On Spirituality & Technology

Well, it's a bit overdue for a post on the last article that we read (Erik Davis - Techgnosis) but the brunt of the work for the year is done so I should give it a shot. All in all, the gist of the article talks about those who seek a "psychospiritual quest through the image of the machine". 1. The machine is how we recognize ourselves. 2. But, Gurdjieff says that we're so hypnotized by technologies that we don't realize our potential for realizing deeper levels of consciousness. It's interesting that the article would mention such claims, and I feel as though the former supports my essay's argument, but the latter actually goes against it.

The machine is definitely one way for us to recognize ourselves, with the advent of blogging, YouTube, and an influx of social networking websites that allow individuals to create online avatars and identities to their desire. Blogging creates a narrative for the individual, and as mentioned in class, it along with YouTube are extremely performative activities. By reflecting on these blogs and videos that we post online, one could say that we recognize ourselves just as how others would see us.

However, I must disagree with Gurdjieff's contention that we're hyponotized by technologies and thus oblivious to our potential for deeper consciousness -- as my essay argues or I guess implies, deeper levels of consciousness do not always have to involve notions religion or spirituality. As I mentioned during the essay presentation, I believe it is convenient for individuals to say an experience feels "spiritual", simply due to the transcendent or amazing feeling that they obtain from it. What about transhumanism, posthumanity? These concepts do not necessarily imply religiosity/spirituality.

"Technologies have their own increasingly alien agenda" -- is it technologies, or human beings, that have this alien agenda? This is a notion that's been brought up a couple times in class. It's definitely my belief that it's not what we use but how we use it that's the issue here.

Well, this is the last blog for now. Good class, interesting material. Thanks for visiting.

OK, well I think it's about time I update this thing. I'm not quite sure what to make of last week's reading by Wertheim, "The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace", because it pretty much represents one of the arguments that I am absolutely trying to argue against in my paper. I think I will use this entry as a stomping ground for combing through my argument about why cyberspace was not created and is NOT utilized for purposes of spiritual transcendence. Actually, for now, I will just post some quotes that I think are relevant to the issue. Later maybe I'll sift through them and make some notes.

"Cyberspace too is potentially open to everyone: male and female, First World and Third, north and south, East and West... cyberspace is also unfractured by national boundaries, a "space" where people of all nations can in theory mix together with mutual ease." (22)

Commentator Allicquere Rosanne Stone has noted that the apparent disembodiment engendered by cyberspace offers a special appeal to teenage boys. With their bodies going through rapid and unnerving changes, Stone suggests that young males are drawn to a realm where they can escape their physical awkwardness and embarrassment. (24)

Michael Heim: Isolation persists as a major problem of contemporary urban society - I mean spiritual isolation, the kind that plagues individuals even on crowded city streets. In the midst of this isolation, "the computer network appears as a godsend in providing forums for people to gather in surprising personal proximity". The net, apparently, will fill the social vacuum in our lives, spinning silicon threads of connection across the globe. (25)

People will only adopt a technology if it resonates with a perceived need... The sheer scale of interest in cyberspace suggests there is not only an intense desire at work here, but also a profound psychosocial vacuum that many people are hoping the Internet might fill. (28)

We modern Westerners have prided ourselves on, even defined ourselves by, our tremendous material achievements - our skyscrapers, freeways, and power stations; our automobiles, supersonic aircraft, space shuttles, and inter-planetary probes. In this modern physicalist age we have navigated the globe, put men on the moon, eradicated smallpox, etc. All these are extraordinary accomplishments, and ones we might well be proud of. (30)

Modern mastery of the physical world is exhibited nowhere more strongly than in our scientific understanding of physical space ... Our understanding of physical space now extends beyond our planet and out to the most distant reaches of the cosmos. (30)

Yet while we have been mapping and mastering physical space, we have lost sight of any kind of spiritual space. In the vision painted by modern science, the physical world is the totality of reality because within this vision physical space extends infinitely in all directions, taking up all available, and even conceivable, territory. (31)

Even though many cyberspace enthusiasts long to escape the limitations of the body, most also cling to the glories of physical incarnation. They may not like physical finitude, especially the part about death, but at the same time they desire the sensations and the thrills of the flesh. Cybernauts' ambivalent regard for the body is indicated by the very metaphor of "surfing" they have chosen. Who more than a surfer revels in the unique joy of bodily incarnation? (8)

