. I believe that a key part of any substantive program to deal with global warming---and all the other environmental problems---will be to find some sort of meaningful substitute for these ideals. Not only will it motivate people to overcome their despair, it will also help overcome the instinctual resistence that people feel when their “sacred cows” are threatened.

The Different Types of Religion

People often express real surprise that when I say that I see a role for religion in our society. To be honest, I often find myself thinking the same thing. But having said that, I can see some worth, in principle, of something even if I myself often find it intensely distasteful in practice.

As I see it, there isn't one single thing that can be described as "religion". Instead, it seems to me that there is a very amorphous, trans-cultural phenomenon that manifests several very different, and often mutually exclusive, tendencies.

One line of tension occurs around the issue of whether one wants to accept people the way they already are versus whether or not they need, for want of a better term, "improvement". Consider, for example, the differences between Buddhism and Fundamentalist Christianity.

In Buddhism, the key issue is whether or not a specific person gains a specific type of wisdom known as "enlightenment". This insight is not granted as any special dispensation by a god, but instead is the result of specific, impersonal laws that govern the entire universe. Everyone is at least potentially able to gain this insight. There are a myriad of different systems for achieving this state, but ultimately everything boils down to a training regime aimed at dramatically changing the mental state of the individual believer. As a result of this emphasis, I would call religions like Buddhism "Wisdom Religions".

In Christianity, however, the issue is one of whether or not one accepts the "atonement" offered by Jesus.

"Atonement" has existed in a lot of different cultures who saw the concept in slightly different ways with a common outcome. In some societies the wrong-doing of an entire community was "transferred" in some way onto one particular being (sometimes an animal, sometimes a human being) which then suffered the consequences of that sin for everyone else (often a painful death). Another way of looking at it is to suggest that the sins of an entire group of people have amassed a "sin deficit" with the Gods. This deficit is paid, not be taxing each and every individual but by using up the entire life of one person. Yet another way of looking at it is to see the Gods as being annoyed with human behaviour, which means that they need to be "bought off" with a bribe. For example, supposedly the Gods of the Mediterranean area (Jehova, Zeus, etc) like the smell of blood and burning meat, so sacrifices were offered in order to get the "powers that be" to "look the other way" when the community screwed-up mightily (which, of course, was all the time.)

This atonement idea is very old and has manifested itself in many different cultures. In Iron Age Europe, for example, people used to murder individuals and bury their bodies in peat bogs as human sacrifices.

(Presumably the Northern Europeans thought of these bogs as portals to the Godly realm.) China also has a history of both animal and human sacrifice, but being a practical people, very early on they decided to cut out the "middle-man" and simply pay off their gods with money. This resulted in the creation of "Hell Banknotes" which have existed in China as long as currency. The idea is that you burn them in a fire and the smoke goes to the other world and pays off the Gods. You can buy these bills at most Chinese import stores.

Christianity is an outgrowth of this atonement type of religion in that Jesus assumed all the sins of the entire human race, was tortured to death, and, as a result, members of the Christian community have their "sins washed away in the blood of the lamb".

On the face of it, this is a totally absurd idea in that it assumes that a person's misdeeds are something like a financial debt that can be paid off by another person. (I once had a fellow tell me that if Hitler accepted Jesus Christ on his death bed he would go straight to Heaven. In contrast, a man who lived like a complete Saint all his life but did not "accept Jesus" would go straight to Hell.) Obviously, most people do not see crime and punishment in these terms, or else we would settle all criminal cases through the payment of fines. Billionaires like Bill Gates would literally be able to get away with murder! If this idea is offensive to most people---why would we accept the idea that Christ on the cross as somehow making other people's behaviour "OK"?

But that is only if we look at it from a purely personal point of view.

More than anything else, atonement religions are about building a sense of community. The New Testament has a great many things in it, but one of the stronger threads talks about what the group of believers should be like. (Traditionally the translation is as "the Kingdom of God", but the Jesus Seminar chose to translate the term as "God's Imperial Domain" which I like a lot better because the "Kingdom of God" emphasizes the rulership of God whereas when I think of "God's Imperial Domain" I think more of the duties of citizenship.) This is the focus of several parables, such as the one that compares God's Imperial Domain to a mustard seed that grows into a tree and the other that says it is like yeast hidden in dough.

The important idea is that the small, insignificant, and humble becomes an important force in society---like a weed seed growing into a large tree or yeast making bread grow. The same sort of thing comes out of the "Sermon on the Mount". Consider the following:

"Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are they who mourn,
for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek,
for they shall inherit the earth.

Christ is saying that the weak, powerless, insignificant are actually the real "players" in society. They are the ones who have the ear of God and who are on the "fast track to success".

