A question on Armageddon

On another thread, you said :"Morality is a construct of Humans, it is as much a crutch as religion is". I agree it may be largely a human construct, but hardly "irrelevant", and for creatures as lame as humans, such a "crutch" is probably necessary for survival. I'm basically a utilitarian in regarding "good" as that which promotes the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people, and evil as anything that does the opposite. The world has generally gotten by because a majority of humans follow moral codes that generally promote more good than evil although sometimes the balance is precarious. Humans survive because they are social animals--utterly dependent on a high level of co-operation for their very existence. Durkheim's classic sociological study of religion, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, saw religion as primarily a means of promoting and expressing social solidarity. That's one reason religion seems (until rather recently) a universal phenomenon. Religion and morality, of course, aren't the same thing, but early on in history they became interdependent, as the glue holding society together.

Nature provided the rudiments of morality long before humans arrived on the scene. Reciprocal altruism is "a behaviour whereby an organism acts in a manner that temporarily reduces its fitness while increasing another organism's fitness, with the expectation that the other organism will act in a similar manner at a later time." It's found in a wide variety of species, from cleaner fish, ants, and termites to vampire bats, and of course, primates.
Biological Altruism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Biological Altruism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
A separate trait is empathy, the ability understand and share the feelings of others, found in rats, mice, monkeys,elephants, and, of course, dogs.
Do Animals Feel Empathy? | Scientific American
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1261022
Empathy seems to be more prevalent in pack and herd animals. According to Dr. James C. Harris of Johns Hopkins University, it as “an evolutionary mechanism to maintain social cohesion.” Do Animals Have Feelings? Examining Empathy in Animals | UWA Online Animals relying on a group for survival must be more sensitive to what those around them are feeling, whether they’re human or non-humans. That, of course, would apply to humans. At first, the mechanism aimed at promoting social solidarity within hunting bands and tribes, especially to those sharing genes or kinship, and did not extend to outsiders. That was the limit of biological evolution's contribution to morality. But humans, unlike other animals, also benefit from cultural evolution. In the last chapter to The Selfish Gene, Dawkins develops his theory of memes (not to be confused with the internet memes we encounter on social media.) More broadly, memes are units of culture that spread by imitation from person to person. "Memes spread through human populations by social contact far more rapidly than genes spread by sexual contact. Just as our behavior at the individual level is controlled by selfish genes, our behavior at the social level is controlled by selfish memes." Biological and Cultural Evolution | Edge.org

I suspect a good deal of human morality is based on memic elaboration of the two biological principles of reciprocal altruism and empathy: the golden rule (reciprocal altruism) which is found in many cultures World Religions: The Golden Rule Across Cultures and empathy which is the basis of "love thy neighbor". Unfortunately, humans also have egos that can hijack these principles for selfish agendas. TBC

 

I guess I need to clarify a bit---I use a slightly different definition of religion vs. spirituality which is based on my own research and experiences. The standard definition allows for indigenous spirituality to fall into the category of religion, as primal religion. Somewhere in this forum I have had that discussion before and provided my definition. Its been a few years since I have discussed this so I will have to dig out my exact definition. But in a nutshell, I feel that hunter-gatherer tribes have a spirituality rather than a religion. I argue that religion did not develop until mankind began to live in communities large enough that institutions were needed to manage the community and the resources. Therefore man had already began to have a sense of in-group out-group, and and a sense of ownership. He began to see the world in more objective terms and began rational reasoning. From this perspective he begin to form institutions, and develop a dualistic cosmology. The development of writing forced him to think in more linear terms.

The hunter-gatherer therefore did not have a religion, but a spirituality. As hunter-gatherers began to plant and began to live in a fixed location which evolved into villages, his spirituality began to evolve into a pseudo-religion. This meant a shift from a focus on the individual, which is the essence of spirituality (as someone mentioned, it is very subjective) to a focus on the group (it became more objectivistic). This pseudo-religion would then become the basis for the institution as the pseudo-religion evolves into a religion as mentioned above.

