Demoralization thesis

A summary of:
Lynch, G. (2007). New Spirituality: An Introduction to Belief Beyond Religion. I.B.Tauris: London.
Chapter 5 – The Collapse of Civilization? Progressive Spirituality and the Demoralization Debate (130)
& Chapter 6 – The Future Prospects for Progressive Spirituality and the Progressive Milieu (162)

The remainder of the book is really concerned with morality; emphasizing the link between spirituality and morality, which I will have to explicate in my dissertation. The question in modern society – or perhaps the fear – is that without religion, where will we get our morality. I basically reject this as a reasonable question on basic evolutionary and historical grounds. We can see evidence of morality in animals, who don’t have religion (so far as we would know it), because it is useful for survival. Dawkins argues that altruism is advantageous – I scratch your back, now maybe you’ll scratch mine – and therefore that personality trait, that basic morality, survives to the next generation. And I find it hard to believe that before religions became established, we were completely without a sense of right and wrong. Of course, Durkheim argued that totemism, the earliest form of religion, concretized sacred and taboo, making it clear to society what was right and what was wrong. I think in this sense, you may be able to say that religion is useful for clear delineation of morality, thereby removing the need for subjective introspection. How facile to point to a passage in the Bible as your moral compass, rather than seeking that wisdom within! As they say, ‘Morality is doing what is right regardless of what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told regardless of what is right.’

Now, given that disclaimer, I do think that our conviction in our morality may be being eroded by technology, precisely because a new, more aggressive morality, namely the values of technology, are coming to dominate our worldview. And there is evolutionary sense in this! In a world where technology is so important, those who adopt its values are more likely to succeed, to thrive. Those who buy into the technological worldview, fit best in this society. The more we engage with technology, the more familiar we become with technological values, and therefore the more comfortable we are with them, the more they ‘feel right’ to us, purely by repetition. Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi in Britain, says, “Now we choose because we choose. Because it is what we want; or it works for us; or it feels right to me. Once we have dismantled a world in which larger values held sway, what remain are success and self-expression, the key values of an individualistic culture” (142).

And I’ve been concerned with this issue for several years, focusing as an undergraduate on the values of consumerism (not at all dissimilar from technology – in fact, a segment of the technological paradigm; e.g. George Ritzer’s McDonaldization thesis, “in which he argues that increasingly large sections of society are modeled on the rationalized principles of the fast-food restaurant: efficiency, measurability, predictability and control through non-human technology” (150)) that may have begun to upset our well-being, making us more susceptible to anxiety and depression. And I find myself having gone full-circle with this quote: “‘Demoralization’, as used by writers such as Gertrude Himmelfarb and Ralph Fevre, points to an important association between morality and well-being. Essentially the term ‘demoralization’ suggests that a crisis develops when people lack an adequate moral framework for living their lives, and that the lack of such a framework is not only a source of unethical behaviour, but also personal anxiety and unhappiness” (134).


I guess this means that I believe there is some truth to the latter two demoralization theses presented in the book, that demoralization of society is caused by:

1. “the liberal, ‘expressive’ revolution of the 1960s…”
2. “increasing secularization of western society…leaves people devoid of adequate moral and religious frameworks for their lives”
3. “the ideologies and lifestyles of contemporary capitalism which distort people’s views of what is important in life, provide them with illusory forms of happiness and trap them in an exploitative and dehumanizing web of social and economic relationships”
4. “the growing influence of rationality in modern societies which weakens our ability to think about our lives in morally adequate ways, traps us in inhumane and (ironically) irrational social systems, and separates us from a proper relationship with out emotional lives” (135).

I found Clifford Geertz’s categorization of ‘mythos’ and ‘ethos’ useful for this discussion, and probably helpful for my dissertation. Lynch writes (apologies for the large chunk pasted below):

“‘Mythos’ is the story within which the members of a culture locate themselves – a story bound up with particular cultural symbols and rituals. ‘Ethos’ is the moral sensibility – the values, sentiments and motivations – that are generated through immersion in that mythos. Progressive spirituality offers a particular mythos through its turn to the story of the unfolding universe as the grounding narrative within which human existence makes sense. Unlike a secularist world view that depicts human life as devoid of meaning and value other than that created by humans themselves, the universe story places humanity as one small element in a greater narrative of cosmic unfolding. Within this story, human consciousness is seen not as a site for nihilism or existential despair, but as a symptom of the universe becoming conscious of itself. Human consciousness finds its meaning as it is used to deepen awareness of the cosmos of which (159) we are part. It finds its moral significance when it is used to reflect on how humans can act constructively within the cosmic drama into which they have been invited to take part. Far from being atomized, isolated individuals caught in a meaningless universe, we find ourselves born into a story that gives us both pleasures and obligations. As Thomas Berry puts it, ‘we are… thrown into existence with a challenge and a role that is beyond any personal choice. The nobility of our lives, however, depends on the manner in which we come to understand and fulfill our assigned role’” (160).

Lynch reiterates his thesis of the evolution of a progressive spirituality with this smaller paragraph:

“This mythos of the universe story has the potential to give rise to a particular ethos. The moral sensibility celebrated by progressive spirituality is one of a deeply felt participation in the unity and interdependence of the whole of existence. According to Carol Christ, ‘the source of morality is the deep feeling of connection to all people and to all beings in the web of life’” (160).

If this sense of connection is the heart of this new spirituality, this seems to justify my focus on the Internet. Thus far, we have sought to realize this connection by technological means, i.e. the Internet; but the question we have to ask is whether the Internet has been designed in such a way as to allow meaningful connections to form. It is a question, again, of depth vs. breadth; of many weak ties vs. fewer strong ties. And perhaps we need both. Weak ties are useful. But on the whole are we more able to form strong ties through the Internet? And a follow up to this would be to ask whether weak ties are enough to produce a morality centered on our fellow human beings. Do we in fact need strong ties (in addition to weak) to help us realize a ‘deeply felt participation in the unity and interdependence of the whole of existence’?

Modern religion as spirituality

A summary of:
Lynch, G. (2007). New Spirituality: An Introduction to Belief Beyond Religion. I.B.Tauris: London.
Chapter 4 – Progressive Spirituality and Modern Religion in the West (101)

I this section, Lynch traces the evolution of the Progressive Spirituality, referencing various prominent sociologists. Here’s a rapid overview, summarizing the big names that have contributed to this discussion in the past.

1. Durkheim argued (in Suicide) that modern societies are increasingly individualistic: “Originally, society is everything, the individual nothing… man [sic] is considered only an instrument in its hands… But gradually things change. As societies… increase in complexity, work is divided, individual differences multiply, and the moment approaches when the only remaining bond among the members of a single human group will be that they are all (102) men. Under such conditions the body of collective sentiments inevitably attaches itself with all its strength to its single remaining object… Since human personality is the only thing that appeal unanimously to all hearts, since its enhancement is the only aim that can be collectively pursued, it inevitably acquires exceptional value in the eyes of all. It thus rises far above all human aims, assuming a religious nature” (103). This “cult of the individual” signaled to Durkheim a new age of secular religion, where, Lynch says, “the individual would inevitably displace all older religious traditions, which would not survive the passage into modernity” (104). But interestingly, Durkheim did not see this as the beginning of amorality; rather the individual would serve as the foundation of a new emergent morality: “Unlike these dying religions, Durkheim claimed that the growing cult of the individual was the only possible form of collective religion that could serve as a rational basis for modern life, whilst, at the same time, stimulating powerful moral sentiments” (104). This seems to have come true, in the sense that one of the tenets of progressive spirituality is the sacrality of the human self. And Durkheim famously said – and we can perhaps take this as a warning – that “‘the old ideals and divinities which incarnate them are dying because they no longer respond sufficiently to the new aspirations of our day; and the new ideals which are necessary to orient our life are not yet born’” (104 in Lynch). In other words, that which is not relevant to our needs and does not make sense within our worldview will go extinct. Presumably, this could happen with technologies, too.

2. Similarly, Troeltsch commented that spirituality was overtaking religion because “the ‘cultured classes’ of artists and intellectuals who no longer found the Church an adequate spiritual or intellectual home” (104).

3. Artists such as Kandinsky and Mondrian who developed abstract art were also influential in shaping spirituality, because their art emphasized “direct mystical engagement with spiritual truth” (105).

4. Simmel argued, like Durkheim and Troeltsch, that people were increasingly “alienated from traditional Christian beliefs and symbols” (105). Yet, “their religious impulses persisted” (105), so, like Heelas et al argue, “Lacking any external belief-system to which such impulses could be attached, …these impulses instead became focused on the subjective experience of life. Or, in his words, in this new mysticism, religion becomes ‘a way of living life itself’, without any reference to an external God. As a consequence the whole of life becomes sacred. The religious, or mystical, life is no longer the pursuit of God, but the pursuit of a particular quality of life characterized by a sense of depth and wholeness” (105).

5. Sorokin: “He predicted that the near future for western society was bleak – to be marked by a loss of shared public values, greater exploitation within the capitalist system, diminishing freedom, the rise of mediocrity over genuine creativity and growing levels of anxiety and depression. Unlike demoralization theorists who might see these simply as symptoms of a culture in decline, Sorokin saw these more as birth pangs of a new ‘ideational’ (that is, spiritual) culture, shaped by a shared commitment to ‘eternal, lasting, universal and absolute values’” (106).