This has tremendous implications for someone who wants to build a community. Before anything else, it means that a Christian church is not an elitist institution. It can open its doors to any and all who seek to enter. Moreover, because all the real "heavy lifting" of the religion is done by Jesus---through atonement---it means that the expectations for anyone joining are very minimal. Contrast this with a Buddhist Sangha, where the expectation is that the individual is psychologically prepared to submit to a very stringent set of monastic rules and undergo a very disciplined life of meditation. The Christian message is bound to attract more "bums in the pews" than the Buddhist one.

The second thing about an atonement religion is that it sets the members of that particular group at odds with "the Other". All atonement religions are, almost by definition, "chosen people". This is because they have entered into a contract with the powers that be through buying into the act of atonement. This is different from a wisdom religion, in that even though it has a stringent "entry price", the group itself doesn't believe that it is entitled to have any sort of privileged role in society. Buddhists seek wisdom, but are willing to accept that there are other paths to that same wisdom. Christians, instead, believe that Christ's atonement is the only way to achieve salvation. Wisdom religions, therefore, are cosmopolitan whereas salvation religions are parochial.

This stuff about "atonement" might seem a little hard to believe, but it is actually very powerful stuff for many people. The reason why is the same as why so many movies have violence in them. That is to say, when you see the depiction of violence (e.g. explosions, gun battles, fist-fights, etc) your nervous system kicks into action, your adrenal system kicks in, and you go into a heightened state of arousal (e.g. "fight or flight".) In an atonenment religion when the tribe dragged a human sacrifice to the altar and killed them in front of everyone, everyone felt a vicarious thrill as they participated in the act---even if as just spectators. The same sort of thing still has power in todays society as was witnessed when Mel Gibson produced a movie about the torture and execution of Jesus Christ. In a sense, the atonement religion makes sense because the heightened adrenal reaction is a type of "altered state of consciousness" which many people will crave.

There are, of course, other ways of creating a group venue for this sort of heightened awareness. A religious group can have an orgy. Or it can give its members hallucingenic drugs. Or it can have something far less drastic---like holding a series of exercises in bonding---like church dinners, musical events, work "bees", charity drives, etc. But either way, the point is that some sort of collective experience takes place where people's emotions are channelled in a way that allows the individual to bond with the group.

In my own case, because of my loopy childhood, a part of me has always been seeking a sense of "belonging". I remember when I started going to the Unitarian Church that I was profoundly moved by the way people honestly welcomed me into the congregation. After I joined the congregation, however, it eventually became clear to me that I have precious little in common with the other members of the community, which sent me back to being a hermit.

People are social animals. And the only way that our society is able to make progress is if people join together in groups to work together. And the only way I've seen to get people to do this is if we use emotional attachment to do so. And this, in a nutshell, is what I see organized religions doing. The problem comes when the content of the religion is counter-productive: people get brought together to build a community devoted to doing profoundly stupid things. I suppose what I would like to see is some sort of religion that was able to bring together people the way an atonement religion does but then went on to teach them how to better themselves like a wisdom religion does.

This has become a long, rambling post. I've already put too much time into it, so I think I'll just post it. This is supposed to be a diary, so I hope readers won't mind if some of the posts are not much more than thinking out loud.

Environmental Vow: Part Five

Economic Growth

A second “sacred cow” that sabotages real environmental debate is the way that environmental destruction turns on the hinge of economic growth. As I mentioned above, our economy grows through the human activities that involve a financial transaction, and these almost invariably involve some sort of stress on the earth. It should be obvious, therefore, that if we are going to substantively deal with the environmental crisis we should be seriously questioning the current imperative that our society has towards unlimited exponential economic growth. Yet when we look at the discourse in both radical environmental circles and the mainstream society we see almost the same level of denial as that associated with population issues. Why? Surely there is no direct biological urge for economic growth.


There are a lot of reasons for this, which I will try to briefly identify. First of all, our economy is such a complex, interdependent edifice that it is hard to conceive of substantially modifying it without causing the whole system to collapse. And yet its continued growth is the only ultimate security that we can offer to the billions of people who are dependent on it. Finally, for many of our society's leaders the economy has taken on the traditional role that used to be filled by religious faith and the chivalric code. That is to say, their place in the economy fills an existential void for some of our world's most influencial people.