We see this in the Native American traditions---the plains Indians retained a strong sense of their hunter-gatherer roots at the time colonialism took over their lives. They were fairly nomadic, and their spirituality was focused on the individual--take for example, the vision quest. There is a support of the community around the vision quest---you usually don't just go off by yourself. There is a medicine man who checks on you, and there are prays being done for you during the vision quest---but the focus of all of this is on the individual. Even a sweat lodge, or other ceremonies, are done in a group, but they are experienced very subjectively. On the other hand, if you go to a pueblo, you will see that the ceremony in the kivas has changed to a group focused ceremony. Whereas the sweat lodge, being very subjective, can be visited by spirits who may interact with an individual (nonphysically), the Kiva, has an objective physical dancer, who comes in as a kachina or spirit in a mask and costume for the group to witness.

All these indigenous spiritualities and pseudo-religions are animistic. They are all multiplistic, but in the pseudo-religions you begin to see dualistic elements, such as the twins in the Hopi cosmology, for example.

On the surface, Hinduism does seem to be non-dualistic. I used to assume that it was so, partly because we define it as polytheistic. But then I realized that it does have a dualistic cosmology--that is to say, it is dualistic. This dualism, which has spread into all of the Eastern religions is broken down into the dominant heaven-sky-male, and the subservient earth-ground-woman.

I also understand that spirituality is at the core of every religion, and that they were built off of that. Some religions, like Hindusim or Sufism, place a stronger focus on achieving the ecstatic spiritual experience, than do others like most sects of the Abrahamic religions, so this may make it seem that one religion is less dualistic or more subjective than another, but they are far more similar than they appear. One can say that Hinduism has Dharma so it is not dogmatic, but I argue that Dharma is in the end, another name for dogma. You might notice that gender also fits strongly into this dualism. Hinduism is very misogynistic.

I also would like to point out something I think is amusing in how we define Hinduism as polytheistic. We say that because we in the colonialism of the West have control over the definitions. But what if it was India that colonized and dominated the world. They could've argued that, "Hinduism is the one monotheistic religion, because we have only one God, the Atman, or Brahma, not like those silly polytheistic Christians with their many Gods---God or Jehovah, and Jesus, Holy Spirit, Mary, Lucifer, and the angels, and somehow those saints fit in all that too."

Again, I argue that this developed naturally, as they began to form city-states, with an understanding of in-group and out-group, and the experience of that when dealing with other tribes---as other tribes tried to trade with them, for example, and they understood, this is our maize, and if you want some you have to give us something for it---they had a defining experience of The Other.

Yes, I understand that religion serves other purposes beyond control, but I would argue that because they are an institution, the control is far more reaching and all-pervading in all religions (as I define them). A spirituality can have morality, mores, and taboos. But this is a different level of control, and their purpose is not based on that control.

 

As a Muslim, needless to say, he believes in the version in the Quran. But since he only believes in that version, he thinks that the gods that we all talk about are one and the same and all religions simply give them different earthly names.
He also agrees that this has lead to false conflict on earth as a result and the clue in our bible lies in the good Samaritan.
He was a paramedic, who I worked with during my years with the London ambulance service and agreed that he would not be judged if he missed his prayers while dealing with an injured or seriously ill patient. Unfortunately we have lost touch over recent years.

 

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In the field of comparative religion, religion is often defined in terms of the four C's: creed (common beliefs), code (moral rules), cultus (rituals), and community (fellowship of believers). Of course, these tend to become complex as societies become larger and more complex. However, I think a bright line between religion and spirituality is untenable. All known human societies in the past had at least a rudimentary form of those characteristics, though more informal. They had shared beliefs about the spirits which animated nature; shared ideas about how to relate to them thru rituals to bring the rain, the game, etc.; and a community of believers co-extensive with the band or tribe concerned. Shamanism was the norm. I think it's useful to recognize that.

I also think it's useful not to romanticize hunter-gatherers. In The Better Angels of Our Nature, evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker presents a good deal of evidence that they were at least as violent and nasty as we are to outsiders.

 

I agree with you fully. I upset the apple cart, by saying that if each group believes that their is only one god, they should accept that other groups should realise that they simply have another earthly name for him (or her)
As I mentioned earlier on this thread, it seems unlikely that their are several gods up in the heavens somewhere, spending their time throwing rocks at each other.