6. Luckmann “was one of the first sociologists to refer to this new religious landscape in terms of a consumer marketplace, in which individuals make choices about which groups, resources and practices will be most useful for developing their lives” (107). Spirituality is commodified to a degree.

7. Berger took Luckmann’s ideas further, arguing that we are now “‘faced with the necessity to choose between gods’” (107). Lynch explains, “By pluralism, Berger meant not only an increased awareness of different religious and cultural traditions brought about by immigration and the shrinking of the world through travel, mass media and new communication technologies, but also the growing range of choice at the lever of everyday life” (107).
And the result of these trends is that people become less sure of there being any one true faith the more they are exposed to alternative religions (“an open religious marketplace has replaced any traditional religious consensus” (108)), forcing people to make their own meanings, to determine for themselves what feels right, what’s meaningful. “Such choices encourage a process of ‘subjectivization’, in which people become much more self-conscious about their thoughts, feelings, needs and aspirations” (108). And here, we arrive again at Heelas et al’s ‘subjective turn,’ where people assemble their own religion/morality, e.g. “Sheila-ism” (122).

The point of all this is to show that spirituality is the adaptation of religion to modernity (126). Lynch writes, “Indeed progressive spirituality can be seen as an active attempt to resist the modern pressures of secularization…. Progressive spirituality addresses the challenge of the privatization of religion, in part, by embracing it…. At the same time, progressive spirituality endorses forms of faith which are outward-looking, positioning the self as a responsible actor in an unfolding cosmic drama and inspiring people to engage in various forms of social activism” (126).

The ideology of progressive spirituality

A summary of:
Lynch, G. (2007). New Spirituality: An Introduction to Belief Beyond Religion. I.B.Tauris: London.
Chapter 2 – The Ideology of Progressive Spirituality
& Chapter 3 – Progressive Spirituality and the New Generation of Progressive Religious Organizations

Lynch tries to distance his Progressive Spirituality from any religious connotations. This spirituality is closer to ‘morality’ than ‘religion.’ It is, to Lynch, an ideology (41). He writes, “Progressive spirituality can also be understood as a product of what Charles Taylor has described as the long cultural march in western modernity towards a new sense of moral order based on the rights, freedom and inherent value of the individual” (67).

As an ideology, progressive spirituality is organized around 3 key beliefs: 1) “The divine is an ineffable unity, and is both the guiding (43) intelligence behind the evolutionary processes of the universe, and (within) the material form and energy of the universe itself” (44); 2) nature is sacred (43); 3) the human self is sacred (43). In reading this book, I find it very easy to fit in this box. Not only do I agree with this ideology, but I also find it, for the most part, fairly non-controversial, i.e. I would think that almost everyone I know would probably agree (though perhaps would not use the term ‘sacred’, but instead, ‘important’ or ‘inviolable’). It makes sense that I’m concerned with human values in technology, because of (3). And I believe that in part it’s important to get this right because it is the only way I see of realistically correcting our relationship with nature… because I believe strongly in (2).

I have sometimes described my PhD aim as creating a cyber culture/environment in which spirituality can thrive – or at least does not erode spirituality. This means that I will have to give some thought to what spiritual development is. This chapter provides one definition: “Spiritual development consists of a movement beyond this false ego towards one’s true self. Unlike forms of New Age thought which describe this process in terms of a flight from the material to a higher ‘spiritual’ self, however, progressive spirituality understands this process more in terms of an authentic integration of the self which is conscious of the (58) divine presence within the complexities of embodied experience” (59). I would say that this is precisely what Lanier is getting at when he speaks of making ‘contact with the mysteries of nature’.

Yet there is, undeniably, a tension between spiritual development and technology. Many cannot conceive of a realistic marriage between the two: “At the same time, however, some writers within progressive spirituality are highly critical of new technologies – what Mary Daly calls ‘necrotechnology’ – as a source of spiritual evolution” (47). Similarly, people may question whether modern life itself is incompatible with spirituality. I think this is playing the victim, because we have the power to change aspects of our societies we don’t like. Furthermore, this stance fails to recognize the adaptive capabilities of spirituality. Our spirituality is finding ways of thriving: “Progressive spirituality is not so much postmodern, as a particular form of modernity – a softer modernism – a spiritual way of living for the modern age” (68).

We also have to recognize that we are little bricoleurs in contemporary society. We extract, we build meanings. As such, we build progressive spirituality out of bits of pieces of other spiritual traditions that make sense to us today. “William Bloom, for example, comments that holistic spirituality ‘deepens the essence of all religious traditions’ – a perspective that Paul Heelas has referred to as ‘perennialism’. This notion of the ‘essence’ of truth within all religious traditions rests on the assumption that religious traditions are meaningful and truthful precisely to the extent that they confirm the basic assumptions of progressive spirituality” (61). Given this, it would make sense – i.e. it would fit with Progressive Spirituality – to draw from spiritual traditions when applicable in my PhD research; they are part of our contemporary understanding of the world, because they are our history.

A final, small point: Lynch argues that there is a “lack of collaboration” between “organizations within the progressive milieu” because they “have a range of different priorities” (94). Given that I sympathize with this spirituality, and would like to see it flourish, it would seem that part of my mission could be to conceive of ways that the progressive milieu could collaborate better through new internet technology. But this is an entirely separate issue, namely how to make society more spiritual. If I am going to make society more spiritual, it would be a side-effect of engagement with more spiritual technology. I do not want to think of technology as a tool in this respect. I want to think of technology as an experience.

Progressive Spirituality

A summary of:
Lynch, G. (2007). New Spirituality: An Introduction to Belief Beyond Religion. I.B.Tauris: London.
Introduction
& Chapter 1 – The Roots of the New, Progressive Spirituality

There is a problem with the idea of taking traditional spiritual practices – like Buddhism, Sufism, Christianity, etc. – and extracting implications for modern technology, namely that they are results of entirely different worldviews, and thus don’t ‘speak’ particularly well to one another. This is not to say that traditional spirituality is irrelevant when we consider contemporary human values and how they are realized in our technology; but it makes a great deal more sense to contextualize modern technology within a modern spirituality.

I can predict objections to this approach: Modern spirituality is influenced by – perhaps corrupted by – modern technology, and if we’re trying to get more spiritual technology, we ought to decouple them in order to then create something new. To think that we could ever step outside our worldview like this, however, is naïve. We should seek to understand contemporary human values that have arisen alongside the development of technology, and aim to vault these values to the top of our priorities when developing technology. And in the words of Szerszynski (quoted in an earlier post), “So the task of technology critique cannot be to escape historical conditioning; this indeed would be once again to reproduce the promise of modern technology to overcome finitude. Instead, the very embracing of our historical conditionedness, and ultimately of our embeddedness in the ongoing transformation of the sacred, can itself be seen as an anti-technological move, a negation of the negation of finitude. Such an embracing must involve a greater awareness of the way we are constituted by our past. And the point of such awareness cannot be to overcome our conditionedness, to refuse what is handed us by the past; such is the impossible dream of Enlightenment. Instead, the task must be to receive that past more consciously and responsibly” (174). In other words, we should neither seek to return to earlier forms of spirituality – this makes no sense and is not possible – nor forcibly drag it into the future, into our technologies; rather we should understand how this spirituality has changed over time, how it is now, and apply that understanding to a critique of our current technologies.

This brings us to Lynch and his notion of Progressive Spirituality. Lynch argues that history has produced a contemporary spirituality, “the emergence of a particular ideology, a progressive spirituality, which is forming the basis for these new forms of religious identities, a diffuse sentiment of tolerance and openness amongst religious liberals but arises out of particular concerns and is organized around a common set of clearly identifiable values and beliefs. Progressive spirituality is a particular way of understanding the world shared (20) by individuals and groups across and beyond a range of religious traditions, who seek to understand their particular tradition and commitments through the lens of progressive spirituality’s basic assumptions” (21).

What are these basic assumptions? “Firstly, it normally indicates a commitment to understanding and practicing religion in the light of modern knowledge and cultural norms…. A second defining feature of ‘progressive’ religion is a sympathy with, and often active engagement in, green and left-of-center political concerns” (19). And further, the notion of God has morphed now into what Lynch calls ‘Moralistic therapeutic deism’: “This perspective can be summarized as the credo which asserts that there is a God who watches over the Earth, that God wants people to be good to each other (as each world religion teaches), that the point of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself, that God does not need to be involved in one’s life unless one has a problem and that good people go to heaven when they die” (5).

And how did this new spirituality develop? What are the roots of Progressive Spirituality?

“…it has emerged out of four key concerns: the desire for an approach to religion and spirituality that is appropriate for modern, liberal societies, the rejection of patriarchal forms of religion and the search for religious forms that are authentic and liberating for women, the move to re-sacralize science (particularly quantum physics) and contemporary theories of cosmology), and the search for a nature-based spirituality that will motivate us to try to avert the impending ecological catastrophe” (10).

I am particularly intrigued by the third of these, because it relates to Wertheim’s assertion that the soul has been squeezed out of our world by modern science. Lynch echoes this, referencing Bishop John Robinson who argued that whereas people used to think that God was, if not ‘up there’, at least ‘out there’, but, “Such a concept, Robinson argued, was no longer tenable in an age of scientific and psychological discovery, in which no home for God could be found in the universe and the suspicion grew that the God ‘out there’ was as much a projection of the human mind as a metaphysical reality” (29). But it seems the soul seems to be leaking through, adapting by changing shape. (This is the phenomenon described by Szerszynski, too, as ‘new sacralizations’.)