Fantasies have been written about what might happen if a person with a modern education and a modicum of technical know-how were transported back in time to a simpler age. Take, for example, Mark Twain's classic A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. The hero of that tale, Hank Morgan, is able to create a modern (at least by 19th century terms) industrial society pretty much purely from the knowledge he carries in his head. What this sort of techno-rugged individualism misses, however, is how many of the key pieces of our modern world rest upon other elements---take away any one part and all the rest becomes impossible to sustain. If Hank Morgan were to miracurously appear in Dark Age England, for example, he would know how to do a great many things but would quickly find out that there wasn't enough iron available to realize any of his dreams. And if he tried to expand iron production, he'd quickly realize that there simply wasn't enough coal around to fuel the furnaces. And if he wanted to dig more coal, he'd find that there weren't enough roads (let alone railways) available to transport it to his furnaces. He'd have problems finding enough skilled and literate workers, or enough agricultural surplus to feed them, or enough copper, tin, lime, and all the other things needed to create Twain's Dark Age Utopia. If it was impossible to create the 19th century economy out of thin air, think about how hard it would be to create a 21st century one! It requires very complex machinery, electronics, robots, exotic metals, very highly skilled labour, etc-----take any one of these out of the equation and nothing else would work.


Equally important to a modern economy are the complex web of government regulations and business relationships that manage this huge globe-spanning machine. These include things like “just in time delivery”, the internet, fractional reserve banking systems, complex webs of international insurance, currency traders, futures markets, our legal system and so on. Add to this the fact that the international market consists of many smaller national and regional markets, all of which are in competition and very quick to take advantage of any weakness in another in order to gain market share. Indeed, everything is so complex that you will often hear politicians and business people refer to the fable of “The Goose Who Laid the Golden Egg” and suggest that we should leave things to manage themselves. Indeed, our economic system is so complex that no one really knows how to control the thing without running the risk of having the whole thing grind to a halt. This means that an equally apropos fable is that of the woman who took a ride on a tiger and found that it was impossible to safely dismount. In this light, knowledgible people view anyone who talks about the need to rein-in economic growth as being little short of insane.


The second thing to understand about economic growth is the way so many of our personal and public institutions depend on it for their well-being. Take, for example, the concept of “retirement”. People realize that in ages past almost no one was allowed to spend a significant amount of time at the end of their lives without having to work. Since almost no one lived long enough to care, it didn't much matter. But with the increase in life expectency there also came a dramatic increase in the speed with which the economy grew on a year-by-year basis. This meant that, as a general rule, money invested in new enterprises could be guaranteed to increase exponentially in value (again, the “miracle of compound interest”.) Of course some businesses did well, and others failed. But if you were reasonably lucky and prudent enough to not put all your eggs in one basket, anyone with a bit of money to invest stood a good chance of seeing their investments grow. This meant that a little money “put away for a rainy day” became a lot of money at the end of a person's life.


Consider the following hypothetical numbers. A man starts work at the age of twenty and retires at age sixty. He puts away fifty dollars per week for his retirement. According to the following interest rates, he receives a different amount at age sixty.

At 5% he receives $330,000
at 4% he receives $257,000
at 3% he receives $202,000
at 2% he receives $160,000
at 1% he receives $128,000
at 0% he receives $104,000

Beyond the individual level, this sort of assured economic growth allowed institutions like companies and governments the ability to create pension funds. And with these, the concept of retirement became a real possibility for larger and larger segments of the population---at the same time that modern sanitation and medicine were allowing more people to get to old age before dying. Remove exponential economic growth from the equation and there is no dramatic increase in wealth over a person's working life; and without that the concept of retirement disappears for most people. No wonder ending economic growth is a scary prospect.


This problem goes beyond just the old-age pension, though. Every social program that the modern state provides is paid for by taxation. And there are real limits beyond which taxation becomes confiscation, which forces businesses and individuals change their behaviour in ways to avoid paying it (that is, they either go out of business or leave for somewhere else.) This means that if a government wants to bring in new programs it has to either cut existing ones first (which almost never happens) or expand the tax base to fund it. And with exponential growth and an increasing population the tax base continues to grow on its own as new businesses come into being, the number of tax payers grows, and, the income of citizens increases. This process has continued for generations and is what has slowly built up the welfare state as more and more services have been added onto the role of government---which before the industrial revolution traditionally consisted of little more than national defence and a criminal justice system.


Economic growth also has a tremendous impact on the politics of a nation. One of the classic lines for politicians in liberal democracies has been “a rising tide lifts all boats”. What this cliche really refers to is the way economic growth has tended to end class warfare in modern democracies. That is to say, in a world where there is only a set amount of money to go around, the rich can only be rich if they take money away from the poor. This breeds a politics where the poor and rich resent each other and engage in constant battle (think of all those peasant revolts in medieval Europe.) But if the economy keeps growing faster than the population does, then that means that it is possible to convince the poor to accept the continued existence of the rich as long as they believe that the entire population is doing better every year than the one before. The other cliche about this state of affairs is that most people don't care about what percentage of a pie they get as long as their particular piece keeps getting bigger. In a no-growth economy the rich simply have to feed on the poor and class warfare begins all over again. And in a nation suffering from class warfare, it is much harder to make the compromises that are necessary to sustain a liberal democracy. In effect, an end to economic growth threatens the continued existence of democracy.