 

To romanticize hunter-gatherers is to commit another form of prejudice, that of the Noble Savage. Though let me add that when we think of war among such people, we place it in modern civilized terms--a battle for land, power, and control. In their own words, this is not what they fought for, but that is another topic.

The problem with Comparative Religion is that it is grounded in materialism and from this position makes objectivist assumptions. There is for example. the typical assumption that the indigenous knowledge of plants and herbs comes from years of experimentation. They do not take into account at all the experiences of an indigenous healer in how he or she came to select certain plants for healing specific things. In fact, if you work out the actual scenario of experimenting over generations to see what kills, what makes one sick, what does nothing, and what heals and how it heals, and which one is a combination of these things, you start to realize that the statistical possibility that they gained such knowledge, and especially over so many different plants, is very low. But to accept any different reeks of so much Idealism and magic, that it would make Kant roll over in his grave.

Another defining characteristic I make about spirituality is how it connects the individual to the universe, or more specifically, nonphysical side of the universe. Naturally this would not even be a consideration in comparative religion, being that it is a science, and, since I brought up Kant, he separated science from the nonphysical, and for the most non-objectivistic, things of the inner mind. This nonphysical could be god, or the gods, or spirits, or the universal mind, or even as I argue in my own philosophy of Archephenomenalism, quantum information and the nonphysical dimensions (i.e. all the dimensions beyond what we understand as physical---up-down, left-right, front-back, and time as the moment of Now).

Spirituality is that connection that subjectively transcends us beyond the physical. Religion tries to objectively bring the nonphysical into the physical--a dynamic or process which I call, Logosummonism. Sitting in a church pew praying to god, and drinking wine as the blood of Jesus are examples of logosummonism. Sitting in a yuwipi (a Lakota spirit calling) ceremony and seeing and feeling things that defy the laws of science is a spiritual experience and is not logosummonistic.

Likewise, meditating and going deeply within oneself is a spiritual experience and is not logosummonistic. It is also very subjective which brings us to another defining characteristic of religion. Religion places people into positions of authority with control over the access to the nonphysical. For example, in the catholic church, you have to go and confess your sins to a priest, rather than just apologizing directly to God. Indigenous spirituality has medicine men, and shamans and so forth who will act for you, but they do not control or limit your subjective access to the nonphysical. Rather they have made sacrifices or have a gift to connect to the nonphysical and help translate, if you will, the nonphysical for you. A medicine man is very humble and should not place himself above you in a manner of control between you and spirit.

When you look at comparative religion from these contexts, you begin to see how it is lacking in its definitions and that these things do separate spirituality from religion, and even the spiritual aspects of a religion from its institutional aspects.

 

Or as Kierkegaard said, there is only one true Christian in all of history, and he died on the cross. LMAO!

 

Logosummonism, in case I didn't define it above very well, is a term I coined referring to the process of bringing the nonphysical into the limits, laws, contexts, constructs and definitions of the physical. The pinnacle of logosummonism is probably Hegel's concept of God, and the failures and problems that have come our of materialism can probably be largely attributed to that. If there had been no Hegel, there would have been no Marx. The biggest and most destructive failure of Marx is that he did not allow for the nonphysical---the irrationality of the human mind or the human spirit. (Mind by definition is nonphysical) I even argued this at 18 years old with the Marxists at Denver's underground bookstore.

Spirituality attempts to transcend the physical. Even if we are doing this to manipulate our physical situation and reality through prayer, ceremony or magic, it is through approaching the nonphysical as something beyond the physical.

There was a word that was more fitting to this, but unfortunately Derrida had already used it in his philosophy of deconstruction.

 

I doubt that it's religion per se that's the source of in-group, out-group division. Our cousins, the chimps, are quite territorial--using border patrols to police the boundaries. If another group of chimps encroaches on a group's territory, the members of each confront each other in a noisy display of mutual hostility; and if one hapless individual encroaches, (s)he can expect to be torn limb from limb (Pinker, The Better Angels, p.57). Their human relatives seem to have retained these traits, and regularly do violence in sneaky raids. Research on violence in primal human societies suggests that, while much smaller in scale than today's wars, the frequency is such that the body count adds up to a rate that is considerable by any standard. (Ibid.)
What causes such encounters? Cannibalism seems to have been more widespread than anthropologists previously thought (Gibbons, 1997). Raids were also done to gain hunting grounds and watering holes, caches of stored goods, kidnapping women,or preemptive strikes against potential adversaries. (Pinker, p. 46) Looked at from the vantage point of history, religion seems to be a relatively minor factor behind most wars. The Encyclopedia of Wars , recording nearly 1,800 wars that have occurred in history, reports that only 123 (6.98%) were primarily religious in nature. Amazon.com The quest for territory material goods (wealth), and power seem to be principal causes, even in conflicts that might superficially be labelled religious.

