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Introduction

I am parked down by a local park. It’s not quite 07:00. The sun is behind me, and I am intrigued by the way tree shadows trace linkages across the ground. We draw lines to link things – and now before me a transient line challenges me to see what has been linked. Two almost parallel shadow lines make a pathway from my car to a picnic table – an invitation to get out of my comfort zone?

Trying to Make Sense

COVID has become a huge thing in our lives. It has redrawn the contours of our conduct. It connects and separates us. What started off in one city in China has gone global. A virus which dwelt within a community of critters in the wild world was drawn out through trauma and has rampaged – seeking to return to an equilibrium – around the globe. 

Humans do not do well with novel micro-organisms out of context of their natural home. That was catastrophically true when Europeans arrived in the Americas, and elsewhere as well. 

But unlike earlier times, before travel became easy, our non-local interconnectedness is now addictive. We love to be other than where we are. We have eschewed the intimacy of the familiar for the sensation of the new. 

Over 1996 – 1997 I spent 13 months in Dover, UK. I had planned to move to the UK from Australia permanently, but that wasn’t to be. I was there to get an education, and nothing more. Not that I knew it at the time. 

I travelled, taking short trips to Paris, Edinburgh, London, Oxford, Dublin, Belfast and others. But I explored Dover too. 

I lived near a pub, The Orange Tree. It became my go to place. Like so many local pubs, it was a community centre – a communal lounge. Many there had not left Dover for years. There was a chef who worked in Canterbury, a truck driver who drove across Europe – and that was it. There was a guy whose parents fled from Brisbane back to Dover so he wouldn’t be exposed to the risk of conscription and have to serve in Vietnam. Well, that’s the story he was told. Apart from that, nobody seemed to have been out of Dover too far or with any frequency. The landlady told me she had been on holidays one time – about 20 miles distant. 

Being in Dover was a lesson in Community for me. This lesson was to be extended later in 1997 when I worked as Community Recovery Coordinator on the Tasman Peninsula, just a year after the Port Arthur shootings. Here the contrast between the old families and the new families was sharp. 

Intimate familiarity versus novel exploration are two poles of what drive us. Without the former we have no foundation, and the latter is no remedy. 

Animism and materialism reflect a similar polarity. The former is born of intimate familiarity. The latter spurred by the lust for the novel. It’s one thing to travel in search of a new foundation of intimate familiarity; and quite another to seek sensation, or to exploit, away from our familiar. 

COVID has disrupted our norms and thrown social and economic behaviour into chaos. The intimacy of strangers was to be avoided. Travel for non-critical reasons had been denied. 

And thrown back upon intimate familiarity we discover it is wanting. While it is intimate and familiar, it is not known. We can tolerate an intimate familiarity that is unpleasant so long as we can escape to something that offers respite and the chance to imagine an alternative. 

A Need to Rethink

There is no doubt that COVID will become a background disease like the flu. It will become a hazard to be navigated. But we must see it as more than a public health crisis and acknowledge that it is the product of who we are. 

In the US, Trump is still directing his supporters gaze to China as the source. It may be true that cultural and commercial practices in China released the virus from its natural domain. But it’s spread around the world was entirely down to us and our way of living. It has exposed crucial elements of the system of living we have created; and given us a chance to reimagine them. 

The natural thing to do is to desire a ‘return to normal’ – if that normal was agreeable. But we might pause to consider whether than normal was even remotely agreeable to the planetary life. Clearly our economy has been designed to cater to normal, and to exploit opportunity to gratify our desires. 

We in the west have long seen ourselves as a thing apart. This started with the Biblical creation of humanity as apart from all other creatures and then it was to humanity whom God gave dominion over all others – made apart and given to rule, to dominate. 

For a long time that narrative served the interests of generations. Its crudity was swallowed up in the Earth’s capacity to soak up punishment, but only up to a point – and now we can see that point on the horizons of our informed imagination. 

Now we have no recourse to imagining that the virus is a mere evil disputing our rightful dominion. The myths of millennia past do not protect us from intentional ignorance. Gone from the religious narrative is the notion of Divine punishment. That is visited only upon enemies and apostates. Our misfortune is an act of evil. The faithful are blameless.

The climate change discourse is the closest we have to a notion of divine punishment. That in which we live and move and have our physical being is kicking back. And yet, how strange it must seem that some of the most vociferous denials of climate change are those who profess the strongest religious ardour. They see it as a conspiracy of evil. 

It is not paradoxical that science has become the moral voice. Religion was always an existential response to problem of action and consequence as it played out in the real and unreal worlds – the physical and the metaphysical. Science has eschewed the metaphysical for dogmatic reasons; but is being drawn ineluctably back into balance. In the meantime, religion has abandoned the metaphysical for the purely psychological. It has become materialistic also. It still employs the language and trappings of the metaphysical – but there is scant spirit in it. 