The typical cyberspace enthusiast ... wants to enjoy the pleasures of the physical body, but without any of its weaknesses or restrictions. (258)

Just as the Christian body returns in glorified form, so Fisher explains that in contemporary cybernautic dreaming the "body returns in a hypercorporeal synthesis". Transcending the limits of the physical body, this cybernautic body has powers far beyond mortal means. (259)

Immortality, transcendence, omniscience - things some cyberspace enthusiasts are beginning to think of as "possible and plausible". Myself, I cannot imagine a worse fate than being downloaded into immortality in cyberspace. What would be the fate of an immortal cyber-elect? What would one do in cyber-eternity? (264)

The pattern of seeing new technology as a means to spiritual transcendence has been repeated so many times that Erik Davis has coined the term "techgnosis" as a generic description of the phenomena. (278)

Too often, cyber-religious dreaming suggests a tendency to abandon responsibility on the earthly plane. Why bother fighting for equal access to education in the physical world if you believe that in cyberspace we can all know everything? ... Paulina Borsook has noted that the culture of the Silicon Valley cyber-elite is indeed imbued with a deeply self-serving libertarianism that shuns responsibility toward physical communities. It is a tendency she terms "cyber-selfishness". (280)

Unlike genuine religions that make ethical demands on their followers, cyber-religiosity has no moral precepts. One gets the payoffs of a religion without getting bogged down in reciprocal responsibilities. It is this desire for the personal payoff of a religious system without any of the social demands that I find so troubling. In its quest for bodily transcendence, for immortality, and for union with some posited mystical cyberspatial All, the emerging religion of cyberspace rehashes many of the most problematic aspects of Gnostic-Manischaean-Platonist dualism. What is left out here is the element of community and one's obligations to the wider social whole. Ironically, it is in just this communal aspect that cyberspace may ultimately prove to be of the greatest value. (280)

I'm not quite sure what to think of the New Age movement. I believe the "movement" is beneficial in some ways for letting us take responsibility for our own actions and letting us think for ourselves, but its "beliefs" are largely only attainable by middle-class North Americans. This concept about self-actualization, which is also placed as the utmost "being" need on Maslow's hierarchy, is a sensible "peak" goal for those who value the experience, but cannot possibly be attained by many people. When I had first heard about this hierarchy in high school, it sounded spot-on with its interpretations of what is important in life, but with critical thinking comes reconsiderations of prominent theories. In some ways, I even feel as though the priorities in this hierarchy is flawed. Majorly Westernized and individualistic.

The needs are listed as follows: physiological -> safety -> belonging -> esteem -> self-actualization. Who's to say that people without food or water cannot achieve self-actualization? Take asceticism, as an example, Buddhist monks live minimally in monasteries and often fast, yet they are capable of attaining spiritual enlightenment. People with not much security, such as beggars on the street or adventurous backpackers who have decided to travel the world living out of a rucksack, may gain lots of insight into how the world works through much experience with people from different walks of life. On the other hand, people with everything they will ever need in the world, such as Hollywood celebrities and all-star pro athletes, are often (but not always) incredibly self-absorbed and materialistic. Who is to say that they will ever attain self-actualization? Experiences are subjective I suppose, and I guess it is a matter of interpretation for subjects like these. o_O

Aldred's article talks about the New Age appropriation and commercialization of Native American spirituality. Why must people do this? It happens with all cultures though, this is not a situation in isolation. Applying "ethnic gloss" is a pathetic way to get individuals to "learn" more about a culture. Yes, maybe sometimes there is limited information to work with, but that is really no excuse for this method of exploiting a culture in order to appeal to people who may not know better. Two examples of this that I have observed are 1) tattoos of Chinese characters and 2) Abercrombie and Fitch t-shirts with stereotypical Chinese characters printed on them. I'll try not to go off tangent too much.

1) Why???? When I see people with tattoos like these who are not Chinese, I cannot help but think how sad the trend is. Not that I am trying to claim Chinese characters as our own, but the entire idea of Chinese culture and characters being so incredibly "exotic" to some is just something that really grates on me. How to explain this feeling that I have, I really don't know. My feeling is just that most people who get these think they look, for lack of a better word, "cool" -- nope, not because they appreciate the history of Chinese culture, not because of anything else. I really hate to bash people with these tattoos, but I can't help it. I often hear stories (probably fabricated) about someone asking a Chinese person about how to write a certain word (love, strength, cliche things like that) and the Chinese person giving them a completely off-the-wall word such as oh, "rapist" or "pedophile" as the real word, resulting in them getting some ridiculous tattoo. A little extreme, but you get the point.