Yet as societies developed, it soon became evident to individuals within them that religion could be useful in justifying conflict and rallying the troops. As Gibbon said of the Romans, to the citizenry all religions were equally true; to the philosophers all were equally false: and to the politicians, all were equally useful. One notable example was Sargon of Akkad, the first human emperor. After the Akkadians conquered Sumer, Sargon adopted the cult of Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of sex and war, and made his daughter Enheduanna high priestess. She became perhaps the world's first theologian, transforming the religion into a militaristic ideology. Many warlike societies rallied around war gods like Indra, Marduk, Zeus and Yahweh. But as people tired of the ravages that followed in the wake of such deities, new classes of theologians and philosophers fashioned the universalistic religious doctrines of the so-called Axial Age: the writers of the Upanishads, Zarathustra, the Hebrew prophets, etc. Mustn't overlook them in describing the effects of religion.

 

That would frighten the pants off them, their would be a danger of creating world harmony.

Over recent years, since the timeframe of evolution makes little sense and intelligent beings seemed to come and go, but left us with a lot of puzzles such as the Roman roads that are straight when viewed from outer space, not to mention the pyramids and Stonehenge.
I often wonder whether human life is actually native to this planet, or whether it was seeded here. It would explain our physical differences including skin colour, as well as our religious differences.

I also think that Stephen Spielberg and Gerry Anderson have some knowledge that may be preparing us for the truth. Along with Stanley Kubrick, none of them will ever accept interviews on the subject and mostly laugh it off.

 

My argument is that it was the other way around--that it was the in-group out-group that helped shape spirituality into religion,along with a shift from subjectivsim to objectivism.

 

I'd think a shift from subjectivism to objectivism (i.e., from personal impressionism and emotionalism to rational, fact-based reasoning) would be a good thing. But I'm not sure it's helpful to think in terms of such a "transition". That suggests an evolutionary model, with too bright a line between "primitive" humans and "modern" ones. Typically, this is done by scholars who regard the latter as superior to the former, although in your case I sense the opposite is true. I think spirituality and religion co-existed from the beginning and continue to do so. The emotional (spiritual) aspects may have been more intense for a larger percentage of people in primal societies than in modern secular ones, but that would be a matter of degree. (Have you ever attended a Pentecostal service?)

"Spirituality" seems to be a catch-all for beliefs and practices that differ from the rationalism and materialism characteristic of modern western societies. I don't think subjectivism versus objectivism are the best terms for characterizing these differences, nor do I think the line is as bright as it might seem. Anthropologists like Levi-Strauss and Latour suggest that the line is far less bright than once supposed, and that spirituality and rationality co-exist in both modern and primitive societies. Spirituality as Method in Anthropology and Sociology

According to the Cambridge dictionary, "subjective" refers to being "based on personal beliefs or feelings, rather than based on facts." Subjectivism is the doctrine that "our own mental activity is the only unquestionable fact of our experience". (Richardsdon and Bowden (1983), A New Dictionary of Christian Theology ). In extreme form, it would be represented by solipsism (the notion that only one's own mind exists) or Berkeleyian idealism, that reality is an idea in the minds of humans and God. I'm something of a qualified subjectivist myself, when I say that "nothing is certain, not even that." Such concerns were in vogue in ancient Athens, and later in the Enlightenment . We don't know anything for sure, apart from the consensus of others, and "objective reality" is, for practical purposes, that consensus. But in relative terms, we regard as objective those observations or experiences for which there is a high degree of confirmation by other observers.

