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What does “spiritual” mean anyway?

I’ve touched on this topic in earlier posts, but it has come around again. I think most of my friends claim to be “spiritual,” and obviously there’s a larger discussion in the political culture in which the right’s colonization of religion has focused a lot of pwogwessives on the idea that they have to declare their own spirituality to be taken seriously. In personal life–and you can really see this in personal ads, that alienated place where people try to find new love–it’s pretty much de rigeur to declare oneself “spiritual, but not religious,” whatever that means! So I’ve been talking to several of my atheistic colleagues about this, since I can’t believe that so many people are actually religious (even if an awful lot of folks do seem to embrace squishy New Age-ish thinking).

I find the people I have grown closest to, and feel are the most fully engaged with their humanity, are usually quick to invoke a spiritual dimension to their lives. That leaves me in the awkward position of recognizing that I like them and feel more connected to them emotionally than, say, someone who I know through ‘activism,’ but weirdly alienated by the vague spirituality that creeps into many conversations, parties, gatherings, etc. I would like to unpack the conceptual meaning of the term, and perhaps suggest that we could be more precise about what we’re referring to when we say ‘spiritual,’ and by so doing, decouple the religious connotations from what we’re really talking about.

I think ‘spirituality’ is often a code word now, indicating two basic qualities: emotional literacy and a comfortable embrace of life’s connectedness. Neither of these notions are particular religious, in fact, both are easily accommodated by secular philosophy. I have been an atheist my entire life and find the embrace of mysterious higher powers perplexing at best, and often aggravating when invoked to explain social and historical dynamics. But I’ve also grown wary and weary of card-carrying atheists for their religious fervor to convert everyone to their brand of rationalism.

Continue reading What does “spiritual” mean anyway?

February 1st, 2007 | Category: General Musings | 5 comments

Upcoming public appearances

I don’t do this too often, but I do get asked semi-regularly to please announce my public appearances in time for folks to know about it… so, here are the next few.

Friday, February 2, UC Berkeley, Wurster Hall, 2 p.m.:
Remodeling Design Activism Conference
I’ll be speaking about Critical Mass, its history and ongoing life, its relationship to urban design and reinhabiting city life, purloining my old title “Bicycling Over the Rainbow: Redesigning Cities and Beyond”

Tuesday, February 13, 7:30 pm
Whatever Happened to the 8-Hour Day? A History of the San Francisco Labor Movement
UCSF Laurel Heights Campus, Laurel Heights Auditorium
3333 California Street at Walnut, one block west of Presidio Avenue
This will be an hour and a half tour through Shaping San Francisco’s labor history section with yours truly doing my usual endlessly tangential ruminations.

Wednesday, February 14, 8 p.m. at CounterPULSE (1310 Mission at 9th)
Land Grabs

San Francisco’s entire history is based on land grabs, within its own borders and far beyond. Sketching this history to the present, we will also look at counter-efforts to grab land and to create open and cooperative spaces in an ever more commercially tyrannized society. (Chris Carlsson, Erick Lyle, James Tracy)

Saturday, February 18, 12-4 p.m., meet at CounterPULSE
Bicycle History Tour: Dissent
Riots, demonstrations, manifestos, artistic and literary movements, and much more is rediscovered during our easy-pace but several mile-long bike ride around the city. No serious hill climbing. Bring water and a snack. ($15-50 sliding scale donation requested to benefit CounterPULSE and Shaping San Francisco, but it’s flexible).

January 28th, 2007 | Category: My Writings and Appearances | 3 comments

Drumming at Demonstrations

This coming Saturday is a big demonstration in Washington DC and as is often the case, we’ll have a smaller parallel one here in SF. It’s organized by the ANSWER coalition, but as most of us like to say, they make the reservation but they don’t necessarily determine the dinner or the tone of the meal… The “spontaneous” march from Powell Street on the night of Bush’s escalation speech was really abysmal. About 200 people, which wasn’t the problem, but the tone was so off-putting. What is it about ANSWER and its minions that prevents them from figuring out that there’s hardly anything worse than actually turning up to a protest only to be barked at in a scolding tone by unimpressive orators with amplification?

Anyway, in spite of the ever-offensive sounds we have imposed on us by these self-deluding enlightened ones–or maybe because of them–we like to show up and drum. We don’t have signs or name tags but we go to anti-war demos with our drums as one of the many, largely informal incarnations of the Committee for Full Enjoyment. I know there’s a bunch of tired leftists who lament the arrival of the “hippie drummers,” partly because we are out of step with the barking self-importance and self-righteous tone of the march. Well, pshaw on that…

Demonstrations are mostly a dead form. When I go to demos without a drum, they make me feel puny and stupid and weak. If I go with friends and we lay down some serious rhythm, get people dancing with us, it doesn’t matter how lame and shallow the politics of the surrounding march are, we’re literally bringing a Dionysian impulse to the experience, tapping a deep-seated need for public celebration, conviviality, dare I say ‘joy’? Happily, Barbara Ehrenreich’s new book “Dancing in the Streets” is about this exactly. In fact, she notes that in recent years political demonstrations have increasingly harbored the kinds of behaviors that were once more commonly associated with parties or festivals, showing that the need for public sharing of spirited life cannot be shunted aside or suppressed. It’s neither wrong nor extraneous to the reasons why we publicly demonstrate.

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January 22nd, 2007 | Category: Public Space | One comment
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