Hello, I just wanted to start a conversation here, since personally I have been increasingly leaning towards what I would think is an animistic or pantheistic worldview, apparently many people are also of the same mind so I just wanted to get some other perspectives.
I increasingly do not think that humans have some monopoly on consciousness or intelligence it also appears that there is something more to evolution than simple random selection, that there is some kind of underlying intelligence to how all life operates, adapting perfectly to it’s environment, this and having had some very powerful experiences on psychedelics ( and yes I do think it’s more than trust a high-dea ) that maybe there is something like consciousness underlying all existence, that everything, even non-living things are in a way “alive”
Other ideas that make me wonder are the discoveries of quantum physics and observation of subatomic particles, which seem to imply that observation itself influence or creates reality. Many New Age types have jumped on this to promote their own Neo Idealistic theology, I think we should be skeptical of those aspiring prophets, but these discoveries do pose serious challenges to the traditional positivist way of understanding reality.
It really makes you wonder like maybe Hegel was right, and that everything is just Mind, history is just God figuring himself out or whatever the fuck he was talking about
All that being said I don’t strictly believe in ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’ and I’m not a fan of crystals and all that mystical woo shit. There may well be something deeper to our consciousness than just the observable brain, that our ability to observe, is based on some rudimentary basis of energy becoming consciousness of itself and maybe we’re all just part of one cosmic consciousness, but to me that would mean that the consciousness is physical in origin, and that actually all matter has some underlying living quality to it. Like maybe the Earth or the Sun or Galaxies themselves are “consciousness” and “alive” in the sense of dynamic self regulating organisms.
All that being said I still think the skeptical/empirical worldview is the best way to go about operating in the real world, and we can speculate about these things, but it is very dangerous to form any rigid dogmatic belief, lest we turn this isn’t some other dogmatic religion, which we humans should have learned by now, is not the way to go.
Thanks for reading, I look forward to seeing other perspectives
In my animistic view, I too try to move away from the word spirit because it’s really carrying a lot of contextual baggage with it. More than the word spirituality I might theorize. When I talk about all things having spirit, I then create a bridge. I say, “Spirit, is the essence of being. It is the energy in every particle of our bodies. It exists in animals and plants. It exists in rocks. It exists in mountains. It exists in forests and rivers. All things that exist, from the things we see and touch, to the air we breathe is part of existence, part of Life.” Or something along those lines, lol.
I do not believe being, or having spirit, requires human consciousness. We have already learned that plants communicate with each other and with the fungi which they feed. It’s a different type of consciousness. Rocks intend to be rocks. It is their being to be rocks. Do they experience their environments like we do? No. They’re rocks. But they do exist, and they are a part of our Life, of our existence.
I have been working on a post of my own about the solarpunk spirituality, and I think you would vibe with it. Spirituality doesn’t need unverifiable claims to be spirituality. I feel like it fits perfectly into the gaps of the gears of science.
I found out on a recent wikipedia trawl that my view on this is effectively ‘panpsychism’. I don’t think that rocks or the wind have complex thoughts, but I do believe that all matter has some sort of fundamental experience to it, and that this synchronises to make stuff like brains.
I do think plants and some microbes have more complex feelings though :)
panpsychism
thanks for this great concept