This should not be a mystery. Religion is about succeeding in physical life – at least that’s the foundation of the Judaic strand of Christianity. As physical life became easier the need for metaphysical intervention has diminished. The moral dimension of material success was not something religion has been good at addressing – and, really, what else was there – beyond personal morality. A religion predicated on an intervening God really had no place to go. 

Nietzsche’s famous declaration “God is dead” is better understood as ‘our conception of God is dead’. Materialism has essentially cleared the body away, but contemporary Christianity has set it up as an idol. 

It’s All Part of One System

Stephen J. Gould has asserted that science and religion are two non-overlapping magisteria. He, like so many scientists, has misunderstood what religion is. They do not just overlap, they interweave. To grasp this, we must understand what religion is, and what it is not. It’s not as defined – the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods (Oxford Dictionary). That’s one aspect of what it is, not all it is. Our ancestors were animists. Their senses were profoundly attuned to the physical and metaphysical aspects of their reality. Their being in the world was precarious. Their way of knowing was framed in terms of agency, not mechanism. The luxury of the polarised thought that materialism has given us is novel; and was not available to our distant ancestors.

Religion is not about belief in, and worship of, gods. It’s about engaging with being in the world at a physical and metaphysical level – a way of knowing. We have replaced acute physical senses with technological ones, and we have replaced metaphysical senses with forms of psychology and arts in a materialistic framework. Absent is a deeper sense of the extent of the metaphysical aspect of our reality.

We are awash with self-interest. We struggle, as a culture, with notions of sustainability, peace, civility. This is, I think, part of evolution of individuality – still in its early phases. 

As we rediscover a holistic way of knowing – seeing that complex systems are the foundation of our reality – we will struggle to reframe our moral vision and discourse. Indeed, globally, ‘progressives’ struggle to articulate a sophisticated ‘secular’ morality. In some cases, this is a reluctance to follow the evidence away from a self-centred ethos toward something that looks too much like the old values championed by religious hypocrites.

Conclusion

We can avoid ‘morality’ as a word, because of its hypocritical taint, and replace it with ‘values’. But the challenge is the same – we must rethink our values at quite a deep level and bring them into conformity with the insights that greater awareness of complexity (at all levels) is producing.

We have some work to do – individually and collectively.

The Original Blog

My first post was on 30 December 2017 – a piece called Gnostic Illusion. I am starting to draft this on 28 December 2021 with the goal of relaunching on 30.12.21 (That does not happen). At the moment, Gnosticism is a focus of interest for me. I am reading Elaine Pagels’ The Gnostic Gospels. This book came out in 1979; and was not one I had encountered on the theme since then, despite having an interest and reading works by other authors. I’d read several of Pagels’ books, and I bought this one a few years. It’s been sleeping in my Kindle collection until just recently.

This was interesting because of two things. It would have been a waste for me to have read it between 1979 and 2019. And it is now clear that if the authors of the other books on Gnosticism I read had read Pagel’s book, they didn’t understand it.

What I wrote in 2017 didn’t have the assistance of Pagels’ subtle mind. It was shallow on key points, and a little off the mark. Still, the point I was making still holds, in my mind. I am still deciding whether to repost it.

I posted 2 other essays that day – In praise of Emma Restall Orr and Conspiracies and Confusions. 

Emma wrote some wonderful books that inspired me deeply. They are way under-appreciated as serious sources of deep insight. Emma was a leading light in the contemporary Druidic movement in the UK, and then she walked away. After reading the original essay I googled her in the hope she was still active. She has replied, and we shall see what transpires. I will repost the in praise of Emma essay. 

An Age of Conspiracy?

I have moved a long way from what I wrote in Conspiracies and Confusions. I wanted to distinguish between conspiracy theories, real conspiracies and those that are somewhere in between.

I thought it necessary to do this because of the problematic situation that arises from theories about human origins and history. Conspiracy theories are part of our culture now. They tend to be manifestly idiotic -on sensible investigation. I wrote 3 blog posts that resulted from exploring some conspiratorial activity. I will repost them, because I think it is important to appreciate that we need disciplined inquiry of even things we are disposed to find appealing.

But there are also conspiracies that are just that – attempts to distort and deny truth. These can also be harnessed to the conspiracy theory culture as well.

Conspiracy is routine. Governments are into it as a part of core business – intentionally lying to conceal motives and actions that do not serve the common good. They will argue their motives and actions serve the common good – but never truthfully argue that case. It’s a messy business. There always seems to be a background interest and influence – and maybe it has ever been thus.

Then there are existential conspiracies where facts are hidden, or denied, to protect a discourse for motives that are never made clear. The truth about UFOs and ET is perhaps the most flagrant. Here the official stance of government is at odds with the publicly available evidence.

The other classic existential conspiracy is the claim that the Great Pyramid is a tomb. There is no real evidence to affirm this. It is a claim that has become woven into the Egypt story by ignoring the demands for evidence. It’s a case of ‘must have been’ – the art of dismissing disagreeable evidence and concluding that a thing ‘must have been’ as asserted because no other explanation is possible (read acceptable).

