[P2P-F] Fwd: is there no p2p spirituality because there is no spirituality

[Amaia Arcos]

What about a Skype based video-conference? We can make our own coffee and
sip along, as if we were physically in the same place?

I think this sort of discussion is more fun "in person" :)

It could be recorded for archival and publishing purposes..

On 12 September 2011 16:26, Michel Bauwens <michel at p2pfoundation.net> wrote:

> thanks Richard, very 'enlightening' stuff, but this time, I'm just reading
> ... it's a bit of time question for me now, as I'm preparing a lecture tour
> ....
>
> If you had time, I'd be interested in some kind of summary of our
> discussions, that is readable for outsiders,
>
> just a suggestion,
>
> perhaps one day, when I'm back from my travels, we can have an organized,
> publishable, email-based discussion, less tit for tat, more an extented
> dialogue,
>
> Michel
>
>
> On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 9:13 PM, Poor Richard <poor_richard at att.net>wrote:
>
>> **
>> my comments as usual are interlinear
>>
>>
>> On 9/12/2011 3:56 AM, Michel Bauwens wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 3:01 PM, Poor Richard <poor_richard at att.net>wrote:
>>
>>>  My comments are interlinear
>>>
>>> But what makes the term "spirituality" even more problematic than "love"
>>> in many contexts is that it is indeed a "hot button" word for many in the
>>> atheist/agnostic/skeptic/free-thought/science community.
>>>
>>
>> yes, but that is exactly because they have chosen for an impoverished
>> understanding of the world, and thus the world challenges that ...
>>
>>
>> I do not believe such a description fits me nor a substantial portion of
>> the communities in question.
>>
>>
>>  for me it's very easy to recognize the people who have either gone
>> through this inner transformation, or not,
>>
>>
>> I somewhat agree, but for me it may not be as easy as for you. I am often
>> surprised by what extended dialog may unearth.
>>
>>
>>  and the acceptance of the word 'spirituality' seems like a good
>> indicator for that.
>>
>>
>> To me the word spirituality, when used in a non-sectarian universalist or
>> new-age sort of way, is lately an indicator of a sort of intermediate phase
>> of development, although few that I encounter actually seem to pass beyond
>> it. That may sound superior or arrogant but I think it best that I don't
>> sugar coat it with euphamisms or sneak it in sideways. I base this on my own
>> life trajectory as well as my last few years of study and re-analysis of
>> myself and those I have known.
>>
>>
>>   You are one of the few exceptions, i.e. having clearly having
>> experiences but not using the concept.
>>
>>
>> Yes I will stack up the quantity and intensity of my religious, mystical,
>> and shamanistic experiences (with and without psychoactive substances)
>> against anybody's. I'm no slouch as an amateur scholar of comparative
>> religion and other wisdom traditions, either. I used the concept of
>> spirituality most of my life. It has only been in the past decade that I
>> have abandoned the concept of supernaturality and only in the past few years
>> have I questioned the implicit associations of supernaturality (and other
>> connotations I consider doubtful or fallacious) with the word
>> "spirituality". It may be telling that I titled my blog post, "Is spiritual
>> the new supernatural?," with a question rather than a statement. I am still
>> agnostic as to the existence of anything logically and qualitatively
>> distinct from everything else in the natural world, i.e. anything
>> supernatural or non-natural) but I have completely abandoned the idea in my
>> own thought pending some startling future revelation). One might think my
>> aforementioned experiences would have provided just that revelation and
>> indeed I interpreted them that way once. But gradually over the past couple
>> of decades, concurrent with my deepening practice of introspection and my
>> further assimilation of neuroscience and other life sciences I have come to
>> interpret them in naturalistic ways that are much more satisfying to me than
>> my former spiritual  interpretations. My naturalistic interpretations are
>> more satisfying because they are more intellectually parsimonious
>> (spirituality no longer "adds value" to my interpretations--if it did I
>> would retain it); because they expand rather than shrink the horizons of my
>> mind; and because they fractally interdigitate with all the rest of my
>> knowledge as my previous interpretations never could. The silver lining of
>> spending years in extreme depression during which as much as half my time
>> was spent in a semi-trance-like, semi-meditative state interspersed with
>> long periods of careful and lucid examination of my thoughts, my beliefs,
>> and my entire body of knowledge and experience-- was that I was able to
>> sort, cross-index, and integrate all that content and process it to an
>> extent I think that few people ever experience. This has given me an
>> intellectual rebirth. I would say that my new brain is about two years old.
