Some things I am fairly sure of

[robinturner]

Religious practices, spiritual paths, practical philosophies, wisdom traditions … call them what you like, they come in a bewildering variety. Such a variety, in fact that people tend to assume that either (a) only one of them can possibly be valid or (b) they are equally nonsensical. The first option is less like Pascal's wager than putting all your money on a horse in a thousand-horse race: if you're going to believe that the First Reformed Snake-Handling Church has got it right and all the others have got it wrong, you need much stronger evidence than that your daddy handled snakes all his life and was a pretty decent kind of a guy. The second option has a certain elegance, since all you need to do is to show that all of these diverse faiths and practices are based on one or more false assumptions; Dawkins has made a career out of this. On the other hand, it's kind of boring. This leads us to the "perennial [pop] philosophy" approach: deep down, they are all really saying the same thing.

This approach is very appealing, and the only problem with it is that Tibetan lamas, Sufi dervishes, Neo-Stoics, Franciscan monks and Yakut shamans are most definitely not saying the same thing. They're not even doing the same things, unless you think getting drunk on vodka, eating a load of 'shrooms and dancing around wearing a ton of metal and bits of dead animal is "the same thing" as Islamic ritual prayer. Sure, they all (with the possible exception of the Stoics) do things that are a bit unusual and have odd effects on your brain, but we need a little more to go on than that.

Rather than assuming that all these diverse systems are saying exactly the same thing, then, I prefer to look at those areas where they do occasionally find agreement and which are born out by my own experience, in the hope of arriving at what the Dalai Lama calls "basic spirituality" (not that I am assuming the existence of a spirit to get spiritual about). To achieve this, we need to ignore the mythology. If we start—as most of these people do—with some assumptions about the universe, then we are immediately plunged into a chaos of competing myths. The world may or may not be created by a god or gods. We may or may not have an immortal (or mortal) soul. We may be reborn repeatedly, or die and go to Heaven, Hell or some other place. All of this mythology is hugely entertaining, but it is really only supportive fantasy, and you could just as well get your beliefs from Star Wars (in fact some people do).

So what the +%@!*# do we know? Certainly not what the film of that name suggests: quantum physics may some day prove the existence of free will, karma or magic, but there again, it probably won't, and may itself be superseded by some Theory of Everything that proves that the universe is a howling chaos inhabited by horrendous beings with tentacles and too many consonants in their names. As I said, forget the physics, the metaphysics and the mythology—or at least put them to one side for a moment—and concentrate on the less glamorous but more useful stuff.

It all begins with ethics

The first two stages of yoga (according to Patanjali) are yama and niyama—basically "don'ts" and "do's". (And it's interesting that the "don'ts" come before the "do's".) While antinomianism has its charms, there's always some set of life-rules that you have to follow before you can get anywhere. The problem is that, like the metaphysical stuff, there is a plethora of often contradictory rules: "Thou shalt not kill." "Thou shalt not eat of the flesh of the three-toed sloth." "Choose ye an island! Fortify it! Dung it about with enginery of war!" (OK, I made up the sloth bit, but the dunging about is real.) But we can boil this down to Google-ethics: Don't be evil. (In case you're wondering about Satanists who truly want to be evil, I cover what I call the "Satanist paradox" elsewhere, but I'm not saying where.) For specifics, we need to move on to the next point.

Virtue is pretty much universal

This is not immediately apparent, given the confusion of moral codes. But if we look at character traits rather than specific actions, there is a fair degree of consensus. There are few if any cultures in which cowardice is a virtue or generosity a vice, where it is thought better to be stupid than wise, or where one should repay kindness with cruelty. Virtues are correct by definition, since a virtue is an appropriate reaction to circumstances. Courage is the appropriate reaction to danger; justice is the appropriate distribution of benefit and harm; prudence or self-discipline (sophrosune) is the appropriate stance to take to our desires.

Of course there are some things which are regarded as virtues but not universally accepted. Chastity is a good example: it's seen almost as a vice in modern liberal societies, while in some parts of the world, they'll stone you to death for not practicing it. Sexual morality is an ethical quagmire, not least because hormones are involved (or more accurately, our cognitive reactions to hormones), and hormones rush in where angels fear to tread. But even here, there is an opportunity for consensus. Take marital fidelity. This is not, I think, a virtue in itself; in fact I think a lot of marriages would benefit from a little infidelity. However, it is based on two universal virtues: prudence and justice. The first demands that we weigh up our desires and their consequences and behave accordingly; the second demands that we treat people fairly. So if you have entered into an agreement with someone that involves not having sex with other people, prudence and justice demand that you keep it. On the other hand, if you're a Babylonian temple prostitute, they may demand different things.

