WI’ve had so many autopsies the election that a wave of postmortem autopsies is coming now. But if we zoom out – way out – and look at the bigger picture, what we urgently need to examine isn’t just why we’re so polarized and divided. , but also why we lack so much compassion, empathy and understanding towards those with whom we disagree.
The seeds of this decline were sown well before the 2024 campaign. Decades ago, as our dominant culture began to reject organized religion, with all its faults, we also began to reject the spiritual dimension of life. We threw the baby out with the bathwater. And we have filled the void with deeply inadequate substitutes, chief among them politics.
Politics certainly matters. At stake are people’s livelihoods, rights and freedom to live their lives in a way that allows them to flourish. Political commitment is essential, especially when it comes to protecting the most vulnerable. But as the saying goes, everything is politics but politics is not everything. And we can only maximize our effectiveness by not asking from politics for something that politics cannot give us.
The consequences of elevating politics to religion are all around us. Dogma is a central element of all fundamentalist religions. The purpose of dogma is to define and defend the boundaries of acceptable opinion, and to label anyone who exceeds them as a heretic. And heretics, even if they are not burned alive, are dehumanized, ostracized, and deprived of all empathy and understanding. It is the poisonous fruit of asking politics to be the central or sole source of meaning in our lives – the answer to our fundamental need to connect to something greater than ourselves.
As Jungian psychoanalyst Marion Woodman says wrote“Without an understanding of myth or religion…the individual experiences the mysteries of life as meaningless chaos. » This is an apt description of our current moment – the result of politics becoming the sole organizing force in our lives.
This is terrible both for the body politic and for our body itself. Studies have shown that politics can have far-reaching consequences, making us more stressed, depriving us of sleep, and harming our mental and physical health. “There is a considerable and growing body of evidence that policy has a negative effect on a wide range of health outcomes. » said Kevin B. Smith, professor of political science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “It comes from different researchers using different data, approaches and measures, and it all comes from the same conclusion: politics is not very good for us.”
In fact, a 2019 study found that political events can increase emotional reactivity to daily stressors, which is the exact opposite of spiritual practices that help us become less reactive to daily stressors.
The other costly substitute for our neglected spiritual dimension is “scientism.” Which should not be confused with science. Scientism, or scientific materialism, is the dogmatic belief that science and its methods of gathering information are the only valid sources of true knowledge.
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Of course, science is essential and is the invaluable prime mover of material progress. What separates scientism from science is the dogmatic certainty that science can provide comprehensive answers to all important questions in all aspects of life and that there is only one answer to all these questions. In his prescient 1992 book TechnopoleNeil Postman writes of scientism as “the desperate hope and wish, and ultimately the delusional belief” that science can answer questions such as “What is life, when and why?” “Why death and suffering?” “What is right and wrong to do?” “What are good and bad endings? » “How should we think, feel and behave? »
And there are many critiques of scientism among scientists. In his book Monopolize knowledgeIan Hutchinson, a professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT, argues for the limits of scientism. “There are many other important beliefs, secular as well as religious, that are justified and rational, but unscientific, and therefore marginalized by scientism,” writes Hutchinson, “and if that is the case, then scientism is a horrible intellectual error . » And many experiences – like “the beauty of a sunset” or “the drama of a play” – escape the domain of science. Like Lawrence Principe, professor of chemistry and history of science at Johns Hopkins, Remarksscientism could “be turned against the ideas offered and expressed by poetry, by art, by music, by aesthetics”. And no double-blind randomized trial can prove the ultimate importance of love, compassion and forgiveness. These are spiritual principles, not scientific ones.
Scientism, Postman writes, involves “the misapplication of techniques such as quantification to questions where numbers have nothing to say.” The famous adage that you can’t manage what you can’t measure is useful in business. But it’s less useful for other key aspects of our lives. Quantification is good for sales but of little relevance to souls, which can be explored but neither managed nor measured.
In a recent paper In The Journal of Ethics and Social PhilosophyC. Thi Nguyen, a professor of philosophy at the University of Utah, has written about the concept of “value capture”: replacing our deepest goals with measurable goals, which technology makes so easy to achieve. Many aspects of our physical health can be measured and tracked, for example, but our spiritual health cannot be counted daily.
Since the Age of Enlightenment, science has often been seen as being in fundamental conflict with religion and spirituality. But many of our greatest scientists have rejected this simplistic conflict outright. “I believe in Spinoza’s God,” said Albert Einstein, referring to the 17th-century philosopher who believed God was revealed in the ordered harmony of nature. And Einstein delivered the ultimate rebuke to scientism: “The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. »
When we stop seeing them as two adversaries in a zero-sum battle, science and spirituality – “the two children of the human desire for answers,” as Hutchinson describes them – can coexist in harmony, each bringing us its unique benefits. The famous biologist Stephen Jay Gould describe this beautifully within the framework of his concept of NOMA (Non-Overlapping Magisteria): “Science attempts to document the factual character of the natural world and to develop theories that coordinate and explain these facts. Religion, on the other hand, operates in the equally important, but entirely different, realm of human purposes, meanings, and values—topics that the factual realm of science might illuminate, but can never resolve.
It is the dogmatists on both sides who drive the conflict. The growth of scientific fundamentalism has occurred concurrently with the growth of political and religious fundamentalism. And as in many other conflicts, the extremes – apparently in opposition – feed off each other. The loser is always the public good, as we saw in the ostracism of scientists and experts who questioned the extent or duration of lockdowns, or in the stifling of any debate over whether the COVID-19 virus could have come from a laboratory. And on the other hand, many public health officials urging people to get vaccinated against COVID-19 were target with personal threats.
It is not surprising that this scientific fundamentalism substitutes technology for religion. In his book, Tech Agnostic: How Technology Became the World’s Most Powerful ReligionGreg Epstein argues that technology involves rituals and rites that we all perform with devotion every day. It connects us to a community of like-minded people, it has its own priestly class, it can be transformative and we are convinced that it will lead to a happier future. Some even believe it could grant immortality. “In other words,” Epstein writes, “technology has become a religion. »
In a interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin at the DealBook Summit, Sam Altman used the word “magic” to describe AI. He corrected himself by adding “no magic”, but rather “incredible science”. But in reality, Altman was right. AI seems magical. And even the tech leaders who created it aren’t completely sure how it works. But it’s worth pointing out that while we regularly talk about technology as magic, we shy away from the idea of exploring the magic of our humanity. We look at technological innovations with awe and wonder, but overlook the mysteries that are neither created nor explained by technology.
When we shut down our spiritual selves, when we treat those with whom we disagree as heretics, we also close off avenues of forgiveness, grace, and redemption – all of which are rare in our culture today . And yet, we all need the forgiveness and understanding that we often struggle to give to others.
So yes, we should be in politics. We should celebrate scientific discoveries and new technologies. But neither should we forget to return to Caesar the things – and only the things – that belong to Caesar.