I seriously doubt that hunter-gathers were mainly "subjectivists" at all. They thought that their beliefs about the world around them were objective, not just based on personal feelings, and their views were shared by other members of the hunting band or tribe. It was reasonable for them to think that the things they encountered in nature had spirits like they did and to endow them with agency, in the absence of evidence to the contrary. (Pascal Boyer, 2001, Religion Explained: Evolutionary Origins of Relgious Thought). They went on the basis of what they thought to be observed facts, albeit theirs, like ours, were colored by misperceptions. When the Lakota warrior went on a vision quest, of course, he expected to obtain subjective personal insights about his own destiny. But the practice of doing this, and the expectation that the result would be such personal insights, was shared by the tribe. It was, in other words, a religious belief. To my knowledge, there are no pre-modern examples of societies in which individuals proceeded on the basis of their own individual vtews about reality, apart from and at variance with, the shared beliefs of their society. We might regard them as erroneous, and in that sense non-factual , but to the members of the society, they were factual. "Objectivity" in any meaningful sense, must refer to the consensus view of members of a community who are trying their best to describe what they regard as the known factual characteristics of the world around them. Religion (In Primitive Culture) | Encyclopedia.com
How and why did religion evolve?

Did the in-group, out group division help to shape a transition from "spirituality" to "religion"? In hunter-gatherer societies, internal "in-group, out-group' divisions tend to be non-existent or ephemeral, owing to strong social pressures in small face-to face societies to conform. Out-groups tend to be rival bands and tribes, and differences with them tend to be territorial, or over resources. Only with the advent of larger-scale societies classes of priests and philosophers, did religion play much, if any, significant role in divisions and conflicts among in-groups and out-groups. Tribal war gods like Indra, Zeus, Marduk and Yahweh became prominent in supporting battles over territorial and resource issues.

 

I'm sure any field of study has its limitations, and it is certainly possible that a whole discipline of scholars devoting their lives to a subject could get it wrong. On the other hand, I've so often encountered apologists for fringe theories--conversion therapy, scientific creationism, antivax conspiracy theories, etc.--that always include the same claim: the mainstream scholars are out to lunch and we're the persecuted champions of truth. So maybe the scholars of comparative religion are all wet. But from my experience and observation, the framework which I put forward seems useful in distinguishing religions from non-religions.

Can you think of any hunter gatherer society that doesn't have morality (code)? Or shared beliefs about supernatural powers (creed)? Or rituals (cultus)? Or communal fellowship among believers? (community). Or in which these characteristics aren't to a significant extent integrated? I can't, but maybe you know of one. If they do have such characteristics, why do you think they can't be meaningfully compared to other religions? Keep in mind that none of the scholars of comparative religion are denying the importance of spirituality. What they are saying is that, even at the simplest level, these spiritual insights and experiences seem to be expressed in communal as well as individual behavior. By "grounded in materialism" and making "objectivist assumptions", do you mean assuming that primal religions are products of human behavior and trying to study them objectively instead of impressionistically?

Admittedly, modern religion has acquired a bad name in some circles for being too bureaucratized and detached from the authentic self.
Religion vs. Spirituality
Are You Religious or Spiritual? Both or Neither?
Religion in the west is also closely associated with Judeo-Christian beliefs and practices which may turn some people off. And it is certainly true that primal religions are less institutionalized and more informal than those we encounter in the modern world. The whole tribe was the "church" in hunter-gatherer societies. Still, I submit that religion is a pervasive phenomenon that, to the best of our knowledge, has co-existed with spirituality since the earliest known societies. It's popular in the U.s. to view spirituality and religion as strictly separate and polarized: spirituality good, religion bad. Much of spirituality remains attached to traditional religion, to soften their hard edges. So, we have Jewish spirituality, Christian spirituality, and Muslim spirituality.

 

Again, let me point out that I am not being romanticist (or was that in a different thread where I recently pointed that out), nor am I being racist in the sense of the Noble Savage. I do not see the indigenous people as either less, or more, superior to civilized man. They simply had a different knowledge. Civilization has carried us a long ways in developing as a species, but it will also, very obviously, lead to our demise as a speices if we do not identify and deal with why civilization is carrying us down the current suicidal path.