>>
>>
>>  But from the above, your choice seems politically and socially motivated
>> by the acceptance of that said community.
>>
>>
>> Not at all. I neither accept nor am I accepted by those communities (I
>> mentioned several) to any extent that would influence me. My brief
>> interaction with people in the local atheist community in N. Alabama was
>> quite contentious. My acceptance of science is not of the community but of
>> the methods, philosophies (with exceptions), and discoveries of science. I
>> merely mentioned the various communities in question because they are
>> well-represented in internet fora. I run across them all the time, but
>> usually in open discussions of activism, politics, economics, ethics,
>> conservation, general philosophy, and life sciences. I get the impression
>> they are well-represented in the ranks of public intellectuals, internet
>> geeks, and social activists. Very few of them seem to specialize in hyping
>> their atheism, skepticism, etc. to the exclusion of the general spectrum of
>> issues and ideas, any more than most gender-atypical or neuro-atypical
>> people or handi-capable people are obsessed with talking just about their
>> special community ad nauseum.
>>
>>
>>  I understand that position perfectly, for the same reason I do not use
>> the loaded s- and c-words .. but rather p2p to start a fresh investigation
>> of emancipatory possibilities
>>
>>
>> If I slant my language for any audience (which is seldom), it is usually
>> the "mainstream" audience. But if I were in your position I would probably
>> avoid loaded words, too. From that frame of reference I might be fairly
>> neutral on spirituality, since it is so popular, but I think I would avoid
>> constructing many articles (with occasional exceptions, of course) that
>> didn't allow some room or comfort level for bright, non-spiritual and
>> anti-spiritual people to feel safe about participating.
>>
>>    We can say that "all is part of life", but again, isn't there a sea of
>>> difference between understanding this mentally, i.e. still separately as a
>>> watching and conversing mind, and/or to experience this directly, as a
>>> shaman might.
>>>
>>>
>>>  I behold a sunset. I am moved esthetically and emotionally, and perhaps
>>> in other ways for which "naturalistic spirituality" might serve as a place
>>> holder for other words we don't have for responses of our organism that are
>>> still insufficiently examined. I'm not even saying that we can't value the
>>> sunset without examining our experience at all. But if someone tells me the
>>> sunset moves them spiritually, I probably know less than if they say it
>>> moves them esthetically or emotionally. Most people would just accept the
>>> spiritual explanation as if that meant the same thing to everyone. If you
>>> said you love the sunset, depending on the context I might say "yeah, me
>>> too" or I might ask "why?", or "what do you love about it?," or "what do you
>>> mean?, or "why don't you marry it?"
>>>
>>
>> The sunset is not a good example, as anyone can 'easily' experience that,
>> but what about shamanistic, mystical, gnostic and other experiences, that
>> are not reducable to an external input from nature, but are rather inner
>> events, from problematic origins (your 3 mind theory) . THere is more to
>> life than nature 'mysticism' ..
>>
>>
>> I want to say a bit about eroticism and then I'll discuss shamanism. A lot
>> of artful lovers (I include myself of earlier years) have had so-called
>> spiritual erotic experiences--merging with the cosmos kind of stuff. The
>> thing is, all kinds of hormones get flowing in the nervous system that are
>> capable of producing hallucinations and there is ample evidence of the
>> interaction of bio-elctromagnetic fields that probably affect the
>> proprioceptive nervous system in exotic ways. I myself became fairly adept
>> at the latter, and for years I considered various spiritual interpretations.
>> Gradually I worked out naturalistic hypotheses that were more plausible to
>> me. This does not exhaust the possibilities for evoking spiritual-like
>> erotic experiences but I think it probably characterizes the whole spectrum
>> of the phenomena.
>>
>> I'm not sure how you might distinguish mystical and gnostic, but one of
>> the few experiences I have no good naturalistic hypothesis for is my
>> occasional ability to correctly visualize the interior construction of a
>> machine I have never worked with before. One example is the case of a WWII
>> vintage Willys Jeep that wouldn't start in the middle of the wilderness.