Now it may turn out that pyramids were built and used as tombs. The point is that no actual evidence that this was their primary function has ever been provided. It has been a case of extrapolating from scant and suspect ‘evidence’ and building an impenetrable fortress of dogma. This has led to wild, and sober, counter theories. These are necessary because it is intolerable to remain inert in the face of such flagrant manipulation of the interpretation of this precious legacy in the stages of human attainment.

The Need for Doubt

There are many things that have become woven into our cultural narrative using this tactic. It does not help when conspiracy theorists make doubt no longer respectable. Those who declare themselves arbiters of the good and the true and the real must always have their motives subjected to very close sceptical scrutiny.

The word sceptical has been debased from being the foundation of disciplined doubt to being camouflage for straight out dogma denial. Doubt has become political rather than intellectual. It is easy to take apart a proposition using purely ‘rational’ methods. But that’s how we destroy truth as well. Truth is not always robust and self-evident to rational inquiry. Sometimes (often in fact) it is shy and delicate and must be nurtured into expression.

There was a time when a common outlook had to be enforced. This was a time when a culture or community was vulnerable to harm if points of view became fragmented. These days, our complex pluralistic cultures can endure a lot of diverse opinion – but only up to a point. There still must be common agreement on crucial issues – and we have to agree what those are.

This is the foundation of what we now understand, in a limited way, as religion. Shared beliefs and values were necessary for survival – and flourishing. What we believe matters, still.

There are real conspiracies that interfere with the freedom to imagine who and what we are. This has been so ever since the Christian Church determined what ‘good’ people could believe and think. Where this differs from the critical existential imperatives of tribes is in the fact that none of the dogma is demonstrably essential to survival. Humans did perfectly well under paganism, and atheism hasn’t done irreparable harm.

The Limits to Virtue – As We Imagine It

What has done harm to the human condition is materialism – but not in the short term. The harm has proven to be systemic in the sense that the very foundation of human material wellbeing and existence is being attacked while most of us think we are enjoying benefits. This is no longer a matter of rational dispute. The evidence of harm is persistent and widespread. Opposition is organised and determined. It is fair to call it a conspiracy; because it denies, rather than refutes, the evidence that contradicts. Also, it is fair to assert it favours wrong-doing, for the benefit of a few.

W.B Yates’ poem, The Second Coming’ was written in 1919. I commend the whole poem, but I want focus on 2 compelling lines:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

That is bleak assessment of ‘the best’. Let’s allow a poet’s licence and say it’s not a case of lacking ‘all conviction’ but of expressing it poorly. The image of the ‘best’ – those who assert moral and intellectual superiority – tend to be nothing of the sort. On the extreme ends of the spectrum of moral and intellectual conceit there is woeful ignorance and adherence to dogma. 

The ‘worst’ see what they have to lose; and are motivated to become organised in its defence. The ‘best’ have a lesser sense of urgency, though what can be lost is nevertheless fundamental to human wellbeing. The ‘worst’ will impose their beliefs and values upon others. The ‘best’ will not, rightly so. So, the best have only the examples of their own conduct – which can be riddled with pride, arrogance, intellectual laziness and hypocrisy.

In this sense Yate’s is right. That lack of conviction comes from an inner sense of personal pride. It lacks the conviction of authentic insight, which taps humility. Yates is no mere poet. In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was a deep thinker with a powerful spiritual dimension to his life.

It’s something David Brooks has been looking at in The Road Character. It’s the dilemma of our age – how to be good with depth and grace without recourse to dogma and the arrogance of certainty. I am not saying I know what the answer is. I simply acknowledge the problem.

The coming year, 2022, will be a year of testing values and putting the ‘good’ under a challenge to articulate high values in an inclusive way. By that I mean speaking to what is noble and compassionate in everyone without straying into any ideological domain and thereby excluding those whose habits of mind forbid them from following. 

This is, I think, the challenge of the truly secular – a contemporary version of the catholic (universal) but without the dictates of creedal obedience. It’s hard ask; but I don’t know what the alternative is.

It’s not possible for ‘good’ to be ‘full of passionate intensity’. That doesn’t work. It becomes a mask for the ‘worst’ and it fools the many. The alternative can only be a matter for personal judgement and commitment.

Conclusion

What’s ahead of us is a time of challenge – to reframe our knowledge and values. Science is moving into quantum thinking, which is fatally wounding the materialist paradigm. Climate change is obliging us to rethink, reframe and re-imagine our being in the world. Social media is challenging us to reimagine civility and truth.

Indeed, we are living in cusp times in some many areas of being human. And off-stage, waiting in the wings, may be others from distant elsewheres. If their presence becomes widely undeniable, we will reach a tipping point for which we are not prepared.

I have no fixed opinions on ET, beyond thinking that the evidence is beyond hasty denial. The 25 June 2021 report from the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence – Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena – was widely dismissed as disappointing. But writ large between the lines was an entirely different message.