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Unless it's pretty extreme, it's hard for any one person to know if their emotional climate is "normal" or "typical" or not, because it's all they have direct experience of and there's a lot of room for interpretation in other people's descriptions of their emotions.
I like to think that I'm a feeling person and I've been described as sensitive; nor am I without aesthetic sense. Yet, I basically have no idea what people are talking about when they describe a response to certain things (the Grand Canyon, whatever) as "spiritual". I certainly find the Grand Canyon pleasing and it gets more of a rise out of me than a lot of other things (enough that I have had a brief fantasy of spending a few days in a Grand Canyon rim cabin, but not enough that I'll likely ever act on it), but I have a niggling suspicion that "awesome" means something far more to, e.g. you than it does to me. In other words whatever it is you're getting, I just feel a hint of. My son is even more blunted (borderline Asperger's Syndrome). From what he's told me over the years he would regard the Grand Canyon as a big hole in the ground and he would go along with your statements with a shrug if he were present during your "spiritual experience". Yeah, wow, cool, isn't it? What's for lunch?
What I think this speaks to is that spiritual experiences, while real and pleasurable for those having them, are a product of brain chemistry, emotional makeup, personality and social conditioning. If you are wired such that certain experiences put you "over the top" in some way and cause you to feel some unique sense of transcendence, you could easily, through the magic of agency inference, ascribe that to a spiritual world / beings / god. But you don't, from what you've written here, nor should you.
Regardless of how I explain the mechanism, I wish that I got more of a high out of beaches, sunsets, canyons, fuzzy kittens, poetry, etc. I get just enough to extrapolate what it must do to take people out of themselves and soothe their jangled nerves. Alas, I have to get along on what I can actually get my mind around. Other people laugh longer and more uproariously at jokes, melt more thoroughly and completely in the face of beauty, and just generally do a far better job of rationalizing the absurdities of existence.
I can sit staring into space for extended periods of time and be deeply entertained. My I.Q. is something over 110, maybe well over that, so it's not because of stupidity.
Maybe most of us are better at lying to ourselves than you/tricking ourselves into believing things that exist to nobody but us?
Look on the bright side...perhaps, if you were more skilled at the rationalizations which might be involved with getting more out of certain experience, maybe you'd be more likely to be a religious fundamentalist? Perhaps you're better off than the lemming hordes who think, "That's pretty...therefore god exists?"
A) You are obviously wrong about a bow rendering a brick not a brick. Nothing has changed about the brick apart from added decoration. Do you cease being a human when you put on a hat? Are you somehow or other transformed into a new species..."Hatpersons?"
Baloney.
Consider the possibility that your brain works differently from most people, and that they see very real differences you are missing...keeping in mind that I'm not a psychologist, and have no training as one, but I see no other explanations at this time.
Consider the possibility that your brain works differently from most people, and that they see very real differences you are missing...keeping in mind that I'm not a psychologist, and have no training as one.
Baloney also is not an argument, it is a characterization.
That brains work differently is not an argument in support of some extra phenomena called "spirituality", it is an observation that not everyone reacts the same to assorted stimulation.
Unless it's pretty extreme, it's hard for any one person to know if their emotional climate is "normal" or "typical" or not, because it's all they have direct experience of and there's a lot of room for interpretation in other people's descriptions of their emotions.
I like to think that I'm a feeling person and I've been described as sensitive; nor am I without aesthetic sense. Yet, I basically have no idea what people are talking about when they describe a response to certain things (the Grand Canyon, whatever) as "spiritual". I certainly find the Grand Canyon pleasing and it gets more of a rise out of me than a lot of other things (enough that I have had a brief fantasy of spending a few days in a Grand Canyon rim cabin, but not enough that I'll likely ever act on it), but I have a niggling suspicion that "awesome" means something far more to, e.g. you than it does to me. In other words whatever it is you're getting, I just feel a hint of. My son is even more blunted (borderline Asperger's Syndrome). From what he's told me over the years he would regard the Grand Canyon as a big hole in the ground and he would go along with your statements with a shrug if he were present during your "spiritual experience". Yeah, wow, cool, isn't it? What's for lunch?
What I think this speaks to is that spiritual experiences, while real and pleasurable for those having them, are a product of brain chemistry, emotional makeup, personality and social conditioning. If you are wired such that certain experiences put you "over the top" in some way and cause you to feel some unique sense of transcendence, you could easily, through the magic of agency inference, ascribe that to a spiritual world / beings / god. But you don't, from what you've written here, nor should you.
Regardless of how I explain the mechanism, I wish that I got more of a high out of beaches, sunsets, canyons, fuzzy kittens, poetry, etc. I get just enough to extrapolate what it must do to take people out of themselves and soothe their jangled nerves. Alas, I have to get along on what I can actually get my mind around. Other people laugh longer and more uproariously at jokes, melt more thoroughly and completely in the face of beauty, and just generally do a far better job of rationalizing the absurdities of existence.