Ending growth has a particular dread for Third World nations. The standard prescription for ending poverty is that the nation has to “develop”. And what is development other than really fast economic growth? Ecologists have repeatedly asked the question about how the world is going to end climate change if India and China's citizens all end up owning automobiles and using air conditioners the way North Americans do. Yet the question always gets thrown back into their faces “Do you expect these people to voluntarily live in poverty forever?” It has been the stated goal of every “right minded” person---Left, Right, Communist, Capitalist, Religious, Atheist, whatever---that someday “development” will be able to raise the poorer nations of the world to the level of the “West”. Indeed, this dream has eaten up the sweat and blood of enormous numbers of idealistic people. It must seem monstrous indeed that when we are finally reaching the point where it seems possible that significant sectors of the Third World will actually become “developed” that we need to stop the process in its tracks because of environmental concerns.


It needs to be stated that beyond the materialistic concerns that are mentioned above, there is also a spiritual one. Expansion of the Welfare State and Development are not simply political and economic issues, they also idealistic visions that have sustained generations of people. In essence, they embody the general notion of “progress” and the incremental improvement of human kind. And in the absence of any sort of other spiritual narrative, “Progress” is something that gives life meaning and unifies the vision of countless people who have rejected religion. Suggest to these folks that nature sets firm limits beyond which the material culture of the human race simply cannot expand, and you have made impossible what motivates their efforts and fuels their sense of self-worth. I suspect that this is why so many traditional “Leftists” and “Progressives” have such a visceral antagonism towards Green political activists. On an inarticulate and intuitive level they understand that the idea that economic growth must be limited is some sort of existential threat to that specific set of values that they have built their lives around.


On the right side of the political spectrum a similar gut-renching antagonism exists with regard to the suggestion that there need to be limits on the economy. But I think that it is different from those mentioned above. Whereas people on the Left find themselves obsessed by the concept of “equality” or “economic justice”; the Right, I believe, is more concerned about “freedom” and “liberty”. Probably the most extreme expression of this worldview comes from the pseudo-philosophy of Ayn Rand. Her novels, which seem to be most popular with young males, seem to fill the same sort of role as adolescent “ripping yarns” literature. Rand's novels are, in effect, a sort of “Horatio Hornblower” books for young Conservatives because they fill their readers with visions of excitement and adventure of a sort that people rarely experience in the real world. Unfortunately, a small segment of the readership fails to grow out of this phase and continue to support Libertarian politics for the rest of their lives.


Beyond these fantasies for the immature, there does seem to be an element of the Capitalist vision that appeals to many people's deep-seated need for adventure. At least in the fantasy life of a lot of the supporters of an unfettered free market, I think that business competition fills the primeval wish to compete and conquer that used to be satisfied by hunting and tribal warfare. A case can certainly be made, for example, that the loudest proponents of capitalism tend to be very competitive people who spend very little effort being concerned about the plight of those who get in their way. As such, they could be said to be something like a “warrior class”.


For those people who seem most successful at business, the marketplace often seems to create a sort of existential “reason to be” that is much like the creative impulse that inspires artists. That is to say, the best elements of capitalism are about creating new products and wealth. And the process of doing so gives purpose and meaning to the lives of so engaged. In fact, I suspect that this is why so many “captains of industry” work so hard. Indeed, they simply cannot be in it “for the money” or else they would slacken off and enjoy themselves once they have made their pile. Yet if you look at people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, it almost seems as if the money itself is irrelevent. (Which would explain why they and so many other super-rich individuals give so much of it away.) I think that it is this sort of pseudo-spiritual engagement that many people have with the economy that explains why so many people seem to be so deeply threatened by the environmental movement. Contemplating an end to economic growth is not simply an end to some people making money, it is much more like doing away with their purpose in life. And, of course, the money that these people have gives them enormous influence in society.


Of course, most people are not left-wing activists out to create a egalitarian utopia. Nor are they rightwing disciples of Ayn Rand out to make the world safe for Nietzchian supermen. Most aren't even people who get their zest for life from business. But unfortunately, a very large fraction---if not the majority---of our society's leaders are. Many of our social activists, trade union leaders, the people who run our charitable institutions, politicians, and so on, really do have a vision of constantly expanding welfare state. And some of our most rabidly pro-business activists and politicians really do believe that there is something inherently evil in any attempt to limit the freedom of business. And finally, a lot (if not most) of our most successful business people really do get a great deal of personal satisfaction from working to make their businesses grow. And put these three groups together and you have defined just about the entire leadership of humanity. As a group, our leaders have an enormous personal investment in the concept of unfettered economic growth. In light of this emotional attachment to the present system, I simply cannot see how they can be counted on to deal with climate change before it is too late---especially as the last doubling cycle before catastrophie will initiate events that will arrive with what seems supernatural speed.