WThere have been so many post-mortems about the election that there is now a wave of post-mortems. But if we zoom out and look at the big picture, what are our most urgent needs? We need to examine not only why we are so polarized and divided, but also why there is so much lack of compassion, empathy, and understanding for those with whom we disagree.
The seeds of this decline were sown long before the 2024 campaign. Decades ago, when our mainstream culture began to reject organized religion with all its flaws, we began to reject the spiritual side of life along with it. We threw out the baby with the bath water. And we have filled that void with very poor alternatives. The most important of those alternatives is politics.
Politics is certainly important. There is a balance between people’s livelihoods, their rights, and their freedom to live their lives in ways that allow them to thrive. Political engagement is important, especially when it comes to protecting the most vulnerable. But as the saying goes, everything is political, but politics is not everything. And only by not asking politics for what it cannot give us can we maximize our effectiveness.
The consequences of elevating politics to the level of religion are all around us. The central element of all fundamentalist religions is dogma. The point of the doctrine is to define and defend the boundaries of acceptable opinion, and to label those who stray from those boundaries as outright heretics. And heretics, even if not burned at the stake, are dehumanized, ostracized, and denied empathy and understanding. This is the poisonous fruit of seeking politics to be the center or sole source of meaning in our lives, the answer to our fundamental desire to connect with something bigger than ourselves. is.
Jungian psychoanalyst Marion Woodman wrote, “Without an understanding of myth and religion…the individual suffers alone with the mysteries of life as a meaningless mayhem.” This is a good illustration of our current moment, the result of turning politics into the sole organizing force of our lives.
It’s terrible for the body politic and it’s terrible for our actual bodies. Research shows that politics can cause serious damage, increasing our stress, depriving us of sleep, and damaging our mental and physical health. Kevin B. Smith, a political science professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said there is “ample and growing evidence that politics has negative effects on a wide range of health outcomes.” “This is something that different scholars are putting out using different data, approaches, and measures, all triangulating around the same inference: Politics is not very good for us.”
In fact, one 2019 study found that political events can increase emotional reactivity to everyday stressors. This is in direct contrast to spiritual practices that help dampen our reactions to everyday stressors.
Another substitute for the spiritual aspect that we ignore is “scientism”. Don’t confuse this with science. Scientism, or scientific materialism, is the dogmatic belief that science and its methods of gathering information are the only valid source of true knowledge.
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Of course, science is important and is a valuable primary driver of material progress. What distinguishes scientism from science is the dogmatic belief that science can provide comprehensive answers to all questions important in all aspects of life, and that there is only one answer to all these questions. That means there is. In his visionary 1992 book Technopolis, Neil Postman describes scientism as a “despair” that science can answer questions such as “What, when, and why is life?” “a kind of hope and wish, and ultimately an illusory belief.” “Why is there death and suffering?” “What is right and wrong to do?” “What are the consequences of good and evil?” “How do we think and feel?” , should we take action?”
And among scientists there are many who criticize scientism. Ian Hutchinson, a professor of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, argues for the limits of scientism in his book Monopolizing Knowledge. “There are many other important beliefs, not just religious but also secular, that are justified and rational but are not scientific and are therefore alienated from scientism,” Hutchinson writes. “If so, scientism is a terrible intellectual mistake.” And many experiences, such as “the beauty of a sunset” or “the drama of a play,” are outside the scope of science. Laurence Principe, professor of chemistry and history of science at Johns Hopkins University, points out that scientism “can be at odds with the insights offered and expressed by poetry, art, music, and aesthetics.” And no amount of randomized, double-blind trials can prove the ultimate importance of love, compassion, and forgiveness. These are spiritual doctrines, not scientific doctrines.
Scientism, Postman writes, involves “misusing techniques such as quantification to solve problems for which numbers say nothing.” The famous adage that you can’t manage what you can’t measure is also useful in business. But it’s not very helpful for other important aspects of our lives. Quantification is good for sales, but it has nothing to do with soul. The soul can be investigated, but it cannot be managed or measured.
C. Thi Nguyen, a philosophy professor at the University of Utah, writes about the concept of “value capture” in a recent paper in the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy. This is about translating our deepest goals into measurable goals, and technology makes it so much easier. to do. For example, while many aspects of our physical health can be measured and tracked, mental health cannot be reduced to daily numbers.
Since the Enlightenment, science has been seen as fundamentally opposed to religion and spirituality. However, many of our great scientists bluntly rejected this simple opposition. “I believe in Spinoza’s God,” Albert Einstein said of the 17th-century philosopher who believed that God manifests himself in the orderly harmony of nature. And Einstein delivered the ultimate rebuke to scientism. “The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe.”
Science and spirituality, what Hutchinson describes as the “twin offspring of humanity’s yearning for answers,” can coexist harmoniously if we stop thinking of them as two adversaries in a zero-sum competition. Each offers us unique advantages. Renowned biologist Stephen Jay Gould beautifully described this as part of the concept of NOMA (Non-duplicate Magicians). Religion, on the other hand, operates in an equally important but quite different realm of human purpose, meaning, and value, a subject that may be but never resolved in the realm of scientific facts. ”
It is the dogmatists on both sides who are causing the conflict. The growth of fundamentalism in science coincided with the growth of fundamentalism in politics and religion. And, as in many other conflicts, the two extremes, while ostensibly opposed, feed into each other. There are always losers, as seen in the ostracization of scientists and experts who questioned the scope and duration of the lockdown, and the suppression of any debate over whether the coronavirus could have originated in a laboratory. It is in the public interest. And at the same time, many public health officials urging people to get the coronavirus vaccine have been the targets of personal threats.
No wonder this scientific fundamentalism replaces technology with religion. In his book, The Technological Agnostic: How Technology Became the World’s Most Powerful Religion, Greg Epstein argues that technology has rituals and rituals that we all perform reverently every day. I’m doing it. It connects us with a community of like-minded people, has its own priestly class, and has the potential to bring about change, which we believe will lead to a happier future. Some even think it may grant immortality. “In other words, technology has become a religion,” Epstein writes.
In an interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin at DealBook Summit, Sam Altman used the word “magic” to describe AI. He corrected himself by adding, “It’s not magic” and “It’s incredible science.” But in reality, Altman was right. AI seems like magic. And even the technology leaders creating it don’t fully understand how it works. But it’s worth pointing out that while we regularly talk about technology as magic, we take a backseat to the idea of exploring humanity’s magic. We look at technological innovations with awe and wonder, but ignore the mysteries that technology neither creates nor explains.
When we close off our spiritual selves and treat those with whom we disagree as heretics, we also close off the path to forgiveness, grace, and salvation. All of these are lacking in today’s culture. However, we all need forgiveness and understanding, but find it difficult to give it to others.
So, yes, we need to get involved in politics. We should celebrate scientific discoveries and new technologies. But we must also remember to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and only what is Caesar’s.