>> Although I was not likely to have ever seen a schematic of a Willys starter,
>> much less ever disassembled one, I had a vision of the construction of the
>> starter which actually included the problem. I disassembled the starter and
>> found the problem exactly as I had seen it. Its possible that I had
>> disassembled maybe one other starter, possibly that of a 1949 Jaguar,
>> before. So go figure. I've had similar experiences with other machines.
>> Leaky mind?
>>
>> What shall I say about shamanism without fearing for my life? Here again I
>> think the proprioceptive nervous system and the bio-electromagnetic fields
>> of living organisms are recruited in exotic ways, often with the aid of
>> psychoactive substances, music, chants, rhythmic movements, sleep
>> deprivation, and many other devices that alter or reconfigure the neural
>> networks and the electrochemical state of the brain and the entire nervous
>> system of the practitioner and sometimes other participants. Even though a
>> lot of real stuff, including very exotic biophysical and biochemical stuff,
>> is actually going on, the other dimension of it is that memory contents (not
>> just the conscious memory but the eidetic lifetime memory of every sense
>> perception you ever had and every Hieronymus Bosch<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paintings_by_Hieronymus_Bosch>-esque
>> image you ever imagined or dreamed in your life) are recruited to wrap the
>> real physiological phenomena in a "virtual reality", or a sort of channeled
>> hallucination that relates in a meaningful way to the shamanistic activity
>> being conducted. The deal is that stuff happens that seems like magic, but
>> is actually very natural despite its being truly unusual, mind-boggling, and
>> poorly understood by science. That is not to say that all practices
>> considered as shamanism, such as so-called psychic surgery, are legitimate.
>> But there truly is real shamanic "magic", healing, and communication with
>> nature in the manner I characterized above. I am fairly convinced I have
>> communicated with plants and animals shamanistically, but a large part of
>> what I thought I experienced was probably amplified and elaborated by my
>> brain. Lets say one percent of the communication was real and 99% was
>> brain-generated virtual reality (to be very conservative).
>>
>>
>>
>>>  But, this is crucial, just as we cannot reduce the 'meaning' of
>>> skakespeare by the physical qualities of the ink on paper,
>>>
>>>
>>>  This is a bad example for your position. Meaning is only a relevant word
>>> in the context of a conscious entity. The ink on paper only has meaning when
>>> it is given such by the reader. We have learned a great deal about how all
>>> that works, and have no good reason to think that any of the stuff we don't
>>> know about it yet is not just as naturalistic as what we already know. When
>>> it comes right down to it, there is no good, logical, persuasive way to
>>> assert that anything unknown or mysterious is unnatural, because of the very
>>> lack of explanatory evidence that makes it a mystery. I have been
>>> experiencing and witnessing real mysterious phenomena for decades and have
>>> not seen, heard, nor read any convincing evidence that anything that exists
>>> or anything that is real is unnatural. Thus one of my objections to the very
>>> prevalent "supernatural" or dualistic connotation of the word spiritual.
>>>
>>
>> ok again, there is no need to accept the supernatural at all; but here is
>> a crucual difference, you seem to argue that one day, we'll know enough of
>> the brain to explain the inner experiences of shakespeare lovers and tibetan
>> monks, and that is the reductionism I object two. These are entirely
>> different planes or aspects. No matter how much we know about how the brain
>> works, that does not say anything about the hermeneutic aspects of
>> Shakespeare. For that you would need psychological and social sciences but
>> even more: intersubjective dialogue, irreducible to any 'science'.
>>
>>>  Not yet. That will require full visibility into all levels of brain
>>> function and a way to "play back" these recorded correlates into another
>>> brain to verify that the experience induced by the recording is as complete
>>> as the original. I predict that some day it will be demonstrated so. I'd
>>> guess that to occur around 2040. I hope I'll live to experience
>>> high-fidelity brain recordings.
>>>
>>
>> again, for me that has no bearing on understanding the phenomena in
>> question, physical correlates are just physical correlates, they do not
>> exhaust the issue at all
>>
>>
>> How can you say that does not exhaust the issue if you record the
>> correlates and play them back in an actual brain to reproduce the original
>> experience? I put that in specifically because it would confirm that the
>> correlates + brain were in fact sufficient to reproduce the full subjective
>> experience. You can say that's impossible and will never happen, fair
>> enough, but if it did happen why wouldn't it exhaust the issue?