Your response and understanding of objectivism versus subjectivism is very Cartesian. But that is not your fault. Objectivism and the seemingly superiority of objectivism is the foundation of the Modern World, and as I have already pointed out, the foundation of civilization. The Modern World, funny enough, is based on the very subjective truth of Descartes, I think, therefore I am, which he then used to found modern day objectivism by using that to validate the objective world.

The objectivist definition of subjectivism is that it is based on emotions and personal beliefs and feelings, which is basically true, but it is philosophically incomplete, whereas objectivism is based on facts and truths which are collectively agreed upon, which is also basically true. The problem is not as simple as saying this is a scientific fact and that is not. Because objectivist views are always interpreted and used and therefore manipulated by subjective beings, and those who do this successfully are those in power. The other common and related objectivist view is that subjectivism is bad because it leads to, and enables, self-centeredness and greed. Actually, greed, and self-centeredness is a very objectivistic dynamic, because it is those who see the world in an overly objective manner, that force their will onto the world. Their feelings, perceptions, and demands of the world are inescapably subjective, which they objectively project onto the world. If they are not feeling pain, then how can anyone else be feeling pain because their objective view of the world around them is pain-free--and so must if be for all the objecified objects around them. This is very different than someone who subjectively looks at the world as a world of subjects and subjectively realizes that, I don't have any pain right now, but there are many people out there who subjectively feel pain. The difference lies in, as I said, how the objectivist objectifies the world and everything within it. I would argue that solipsism falls into this same objectivist context, after all, Solipsism develope as the Greek philosopher were trying to objectively categorize and think about the world around them. In fact, when we takes Descartes First Principle and apply it to the objective world to validate it, I would say that he was actually creating a masked form of solipsism. Yes, he left the subject as this hidden, never referred to invisible thing inside the object of his own body, but the whole objective world is dependent upon it. And that is the nature of objectivism all the way to today. (As far as Berkeley, well, my philosophy is a phenomenalist one and science has validated phenomenalism more than Berkeley probably would have ever expected.)

A world where subjectivism is dominant, is not a world that is necessarily dominated by feelings and emotions, and facts and objective reality be damned. Nor is it a world where knowledge and truth cannot exist because such things are dependent upon objective reality. Rather it is a world where we do not see others and the world around us as a collection of objects. The hippies, were very subjectivistic and were trying to create a subjectively dominant world. In the early days of the hippie movement, there was no 'hippie style.' A lot of the hippies would dress in a Victorian style and so forth, but the point was not to be a part of a style, but rather to express your own uniqueness. Everyone could dress however they wanted because that was expressing themselves uniquely, and their individuality itself was what was respected.

When we treat things as objects, we remove that irrational unexplainable aspect of subjective life that is a part of them, that is---life. We remove the most important aspect of their being. This was my biggest hippie argument against Marxism back in the 70's when I would sit at the local underground bookstore and debate with the Marxists. Marx was so objectivist that he believed that a human could not have an individual self until he was economically liberated. It would be fine if he meant this politically, that he would not be able to truly express himself unless he was liberated, but he meant this in a Hegelian way that objectified even the soul. you mentioned Levi-Strauss and there too, the objectification of life that structuralism represented is not much different from that of Marx, and was a disappointing reaction, in my view, to existentialism which was a materialist attempt to place the subjective individual back at the center of our quest to understand Being.

The problem is not whether or not objective reality can be perceived by a society where subjectivism is dominant. The problem is the difference between an objectivist society's view on the subject and the object, versus, the subjectivist society's view on the subject and the object.

I have spent some time with several indigenous peoples, the Aeta and the Bontoc in the Philippines, the Ainu in Japan, and I spend a lot of time today with primarily Lakota people (but also people of other Nations), participating in ceremony and fighting for their rights and so forth. I am a director and the treasurer of a small nonprofit, The White Horse Creek Council, which promotes and supports cultural traditions, spirituality, and so forth, and I joke that I am the token white boy and I have done that for a good 12 - 15 years. I have always tried to experience a culture, and a religion for that matter, from the inside. I spent a good 15 years in Japan and managed to do that quite well, despite being a gaijin, and not just a gaijin, but a hippie gaijin, I did the same with the Philippines for a good 5 years.

