The appeal of going on some sort of spiritual voyage has always eluded me. I’m happy where I am, paddling in the spiritual shallows. Today’s New York Times piece by Charles Blow had a beginning that was, therefore, unlikely to draw me in:
I recently met a young woman who was just back from a monthlong Costa Rican vacation. She said that she had gone in part to connect with her spiritual self, to shed the moral strictures of her youth and to find her place of peace as an adult. In her mind at least, it had been a successful trip. She was a new woman, spiritually awakened.
Oh, good grief.
Nevertheless it is worth persevering with Blow’s piece, which is a useful reminder of the fact that the need to embrace some sort of religion (call it what you will) is a very widespread human characteristic. To assume a secular future continues, I think, to be a mistake.
Blow writes:
In fact, on some measures, the data suggest that these so-called millennials may be more spiritually thirsty than older generations. According to a Knights of Columbus/Marist poll also released this month, being “spiritual or close to God” was the most selected of any other “primary long-term life goal” among those 18 to 29 years old (other choices included “to get married and have a family” and “to get rich”). The rate at which they selected it was significantly higher than other generational groups, and nearly twice that of Generation X.
The print version of Blow’s article is illustrated by some interesting charts: Apparently, 58 percent of “religiously unaffiliated” Millennials (aged 18-29) believe in miracles and 42 percent in angels and demons.
A well-named generation, it appears.
What “moral strictures” was she looking to shed, “thou shalt not steal”? Seems unlikely. The woman in Costa Rica strikes me more as somebody who was looking to let loose her inner slut, since it’s not as if we place significant limits on female behavior these days.
These people want to be both “close to God” and “shed moral strictures”? Something does not compute here.
“Spiritual” is a word that’s come to mean whatever the speaker wishes it to mean. Any person who describes him or herself to me as “spiritual” is, as far as I’m concerned, actually saying “I am a self-absorbed twit.”
I know people who aren’t religious at all, don’t go to church etc. but will readily believe in ghosts and demons. I think that with the old structures of society fading away, religion is losing ground but it’s not losing ground to atheism as much as simple superstition and vague spiritualism.
It has to be said that we have yet to observe a human society that on a mass level did not look for some concept that transcends the individual and his material existence. People apparently don’t feel comfortable left alone in the rather cruel reality of material life.
Mike H, I know people who aren’t religious at all, don’t go to church etc. but will readily believe not only in ghosts and demons but also in the wisdom of the government, all the while disbelieving in market forces.
It will be hard to get rid of religion or spiritual feelings because these things are wired into us by evolution according to the book “The Faith Instinct”. Didn’t Jung believe most people need a religious outlook on life even though he didn’t believe in God?
Richard Dana , who wrote Two Years Before the Mast, also was interested in religion and he found that people ,who were taught about the world and read many things before they were indoctrinated into a religion as a child , had a harder time believing in God and being religious. There might be a window where the faith instinct is “activated” in a child ,sort of like language and if you miss that, it will be harder for people to be religious, although not impossible.
Who gets a month off for vacation?
It’s true. Just look at how many secular leftist young people believe in outlandish concepts like “karma” as well as things being “meant to be” and so forth. I would second what Mike H said. People are discarding religion because they don’t want to be constrained by the absurd puritan rules, yet they have no problem with “magical thinking” in a less constricting context.
If the reduction of traditional religious belief leads to social decay, would not the objective measures of such social decay; 1) criminality, 2) drug abuse, 3) teen pregnancy all increase over time? In fact, all three of these have declined over the past 20 years. Drug abuse among young people and teen pregnancy peaked in the late 80’s. Crime peaked in 1993. All three social pathologies have declined significantly since. Again, if decline in religious belief leads to an increase in such social pathologies, why have they declined instead have increased? Also, all three of these pathologies are less among the “god-less” Europeans and Japanese than Americans. I think the notion that the decline in religious belief leads to social pathologies need to be re-examined.
The woman in Costa Rica strikes me more as somebody who was looking to let loose her inner slut…
Obviously. The only question is whether she actually believed anyone else would believe her explanation.
I’m with Susan on this one. I can’t even count the times I’ve heard “I’m not religious, but I’m spiritual!” As if one was superior to the other.
And to answer Twain’s question about who gets monthlong vacations–government employees if they have the requisite number of years, and wealthy people, to name only a few possibilities.
College professors actually get three months off in the summer, six weeks at Christmas–excuse me, Winter Solstice–and spring break, as well as long Easter and Thanksgiving weekends.
And they are all deeply spiritual. Deeply. I can’t begin to express how deeply.
Susan #10. Actually (and I know whereof I speak) college professors who teach can get summers off, but others (like me) don’t. Our solstice break (again, for the teaching types) is about a month, not six weeks; here at my ESU, Easter’s just another Sunday. Thanksgiving, I give you. (Factor in that the teaching profs are generally on 9-month contracts; you can argue that they’re paid too much in the first place, but that’s a different topic.)
And no, we’re not all deeply spiritual, not by a long shot.
@Narr
I know. I was just joking. But the vacation times for profs are, generally speaking, more lavish than those for people who work outside the tower.
I myself am deeply shallow.
Susan #12. I like to describe myself as profoundly shallow. Great minds etc, huh?
@Narr
Absolutely. And crass and materialistic as well.