>>
>> Besides, there is all the evidence from brain damage, stimulation, etc.
>> that the brain creates the subjective experience because when you damage or
>> stimulate it you alter or extinguish a specific category of subjective
>> experience or cognition.
>>
>> I consider this just as well-settled as an election where 40% of the votes
>> are in and every single one of them is for the same candidate. In other
>> words, I don't believe in miracles even though there is still a small
>> possibility they could happen. If and when one happens I'll reappraise the
>> situation. This is not so much reductionism as a tendency to conserve ones
>> resources by concentrating on the most probable pay dirt.
>>
>> We are all reductionists. That is built in to the nature of our brains and
>> it offers certain economies and efficiencies. That is why we have to be so
>> vigilant for habitual cognitive biases and why all our beliefs, even about
>> our own first-person experiences, have to be provisional and have to be
>> regularly examined, tested, and revised. The issue is whether one's
>> reductionism is reasonable in a given context. For example, if you are even
>> remotely fundamentalist about anything, including science, that is excessive
>> reductionism. Many religious people have some of the most reductionist views
>> of reality of all. I would say that one's world view must be at least 50%
>> based on the best available science or it is a reductionist world-view. By
>> that standard probably 90% of the human species has a pathologically
>> reductionist world-view. Most of the remaining 10% would be some
>> approximation of a scientist-shaman.
>>
>>
>>
>>>  Hence the dialogue is always between those three levels, that of
>>> understanding material laws, that of understanding human meaning, and that
>>> of experiencing directly the transformative power of spiritual experiences.
>>>
>>>
>>>  In that scenario I'm not sure I see any difference between direct
>>> spiritual experience and, say, direct experience with a microscope.
>>> Experience with microscopes is also transformative.  Direct experience is
>>> integral to science, and science is transformative, too. So is torture.
>>> (Different strokes....)
>>>
>>
>>
>> well it is the difference between physical torture, mental torture, and
>> what it all means to the human being doing and experiencing it ... multiple
>> levels of reality, not reducible to the physical correlates ... each new
>> level of complexity is based on the lower level and cannot exist without it,
>> but brings new 'laws' to the table .. i.e. emergent realities
>>
>>
>> Not reducible to the physical correlates -- I haven't said that. It is
>> correlates + living brain. But if we can play the brain like a player piano,
>> it means we don't need anything else (except more detail) to explain it.
>> That's not irrational reductionism, that is rational parsimony.  An Amazon
>> tribesman might wonder what kind of spirit animates a chain saw or an
>> excavating machine, but we don't. We understand the machine performs its
>> function without requiring a spirit. In my opinion there is no credible
>> evidence that we are anything but amazingly subtle and complex machines.
>> That is not a reductionist position unless I hold it in the face of reliable
>> contradictory evidence.
>>
>>
>>    That doesn't require anyone to believe anything said by such
>>> experiencer, but only, if we want, to follow the injunctions that may lead
>>> to those occuring in us as well. There is no obligation, but in my mind,
>>> there should also not be a rejection.
>>>
>>>
>>>  I disagree. Many (perhaps all) altered states of consciousness can be
>>> induced by secular means free of any association with religious or spiritual
>>> trappings. What the religious and spiritual terminologies, narratives,
>>> rituals, sacraments, art, architecture, etc. mostly seem to contribute is to
>>> make a practice or procedure more interesting, entertaining, or emotionally
>>> compelling (sometimes frightening) to many. This is a way of exploiting
>>> human nature.
>>>
>>
>>
>> well again, "a means of exploiting human nature" "hoaxes", instead of :
>> different cultural and historical ways to experience human and other
>> realities
>>
>>
>> That is not a fair characterization of my position. However it would be
>> foolish not to acknowledge that a great portion of what most people
>> (including modern, educated westerners) actually believe is contradicted by
>> fact, and that (a separate issue) there are many people in all cultures who
>> exploit human nature and perpetrate hoaxes.
>>
>>
>>   ... there is a sea of difference between the dead western funerals I
>> experienced in Belgium (for my father) and the lively, communal, rich
>> funeral rites I experienced here in Thailand (for my mother). An incredible
>> difference in effectiveness, psychological, social, spiritual ..
