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But as the countryside materialised around me - the purple-grey ridge of the Black Mountains to the north starkly beautiful in the dawn - I was slowly beginning to understand. This was not my world any more. Not in Herodotus, not in Seattle, not in Hamburg or Montreal or London. Not even in New York.
In my world, there were no nymphs in trees and streams. No gods, no ghosts, no ancestral spirits. Nothing - outside our own cultures, our own laws, our own passions - existed in order to punish us or comfort us, to affirm any act of hatred or love.
My own parents had understood this perfectly, but theirs had been the first generation to be so free of the shackles of superstition. And after the briefest flowering of understanding, my own generation had grown complacent. At some level, we must have started taking it for granted that the way the universe worked was now obvious to any child, even though it went against everything innate to the species: the wild, undisciplined love of patterns, the craving to extract meaning and comfort from everything in sight.
We thought we were passing on everything that mattered to our children: science, history, literature, art. Vast libraries of information lay at their fingertips. But we hadn't fought hard enough to pass on the hardest-won truth of all: Morality comes only from within. Meaning comes only from within. Outside our own skulls, the universe is indifferent.
Maybe, in the West, we'd delivered the death blows to the old doctrinal religions, the old monoliths of delusion, but that victory meant nothing at all.
Because taking their place now, everywhere, was the saccharine poison of spirituality.
From Silver Fire, collected with Mitochondrial Eve in Luminous
I expected this to be the last one I posted but I just finished Teranesia so I think I will do one more. I've noticed his near future stories tend to be a lot more depressing than the far future ones.
In my world, there were no nymphs in trees and streams. No gods, no ghosts, no ancestral spirits. Nothing - outside our own cultures, our own laws, our own passions - existed in order to punish us or comfort us, to affirm any act of hatred or love.
My own parents had understood this perfectly, but theirs had been the first generation to be so free of the shackles of superstition. And after the briefest flowering of understanding, my own generation had grown complacent. At some level, we must have started taking it for granted that the way the universe worked was now obvious to any child, even though it went against everything innate to the species: the wild, undisciplined love of patterns, the craving to extract meaning and comfort from everything in sight.
We thought we were passing on everything that mattered to our children: science, history, literature, art. Vast libraries of information lay at their fingertips. But we hadn't fought hard enough to pass on the hardest-won truth of all: Morality comes only from within. Meaning comes only from within. Outside our own skulls, the universe is indifferent.
Maybe, in the West, we'd delivered the death blows to the old doctrinal religions, the old monoliths of delusion, but that victory meant nothing at all.
Because taking their place now, everywhere, was the saccharine poison of spirituality.
From Silver Fire, collected with Mitochondrial Eve in Luminous
I expected this to be the last one I posted but I just finished Teranesia so I think I will do one more. I've noticed his near future stories tend to be a lot more depressing than the far future ones.
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I Like It. Thanks!
Date: 2006-11-02 14:16 (UTC)From:Egan? Sounds familiar, and I'm thinkin' a Google will alleviate my current not-knowing condition, so no worries 'bout explaining.
[/INNBB-Mode] {-;
I really love this passage. It is oh so true, as ignorance is the easiest intellectual course a human being can take; especially with all the "help" we're given via commercial and entertainment channels of every medium.
One slight caveat I'll submit, though not-unreservedly: as with any chemical additives with which we can treat our brains, spirituality, though certainly a saccharine poison when overblown in its importance due to the nebulous nature of its normal definition(s), I believe to be quite natural and mundane in its actual existence.
By my own definition of "spirit", it's merely the personality with which we are observed to be living each our individual lives. It is how we approach, and appear to approach our lives and any (or at least many) of the varied and sundry situations with which we're confronted and presented on a daily basis.
In other words, there isn't necessarily anything superstitious or supernatural 'bout spirituality, though I totally understand how abused (and IMO, misused*) that this term truly is.
So I get Egan's point.
* Again, I know how it and why it's defined as traditionally so. Spirits are essentially the same as ghosts, which, as far as I've ever seen, exist exclusively in the minds of those who perceive them. Not a lotta empiricism backin' up their existence, eh.
Seeya L8r, and thanks again for the link to this post!
I just blogged part of this myself
Date: 2007-03-11 07:29 (UTC)From:As to "spirituality" I have heard both Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins use the term awkwardly, and I have heard Susan Blackmore deal with it much more directly. She recasts "spirituality" as "extraordinary experience", and I think that is closer to what people who don't believe in spirits mean when they say "spirituality"/
:-Dan
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Mysteries are Questions Not Answers
http://malcorianmonism.blogspot.com/