You have it in a nutshell Mordant. Funny how our brains work. But look at it this way - and I mean this genuinely as a positive thing and I hope you take it that way - I have heard you describe how in the past you were a believer in god - and that is something I have never had. I have never felt any kind of presence or connection with 'god'. There were times when I genuinely wished I did - as though there were something I was missing out on, and spent a long time struggling with that. So you have experienced something I never have and never will.
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Originally Posted by Grandstander
Achieving a sense of awe as a consequence of viewing the Grand Canyon is nothing more than an emotional reaction to a stimulation. If it had any sort of existence apart from the ephemeral emotion, it could be duplicated/activated each time one viewed the Grand Canyon. In fact that does not happen, does it? If I took you to the Grand Canyon for the first time, you may indeed experience a strong emotional reaction. But if I put you up at a nearby motel for a month and each day took you to view the canyon in the morning, at noon and and again in the evening, after a few days there would be no particular reaction at all, would there? The awe would be extinguished by repetition and familiarity. After a time we forget to "tingle." Where did the "spirituality" go?
Further, the phenomena you reference, that awe which feels like part of something larger, can easily be reproduced by the deliberate ingestion of certain chemicals. Drunks will often reach a collective spirit of sorts which has all of the same illusions about something going on above and beyond how you are feeling. Is that spirituality?
You will need to come at me with something more substantive than "that's common sense" if you wish to establish the validity of your assertions.
I think perhaps what we are debating here is the meaning of 'spirituality' which seems to be getting in the way. The problems is I don't know what else to call it. 'Focussed state of consciousness' perhaps? Perhaps we could dispense with the word spirituality and call it something else?
I can't agree with you about the strong emotional reaction being lost with repetition. I was fortunate before I moved to California to live next to the sea. I'd go there often just to listen to the sound of the waves and marvel at the vastness of the ocean. It was never lost on me.
What I will agree with you on is these experiences are undoubtedly caused by a series of chemical reactions in the brain. But that doesn't make them any less special. I thought I'd use a Russell Brand quote here, which is sort of where this discussion started, "to be at the summit of our evolutionary possibility we have to live beyond our animal selves". Evolutionary or not we do seem to have evolved a far higher state of consciousness than the rest of our animal cousins, with which we share more DNA similarity than we care to think about. I think it would be a shame to simply wipe these experiences aside as explainable simply by chemical reaction, I would rather think of them as something that should be embraced.
A) You are obviously wrong about a bow rendering a brick not a brick. Nothing has changed about the brick apart from added decoration. Do you cease being a human when you put on a hat? Are you somehow or other transformed into a new species..."Hatpersons?" Does putting frosting on a turd make it a desirable snack, or is it still a turd?
B) Asserting that something is "common sense" is one of those arguments which comes sans any evidence or even actual argument.
Achieving a sense of awe as a consequence of viewing the Grand Canyon is nothing more than an emotional reaction to a stimulation. If it had any sort of existence apart from the ephemeral emotion, it could be duplicated/activated each time one viewed the Grand Canyon. In fact that does not happen, does it? If I took you to the Grand Canyon for the first time, you may indeed experience a strong emotional reaction. But if I put you up at a nearby motel for a month and each day took you to view the canyon in the morning, at noon and and again in the evening, after a few days there would be no particular reaction at all, would there? The awe would be extinguished by repetition and familiarity. After a time we forget to "tingle." Where did the "spirituality" go?
Further, the phenomena you reference, that awe which feels like part of something larger, can easily be reproduced by the deliberate ingestion of certain chemicals. Drunks will often reach a collective spirit of sorts which has all of the same illusions about something going on above and beyond how you are feeling. Is that spirituality?
You will need to come at me with something more substantive than "that's common sense" if you wish to establish the validity of your assertions.
I do not assume spirituality is anything more than a chemical reaction within our minds.
If everything we feel is based on chemical reactions...I view you as incorrect in viewing the term spirituality as any less worthy of a term to use than love, or hunger.
Such terms have symbolic meanings in our minds. We use them for that reason...that they signal more appropriate symbolic imagery in our minds than saying things like, "I experience a greater amount of endorphins when mating with my wife than I do when watching TV."
If atheists use the word "spiritual" in nontheistic contexts as often as they seem to...I think it makes sense to view the word as perfectly compatible with a worldview that our thoughts are composed of chemical reactions.
The word "spiritual" is, of course, frequently tied to your view of it as us experiencing being a part of something larger...but I think it has nothing to do with that, often enough, that it makes sense to use it in other ways.
No longer referring to the word spiritual in a nonreligious context would decrease the accuracy of language, rather than increase it. Such an action would provide us with one fewer piece of symbolic imagery to explain our thoughts in ways that others will be likely to understand.
The phrase "excessive endorphins" do not provide appropriate imagery. It is insufficient to get the point across in many instances. "Spirituality" gets the job done...in that it is more likely to provide appropriate symbolism.
