concrete social realities

"[T]he ‘inner-turn’ drives us away from concerns with the material; so much so that being preoccupied with worldly matters is somehow portrayed as tawdry or shallow. It’s no accident that we see the wealthy and celebrities drawn to this very capitalist form of religion: most of the world realizes that material concerns do matter. I don’t believe that we find ourselves and meaning via an inner journey. I’m not even sure I know what it means. While of course there is course for introspection and self-examination, this, I argue, has to be in a context of concrete social realities."


From here  An interview with the writer of Dispirited, an attack on "Spiritual but not Religious" thought.


Sometimes intelligent atheists (as opposed to the mindless group-thinkers of the half-educated leftish metropolitan mass) make telling points about spirituality that need making. This book directs its critique at the 'New Age' Mind-Body-Spirit mulch that passes for serious inner enquiry, though it also looks towards Theravada Buddhism, with its absence of overt diety-worship, for a common ground in belief between traditional systems of thought and modern post-religious ideas. It's a trend in modern discourse towards establishing a firmer ground for truth than the post-modern relativism that so many so-called intellectuals have gotten lost in: with their ridiculous contradictions, often projecting exotic notions onto traditional societies (especially when they are suicide bombing us) while simultaneously thinking their systems of thought are rooted in ignorance. But traditional thought is complex and has always contained a range of perspectives that shows up narrow 'modern', atheistic thought for its limited provincialism. 


Modern atheism's rise is a product of the rise of scientific enquiry, itself a faith-based system of thought holding a set of mystical beliefs: that the universe appeared out of nothing, that human consciousness is an accident of evolutionary processes that has somehow created a mind risen above the very processes that created it, and become capable of reversing or resisting negative selfish aspects of those processes (perpetuating a Christian notion of original sin overturned by an enlightened interior turn). Science's rise to cultural dominance in advanced technological societies is entirely due to its role in serving technological advance, and with it the production of consumer goods, the essential driver of capitalist enterprise and the dominance of markets and their economic logic. Leftist atheists owe their current dominance of public discourse to capitalism and serve its most iniquitous machinations through their denial of the true root of human benevolence. 


As Theravada Buddhism, and the Vedanta, its philosophical progenitor holds, human consciousness is not a uniquely established phenomenon that separates the human body out from the rest of the universe, but the ubiquitous and all-encompassing universal consciousness manifesting in an organism that has evolved as part of an interdependent and interactive totality. It is the fact of its immersion in the world that means the human body, rooted as it is in the environment, both social and 'natural', cannot escape its responsibilities to others and to the world - however that arises. The 'inner turn' in the true sense is not a turn away from the world, the conditions we all live in and the relations between us. But is a turn towards a greater reality - and therefore greater source of love and knowledge - than modern atheist thought can perceive. The capacity to care is greater when intelligent analysis and activity is rooted in a direct perception of the reality that we are, at root, a conscious singularity with only apparent separateness.