According to Randy Revell, spirituality has to do with how consistently our thoughts and actions match our faith-based positions or beliefs. By this definition, some of the people who least consider themselves spiritual are in fact quite spiritual indeed. I refer to the rational empiricists, who believe that they have no faith-based positions at all and that in fact it is folly to have any.
Of course, the rational empiricist does have several very strongly held faith-based positions, most of which he keeps with consistency. The one that most interferes with his spirituality is the one that makes him an "ist" rather than simply rational: "I have no faith-based positions. I believe in only what can be proven scientifically." That itself is a faith-based position not shared by the bulk of the world. Alternatives to it are "I have faith that only the scientifically provable is valuable" or Hamlet's "There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Let's explore, for a minute, what kinds of things it might be useful to believe in that cannot be proven scientifically. My strongest faith-based position is that people have the right to their self-determination. I become outraged by criminal trespass against that right, and perhaps even more outraged by government trespass. My blood pressure goes up every time I'm forced to show my driver's license (read "travel papers" for easy comparison with Nazi Germany) before boarding a flight from Seattle to San Francisco. Yet this position is not provable in any way; it is simply an article of faith.
What about the position that people are basically good? Scientifically, many counterexamples to this position can be found and perhaps used to disprove the statement. Howard Bloom's The Lucifer Principle relates just how closely our capacity for evil echoes that of primate societies given the right conditions. The morning newspaper gives plenty of examples every day of people who are not, it would seem, basically good. And yet, if enough people in a community believe people are basically good and act consistently with that belief, something gets created that otherwise would not exist. It is something called goodwill. It's one of the things possible on earth that, without faith, is not dreamt of in your philosophy.
A community of goodwill makes life a very different experience. So much of our experience of life comes from the conversations and interactions we have with others. If the texture of those interactions comes from the negative, suspicious, resigned flavor of the morning headlines, life can be a drag. But if we live in a community where people have faith that people are basically good, and where people act consistent with that belief, we have a spiritual community of goodwill. And oh, what a difference.
Richard Brodie richard@brodietech.com
Author, "Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme"
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