Yes...as with the word "God," the word "spirituality" likely involves little arms and legs sprouting out of it, or the idea that we can read the thoughts of trees and such...but it's a word that both believers in god and nonbelievers can successfully translate to...what I would suspect...would often be similar understandings of the experience. That is its value.
Maybe it only possesses such value in the west...or in certain areas...but it definitely possesses such value in areas I've lived in (Midwest U.S.) and it seems to often possess such value throughout several other western nations than the U.S.
I do not assume spirituality is anything more than a chemical reaction within our minds.
If everything we feel is based on chemical reactions...I view you as incorrect in viewing the term spirituality as any less worthy of a term to use than love, or hunger.
Such terms have symbolic meanings in our minds.
Am I misunderstanding you now? You appear to saying that spirituality is another term for emotions, which has been my argument all along....we've already got that stuff covered. If your argument is that spirituality is something distinct from our emotions, then your employment of "greater amounts of endorphins" does not help you because that is merely making a distinction in the degrees of emotions, also already covered.
To persuade me otherwise would require some sort of convincing demonstration of the supposed distinction. The difference between "I got excited" and "I got really excited" is not the difference between two different phenomena, it is the intensity difference between two examples of the same phenomena.
Last edited by Grandstander; 07-12-2013 at 01:52 PM..
Am I misunderstanding you now? You appear to saying that spirituality is another term for emotions, which has been my argument all along....we've already got that stuff covered. If your argument is that spirituality is something distinct from our emotions, then your employment of "greater amounts of endorphins" does not help you because that is merely making a distinction in the degrees of emotions, also already covered.
To persuade me otherwise would require some sort of convincing demonstration of the supposed distinction. The difference between "I got excited" and "I got really excited" is not the difference between two different phenomena, it is this intensity difference between two examples of the same phenomena.
I had understood your argument to be, not strictly that spirituality was another term for emotions, but that the term has no value.
If your argument is strictly that spirituality is another term for emotions, we have agreed from the beginning.
I have been attempting to illustrate how I believe the term and symbolism behind it has value.
I can't agree with you about the strong emotional reaction being lost with repetition. I was fortunate before I moved to California to live next to the sea. I'd go there often just to listen to the sound of the waves and marvel at the vastness of the ocean. It was never lost on me
I think that you know what I'm talking about.
Consider the differing reactions to:
A) Your first ever visit to a MLB park...your first sight of the field as you emerge from under the stands
B) The first visit to the park of a particular season, but not your first visit ever.
C) Your 25th visit to the park for a game within the same season.
Would you not agree that the diminishing intensity of reactions in those experiences are congruent to the order listed above? Perhaps you are an exception, but wouldn't what I am writing apply to most people that you know?
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What I will agree with you on is these experiences are undoubtedly caused by a series of chemical reactions in the brain. But that doesn't make them any less special.
The question before us is not how special an emotion is, rather, is there anything which would distinguish an emotion as anything other than an emotion, regardless of its power? At what power point does the phenomena cross from special emotion to "spiritual experience?"
I am maintaining that it never does, it simply remains an emotion, remembered for its degree of power, not for its morphing into something different.
I had understood your argument to be, not strictly that spirituality was another term for emotions, but that the term has no value.
I have been attempting to illustrate how I believe the term and symbolism behind it has value.
Rather than saying the term has no value, my argument could be more accurately characterized as the term is an unneeded redundancy.
If we have two piles of emotions, Stack A and Stack B, either they both will qualify as spiritual or neither will qualify. I am objecting to the idea that there is any sort of actual distinction which could be detected which makes one stack just emotions and the other "spiritual."
Rather than saying the term has no value, my argument could be more accurately characterized as the term is an unneeded redundancy.
If we have two piles of emotions, Stack A and Stack B, either they both will qualify as spiritual or neither will qualify. I am objecting to the idea that there is any sort of actual distinction which could be detected which makes one stack just emotions and the other "spiritual."
I will say that though spirituality is quite a vague term, I think some boundaries relating to spiritual type emotions might be roughly defined.
My guess regarding the most common view of what spiritual means...would be:
A feeling of connection with something greater than oneself...that does not necessarily involve a knowledge of a connection with something greater than oneself, or a belief in a connection with something greater than oneself.
Because I see it as having a likely more specific meaning than what just anyone decides it means...I do not see it as unneeded redundancy.
The illusion is part of the experience...and so descriptions that treat it as an illusion (like referring to it as chemical reactions triggering emotions) describe it less accurately than "spirituality," religious connotations and all.
I should note, that while some atheists seem opposed to all sorts of religion...I pretty much view all atheists, agnostics, deists, and pantheists as embodying the same category, commonly called the "nones." I'm not overly concerned about if someone views their "spiritual" experience as supernatural or not. I don't see educating a few more people about how their "spiritual" experience is not truly supernatural, as worth the loss of some nicely symbolism-filled language.
Last edited by Clintone; 07-12-2013 at 04:01 PM..
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