Related link: http://www.hanzismatter.com/

I truly believe that in certain settings where people have a preconceived notion of what a place is like, these self-fulfilling prophecies are bound to occur. OK, some paranormal encounters or experiences can definitely be for real, but what about the other instances when a group of people are again, highly suggestible individuals? Think about the idea of group identity, or groupthink. People, when they really believe in something, are prone to be extremely polarized on the idea, as indicated in social psychological studies. It is truly my belief that these false expectations can be created and ok, while it is not true for all situations (there are always grey areas), it is for many.

That idea about culturally constructed narratives still rings true to me as well. Of course there are still many fringe groups in existence nowadays that hold an immense interest in ufology and hold it close to their being. Definitely. But let me turn to another article from "Sacred Realms" again -- this one is called "Parallels between Recollections of Repressed Childhood Sex Abuse, Kidnappings by Space Aliens, and the 1692 Salem Witch Hunts". I was vaguely thinking about the gist of this article when making the claim that oftentimes, narratives are culturally constructed anecdotes that must be viewed from a wider perspective.

The article talks about how "the way the memory for the alien abduction is uncovered closely resembles how memories of early sexual abuse and ritual abuse develop". The author notes some statistics, "between several hundred thousand to more than 3 million adults in the United States alone have had an abduction experience". Seriously? Is this for real? It really must be a product of therapy or media-triggered effects. In all these abuse and kidnapping experiences, the person is said to -- "1. be unhappy and feels that something is wrong, 2. begin to recall details with help of a therapist, 3. evoke even more memories with more therapy, 4. have these memories validated by therapist, support groups, and general community". When people in a community realize that experiencing a certain event brings attention, there will be an accumulation of claims that it has happened to a number of people.

An example can be seen in sexual abuse (there is absolutely no attempt here to delegitimize those who have actually gone through any sort of abuse). The article actually goes about saying that these people's claims are true, and yes, this may well be the case for abuse but I wonder if it applies to alien encounters as well. This following quote about abuse, I guess, can be interpreted in 2 ways in regards to alien encounters -- popularity of an experience triggers true memories, or it fabricates false ones in people's minds:

"This isn't an isolated thing that only happened to me. I traced it back in my little town 3 generations. And it happens in other towns too. It's happening to kids today. I've had more than a hundred calls about ritual abuse. It's starting to break into the papers. And people are starting to believe it... Ritual abuse is surfacing now because we've started to talk openly about the sexual abuse of children. More and more adults are remembering what happened to them when they were young."

Another quote that has a note of skepticism about these events:

"For most people today the point of doubt is reached well before believing that 3 million Americans have been kidnapped by space aliens, sometimes with repeat abductions between one therapy session and the next. For many, that point is reached well before accepting the belief that there is a nationwide conspiracy of satanists who sacrifice thousands of victims without detection - over twice as many as the victims of known murders. For others, the point of disbelief is reached at the point where people claim sexual abuse on the basis of evidence of the sort accepted as valid by Bass and Davis."

Anyways... interpretation is subjective. Our perceptions are shaped by experience and cultural context. I will end this post off with some links to websites.

1. The One World Family Commune: http://www.galactic.org/Starmast.html
The 2 individuals in tonight's clip from "Galactic Messengers" are a part of this "community", that was founded in 1967 by Allen Michael. Michael was once contacted himself by a being once, and perhaps this experience is what spawned his community. Read about it if you have time.

2. Billy Meier's Home Page: http://www.billymeier.com/
Billy Meier is a man who has claimed to have a number of experiences with extraterrestrials. There is immense controversy surrounding his claims.

I just remembered something from the other documentary clips from "Out of the Blue" tonight... anyone notice the civilian witnesses' names? One boy in particular? His name was "Hal Ley"... people in those clips had been gathering to look at the Hale-Bopp comet but instead they glimpsed some sort of spacecraft. Immediately I thought of Halley's Comet... Hal Ley... Halley. Yeah. Anyways, I thought that was either very coincidental or comical. Maybe he didn't want his real name released and had chosen that as his alias.

Watching Richard Dawkins' "The Root of All Evil?" documentary right now. Should be interesting in the context of this course.