Wisdom trumps all other virtues

Since virtues are defined as appropriate reactions, wisdom is king, since it decides what is appropriate. You can still do the right thing without being wise, but it's pure chance.

Most suffering is self-inflicted

Pain is unavoidable, but suffering is primarily something we do to ourselves. There is very little difference in experience between my stubbing my toe and someone stamping on it, yet I am (unless my Stoicism is well to the fore) upset about the latter. (If I get upset about the former, then I'm being really stupid rather than just averagely stupid.) At the risk of stating the obvious, this does not mean that it is OK to go around stamping on people's toes.

Some emotions need to be eradicated

This follows from what has been said. Romantics can spout all they like, but nothing will convince me that fear, rage, grief, hatred and craving are things worth having in my life. (Except for their simulacra—there's nothing wrong with the pseudopathos of being scared silly by a horror film.) And to go back a bit, wisdom is the key to eliminating them.

Love is the Law

The different traditions vary a lot when it comes to how much they emphasise love, but it's nearly always there somewhere. If we don't engage positively with our fellow humans, and ultimately with the whole universe, we're going to end up miserable. Of course, there is the problem that our fellow humans are notoriously difficult to get on with, which is why in some traditions, people go off to the mountains and practice loving things that don't piss you off so much, like trees and rocks.

The mind needs to be disciplined

We function best when our minds are completely engaged in a task we regard as valuable ("flow" in the current parlance). Unfortunately, the mind tends to degenerate into randomness, which is why we need meditation and the like to give it some kind of discipline.

It's good to get out of your head sometimes

Again there's a lot of variation here, but spiritual traditions tend to emphasise activities that promote altered states of consciousness (ironically, these are sometimes the same ones that in smaller doses are used for mental discipline). An exception is Stoicism, but we shouldn't forget that Stoics lived in a world where ecstatic mysticism was simply taken for granted (mystery religion and all that) and sober, rational thought was the thing that was in short supply.

Eudaemonic happiness needs to include hedonic happiness

Apologies for the Greek. Eudaemonia is happiness in the sense of living well; hedonia is happiness in the sense of feeling good. Traditional systems tend to emphasise the former, but it seems clear from the practice rather than the theory that you can't have the former without the latter. Good feelings don't always make for a good life, but a good life requires good feelings.

Comments

Nice post

[ankh156.livejournal.com]

Executed with your customary clarity and good humor. Difficult to argue with any of it.

It's been a while since we had one like that - 'a fireside chat with Uncle Solri'.

Re: Nice post

[(Anonymous)]

Why thank you! I'll try to write more substantial posts like this, but time is limited.

Re: Nice post

[solri.livejournal.com]

That was me, BTW, in case it wasn't obvious. I'd rebooted into Windows and forgot I wasn't automatically logged in there.

[rodneyorpheus.livejournal.com]

Magnificent.

[solri.livejournal.com]

Thank you, sir.

[jaipur.livejournal.com]

That "love is the law" bit--are you speaking only about current instantiations of the major religions, or are you speaking for all time?? I'm thinking that's a 20th century development to see that as common across major religions...

[solri.livejournal.com]

In the sense of "love thy neighbour" as a commandment, then it's something we only see making a big splash in the 5th century BCE with Buddhism and Mohism. But in the general sense I used, I'd say it was pretty much universal.

[jaipur.livejournal.com]

But followed/emphasized to a greater or lesser degree over the centuries, surely...

[solri.livejournal.com]

Yes. But we need to remember that spiritual leaders (at least the revolutionary ones) often emphasise the virtues they see as lacking in their societies. I think it is no coincidence that religions emphasising brotherly love (and concern for the poor) became popular around the time that traditional clan networks were starting to break down. In hunter-gatherer bands or neolithic villages, there would have been no point in saying something like "All men are brothers," because almost everyone you saw was at least a second cousin.

You can see a similar thing with prohibitions. The fact that the Koran repeatedly condemns female infanticide tells us that the Arabs practiced it, but probably didn't practice male infanticide.

Nietzsche redux

[alsoname.livejournal.com]

I read the Satanic Bible when I was 19 or so (the appropriate age for such reading material, I think), and don't remember it emphasizing evil deeds at all. Rather, it seemed like a repackaging of Nietzsche's ideas about slave morality and the Ubermench et al.

Of course there are other "Satanists" who think LaVey is a pansy, so whatever ...

Re: Nietzsche redux

[solri.livejournal.com]

I read some of LaVey's stuff and got a similar impression: lumpen-Nietzscheanism mixed in with pop-Thelema. What I was talking about with the "Satanist paradox" idea is where someone says, like Milton's Satan: "Evil, be thou my good."

[asteriskhere.livejournal.com]

It's good to get out of your head sometimes

I've got to do this soon!
(I leave such insightful comments, don't I?)

[solri.livejournal.com]

You do.