The problem with the notion I posit in my previous post -- that there's a kind of spiritual ecosphere that not only welcomes but needs the whole spectrum of spiritual perspectives, from committed atheist to firm fundamentalist -- is so clear, I'm not sure how I could have failed to miss it:
Does this mean we'll always have rabid fundamentalists, of whatever faith, that will be trying to bring down a world full of "heretics"? Will we always be putting up with this nonsense? Is it some kind of blind instinct for culling the overcrowded earth? Is it a current of darkness that keeps being passed beneath us, like some slow-moving tectonic plate?
Or is it just crap that we shouldn't put up with?
How do we break the cycle, not just of religious intolerance, but of all the other intolerances that flesh is heir to? What little thing can each of us do, what big thing can all of us do, to stop the madness?
Chucking organized religion. That may be an option for individuals, but I don't think the human race has ever existed (however small, primitive, isolated a society may be) without having -- as one major pillar of its existence -- an idea, a collective story, a momentous event around which sanctity gathered. And I think there's a reason for that: we are wired (by whom?) to try to unweave the threads that make us and weave them into a larger pattern. This is a critical human exercise, and one (as Amba notes) in which both religion and science play roles.
Attacking the fascist elements of a specific religion. If successful, knocking down the armies of God works for a little while. But religions have long memories. And the religions with grudges, with billions of poor adherents with little to lose, or the ones with highly developed infrastructures and a knack for expansion -- these kinds of faiths can graft themselves onto the political infrastructure and become that infrastructure. Then, even centuries later, they come back to avenge their ancient anger.
Today it's Islamofascism. There's no question it's an urgent threat to a freer and more inclusive way of living in the world, and it has to be confronted.
But tomorrow it could be something else. What's happening underneath the shifting plates of culture and commerce that gives this movement its power?
Where will it manifest next?
Who's going to stop it, and how?
Start with yourself: what can you do, in your own small way, to help keep religion from embracing, or becoming, the Reaper?
More important, still: what can you do to vaporize one, small, localized tumor of hatred?
--T.A.
To me, the most important thing we can do may be to recite the mantra, "I don't know." Remember that whatever you believe, whatever you feel, whatever you think you know, ultimately you don't know and neither does anybody else.
This may still involve going to wars of self-defense with those who are sure they know for sure. But if we are to survive (and I agree we're not likely to chuck organized religion), more and more people within organized religion are going to have to recognize that their Great Story is only one of many possible and potent metaphors.
Posted by: amba | February 13, 2006 at 11:18 AM