Might post some notable quotes later if I remember.

Well it seems like I refer to one of my old texts quite a bit (Sacred Realms: Essays in Religion, Belief, and Society) when talking about articles from this course. But you know what, a lot of the stuff that we read always reminds me of stuff that I have read about in this text. This week's reading was Sconce's Mediums and Media, and what did this article remind me of? An article that I had read before about Malaysian women being possessed as a reflection of gender imbalance in the corporate workplace. The reason I thought of this article is pretty obvious I think, in that they both discuss possession as a form of protest amongst women in differing societies.

Sconce mentions this: "Within the context of Spiritualism's model of electronic presence, women 'mediums' and 'trance speakers' were able to raise feminist issues and debate them freely without necessarily challenging directly the overall social order."

On the other hand, Ong mentions this about Malaysian women: "Spirit possession episodes may be taken as expresions both of fear and of resistance against the multiple violations of moral boundaries in the modern factory. They are acts of rebellion, symbolizing what cannot be spoken directly, calling for a renegotiation of obligations between the management and workers".

It seems like the difference here is that the European women are using the channeling of "mediums" to send a proactive message out to society, whereas the Malaysian women are sending a reactive and expressive message that doesn't necessarily overtly address the issue of gender imbalance, but implies it.

Another interesting part in Sconce's article is the part that mentions how the Kate Fox movement still flourished despite many counterattacks against her supposed ability. People will believe what they want to believe, and I guess although I myself have not experienced supernatural encounters (and do not wish to!), we cannot dismiss the fact that there are those who have. Be it from heightened consciousness to supernatural phenomena, having deceased relatives, or living in a haunted location, I have heard and read about acquaintances' anecdotes of encounters with ghosts. The thought of such an encounter undoubtedly "scares the crap" out of me, but it is definitely interesting to read about sometimes.

This week's themes focus on indigenous knowledge, technology, and spirituality, according to the syllabus. It is curious that indigenous knowledge should be associated wih these two seemingly polar terms, but as proven by Moran and Nasr and other readings from this course, there are some insightful associations that can be made between the subjects.

I had been reading ahead to my assigned seminar reading of Brenda Denzler's chapters, and I must note that her discussion of the UFO community paralleled Moran's discussion of the alchemic enterprises during the Renaissance age in Europe. As it stands, both enterprises seemed to straddle a liminal state, of being neither accepted as a religious nor a scientific endeavor. According to Moran, "alchemy was never altogether anything that people believed in; it was something that people did". However, insomuch as it was a concrete activity that required the mixing together of certain chemicals, Pope John XXII condemned the field as being unnatural and one of forgery. Luckily enough (I suppose), the royal court legitimized the art of alchemy as a "fashionable science", because it had the practical function of producing coins.

This tells me that context plays a big role in determining people's opinions about alchemy. During the scientific revolution when breakthrough scientific ideas were being brought to the forefront, it was seen as legitimate, with scientists such as Isaac Newton, Tycho Brahe, and Thomas Aquinas participating in the activity. With the advent of modern chemistry, it was pushed to the backburner due to a more precise and accurate way of looking at transmutations.

Makes me wonder about alchemy's portrayal in the Harry Potter novels. Is the act condemned even more now because it has been cast as a mystical activity under the backdrop of a fantasy movie about wizardry and magic? The characters talk of the creator of an "elixir of life" named Nicholas Flamel, who I had initially thought to be fictional due to the context of the film, until I realized he was an actual being who lived in the 14th century. Such a magical portrayal of him seems to delegitimize the art of alchemy even more, especially when the novels make the fictional supposition that he had created this "elixir of life" that enabled him to live for hundreds of years.

The other article from this week was Nasr's article on Islam, Muslims and Modern Technology... which I found to be overly idealistic. While it is true that the Industrial Revolution has brought on countless technologies and that we are now swamped with an infinite selection of devices and machines to make life easier, it is a matter of choice whether to use technologies or not. Environment does shape the individual, but only to a certain extent. Nasr makes it seem as though human beings are easily malleable by transformations in a society, but this is certainly not the case. He says that Islamic civilization is more prone to following technological trends because they are less educated about technology's pitfalls. But for those who have been ingrained with spiritual values and artistic skills, does technology really have the immense power to take away these aspects of their life? I don't know really how to answer that, but I am inclined to disagree.