Note: Some time ago, I wrote an open letter to Rational Pundits. Admittedly, it was harsh. Inflammatory. I came across a copy of it on the net, and it gave me the willies. I don't stand behind the tone of that previous letter. I wanted to take the opportunity to revisit that letter, and frame it in a tone that is much more in line with my heart, and my wish to participate in a useful way in this discussion. We're all on the same team, after all. So, below is my re-written version of what I wanted to say, and if you do circulate this blog, please reference this version, not the earlier one. Thanks, (sd, 10.25.07)
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I have had the good fortune in this life to interview people like Sam Harris, who's wonderful book The End Of Faith spent a long, long time on the New York Times best seller list, and who's new book is Letter To A Christian Nation. But, after reading works by he and Richard Dawkins, I am sorry, but I have to rant.
Are we still enticed by a flat approach to a vertical problem? In the rational attack on pre-rational religion?
As brilliant and eloquent as people like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris are, they are not truly persuasive. They, and the general contingency of their allies, don't really acknowledge development. People develop. That means people's World-Views develop. There are depths of unfolding in how we understand and experience the World.
Although pre-rational religious types can be excused from the developmental table of discussion, we should be able to expect more from Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. They write books bemoaning and lamenting (rightly so) the dangerous riddle that is mythic (pre-rational) religion, but simultaneously decline to allow that the Mythic World View is one of many in humanity's Vertical Unfolding. In fact, the rational perspective -one which allows for such critical thinking- is also but one station in that unfolding. Human social development has, through the ages, included:
Archaic
Magic
Mythic
Rational
Pluralistic
Integral
There are many ways to describe development (and there are different kinds of development). In the simplest terms, we can say there are pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional World views. We could also be more sophisticated and use models of social holarchy, including the content and contours of each wave of social / cultural development as it has emerged. However you prefer it development is a fact of life, and leaving it out of the equation, as many of these rational authors do isn't very useful.
Sadly, we cannot persuade someone out of a World View. No matter how cogent and bullet proof an argument may be,it will not persuade a mythic fundamentalist to stop believing in a Mythic God. Because actually they're not just *believing*, they are experiencing. Belief and the mythic framework is literally how their reality spontaneously arises in each moment. It's not an oversight, or a mistake which can be corrected with the right application of words. We can't persuade people out of a pre-rational religion anymore than we can persuade a five year old child to become 27 years old.
It's not stupid or wrong to act five years old if you're five years old. It's not a mistake to be five years old. It is, however, wrong to act like a five year old if you're 27, and this is where something more interesting occurs.
Sam Harris and Richard Dawkings do identify a serious problem in our World, but for some reason they don't register that it's a developmental problem, not an intellectual one. What's strange about that is evolution and development in the objective domains (corporeal, biological, social systems) is so self-evident to their view. But somehow the correlate (inner evolution) doesn't get the same regard.
Although we don't really know how people transform, how their center of gravity migrates to larger World Views, debate doesn't seem to be a very reliable means. Does anyone actually believe George Bush can be persuaded from his religious beliefs? Through discourse? Nah. However, is it possible George Bush could develop? Might he grow, expand, and enter into a new perspective? Yes. It happens. Not always, not necessarily, but it does happen. And that is the interesting question. How do people evolve to higher altitudes of consciousness? Ironically, what ardent Evolutionists and Rationalists miss is that the solution IS evolution. Interior evolution = sinking into deeper realms of "I". We can support the relaxation of identity into a larger radius. We probably can't persuade them. We probably can't convince them. It's not so much a choice, it's a world view.
It is not healthy to act like a five year old if you're twenty-seven. It's pathological. Similarly, it's not appropriate for the most powerful government in the World to operate under a Mythic Religious compass regarding geo-political policy. It is a case of collective arrested development. 2,000 years ago when the Romans were bringing a Rule / Order World view onto the map (convention), they were LIFTING humanity up to a new, higher order of social enterprise. From pre-conventional bandits and tribes to conventional Imperial State with codes of conduct and citizenship. Rome was still a brutal affair, but it was a messy move upward. One of the biggest advances up to that time. However... 2,000 years later, it's not something to brag about. It's not so cool, because AFTER that Mythic / Rule-Order World view emerged, so did a Rational one ( Western Enlightenment), and so did a Pluralistic World View (the sixties, Post-Modernism baby! wooo!), and so did an Integral World View. It's not desirable in the scheme of Homo-Homo Sapiens to employ World Views that were antiquated (in terms of the highest good for the greatest number) hundreds or thousands of years ago.
But the question is not whether that's a bummer. The question is, how do we support healthy development to more inclusive world views? Because nothing else will save us from ourselves.
Would we use that approach with our five year old child? Telling them they're wrong for being five? No. But if you're child is 27 and still peeing in your plants at dinner parties, it may be time for a new approach. Five year olds are SUPPOSED to believe in Harry Potter, or Jesus, or Voodoo, or whatever they fancy. But not when they're twenty seven.
This is the variety of discord we are contending with in much of the World. World Views who's expiration date has passed. And they're beginning to sour. It's no longer appropriate for pre-rational orientations to guide the World forward. And we have spent the last 8 years, for instance, with a pre-rational leader at the healm of the World's most powerful nation. It's just not the way forward. But neither can we rely on rational antidotes to pre-rational maladies.
I know, you're saying "But they do other things rationally. If I told them I had some ocean front property for sale in Montana, they would be suspicious. They would doubt it, want proof, and so don't they have access to rationality, but they just don't use it? If I'm eloquent enough, brilliant enough, wont' they just wake up?"
Personally, I have yet to see that happen.
People not only move through altitudes, or stages of Vertical development (World Views), but also possess many kinds of intelligence. Lines of development. That's why a really smart scientist might not necessarily be ethical, or intuitive, or funny. We have many capacities, and the spiritual perspective is one of many. Our types of intelligence develop somewhat independently. Good looking? Doesn't make you smart. Smart? Doesn't make you ethical. Ethical? Doesn't make you agile. This is common sense. For details, see Wilber's work.
Rational Pundits, Authors, Public Figures...
It could help to stop being so flat. Acknowledge these depths, their development. Acknowledge that people, and societies, and cultures, move through altitudes of World Views. If we don't want to live in a country that is ruled by pre-rational zealots, then we had better begin to ask ourselves how people develop from pre-rational to rational, and from rational to trans-rational.
Rationalists of the World, were you BORN with that World view? Was there ever a time in your life when you were three, or four, or five, when you encountered and interpreted the world differently than you do now? Have you developed at all, or did you pop out of your mother completely possessed of the skeptical capacity to inquire and confirm through direct experience? Of course you developed. You were a pre-rational little bugger long before you became a rational bugger.
Knowing this, are we interested in how other people who are not yet at a Rational world view might develop? Would we like to help them, or do we wanna play to the band forever?
Because the sun will expand and consume the Earth before we convert pre-rational views with rational blather. They can't hear us. No one hears it except those who are already at that altitude, or World view. Well, perhaps a few catch it, the ones ready to enter into it (for reasons that have nothing to do with the rational rhetoric). We had better figure out how to see depth, experience altitudes of awareness, and embrace development, or those lower stations will render us undone.
Rationalists, ask yourself, since you developed through Archaic, Magic, Mythic (all pre-rational World views) up to your Rational World view, is it POSSIBLE there are other World views which are yet deeper, higher, more inclusive than the one you now inhabit?
Just for fun, let's imagine that. Trans-rational? Hmm...
