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She Seems Happy Enough…
Zacharius of Alchemical Braindamage (excellent blog, by the way) left a rather keen comment earlier on my Eckankar post:
I think it’s very telling that the only criteria that seems to hold up for a ‘worthwhile religion’ these days is whether it makes you a ‘nice person’.
This seems like a really important topic of discussion for anybody who’s interested in alternative religion (or culture). Unlike our proud moral absolutist friends, those of us who are out exploring the fringe grapple not only with having little to no certainty, but with a constantly changing landscape.
So when we try to compare our spiritual path and exploits to another, we’re left with very few objective criteria for doing so. For the fundamentalist Christian, the test is simple: Have they accepted Jesus? Of course, they run into trouble with just how someone is allowed to accept Jesus, but in comparison to ours their problem is much more limited in scope.
And so we often find ourselves left with the sole mutually agreed upon test of: Is the person “nice enough” or “happy enough”, despite whatever disagreements we may have? If the answer is no, then we’re allowed to suspect their spirituality as a cause. If the answer is yes, then we’re forced into a “Well, I don’t get it, but if it works for them…” type of situation. This is of course a criteria which is easily proven wrong:
“Well, I don’t like it myself - but did you see the smile on his face when he ate that baby’s raw flesh after raping and decapitating it? It obviously works for him.”
This is exactly the chink in our armor that Christians and other absolutists are always trying to exploit, dredging up terms like “relativism”, etc. The difference of course is that while we (well, most of us) may not condone a practice or a philosophy, we (figuratively speaking) utterly reject the coercion of others based upon our own opinions. But that doesn’t mean we necessarily believe people have the right to sadistic or barbarous acts. It’s essentially how we ended up with hilarious bits like the Wiccan Rede: An’ it harm none, Do what ye will.
There’s another question raised here, I think. Is happiness what religion is really for? Is that why we have religion? What is the connection between happiness and religion? In other words, someone can be happy “without” religion (so much as that’s possible, to not have a guiding story-system), and someone can be spiritually quite advanced, while still being a miserable asshole. In fact, in my limited experience I’d say that some of those who trumpet their spiritual advancement most loudly are in fact the least happy with themselves. A generalization for sure, but it helps illustrate the points of this discussion.
I wonder where the equation of happiness with religion really began. Perhaps it was with our Declaration of Independence which proclaimed as inalienable rights: “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” (themselves an alteration of John Locke’s Natural Law rights of life, liberty and property). The pursuit of happiness is of course very different from the actual attainment of happiness, which tends to fly just beyond our reach. Perhaps that’s too cynical or too recent of an explanation though. Maybe all that’s going on is that when we live our life according to a story, we feel “fulfilled” and thus happy so long as we are able to maintain a certain isomorphism with that story.
In an orthodox religious tradition, this is much easier to maintain than in an occultic or alternative tradition, where the story changes every step you take. Where reality or at least the perception of reality is plastic. Zacharius also has a great quote on his blog about how occultists deal with this malleability:
The ritual banishings of the occultist are partly meant to help him secure his hold on a shifting sense of reality. A ’summoning’ is in part meant to extend that reach by drawing new elements into the circle of what others take for granted as static reality.
The other point called to mind for me in this debate is what Timothy Leary said about people learning new semantic models and cultural systems. That they only do so when they are given “promise of future emotional rewards of which the teacher is model”. Maybe that means when we see somebody else who’s really happy, we want to find out their secret. Since happiness is such a fleeting almost mystical thing we automatically assume these people must be more spiritually in touch.
In any event, I don’t have the answer to all this. But it feels like one of the enduring questions for people who go the road less travelled. When you meet another traveler, how do evaluate his experiences out there on the lonely road?
June 26th, 2005 at 4:11 pm
I’ll attempt a serious answer: The test of the value of anything is how it affects the wider world. Eating a baby makes you feel happy but makes the baby and its parents feel really bad. Eating a deer makes the deer feel bad but it might benefit the biosphere (or it might not). We judge value by looking beyond, and looking beyond again. So you can determine the value of a religion this way, and even a fundamentalist religion might turn out to be valuable. But a spiritual system of continually looking beyond is much more likely to be valuable, and following such a path yourself is the only way to take responsibility for your own actions.
By the way, I don’t understand why “grappling” with a changing landscape is supposed to be bad. People in physical prisons want to get out and see a changing landscape instead of the same cell wall every day. I’m completely baffled as to why so many people feel the opposite about their mental landscape.