Some might dismiss new sacralization of science as little more than a semantic shift, a poetic interpretation (not helped by the language invoked in works such as Capra’s The Tao of Physics). But scientific discovery is in many respects validating traditional spiritual wisdom, making spirituality relevant again, if understood now in scientific terms (e.g. ‘energy’). Quantum physics, for example, affirms the notion of interconnectedness of the universe, from which we can draw moral and spiritual implications. For example,

“In 1980, the quantum theorist David Bohm published Wholeness and the Implicate Order, in which he argued for the need for a new scientific and cultural world view which emphasized the harmony and interdependence of all reality. Such a world view, Bohm suggested, could emerge out of the recognition of the common ground of reality – a higher-dimensional implicate order which organizes the enfolding and unfolding cosmos – a grounding reality that draws together and sustains all that exists” (31).

Another unintended consequence of progress in science is that, according to Catholic eco-theologian, Thomas Berry, “contemporary science is beginning to offer a new story of the universe as an emerging, meaningful, creative process that can serve as the basis of an ecologically oriented moral and spiritual life” (31). If we are co-creators, we have responsibility; it is up to us to create a heaven on earth. Thus, the “perilous choice currently facing humanity between a Technozoic era of self-destructive environmental exploitation for the sake of economic gain or an Ecozoic era based on conscious management of relations within the ecosystem for the (31) benefit of the whole” (32).

And furthermore, scientific discovery is now, ironically, weakening materiality and reinforcing subjectivity (making Heelas et al’s ‘subjective turn’ a sensible cultural shift). “As Fritjof Capra states, ‘whatever we call a part is merely a pattern that has some stability and therefore captures attention’. What we perceive as real, stable objects are, to use Capra’s phrase, multiple manifestations of the dynamic and unfolding dance of cosmic energy in which forms emerge, disintegrate and then shift into other forms” (33). The lesson in this is that there is flexibility in our designs, precisely because, as Lanier said, computers don’t really exist, so we can make them whatever we want. We should realize that we are not victims, because we are at least partly responsible for our world…. so let’s make it better!

The roots of Lynch’s Progressive Spirituality certainly implies that older spiritual / religious traditions are increasingly irrelevant to modern living: “The data of contemporary life no longer fits the paradigm of traditional religion, and this creates pressure for a new spiritual paradigm to be developed which takes better account of contemporary experiences, values and concerns” (24). In that case, it hardly makes sense to force old spirituality on modern technology. But there is a possible pathway between Progressive Spirituality and more spiritual technology.

The irony, of course, is that changing technology, making it more spiritual (i.e. incorporating Progressive Spirituality into its design), will inevitably change the nature of this contemporary spirituality. These two variables are intertwined, and in flux, which means that the job of making technology ‘spiritual’ will never be done. But we can commit to keeping attuned to changes in the spiritual milieu and adapting technology to suit this environment.

The consequences of informationalism

A summary of:
Zaleski, J. (1997). The Soul of Cyberspace: How New Technology Is Changing Our Spiritual Lives. HarperEdge: New York.
Reflections part 3 – Other bits and pieces of interest

I think that Zaleski asks the wrong questions a lot of the time; or at least he seems preoccupied with different things than I am. He’s interested in the question of where blurrings may occur between technology and religion (notice the emphasis is on religion, not spirituality), and specifically how technology may be blurring our notions of religious ritual. For example, he asks, “Does sacred ritual have a place in cyberspace? Is cyberspace sacred space” (6)? He is also concerned with the virtualization of the physical more generically. For example, he asks, “The online world is a world of mind alone. How will the human spirit fare in such a realm, sundered from the mystery of the flesh? And what of the artificial intelligences – bodiless minds – that are beginning to populate cyberspace? Do artificial life-forms have artificial souls” (6)?

These are not issues I want to touch with a 90-foot pole. Not only do they seem boring, but they seem contentious and confused. But finally, Zaleski hits upon the question that interests me when he asks, “What effect does surfing the Web have on mind, on consciousness, and, most importantly, on attention – the basic tool of spiritual realization?” (6); and “Does cyberspace… present a particular challenge to spiritual work” (6)?

One of the things Zaleski explores is what people get – spiritually – out of cyberspace. He interviews several religious leaders who use the Internet as an extension of their congregation/practice. Rabbi Kazen (creator of the Chabad-Lubavitch site) believes the Internet represents tremendous potential for Judaism in that it “frees” it (“‘The idea,’ Kazen decleares with a wave of his hand, ‘is that Judaism has to be free’” (14)!). The website is not used by his congregation, but it is a portal onto Judaism for those not already in the flock. Kazen also talks about ‘The Global Interactive Database of Good Deeds’, where “people will be able to participate in lighting their own menorah, by typing in an act of goodness or kindness or a positive thing that they did. And by having a map of the entire world, as every person types in something good that they did, another part of the world will be lit up” (17).

Is this what I mean when I talk about wanting more spiritual technology? No. To me it is a sort of simulacrum of ritual; and it is religious in nature, as opposed to spiritual. Kazen’s comments reveal a very objective way of understanding cyberspace – as an information transference mechanism. And the latter example reveals a very objective way of understanding spirituality – as something that you can measure by the doing of it. I’m concerned with the soul-nourishing power of spirituality.

One interviewee, Sheikh Hisham Muhammad Kabbani, seems to recognize a tension between technology and this nourishing spirituality: “I spend a fair amount of time on the computer because I write, create, design. There are many times when I question how well spent that time is, even though it’s productive time that allows me to design and create things I could not design and create any other way. I appreciate that, but I don’t think it helps my (74) inner state, and it appears that my inner state even suffers through this kind of work” (75). He explains that while it may seem as if a kind of mesmeric engagement in technology is akin to meditative or spiritual practice, “…I don’t feel any better for it [being absorbed in the screen]. I don’t think working at the computer returns as much in the realm of quality as working in a garden, or painting, or playing music, or sitting down and talking to another human being” (75).

This above quote reveals the problem with contemporary values surrounding ‘productivity.’ Productive time is time when you do stuff with information, when you make money, when you save time. But productive time is never defined as ‘spiritually nourishing.’ This is because we have been subjugated by the values of technology, which are speed, efficiency, and built on informational foundations. As John Perry Barlow says, “Cyberspace is any information space, but it’s interactive information space that is created by media that are densely enough shared so that there’s the sense of other people being present. / You could say that cyberspace is also where you are when you’re reading a book” (29). And “Wired Style: Principles of English Usage in the Digital Age… defines cyberspace [as]: ‘Information space…. The place between phones, between computers, between you and me’” (30). But in this view, there is only void between information nodes; there is no meaning in between. The space itself, in other words, is not a meaningful – or spiritual – space. To use a phrase from Woody Allen (Life and Death), it’s “an empty void.” Even Zaleski’s own definition, which lacks any informational elements, depicts such an ‘empty void’: “For the purposes of this book, cyberspace is defined as the virtual space created through the activation of a computer” (30). I would suggest that making cyberspace more spiritual might be conceived as making the spaces in between ‘nodes’ “a full void.”

The other problem with this informational understanding of cyberspace is that it makes the lack of knowledge that much more conspicuous. “Employing Lucky’s pyramidal grid, it seems that what is transmitted through cyberspace is, in most cases, information – not knowledge, and certainly not wisdom” (33)…. “mystical knowledge and wisdom are said to lie beyond the reach of logic and of binary computation, which divide unity into plurality” (33). The problem here is objectivism: information can be measured, knowledge or wisdom cannot. If it cannot be measured, how can it be bundled and passed along in cyberspace? I should clarify that I don’t think that knowledge or wisdom is never exchanged online; but I do think that this knowledge and wisdom is bundled as information for another to extract. Take, for example, The Zen Garden (http://www.nominus.com/%7Ezenyard/zenyard.htm), which packages Buddhist wisdom to be collected by viewers of the site. This is explained in greater detail in Carr’s Rewiring the World: From Edison to Google. Carr’s notions of ‘bundling’ and ‘flattening’ are a product of informationalism; the shallowness of experience makes us shallow. This objectivism and informationalism places the emphasis on quantity over quality; the result of which, in the words of John Perry Barlow, is that, “My range of possible experiences is multiplied hundreds of times. And the possibility for depth of those experiences is reduced. Considerably” (50).

The problem is that there is nothing inherently meaningful about information. If anything, it is a distraction from deeper meaning. Sheikh Hisham Muhammad Kabbani says, ”Our humanness is being eroded by our own cleverness in creating ever greater distractions for ourselves, and by a whole industry creating ever greater distractions” (78). The point is if information is meaningless we should hardly be building our world on these flimsy foundations, lest we lose all “meaningful meaning.” After all, “…there’s nothing more terrible than the loss of meaning” (78). The way to prevent this is to use technology to do greater things. For example, Kabbani says, “If my sitting at the computer is in some way an extension of my yearning, or of compassion, it may be useful” (76).

To some extent, I fear we’re asking the wrong question if we are asking how to make informational technology more spiritual. Why are we not asking the question, instead, Why does cyberspace have to be an informational technology? Can it not do more? Are we not wasting this unique space which holds the most tremendous potential for spirituality in modern society?

