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

[Michel Bauwens]

we could start a series of recorded skype talks, with 3-4 people, on
different topics, with this as a first one?

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 9:36 PM, Amaia Arcos <amaia.arcos at googlemail.com>wrote:

> 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
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>>
>> Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
>> http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation
>>
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>> http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> “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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