But I remember going to my first Sundance. I took my sister-in-law from the Philippines, and I went thinking I was going to experience it as a Lakota individual, at least that was my goal. But I was more like Levi-Strauss---I was the objective observer looking at it as the academic outsider. I was fairly knowledgeable about the ceremony, and I would explain to my sister-in-law that the Sun Tree was their version of the universal world tree or Axis-Mundi, and talk about the ecstatic experience of the piercing and breaking from the tree and so forth, relating it to shamans and their death-rebirth experience and baptism and other world religious uses of this kind of motif. And then someone asked me if I wanted to offer flesh to the tree---just a little bit of skin that was cut off, wrapped in red cloth, and tied to the tree. I said sure, and the next thing I know I was a part of the ceremony. Whenever someone broke from the tree there was this emotional release for me that brought tears to my eyes. The rest of the day, in fact, the rest of the ceremony, which I did not attend because I had to return to the Modern World--but I sensed exactly when the ceremony ended, was filled with subtle things and feelings, and some not so subtle ones, that I cannot explain. I had experienced the ceremony in a way I have seen very few anthropologists write about. There are some, such as Michael Harner, there are also fakes like the author of Tales of Power, who was it? Carlos Castenada? But this is the perspective that objectivism robs us of.

The last two paragraphs were a little side thing to leave you with for now. I want to write more, but I am running out of time. So I will continue later.

 

I will have to dig out my definition of spirituality and religion. Objectivism and subjectivism are not the key defining differences. And it is not, as you have interepreted it a question of whether the people have an objective truth, or not. If everyone had their own idea as to what the truth was, there could be no agreement. Rather it is 1.) an existential issue of the focus on the individual (subject) or the group, and 2.) a focus upon what is objectively experienced versus what can only be subjectively experienced. Spirituality is focused on that of spirit, where religion is more focused on the world around us as consciously perceived.

More importantly, a religion is an institution, where as a spirituality is noninstitutional.

Unfortunately, there are many ways in philosophy that the term subjective is used, and these definitions you provide are narrow overly pragmatic and epistemological in nature. For example, from the Oxford Companion to Philosophy, "Objectivism and Subjectivism. Theories that various kinds of judgement are, respectively, objective, i.e. pertain to objects, or subjective, i.e. pertain to subjects (people). (1) 'Fish have fins' is an objective claim: its truth or falsityis independent of what anyone thinks or feels about the matter. (2) 'Raw fish is delicious' is a subjective claim: its truth or falsity is not thus independent, and arguably it is neither true nor false even though taste can be sophisticated, discriminating, insensitive, etc. The statement (3) 'Most Japanese find raw fish delicious (while most Britons do not)' is an objective truth about subjects. It is therefore perhaps surprising that one theory labelled 'subjectivism' about morality, aesthetics, etc. is the view that evaluative claims within these fields are of kind (3), while another theory asserts they are of kind (2)."

And then from the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, "Subjectivism, any philosophical view that attempts to understand in a subjective manner what at first glance would seem to be a class of judgements that are objectively either true or false.

I of course am speaking about an objective truth about subjects. Perhaps one way to think about what I am talking about is to look at it in terms of Derrida's deconstruction. The modern world is very objective. Forget about the epistemology of this for a moment, i.e. forget about how it pertains to truth and knowledge (in case anyone is following along and isn't familiar with the term epistemology.) The Modern world is very objective in how it treats people and things as objects. People are nothing more than numbers, and their individual feelings, emotions, desires, and perceptions are for the most part meaningless. For example, in the current conflict in Israel, Palestinian civilians are simply objects that are in the way of destroying Hamas. But, what if we were to deconstruct this objectivism? If we tear it apart and deny everything about it. Before its deconstruction, Derrida would say that objectivism is the dominant side, and marginalizes subjectivism. But once deconstructed, subjectivism would be dominant and marginalizing obejctivism---what would that consist of-----the subject---the individual. The individual is no longer a thing, or an object, or a number, he is now the subject---the individual.

Being that I am a phenomenalist, I would have to argue that all truth is subjectively perceived. BUT----THERE HAS TO BE AN OBJECTIVE TRUTH, OTHERWISE WE ARE LEFT WITH NIHILISM.

I was going to write more, but I can't stay awake. Sorry---I have been very busy lately.