Interviews with Jaron Lanier

A summary of:
Zaleski, J. (1997). The Soul of Cyberspace: How New Technology Is Changing Our Spiritual Lives. HarperEdge: New York.
Reflections part 2 – Interviews with Jaron Lanier

I’ll begin this post where I left off at the last one, i.e. with the idea that computers are what we make them. Lanier puts this in no uncertain terms: “Computers don’t exist, to put it bluntly. Computers are just a bundle of matter, and they act as computers by virtue of cultural ability to recognize them acting as computers. So we can make of them what we will…. We have a choice here” (139).

While we have a choice, Lanier explains that it is very easy to get stuck in familiar ways of thinking, particularly the more and more we engage with technology. He uses two helpful analogies. The first is that of a trolley system: “I think there are three different things that can happen. One is that you can be just wandering around on a place, another is that you can have a map. The third, and it’s what happens with computers, is that you install a trolley system and you can go only where the trolley is going. That’s much more analogous to what happens when you create culture using programs. / As soon as a computer program becomes your tool for creation, you can create only what was conceived of in the ideas embedded in the program. That’s the nature of programs. Programs are not the same thing as nature” (185).

Lanier uses another, more colorful analogy to explain that it is very difficult to be creative (thinking outside of the box) when you are confined to the ‘box’ of the rules of computer programs: “When you try to do creative work by playing with computer programs that embed your own ideas or someone else’s ideas, it’s a little bit like hooking up a tube between your anus and your mouth to get nutrition. What you’re doing is, you’re recycling ideas instead of contacting nature and exploring it. That’s the difference between playing with musical instruments and using computers” (147).

What is this “contacting nature” business all about? Here it is again: “Essentially, if you try to do science without going back to nature, all you’re doing is reexploring human ideas that have been set down in a computer, and amplified by the simulation. So what you’re really doing is, you’re self-glorifying your own ideas that have been set down. It’s a little bit like taking a little poem that you wrote and then putting it up in a huge marquee in lights and saying, ‘Oh, wow, that’s really wise.’ It might be, or it might not be, but the point is that you’re blinding yourself. Essentially, a simulation takes a starting human idea that somebody had and amplifies it, and it looks more impressive” (148).

And again: “The way you get off the trolley system is by directly contacting the mysteries of nature. There’s nothing wrong with the trolley system as long as you get off. The problem, the nerd way of using the trolley system, to carry this metaphor on, is to stay on it all the time” (186).

Is this a useful way of defining spirituality? – making contact with (the mysteries of) nature? I suppose part of what Lanier is getting at is the sort of intangibility of reality – that we live in a constantly unfolding reality, of which we are co-creators but can never fully grasp because of its awesome complexity. This gets back to exactly what Lanier was saying about computers being a construct of our imaginations, a subjective thing. As he says, “If you think of the computer as only a conduit between people, you don’t run into this problem at all, because then you’re dealing with it as a conduit between minds. As soon as you treat the computer as an objective thing – as a real instrument, like a real person, as something that stands by itself – you run into this problem, you connect the tube to the wrong hole” (147). This almost energetic transference would be one of those mysteries of nature, and we ought to tap into that energy if we wish to do anything truly worthwhile – in a spiritual way, perhaps – with our technology.

Lanier is the Big Daddy of virtual reality, so of course he has opinions about how this relates to VR. “One way to think about a computer,” he says, “is that it’s a conduit between people. It’s a communication technology in which people can create miniature worlds that are models of things inside themselves in order to have a new form of communication in which they make up a shared objective reality in simulation instead of passing symbols between each other exclusively” (139). I really like this notion of trying to represent something “inside” yourself, because for the most part, I think that where VR and social networking and the like has failed thus far is that it only caters to representation of surface or external qualities of ourselves, e.g. Avatars that look like us, or Profiles where we fill in biographical information. But the other key aspect of this quote is that Lanier is challenging us to do great things with technology, rather than simply simulate our world. This, in fact, is the difference between someone who can draw what they see (someone who in Ellul’s terms would have mastered la technique) and a true artist, who can capture the ineffable. The latter would be spiritual, and Lanier argues that it should be the goal of technological development: “The potential does not lie, ever, in simulating something in the physical world. Because it will always either be done poorly, or if it seems it’s not being done poorly, it means you’re fooling yourself, as in the case of the music example, or this evolution-simulation example. If it seems like the (148) computer is simulating the real world, well, it just means that you’ve lost touch. / The right way to use computers is to use them to simulate alternate worlds, together with other people, as a form of communication” (149).

I struggle to think of examples where we have realized this potential on the Internet. But I can think of many where we are doing poor simulations. Facebook, for example, fosters simulated friendships which, I think we would all agree, pale in comparison to the real. We should not be content to think that this is all we can achieve with our technology, though! While it’s a far more difficult challenge – and one that may take a flash of artistic brilliance, an epiphany – we ought to be striving to create entirely new opportunities for us to think, see, communicate; and we’ll know it when we see it, just as we feel when a truly great painting moves us. This is the spiritual.

The challenge now is that computers exist within a framework that reinforces thinking about them as objective ‘things’, as the evolution of rational Western thought which is increasingly materialistic, pushing the soul and the spirit out of the picture. This makes it difficult to understand our current creations in new spiritual ways, because they were not created from a worldview that allows for this type of thinking. As Lanier himself says, “I think of virtual reality as a Western (142) idea, I make sense of it within the Western framework…. I think that the quest for the universal cultural framework that can contain everything is futile. So I don’t feel a need to try to explain prana in virtual reality. I use a different set of categories to explain virtual reality that don’t include prana. In my life, I certainly think in the larger framework that does include it” (143). To me, this means that we cannot succeed in making ‘slightly more spiritual technology’ if the underlying structure is not radically altered. We have to make “spiritual technology”, not “more spiritual technology”.

The key might lie in uncoupling technology from information. In our minds, they are the same. And immediately, information creates the alienation that would be the distancing of ourselves from (the mysteries of ) nature. Lanier explains, “…information is alienated experience. So, nothing ever goes over the wires whatsoever. But it can be whatever we wish it to be…. These are things we make up, like language” (157). His mission, therefore, is this: “What I’m trying to do is to save Western culture from being destroyed by information” (180).

In conclusion, all of Lanier’s discussions on what technology should be exposes his own spirituality which fits precisely with what Heelas et al described as the ‘subjective turn.’ In other words, Lanier is calling for a turn toward the subjective in our thinking about technology, which will thus lead to more glorious developments which nourish us in ways that technologies produced within an objective paradigm do not. This is perhaps best exemplified by Lanier’s “syncretic creation myth”. In this myth, as technology gets developed further and further along the lines it’s being created now, ‘experience’ gets squeezed out, until finally people can stand it no longer. “So they convened an emergency meeting about their lack of experience…. And as they knew there would be, there was only one solution: They got all of their machines and they put them in a great bonfire and destroyed them” (196). Call it ‘experience’, ‘subjectivity’, or ‘spirituality’, the lesson is that we need to pay attention to these needs, or else one day we will wake up to find that we are living in a prison of our own technological creations.

Prana in cyberspace?

A summary of:
Zaleski, J. (1997). The Soul of Cyberspace: How New Technology Is Changing Our Spiritual Lives. HarperEdge: New York.
Reflections part 1 - Prana

Zaleski makes this interesting, highly questionably claim:

“Prana is a Sanskrit word sometimes translated as ‘life force,’ sometimes as ‘breath.’ It is equivalent to the Chinese concept of chi, and somewhat to the Judeo-Christian-Islamic concept of spirit. In all the major religious traditions, this force is seen as manifesting through the physical body of the human being. This view has profound implications for spiritual work in cyberspace, where the body is absent” (34).

What’s bizarre about this is that Zaleski seems to think that physicality is a necessity of spirituality… whereas most would probably say that the spiritual is fundamentally non-physical. (While I think this is a crude reductionism, take this opinion, for example: “[John Perry Barlow] But I also think that anytime you’ve got a large number of people going somewhere they can’t take their bodies, you are engaged in spiritual activity. It’s that simple” (51).) And for Zaleski, this physicality poses a particular problem to technology if we are hoping to have some kind of spiritual experience. He uses the example of an early Skype-like technology: “It seems like it’s leading toward the point where it won’t be much different than me sitting in front of you an talking like this, except for the lack of prana” (43).

I think Zaleski’s sticking point with this is that he doesn’t think it is possible for ritual sacraments, like Holy Communion, to be performed online. In response to Zaleski’s questions on the matter, John Perry Barlow responds, “If you don’t have the grounding in the wine, the physical manifestation, I can see where they would think that there’s no potential for that holy voltage between the physical symbol and the spiritual reality” (35). But we have to ask ourselves what exactly he thinks is missing (he does not clarify that well). If it is the possibility for transformation, this is clearly not true. Buddhist interviewee John Daido Loori responds, “‘That being the case, …we’d have to say there’s no chi, which is what we’d [Buddhists] call it – breath, life – there’s no chi in a work of art. And I don’t buy that for a second. I feel that art can be transformative, has been transformative’” (166).

It also seems that sometimes what Zaleski thinks is missing is the full-body engagement, the kind that would be associated with “flow” (233). In that case, we might do well to ask whether we really see any kind of spiritual difference between a computer game and a wii game, if the latter involves our whole body. I would say not.

