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lost_in_space2020 t1_iuxr9dw wrote

Reply to comment by Storque in The meaning crisis and language II — We need to ‘believe’ myth and metaphor in order to understand ourselves by Melodic_Antelope6490

"But the sort of “meaning void” we’ve fallen in to is much more a result of changing social and environmental factors, ideological and philosophical conflict between different sources of authority, and a general deepening of our knowledge (thus resulting in myth and metaphor needing to more accurately depict reality), than it is about our disconnection from some primal Truth that can only be ascertained through spiritual means."

So much yes. "In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did that which was right in his own eyes." My friends and I frequently draw on that verse as an apt analogy of the current state of knowledge. I used to think it was possible to form some kind of "cosmological analogy" for our new technological paradigm, but sometimes the only way out of something is to go through it. Unfortunately I don't see the conflict resolving into a new paradigm anytime soon.

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Storque t1_iuyhfyd wrote

I couldn’t agree more.

As much as modern interpretations of spirituality get flack, I actually see them as a move in the right direction.

When people on Instagram post things about “listening to the universe” or whatever, I see it as a secular attempt to employ traditional religious modes and methods of interacting with the world and life in general.

In a world that is as decentralized as the one that we live in, it’s impossible to know when, if ever, such a belief system could codify into a unified set of principles that we could follow as a collective.

I’m doubtful if such an ideological unification would even be a good thing in the first place.

But I do see a lot of evidence that there is a trend towards a sort of modern, decentralized, more secular spirituality which at least attempts to reconcile our emotional wants and needs with modern developments in science and philosophy.

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