>>
>>
>> There are many levels on which traditional funeral rites comfort the
>> living and assist in their adjustment and I don't quarrel with that at all
>> (with some possible exceptions) because at that point people are generally
>> not in a balanced, integral state. By the same token prayer is known to help
>> many people recover from illness, although there is also evidence that
>> non-religious guided imagery has a similar impact. In the absence of other
>> evidence I attribute these to a type of placebo effect. The downside of the
>> spiritual versions of psychoneuroimmunology and suggestion is that false
>> belief systems or biases may be reinforced which could have negative as well
>> as positive consequences at some point int the future. For example, a person
>> convinced that gods had healed them my become fundamentalist or apocalyptic.
>> Of course if the interventions are truly life saving I suppose future
>> consequences can be damned.
>>
>>
>>   there is really a sea of difference between artificially creating a
>> altered states through drugs and machinery, and the collective process that
>> goes on through a spiritual path. Which is not to say we could not develop
>> and are developing, contempary methodologies, such as John Heron's
>> Cooperative INquiry and many others,
>> http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Spirituality#Key_Articles
>>
>>
>> I strongly agree that good collective process is often more powerful than
>> individual practice, though of course they are complementary, and that
>> altered states achieved without drugs or machinery, if possible, are
>> preferable--or perhaps I should say they reflect a greater achievement.
>>
>> However, altered states acheived au naturale do not escape my scrutiny. I
>> have had many unassisted "mystical/religious" experiences for which at the
>> time my highly educated, practiced, and subtle mind had little recourse but
>> to spiritual interpretations. Drugless, in prayer, I was once enclosed in
>> two giant, cupped hands that were a translucent, glowing greenish-blue
>> color. This was visible to my open eyes. I was certain they were the hands
>> of Jesus. Another time while meditating (drugless) in a group of experienced
>> meditators in a very special, highly conducive place, I watched myself as I
>> lay in a small rowboat floating across a smooth, silvery blue lake towards a
>> far shore that was not visible at first. As the far shore just became
>> visible, I heard the unmistakable voice of Jesus --not in my mind but
>> speaking softly in my ears--giving me a blessing. I realized that the far
>> shore was the threshold of the heavenly world where my wife (dead for two
>> decades) might be. As I began to anticipate reaching that shore, I was told
>> in a different voice, unfamiliar but nonthreatening, that it was not
>> permitted. My consciousness gradually returned to the room and I felt better
>> than I ever had in my life. Was this a spiritual experience? In form and
>> content, perhaps; but in time I came to consider it a self-induced
>> hallucination. Curiously, the experience was so incredibly remarkable that I
>> did not feel disappointed to think of it as an hallucination. I was very
>> impressed with my brain. Despite its past injuries and some genetic
>> handicaps, it is a very  fine brain and I gotta love it.
>>
>>
>>     Apart from the rejection of the semantics of the concept of spirit
>>> and spirituality, it is now a historical time to go beyond the rejection of
>>> 19th century rationalism against anything that is not purely 'rational', to
>>> a time of integration and dialogue between the various levels of the human
>>> being.
>>>
>>>
>>>  That's what I'm all up in here about. My rational arguments would not be
>>> what they are without decades of practical experience and observation of all
>>> things mystical and shamanistic from a highly open and sympathetic point of
>>> view. I do not reject the experience, but I do reject many of the common
>>> interpretations of it.
>>>
>>
>>
>> Understood, so do I, but I believe what is needed is participant
>> observation, not a superior condemnation from a morally higher vantage point
>> (i.e. rational thinking vs. hoaxes and human exploitation)
>>
>>
>> I understand. Despite what I said about loving my brain, I don't think my
>> interpretations are ecessively ego-based. But I agree that is not always the
>> case for others who object to spiritual interpretations. In the past I was
>> often a sympathetic participant-observer of many cultural traditions and
>> practices. In the present, my aim is not condemnation but cognitive
>> emancipation and evolution. I only reject (for myself) beliefs that are
>> contrary to evidence or for which I have compelling (at least to me)
>> naturalistic hypotheses; and I only discuss these in what I think are
>> appropriate venues.
>>
>> PR
>>
>
>
>
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>


-- 
“We would think and live better and be closer to our purpose as humans if we
moved continuously on foot across the surface of the earth” Bruce Chatwin
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