Zaleski also defines the missing element this way: “The break with the body in cyberspace is most apparent when meeting other people through live, text-mediated chat, as in IRC or the chat rooms of AOL. The prana, the subtle energies, are lost. The incarnate being, the human being, behind the words can only be imagined, just as the reader of these words can only imagine the writer. What fills the space left by the absent prana is self-projection” (233). This, too, seems bizarre, and I guess it really depends on what you mean by ‘subtle energies’, or ‘self-projection’. As one interviewee was quoted saying, “‘I totally disagree that there’s no prana in cyberspace. That’s like saying you have to lose your humanity because you’re using a different form of communication” (253).

Zaleski softens his argument only slightly with this admission: “I believe that [prana] does break in cyberspace, limiting the medium’s potential for spiritual work in communities as well as on the individual level. But limit does not mean negate, and spiritual work, which calls upon us to accept others, to love them as ourselves, does take place in virtual communities” (254). If this is the case, then the goal is to strengthen the connections between individuals, within communities, to enhance the prana. The problem (as I will go into more depth about in further posts on Zaleski) is that cyberspace produces broad experiences, but not deep ones; so the design challenge would be to focus on creating deeper bonds between people (another way to say this is increasing strong ties, rather than weak ones).

This discussion of prana raises other interesting questions. What do we think is exchanged in a spiritual experience, for example? One interviewee, Sheikh Hisham Muhammad Kabbani, responded: “Because you know that always spirituality is high-tech. Spirituality is a kind of energy transmission from human beings to each other, if we are able to receive it, because human beings are receivers and transmitters at the same time” (61). This is fascinating, mostly because it clearly only makes sense in our modern scientific paradigm. You wouldn’t hear someone describe it like this 200 years ago, would you?

Another question this has made me consider is what I think is happening in a spiritual process. John Perry Barlow said, “So much of what the spiritual process is about is sliding up and down between those two poles of the physical and the immaterial” (35). Where does practice come into this? Some see practice as essential to spiritual growth (perhaps this is a separate question in itself?).

And this has also been helpful for helping me think about what kind of spiritual change I would like to realize in technology. Two separate ideas were raised by this book. The first is inspired by this quote from Loori: “So, how do you use them in a way that nourishes? Cyberspace is here to stay. How can we use it to nourish” (167)? That is a fabulous description of the kind of spirituality I’m aiming at. It should nourish us, nourish our souls, be, as I said, ‘soul-satisfying’.

The other idea is very different, in that it aims at the foundations of the construction. Loori said this: “Sacredness is something that’s earned through time. Kyoto is sacred. Jerusalem is sacred. Rome is sacred. Stonehenge is sacred. These are sacred places because of what has been put into them” (173). Given this, how can we design sacredness into cyberspace? Is it possible to design it in such a way as to make people treat is as sacred? Pesce, for example, tried something like this:“[Pesce] The idea was [in blessing the Internet], inasmuch as possible, to sanctify cyberspace. If we don’t bless our creations, they dehumanize us” (262). There is a big difference, however, in blessing something that is not inherently sacred, and designing something to be sacred.

The truth is that cyberspace represents tremendous opportunity, precisely because it is unbounded and emerging. It is not anything, beyond what we say it is. For example: “‘Cyberspace is a field that has been created where there is an absence of obstructions,’ explained Thomas E. Miller to me…. Miller is a Namgyal Monastery official and the man who conceived of the blessing [different from above]. ‘That’s the way cyberspace was designed. Which creates the potential for something to arise. And the nature of what will arise there is dependent upon the motivations of the people that use it’” (280). In that case, why would we ever say that we could not create an internet that allows for prana?

A profound shift

A summary of:
Senge, P., Scharmer, C.O., Jaworski, J. & Flowers, B.S. (2004). Presence: Exploring Profound Change in People, Organizations and Society. Nicholas Brealey Publishing: London.
Part 4 – Meeting Our Future (part 2 of 2)

The book concludes with talk about what profound shift means. Their ideal is the following: “‘The call is clear: for the whole thirteen-year period, we must do all we can to create this balance and connection with one another. ‘We’re facing these problems… because of our lack of relationship, not just with one another but with all of nature. My purpose is to help the human race understand that it is facing self-destruction unless there is a return to balance and harmony with nature’” (233).

But how can you bring this (or any change) about? The authors suggest it comes back to ‘presencing’. The authors differ in their individual definitions of the concept: 1) “‘A profound opening of the heart, carried into action’” (234); “…waking up together – waking up to who we really are by linking with and acting from our highest future Self – and by using the Self as a vehicle for bringing forth new worlds’” (234); and “…it’s the point where the fire of creation burns and enters the world through us’” (234).

This section offers an important point of clarification about this ‘presencing’ notion. Though the term seemingly implies an in-the-moment-ness, the authors define it in part as “becoming aware of ‘a future seeking to emerge’” (220), and “‘pre-sensing’ and bringing into presence – and into the present – your highest future potential” (220). This has to do with tapping into a sort of Jungian Collective Unconscious; a whole that is greater than oneself. But, again, a clarification is necessary: “‘The emerging whole manifests locally. It manifests in particular communities, groups, and, ultimately, in us as individuals’” (228). This changes our mission, if we want to change society, because global change begins locally and spreads outward to the whole (like Sheldrake’s theory of Morphic Resonance, where small change reverberates through a connected system (199)). This implies the importance of “glocalization” as a means of change.

One way to catalyze a shift is to begin a dialogue. Betty Sue Flowers (author) says, “‘Maybe that’s what we’re doing with the story of the U…. We’re trying to develop a language that can help people think and talk together about how the whole can shift. We know so much about the problems of the world today that it’s easy to fall into fear and denial. What we need is a language of hope and possibility that’s grounded in ideas and experiences emerging from innovators in science, business, and communities’” (218). At the very least, I hope that my PhD research will begin a dialogue about the need for a more spiritual approach to technological development.

Consider this as a springboard into discussion:
“Rose von Thater-Braan, one of the organizers of an integrative learning center for the study of indigenous knowledge and native science says, ‘The many differences between native science and Western science start with intent. The common purpose that drives modern Western science is to understand nature in order to better control – some would say commodify – nature.’ By contrast, in native science, ‘The fundamental intent is to become more human and to learn how to live in harmony with nature and with one another. Native scientists may invent technologies to make their life easier, but these are always secondary to human development’” (202)….

What are we aiming to do with technology? Why are we not trying to aid our human development?

A spiritual grounding

A summary of:
Senge, P., Scharmer, C.O., Jaworski, J. & Flowers, B.S. (2004). Presence: Exploring Profound Change in People, Organizations and Society. Nicholas Brealey Publishing: London.
Part 4 – Meeting Our Future (part 1 of 2)

(Image: Namaste, 1994, Alex Grey)

Charles Taylor argues in his book A Secular Age that the Industrial Age changed the way we conceive of ‘meaning’, that it became inextricably linked with ‘progress’. “‘Somewhere in the last generation of two,’” says Senge, “‘the very word “old” became a pejorative term. Now it’s synonymous with worn-out and obsolete, and ‘new’ automatically means improved and superior. This might be perfectly fine in talking about machines, but tragic for living systems” (178). So this section challenges this formulation of meaning which we instinctively presume to be true. The authors quote Debashish Chatterjee in his opening remarks for a seminar on leadership at MIT: “‘I’ve been guided in my work by the notion that older is often better. If an idea has been around for a few thousand years, it’s been submitted to many tests – which is a good indicator that it might have some real merit. We’re fixated on newness, which often misleads us into elevating novelty over substance’” (179). Some would disagree with this, I realize, but it is perhaps a partial justification for turning back to spiritual traditions for inspiration and guidance.

Perhaps this modern predicament could be characterized as a lack of grounding. This happens when you are constantly into the future; you are simultaneously running away from the past, where your wisdom is located. The authors quote a “senior officer from the United Nations” who ended his presentation to the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis with this harsh evaluation: “‘I’ve dealt with many different problems around the world, and I’ve concluded that there’s only one real problem: over the past hundred years, the power that technology has given us has grown beyond anyone’s wildest imagination, but our wisdom has not. If the gap between our power and our wisdom is not redressed soon, I don’t have much hope for our prospects’” (187).

The authors see some hope in the trends in modern physics and the accompanying changes in the modern scientific worldview. The rejection of the vision of the world as “Newtonian billiard balls”, and the embracing of electromagnetic and quantum fields “transformed the Newtonian worldview of isolated particles, [and thus] potentially transforms the particle nature of the isolated self” (188). I, too, find this hopeful, in that we are beginning to wake up (again – for this was what various religious traditions told us) to the truth that we are all connected. “Connectedness is the defining feature of the new worldview – connectedness as an organizing principle of the universe, connectedness between the ‘outer world’ of manifest phenomena and the ‘inner world’ of lived experience, and, ultimately, connectedness among people and between human and the larger world. While philosophers and spiritual teachers have long spoken about connectedness, a scientific worldview of connectedness could have sweeping influence in ‘shifting the whole,’ given the role of science and technology in the modern world” (188). I cannot prove this, but I imagine that this worldview made it possible for us to embrace the Internet as a means of connecting to others in new ways. And I’ve been asked to justify my decision to focus on the Internet as a technology that I want to design more ‘spiritually’, and I think this is as good as any: that this utopian vision of the Internet as the great connector of humans amounts to huge spiritual potential, potential that I feel we have not fully realized because we have settled for it as it was first conceived.

