If there is a spiritual awakening happening in England, Western Europe or the West generally; if awakening is beginning to happen - or if we are each approaching a moment of choice about our specific (and the general) spiritual future...
If such a thing happens then how could it be detectable - given the private nature of such things?
I think there will be more-or-less inevitable behavioural hence measurable consequences of any serious spiritual awakening.
For example, if many people begin to awaken to a broader and higher form of consciousness, to a living and sentient reality, then I think there would have to be changes...
For example, more attention paid to introspection, to innate motivation, to imagination; a movement towards 'heart' and intuition based living (and therefore less mind or instinct, less head- or gut/ gonad- driven behaviour)...
And linked with this, people would want to stop wasting their time - for example, cut back on engaging with the mass media, cut back on watching and reading trivial and harmful rubbish and lies; cut back on expensive and decadent stuff done for status - buy fewer and cheaper possessions; reduce entertainments, holidays, cosmetics and self-mutilations; stop show-off parties; in general, they'd want to stop wasting money on buying and doing things done just because 'the system' wants people to do them...
And perhaps especially people would begin stopping doing harmful things, things that make things worse - stopping things that promote corruption, destroy Good; they might stop lying, stop praising and working to promote lies and ugliness and the inversion of values...
This kind of thing should be detectable - detectable as changes in trends, in averages and even more so in the behaviour of the awakening sector and spread of change from these sectors.
There might be detectable economic changes, measured inevitably as economic shrinkage, decline and damage (since most of the economy is about bad things, harmful things); detectable in changes of net work efficiency and effectiveness (given that most work is overall harmful); and changes in media usage and engagement (since that is the major waste of time, and the major self-harming use of energy).
Such things would, no doubt, be 'explained' as due to other causes - since their real cause would be imperceptible and immeasurable; plus of course the desire of 'the system' would be to hide any spiritual cause.
Furthermore, such positive trends (if they were strong) would be interpreted and spun as 'bad' - so that people stopping doing bad things, stopping wasting their time and expending great effort on making things worse... people making such changes en masse would for sure be interpreted as economic collapse, productivity collapse, inefficiency, impaired consumer 'demand', deflation, sales reductions and so on and so forth.
Interesting!
In my experience I find many people are yearning for a simpler life. There seems a movement of disaffection and discontentment with materialism and the rat race. A desire to work less and forgo luxuries in order to gain more quality time to spend with family doing wholesome, more nourishing activities: walking in the woods, growing ones one fruit and veg, foraging, staycations to local beauty spots instead of lavish overseas holidays, reading literature and enjoying board games instead of watching TV. At least that is what I am finding many people are now admiring and seeking to model their lives on such ideals. Of course this could be just construed as a fad or trend or a series of 'retro'spective lifestyle choices but it could be the start of something better. Almost certainly the media would react badly to this 'back to basics' shift in priorities if it meant a spiritual revival or that the masses did not need to plug into big brother to keep going up the Maslow hierarchy of endless needs and wants necessary to fuel an insatiable and destructive global economy BUT stepping of the consumer hierarchy as much as one can intuitively seems like the most sane and rejuvenating act I can see happening in our modern world, short of actual spiritual or Religious practice. Converting to Christianity is another story and my experience is that people might want communical garden projects or to knit their own clothes or go wild camping but they dont want Christianity. Why people are so hostile towards the possibility of Religion being good for them is something I still find hard to fully understand. I have always had strong religious and spiritual impulses even as an atheist. It often strikes me as odd that others do not spontaneously feel the same internal drive to pursue spiritual truth or find a spiritual path of personal value. Perhaps the series of changes you describe, including a media withdrawal and change of priorities would reflect the beginnings of such a spiritual awakening. The question is where would this go and would it lead to Christ or...something else?!
ReplyDeleteMild disagreement, on the contrary an economic explosion would be in order generally while inherently wasteful industries would collapse. The Puritans and the Benedictines essentially got rich by spending as little as possible on the harmful bits of economic activity. Less consumption and investment in real honest operating ventures, as opposed to stock market chicanery, combined with high trust will make the whole society much richer.
ReplyDeleteI also must make a somewhat emotional point that there is a big difference between a chosen Spartan lifestyle and real poverty. "So I'll be a little less rich" is a rich man's problem. Most men in the west are having the greatest difficulty obtaining enough resources for basic family formation. Owning a home has become a multi generational process in much of Europe. So, saying "so what" to an economic collapse is on the cruel side for many men.
@Hoyos - We also need to be clear that there is essentially zero poverty in the West - by the biological standards of what was meant in the past: people starving to death, despite working long and backbreaking hours, and having nothing left over to raise children (who would pretty much all die before adulthood). Nowadays the poorest sector are characterised by non-employment, excessive drug and alchohol use, they live on average into old age (by historical standards), they have more children than the rich - as many as they want, and essentially every child that is born to them will be raised to adulthood (if not by the parent/s then by someone else).
ReplyDeleteSo, nowadays when we talk of the poor, we are talking about something absolutely different from the past. I think this tends to be obscured by focusing on differentials, and specific indices of 'the good life' like home ownership.
In the past - poverty was biological - it usually meant an early death and over a few generations at most, extinction of your lineage. Nowadays (and, in Britain, since about 1800) poverty means biological success, a greater proportion f future people will be you descendents - and this has been measured.
So now poverty is sociologically defined, instead of biologically, but with the pretence or assumption that the same thing is being discussed - and usually defined by political activists - hence the perpetual confusion.