June 26th, 2005 at 4:27 pm
yeah i really like the changing landscape myself. anyway, your response sounds a lot like the 8 dynamics of scientology, which is a “greatest good for the greatest number” philosophy using some fancy lingo. maybe there’s more to your answer than that, i’m just interested in scientology lately…
June 26th, 2005 at 5:38 pm
my personal criteria for the value of something is partly based on how happy it makes you, but moreso on how open, how free of restriction and tension, how flexible in the face of new experiences it makes you. life is growth and learning. what is good for growth and learning is good for life.
even the buddha said not to take him on face value. there are in fact passages in the pali cannon where he gives his disciples hell for just smiling and nodding when he spoke. anything automatic is the enemy of wakefullness
June 26th, 2005 at 7:19 pm
Reminds me of the ubiquitous “she says she’s spiritual, but she’s so angry/bitter/etc.” posts all over beliefnet and the Wiccan boards. Yes, folks, seeking communion with God invariably makes one suffer fools gladly- just like Jesus did. (not)
June 26th, 2005 at 7:35 pm
“my personal criteria for the value of something is partly based on how happy it makes you, but moreso on how open, how free of restriction and tension, how flexible in the face of new experiences it makes you. life is growth and learning. what is good for growth and learning is good for life.”
i think that`s what scientology was after(clear) and what psychology is promising and what we all want so badly(though we don`t recognise it).
i ask people,in my seminars,what they would ask for if i was able to grant them one wish.people say things like money,pay off the mortgage,new car,etc and every now and then someone says,happiness.that`s the right answer.the fun begins when people realise it`s a matter of choice.i think thats the key to spiritual practice.choosing good feelings,for no reason.it`s quietly and effectively the right place to begin.
June 26th, 2005 at 9:38 pm
See, I don’t care if eating babies gives someone enlightenment. Since I’d try to stop the practice in any case, the answer doesn’t interest me. I evaluate paths by whether or not they’d help me or my goals (e.g. spiritual/magical progress) and otherwise ignore them. I likely lack the qualifications to judge another’s path, and I don’t think the attempt would advance my own goals.
June 26th, 2005 at 10:34 pm
I personally agree most with Ran:
But I don’t think this comment goes quite far enough. It’s hard to know how to measure collective benefit. It’s hard enough even to know collective cost. A well known problem in health policy: a program that nets a very large utility for a very small number of people but at great cost to a large number of other people may in fact have larger average utility than another program that has moderate utility for everybody. Which program is better? [If you don’t understand what a utility is, just compare the average (not median) income for an extremely wealthy oil caliphate with the corresponding index for a moderately wealthy socialist European country, and then ask yourself which system is more just.]
This is not a criticism of Ran’s statement, but rather a springboard to mentioning an additional criterion I would apply. A spiritual person is a person who has empathy and compassion for other living beings. Other humans, beasts, and for fuck sake even insects. My dog is a test case I grapple with every day. On the one hand, she requires meat for health and happiness, but on the other hand the meat she requires causes suffering for cows and sheep. Who benefits at whose expense? I don’t have any answers, but I know that I love my dog and I also feel really terrible about the cows.
Who is more spiritual? An evangelical who has found Jesus and lives a happy comfortable life in the suburbs of Houston? A new-age Kabbalist bestowing pearls of wisdom from a mansion in California? A pissed off activist trying to work for social justice? An atheist medical volunteer trying to help Africans with AIDS? You tell me.
June 27th, 2005 at 12:03 pm
from a sesame street standpoint, the pissed off activist is the one thing that doesn`t belong. like bill hicks says, if everyone takes care of thier own shit the world would be a better place.
the word “spiritual” has to be put into some context before any meaning can be dirived from it. we all have our own idea of what it means. if we don`t agree about what it means then we can`t work towards answering questions about “it”.
there are those who feed thier cows dog.
the planet eats babies too. it just waits until they get older, for the most part.
i think spirituality is a personal thing. not a social sorting mechanism for estalishing morals and ethics, although the result of getting your own ducks lined up will be of some benifit to the greater good. you are less likely to steal,cheat and drive dangerously.
a read a great thesis once where a sociology type showed that a stupid person does more damage to self and society that an intellegent criminal. i won`t try to fudge it here but i will try to find it.
June 27th, 2005 at 12:35 pm
i’m still pondering this one, but it seems to me that happiness is definitely less important than the freedom to pursue it.
overall, tho’, i don’t think it’s my place to evaluate someone elses’s spiritual progress on an individual level. sure, i’ll talk all kinds of shit about scientology *as a body*, ’cause i’ve studied philosophy and religion and spirituality for a long time and can look at it based in those terms. for the individual in question, though, i wouldn’t feel comfortable making that judgement.
personally, i tend to believe that signs of ’spiritual progress’ include compassion and humility. in other words, it’s not about making one’s self happy, it’s about making others happy. not in some kind of sentimentalized way or patronizing way where you have an ulterior motive and want to convert them or force them to be happy, but in a simple day-to-day way. of course, this stems from my wacky conclusions about the nature of the universe, that we’re all subjective manifestations of a single universal consciousness and are *literally* one another. compassion is treating others well not only because it’s the ‘right thing to do,’ but because by being compassionate to people, you’re being compassionate to yourself in another space/time moment. s’why i’m a big pacifist– imho, murder is suicide, cause you were/are/will be the person who you killed. also explains reincarnation– we can all remember past lives if we want to, ’cause we’ve all been/are/will be everyone else!
oop, gotten off track . . . .
June 27th, 2005 at 12:52 pm
i tend to agree about all of us coming from and back to one thing, and in that it shouldn`t matter so much where the happiness is generated. i`m an egotist but because i generate happiness i thrill myself internally and choose to be good at what i do,ethically and morally. we can only do that internally. if everyone does then the world improves to the precise degree that we all do it. when we set out to do good things for others then it quite quickly becomes political. and we`ve all seen how that works.