Physicist David Bohm is quoted here saying, “‘The most important thing going forward is to break the boundaries between people so we can operate as a single intelligence. Bell’s theorem implies that this is the natural state of the human world, separation without separateness. The task is to find ways to break these boundaries, so we can be in our natural state’” (189). (And, ““Einstein spoke of the ‘optical delusion of our consciousness,’ whereby we experience ourselves ‘as something separate from the rest.’ ‘Our task,’ he said, ‘must be to widen our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty’” (203).) What does this mean if we were to apply it to the Internet? Does the Internet really connect in this way? – or does it in fact entrench our separateness by alienating us first from ourselves (requiring the creation of avatars) and then from each other (avatars relating to one another)? The question we should be asking is where are the opportunities for diminishing the illusion of separateness?

This section also seems to justify my mission in a more fundamental way, i.e. it calls for interdisciplinarity as a means of assuaging the problems that arise from siloed thinking. “The basic problem is ‘fragmentation,’ said [physicist David] Bohm, a way of thinking that ‘consists of false division, making a division where there is tight connection’ and of seeing separateness where there is wholeness. Bohm called fragmentation – in our view of the universe and of ourselves as separate from one another and nature – ‘the hidden source of the social, political, and environmental crises facing the world’” (190). In a sense, my research would amount to a blending of technology, modern scientific thinking, psychology, sociology, management, design and spirituality. Consider this:

“Master Nan said, ‘What has been lacking in the twentieth century is a central cultural thought that would unify all these things: economy, technology, ecology, society, matter, mind, and spirituality. There are no great philosophers or great thinkers who’ve been able to develop the thinking that unifies all these questions.’ The decline in integrative awareness and thinking has been replaced by a focus on business and making money as a default common aim. When Otto told Master Nan he thought human culture was on the verge of a new spiritual awareness, Nan agreed but said that it might not develop as most expect. It ‘will be a different spiritual route from that of the past, either in the East or West. It will be a new spiritual path’” (211). “Or, as Otto puts it, ‘What’s emerging is a new synthesis of science, spirituality, and leadership as different facets of a single way of being’” (212).

I resonated with this quote, because it seemed to imply the need for something like the HighWire programme, but also assert the need for spiritual thinking within academic discourse.

Mutsugoto

Reflections on article at: http://www.distancelab.org/projects/mutsugoto/

What a sweet idea! - "Instead of exchanging e-mail or SMS messages using generic interfaces in business-like venues, Mutsugoto allows distant partners to communicate through the language of touch as expressed on the canvas of the human body. A custom computer vision and projection system allows users to draw on each other's bodies while lying in bed. Drawings are transmitted 'live' between the two beds, enabling a different kind of synchronous communication that leverages the emotional quality of physical gesture."

This is an interesting example to discuss in regards to my personal definition of spiritual technology (admittedly still taking shape). At first this seems to be an attempt to design for human values, namely intimacy. As the article says, "Human intimacy is a significant but often neglected part of modern life. More people now than ever carry on long distance relationships with romantic partners, sometimes for extended periods of time. However today's communication systems are impersonal and generic. E-mail, for example, is often read and written on the same computer and at the same desk that one uses for any other kind of communication. Phone calls and SMS messages are sent and received between partners on the same devices used for work and business." But where this goes wrong, I suppose, is that takes this characteristic of modern society as given, unquestionable, or at least unchangeable... and in fact, if it took off, would reinforce the structures that make this lack of intimacy possible. To say this more clearly, it is like applying a tourniquet to hemorrhaging society (Senge et al., 2004, would call this "shifting the burden" (204)), in short, propping up the structures that in turn enable decreased intimacy by preventing us from reaching what I would call a Turning Point, or Breaking Point. If we were, instead, to reach a point where we could finally say, "I hate this lifestyle that means I can't be with the people I love!" we might actually change as a society. But if we create technologies that make these "realities" of modern life palatable, we calcify them in practice and in our mindsets.

I sometimes think we're asking the wrong questions. The question perhaps should not be, "How do we create technology that offsets the side-effects of a technologized society?" (think of taking pills to counteract negative side-effects of other pills, and on and on). Should we not be asking, "Where did we go wrong?" I think this is why it's important to me to approach technological innovation from a spiritual perspective, i.e., to not avoid the deeper questions.

The Path - spiritual Facebook-ing?

I was pointed to this article on the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11793847

The idea is that rather than have lots and lots of weak ties (read: friends in name only), the site helps you foster stronger friendship ties. These ties are designed into the system by limiting the number of friends you can have. I think it's similar to going back in time to film cameras, before digital: You really had to pick your moments, not waste the film. When digital came along, you could snap as many crap pictures as you liked, because they didn't cost anything to throw away. But is this a good model for friendships? Is this a fair comparison to Facebook?

There is some evidence - cited by the article - that humans can only manage 50 friends, so the notion that Facebook promotes, that we can have 1,000 if we wanted, cheapens the very word "friend".

I think if we value true "friendship", we ought to be thinking of ways to make that word meaningful again in the era of Facebook. People ask me all the time what I mean by "spiritual technology", and follow up with, "Can you give me an example of one?" I now have an example. This is getting closer to what I'm talking about: Asserting human values over and above technological capabilities.

Becoming a Force of Nature

A summary of:
Senge, P., Scharmer, C.O., Jaworski, J. & Flowers, B.S. (2004). Presence: Exploring Profound Change in People, Organizations and Society. Nicholas Brealey Publishing: London.
Part 3 – Becoming a Force of Nature

This section is all about marrying your intention to action, and believing that you can get there. For inspiration, the authors quoted Margaret Mead, who is known for saying, “Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has” (134). But this notion of being a lone warrior somewhat dilutes the truth that being effective has to do to some extent with tapping into – if not the zeitgeist – this ‘field’ they alluded to earlier, which we can do by ‘presencing’. “The transformation of will that arises from presencing was beautifully articulated by George Bernard Shaw: ‘This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose you consider a mighty one, the being a force of nature, rather than a feverish, selfish clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy’” (133). Or, simply put by Victor Hugo: “There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come,’ said Victor Hugo” (131).

I like the idea of making my methodology as spiritual as possible, to walk the walk as it were. For this reason, I like this passage that explains from a spiritual perspective the process of developing one’s intention:

“…John White, one of the original founding partners of the Institute of HeartMath, said, ‘Often people need greater clarity before they can act decisively and with full commitment. Once they see clearly their heart’s intent, their focus becomes like a laser – a powerful, coherent beam, as opposed to an incandescent, incoherent light. An earnest commitment from the heart emerges, vision becomes clearer, broader, and more inclusive of others. Strength of will is replaced by energetic integrity and a knowingness of ‘what else is there’ or ‘I can’t afford to not do this’” (135).

I suppose the idea is that it’s important to put love into your work. As Mother Teresa said when asked how one can do great things, “You cannot do great things. You can only do small things with great love” (139).

The chapter also seeks to dissuade us of the notion that you need to “to know how to do something before you can do it” (149). Instead, the authors argue that the key is getting the intention right, and then beginning what is effectively a prototyping process. As they say, “the creative process is actually a learning process, and the best we can possibly have at the outset is a hypothesis or tentative idea about what will be required to succeed. Robert Fritz characterizes the essence of the creative process as ‘create and adjust.’ We learn to do something truly new only through doing it, then adjusting” (149). Along the way, they explain, the creator will go through a series of “small ‘U’s’” (149). One author describes this process as “chaordic,” i.e., “how order emerges from chaos” (172).

Finally, this chapter asks the important question of how you create major change. They suggest that in some cases, we have to make the brave decision to kill a dying system so that a better one can be born in its place. As someone the authors interviewed said, “‘Maybe what’s needed right now is to stop trying to keep the system alive artificially and perform a controlled emergency shutdown’” (165). This reminds me of a question that I was asked by a college professor that has changed my life forever. He asked, ‘If you really want to change something, do you do it by helping as much as you can to fix it, or do you try to speed up its collapse?’ He was referring to the economy at the time, and asked whether you are better off donating money, or becoming an investment banker who tries to increase the gap between rich and poor. This idea, the notion that the only way to make Real Change is to destroy the current system and all that props it up is something that I constantly think of when I see something in the world I don’t like. In the case of the Internet, the question is whether you try to tweak it as it is now to begin to accommodate our spiritual needs (as an afterthought), or to somehow push us closer to the tipping point where we see the need to abandon our old ways. I suppose there is a third option, however, and that is to provide an alternative, and see if people want to switch to this new rail.

U Theory

A summary of:
Senge, P., Scharmer, C.O., Jaworski, J. & Flowers, B.S. (2004). Presence: Exploring Profound Change in People, Organizations and Society. Nicholas Brealey Publishing: London.
Part 2 – Into the Silence:
Chapter 6 – An Emerging Understanding: The U Theory
& Chapter 7 – The Eye of the Needle: Letting Go and Letting Come

In this section we are introduced to a concept the authors call U Theory – a framework for a new process of thinking. They have drawn a diagram, in the shape of a U, representing the path that the great thinkers take:
1) (At the top, left) “Sensing”: “‘observe, observe, observe’ – become one with the world”;
2) (Down to the bottom of the U) “Presencing”: “‘retreat, and reflect” – allow inner knowing to emerge”;
3) (Up again, top right) “Realizing”: “‘act swiftly, with a natural flow’” (88).

The key seems to be in the ‘presencing’ step, which they say, “constitutes a third type of seeing, beyond seeing external reality and beyond even seeing from within the living whole” (90). But the authors go even further, clearly seeing this stage as a spiritual state of being: “The bottom of the U is where, in Joseph’s words, you discover ‘who you really are as a servant or steward for what’s needed in the world” (91). In many ways, this is not unlike meditation: “We choose the term ‘presencing’ to describe this state because it is about becoming totally present – to the larger space or field around us, to an expanded sense of self, and, ultimately, to what is emerging through us” (91); “Getting to the ‘different place’ that allows presencing to occur begins as we develop a capacity to let go and surrender our perceived need to control”; and “The seeds for this transformation lie in seeing our reality more clearly, without preconceptions and judgments” (131).
(96).

The authors, indeed, link this practice with Buddhist tradition: “Developing a capacity to let go allows us to be open to what is emerging and to practice what Buddhism and other meditative traditions call ‘nonattachment.’ In Buddhist theory, two Sanskrit terms, (96) vitarka and vicara, are used to describe the subtle attachments of mind. Vitarka characterizes the state of ‘seeking,’ when our attention is attached to what we’re trying to make happen. Vicara characterizes the state of ‘watching,’ when, even though we’re not trying to force something to happen, we’re still attached to an outcome we are waiting for. With either, our mental attachment makes us blind or resistant to other aspects of what is happening right now. Overcoming the traps of vitarka and vicara requires continual letting go” (97).

The point of this U trajectory is not to be spiritual, per se, but to see results. The authors argue that engaging in what amounts to a spiritual process will lead to better outcomes. The difference, if we were to make an analogy to scientists: “‘most scientists take existing frameworks and overlay them onto some situation,’ while ‘first-rate ones sit back and study the situation from many, many angles and then ask, ‘What’s fundamentally going on here?’” (85). And while the latter are not any more intelligent than the former, they are able to make the real breakthroughs. Eleanor Rosch, professor of cognitive psychology at the University of California at Berkeley talks about the need for all science to be done with the “‘mind of wisdom’” (98). And she sees this as an almost artistic outlook: “Great artists naturally operate from this other level and always have.’ This ‘other level’ entails a different sort of knowing, what is called in Tibetan Buddhism ‘wisdom awareness.’” (98). Rosch suggests that the trick is in recognizing that “‘mind and world are not separate’” (98), as Buddhism teaches.

Now, psychologists are not the most receptive audience when it comes to pithy spiritual sayings; so in terms that are more palpable for the academics, Rosch has come up with two categories of knowing: ‘primary knowing’ and ‘analytic knowing.’ The former, “arises by means of ‘interconnected (98) wholes, rather than isolated contingent parts and by means of timeless, direct, presentation’ rather than through stored ‘re-presentation.’ ‘Such knowing is open rather than determinate, and a sense of unconditional value, rather than conditional usefulness, is an inherent part of the act of knowing itself,’ said Rosch. Acting from such awareness is ‘spontaneous, rather than the result of decision making,’ and it is ‘compassionate… since it is based on wholes larger than the self’” (99). And:

…all these attributes – timeless, direct, spontaneous, open, unconditional value, and compassionate – go together as one thing. That one thing is what some in Tibetan Buddhism call ‘the natural state’ and what Taoism calls ‘the Source’ (99).

Primary knowing has also been described as tapping into a field of knowledge. The authors again draw on Buddhist teaching: “Tibetan Buddhism talks about emptiness, luminosity, and the knowing capacity as inseparable. That knowing capacity actually is the field knowing itself, in a sense, or this larger context knowing itself’” (99).

Of course, we do not tend to operate on this plane. And furthermore, our technology is beating the capacity to reach that plane right out of us. As the authors say matter-of-factly, “The problem is that most of us have spent our lives immersed in analytic knowing, with its dualistic separation of subject (‘I’) and object (‘it’). There’s nothing wrong with analytic knowing. It’s useful and appropriate for many activities – for example, for interacting with machines. But if it’s our only way of knowing, we’ll tend to apply it in all situations” (99). To me this signals a potential point of intervention, though I hardly know yet what this means in terms of new design concepts. Can we develop technologies that are not built on – and thereby reinforce – this dualistic thinking? My initial reaction is that blurring the boundary between ‘I’ and ‘it’ seems like the misguided goal of VR technology. But then again, immersion, which I have argued elsewhere is certainly not a spiritual evil, does just that – blurs the distinctions. How could you build a system that allows for the kind of immersive experience that something like meditation does? And if part of analytic knowing is it’s linear nature, is there a way of designing for more nebulous, non-linear interaction with a computer? Do we always, for example, need to be oriented around our selves, our avatars and profiles, when we engage with the Internet? Could we be and experience multiple perspectives simultaneously? Is there a way of attaining what Ohashi calls ‘alien self’?:

Ryosoke Ohashi, a scholar of Japan’s leading twentieth-century Zen philosopher, Kitaro Nishida, used the word ‘alien self’ to describe what arises when the localized sense of self fades: ‘Something which is quite alien to me enables my existence.’ Eastern traditions often label this ‘nothingness’: ‘This nothingness enables my existence and also my relation with all.’ But ‘in traditional Christian terminology, this absolute alienness could be said to be God. God is in me – although Nishida doesn’t directly say ‘God.’ But something that is quite alien to me is in my own self’ (101).

More obviously than immediately suggesting design interventions and concepts, this section very clearly advocates a particular methodology that I should probably try to use in my PhD. My supervisor had been describing a non-linear design process to me, that sounds much like this: about doing the linear bit that’s necessary for the literature review, but simultaneously allowing the intuition, completely uninhibited, to make leaps. The thing that I really like about this section is that I now have a spiritual justification for using this design methodology. This ‘presencing’ in my PhD is, effectively, spiritual practice applied to design thinking.

And lastly, I think one of the points I should argue in my PhD is that this spiritual process – which the design community would to some extent embrace (though perhaps not always in Buddhist terms) – would be tremendously helpful for coming up with radical innovations in computing, which is more biased toward and traditionally linear. Infusing computing thinking with spiritual ‘knowing’, and borrowing methodologically from design, I will argue, might just be the key to really changing the world.

Into the Silence

A summary of:
Senge, P., Scharmer, C.O., Jaworski, J. & Flowers, B.S. (2004). Presence: Exploring Profound Change in People, Organizations and Society. Nicholas Brealey Publishing: London.
Part 2 – Into the Silence
Chapter 5 – The Generative Moment

“...’Adam said that the volume needs to be turned up in order for him to hear. Maybe he’s not so different from the rest of us – we all must spend our lives learning to ‘hear the silence.’ The Indian teacher Krishnamurti said that this is why real communication is so rare: “Real communication can take place only where there is silence.” But there is also something more in this silence that goes beyond opening the heart and seeing “from inside”’” (79).

This above story exemplifies the difference between spiritual and non-spiritual communication. Spiritual communication is about listening. Non-spiritual communication is about talking; which reinforces the informationist notion that ‘more is better.’ We design all sorts of technological tools that help us do more talking… but do we have anything that is aimed at helping us be better listeners?

In the previous section, the authors mentioned an experience of radical change at a steelworks that began with learning the skills of dialogue. Researchers from the MIT Dialogue Project taught these skills to both management and union teams, who had previously been locked in fierce arguments that were seemingly irresolvable; “Then the teams began to meet together – and after only a few meetings, the combined group began to discover the ability to have ‘real talk’ about difficult issues. Eventually, tangible consequences became evident in the plant: dramatic declines in accidents and absenteeism, as well as improvements in productivity. The backlog of grievances fell from 485 to zero. Union and management were starting to work together to address systemic issues that had been neglected for decades” (34). I saw this at Corus too. The union leaders talked about the importance of respect, honesty, openness… and this all enabled them to listen to each other better and actually solve problems. I have a feeling that this insight will be the source of at least one mini-solution that I come up with in the course of the PhD.

This section has also given me an idea for a focus group. One of the authors tells the story of when he was involved in seeing the end of apartheid in South Africa. Leaders created two stories to share with the people as inspiration: one of the ‘low road’ and one of the ‘high road’. It allowed people to see the importance of taking the high road, making the more difficult decisions that would lead to a better future. This kind of storytelling might be useful in my writeup for justifying the need for radical change with regards to our technological engagements. Also, the author explained that further steps were taken to involve people in thinking about and creating an alternative future. They brought people together, and they came up with 4 possible scenarios: 1) The Ostrich, characterized by putting one’s head in the sand; 2) Lame Duck, where government was crippled and made no progress; 3) Icarus, where radical changes were made too quickly and came crashing down; and 4) Flamingo: “The scenario called “Flamingo” was one that no one particularly liked initially because flamingos take off very slowly. But they also take off together. As the group thought through these different stories, they came to the conviction that the only viable way forward was “Flamingo”’” (74-5). I wonder if it might be worthwhile holding a focus group and having participants imagine future scenarios and see what conclusions they reach about how we must proceed.

Learning to See

A summary of:
Senge, P., Scharmer, C.O., Jaworski, J. & Flowers, B.S. (2004). Presence: Exploring Profound Change in People, Organizations and Society. Nicholas Brealey Publishing: London.
Introduction & Part 1 – Learning to See

As I mentioned in my reflections on The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace, Wertheim showed how Giotto's art was the first instance of an entirely new way of seeing: with perspective, with depth. It was the beginning of representational art, and paved the way for ‘physical vision’ to supplant ‘spiritual vision.’ In other words, one kind of seeing came to dominate, while our ability to see differently eroded over time. The authors of this book seem to be making the case that we need to retrieve our old way of seeing, a spiritual way of seeing; and that this is the key to shaking off the shackles of modernity that prevent us from achieving our true potential.

The authors of this book take a systems (or even ecological) approach to understanding why change doesn’t happen… but how it could. They argue that resistance to change can be understood as an ‘immune system’ response, an inborn self-preservation mechanism that seeks out and destroys ‘otherness’ (35). This happens in organizations too: the members become ‘vehicles for presencing the prevailing systems of management because those systems are most familiar’ (9). The other way of explaining this same phenomemon is habit (or even Bourdieu’s habitus), which is easy, and comfortable, but dangerous: “As long as our thinking is governed by habit – notably by industrial, ‘machine age’ concepts such as control, predictability, standardization, and ‘faster is better’ – we will continue to re-create institutions as they have been, despite their disharmony with the larger world, and the need of all living systems to evolve” (9).

Another danger of this resistence to ‘otherness’ is that it prevents a healthy (and spiritual) process of ‘suspension’. “As the noted physicist David Bohm used to say, ‘Normally, our thoughts have us rather than we having them.’ Suspending does not require destroying our existing mental models of reality – which would be impossible even if we tried – or ignoring them. Rather, it entails what Bohm called ‘hanging our assumptions in front of us.’ By doing so, we begin to notice our thoughts and mental models as the workings of our own mind. And as we become aware of our thoughts, they begin to have less influence on what we see. Suspension allows us to ‘see our seeing’” (29).

Suspension helps us see clearly; in a way, defamiliarizing our reality so that we can see it differently. The authors argue that this new ‘seeing’ is necessary if we want to make major change: “Most change initiatives that end up going nowhere don’t fail because they lack grand visions and noble intentions. They fail because people can’t see the reality they face” (29). And in terms of businesses and organizations, the key epiphany they must experience is that they “become aware of themselves as living. Once they do, they can then become a place for the presencing of the whole as it might be, not just as it has been” (10). In other words, Step one: see reality as it is; Step two: envision an alternate reality; (Step three: start walking in that direction). (And notably, this is exactly the process that Corus underwent in the beginning of their cultural change program.)

Another important idea from this beginning section of the book is the notion of non-judgment. There is no point in self-reflection if you are going to be judgmental of what you see; otherwise you’ll just revert to your comfort zone and resist change. In fact, you’ll resist your own genius! The authors cite a study of genius which showed that “up to the age of 4, almost all the children were at the genius level”… but that by “over twenty, the genius level proportion of subjects sank to 2 percent” (30). The question is, What happened? Where did it go??? “It didn’t go anywhere; it’s covered over by the Voice of Judgment” (30). This is why people who write about “creativity” (Csikszentmihalyi, De Bono, etc.) try to get people to set aside their judgment: “What we’re trying to do is set up situations where people can attack the Voice of Judgment and access their deeper creativity.’ Ray believes that we can consistently bring our creativity into our lives by ‘paying attention to it’ and (30) by building the capacity to suspend the judgments that arise in our mind… that limit creativity” (31).

But of course we also see this idea of non-judgment in the practice of meditation. For example, Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn describes meditation as a process of “‘purposefully refining our capacity for paying attention, ultimately to anything and everything that might be relevant to navigating in the world with open eyes and hearts’” (50). We might understand ‘open eyes’ to mean ‘suspension’ in Bohm’s terms (or ‘concentration’ in Kabat-Zinn’s: “‘When you begin to focus,’ he said, ‘two elements come quickly to the fore. One is that the mind has a life of its own and tends to go all over the place. By cultivating paying attention, you can become less reactive and agitated. That’s called the concentration aspect of meditation’” (50)). And then we might understand the ‘open hearts’ aspect to be this non-judgmental aspect, which the authors would call ‘redirection’ (51), and which Kabat-Zinn calls mindfulness: ‘Then, if you bring a certain kind of open, moment-to-moment, nonjudgmental awareness to what you’re attending to, you’ll begin to develop a more penetrative awareness that sees beyond the surface of what’s going on in your field of awareness. This is mindfulness.” (50). And this combination breeds creativity, and perhaps even genius: “’[he continues…] Mindfulness makes it possible to see connections that may not have been visible before’” (50)…. [and the authors add] mindfulness explores the possibility of dropping ‘underneath our conventional and highly conditioned way of seeing that separates and reifies a subject and object’” (51).

The authors of this book introduce a concept called ‘presence’, which is not so different from this meditation. This is how they define it: “We’ve come to believe that the core capacity needed to access the field of the future is presence. We first thought of presence as being fully conscious and aware in the present moment. Then we began to appreciate presence as deep listening, of being open beyond one’s preconceptions and historical ways of making sense. We came to see the importance of letting go of old identities and the need to control and, as Salk said, making choices to serve the evolution of life. Ultimately, we came to see all these aspects of presence as leading to a state of (13) ‘letting come,’ of consciously participating in a larger field for change. When this happens, the field shifts, and the forces shaping a situation can move from re-creating the past to manifesting or realizing an emerging future” (14). This presencing is the key to radical change, and innovation as well. This puts the following quote in some perspective: “As W. Brian Arthur, noted economist of the Santa Fe Institute, put it, ‘Every profound innovation is based on an inward-bound journey, on going to a deeper place where knowing comes to the surface’” (13). The lesson for me personally is that if I am going to come up with radical solutions, my process needs to be spiritual. Hence the decision now to use ‘creative engagements’, non-judgmental creations, as a means of accessing a more intuitive solution to the problem of merging the technological and the spiritual.

And furthermore, it suggests that the aim of my PhD, while admittedly incredibly ambitious, is potentially THE avenue to creating mass change. The technological solution I propose needs to engage people in a spiritual, meditative process, so that a shift occurs inside of them… thus facilitating spiritual growth. One author relays a conversation with a peer in which they discuss avenues for radical change: “‘[He asked]…How can we shift the whole?...; [the other answered] ‘After reflecting a moment, he said he’s become convinced that political, legal, and economic approaches don’t go deep enough. By themselves, they won’t bring about the penetrating changes in human culture that we need for people to live in true harmony and balance with one another and the earth. He told me that he is convinced that the next great opening of an ecological worldview will have to be an internal one…’” (56). And elsewhere, this same message is echoed: “‘You know,’ said Joseph quietly, ‘When all is said and done, the only change that will make a difference is the transformation of the human heart’” (26). To reiterate, the lesson here is that radical, profound change, must involve transforming people in a spiritual way. This is why I have refined the aim of my PhD as creating a cyber-environment in which spirituality can thrive (or at least does not erode); but especially to begin a dialogue about why this spiritual technology is necessary, as a means of waking people up, i.e. beginning a transformation of the human heart.

I think it may prove crucial to my thesis to relate this (as these authors have done) back to notions of this ‘shift’ that come from spiritual traditions. I found this paragraph really helpful: “Through our interviews, we’ve discovered similarities to shifts in awareness that have been recognized in spiritual traditions around the world for thousands of years. For example, in esoteric Christian traditions such shifts are associated with ‘grace’ or ‘revelation’ or ‘the Holy Spirit.’ Taoist theory speaks of the transformation of vital energy (qing, pronounced ‘ching’) into subtle life forces (qi, pronounced ‘chi’), and into spiritual energy (shin). This process involves an essential quieting of the mind that Buddhists call ‘cessation,’ wherein the normal flow of thoughts ceases and the normal boundaries between self and world dissolve. In Hindu traditions, this shift is called wholeness or oneness. In the mystic traditions of Islam, such as Sufism, it is known simply as ‘opening the heart.’ Each tradition describes this shift a little differently, but all recognize it as being central to personal cultivation or maturation” (14). What’s great about this – i.e. situating these concepts within spiritual traditions and invoking their vernacular – is that it will help justify to my readers why I use the term “spiritual technology” rather than, say, “humanist”; because I am trying to convey this profound transformation that we can really only begin to capture with words like ‘spiritual.’

This has made me think that it might be a really good idea to structure my thesis into different spiritual steps, e.g. suspension, non-judgment, revelation, etc.; to relate the process of constructing the PhD to a spiritual process, and in doing so maintain a continuity between ‘subject and frame’, between what is described and how it is described, or as Frank Lloyd Wright might say, to achieve a certain metaphorical ‘truth to materials.’ One such section, for example, might be on ‘isness’, a term that I get from Meister Eckhart to describe the way in which all things are God; there is no differentiation (no otherness). A spiritual goal, then, might be seeing this profound ‘isness’; which you might also describe as cultivating holistic thinking (“Bortoff said, ‘You have to cultivate a quality of perception that is striving outwards, from the whole to the part’” (46); and “Dissolving the boundaries between seer and seen leads not only to a deep sense of connection but also to a heightened sense of change” (43)). This thinking is what allows you to see differently, for the “figure and ground to reverse” (49), which is a key to imagining completely new solutions to problems.