What is the difference between religion and spirituality? (READER APPRECIATION DAY)

And how do they relate to political orientation?

“Not only Christianity with its symbols of salvation,” writes Jung “but all religions, including the primitive with their magical rituals are forms of psychotherapy which treat and heal the suffering of the soul, and the suffering of the body caused by the soul.

- Carl Jung, Practice of Psychotherapy

One of the things that I love about Substack is the feedback that I get from my readers. Lately, I have doing a ton of writing, but often it is difficult for me to gauge the extent to which my words are really landing.

Writing is an Apollonian art form, and I am a highly Dionysian person. Sometimes I get jealous of musicians, because when they play live, they are creating their art whilst their audience is experiencing it. Musicians are therefore engaged in an energetic exchange with their fans, and are able to perceive, in real time, the effect that their art is having upon them. Such is not the case with writing.

Lately I actually have been enjoying writing, which is by no means always the case. I know that a lot of writers feel the same. The pleasure in writing is not so much in the act of writing itself, but in the feeling that you get when you´re pleased with what you have written. But that feeling is by no means a given. Franz Kafka, for instance, was so plagued by self-doubt that his dying wish was that all of his writing be burned without being read. Thankfully, his friend disregarded these instructions, and some of this writing is now considered amongst the greatest literature of the 20th century.

But I digress. Where was I?

Oh yeah, I was talking about why I love Substack. It makes me feel like my words are resonating with someone, somewhere, and that I´m not just shouting into the void.

Case in point: a reader wrote a response to my recent article The Secret of Success is to Have No Fear, in which I argue that for a revolutionary movement to have any chance of success, there must exist a certain number of people whose commitment to the cause is greater than their fear of death. I then argue that spirituality can help human beings reconcile themselves to the fact that we are mortal beings, and that a political movement with a strong spiritual foundation would produce bolder revoltuionaries, which is what we will need when shit really gets real.

In response to this article, a reader by the name of TheQuieterOne commented:

I've been reading your writings over the past year, and Paul etc. I don't consider myself spiritual (though I'm starting to experience a kind of peer pressure to conform) but I've never really had a fear of death. I still can't really grasp what spiritual means even if I do understand the disconnection we've suffered and the need for reconnection with a natural way of living.

I think that this provides an opening to clarify some of what Nevermore is all about, although I`ll fully admit that it is a journey, and none of us really knows exactly where this windy road will lead us.

But there is clearly a growing movement of people who share the goal of bridging the gap between anarchist and spiritual philosophy. Paul Cudenec, Derrick Broze, and Darren Allen would be three examples of this emerging tendency, as would Miriam Gomez, Citizen Nobody, Nowick Gray, and others.

So why is it that different people from different parts of the world are coming to the same conclusions?

Well, for one thing, because the West is now a secular, materialist society, religion no longer occupies the same role in policing behaviour that it used to. In Canada, where I`m from, Christians have no political power. To be tarred with the brush of ¨social conservatism¨ by the CBC is likely to end a politician`s career. It is not an exaggeration to say that the trans lobby is more powerful than the religious right is in Canada.

So keep in mind where I`m coming from. I´m a contrarian. If I lived in a highly religious society, I´d probably be very opposed to the dominant religion. But since the dominant idea of age is secular materialism, in which the state has subsumed the role formerly played by God, I find myself opposed to secular materialism, which I see as a denomination of statism.

I believe that the situation is similar in Western Europe and parts of the U.S.A., but is definitely different in Mexico, where I now live. And the fact of the matter is that I like the Mexican attitude towards life much better than that of my homeland. Clearly, the role of religion in society is one of the major differences between Canada and Mexico, and it would be disingenuous to overlook this fact. The vast majority of Mexicans are not materialists. A syncretic mixture of Catholicism and animism is the norm, and this goes a long way to explaining why Mexico is holding its own against Technik better than most countries are.

So although I´ll fully admit that I have an innate bias towards contrarianism, I think my position is also based on real-world observation of what kinds of beliefs lead to happiness and which do not. But I´ll let the reader be the judge of that. It´s not easy correcting for one´s own cognitive biases. Contrarianism is a double-edged sword.

I think that it is fair to say that human beings tend to define themselves in relation to that which they oppose as well as that which they are in favour of. Most of the classical anarchists opposed organized religion because they saw it as a tool of the ruling class to manufacture consent for their dominion over the people.

In The Secret of Success is to Have No Fear, I argue that by rejecting religion on principle, the West has thrown the baby out with the bathwater. While it is certainly true that religion has often been used as a tool of social control, it would be overly simplistic to suggest that religion itself is the problem, or that religion is inherently oppressive. Each religion, like all cultural phenomena, contains both hegemonic and counter-hegemonic tendencies within itself. The task of the revolutionary should be to nurture the tendencies present within their culture which are conducive to their values, and to oppose those which are not.

But what I am saying on a more fundamental level is that so long as human beings are conscious of their mortality, religion will never become obsolete.

Since the beginning of time, every human society has had beliefs and customs relating to an imagined supernatural realm. (Correct me if I´m wrong!) And something that secularists need to get through their skulls is that belief systems don´t have to be rational in order to serve a useful purpose.

As Carl Jung wrote in Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious:

“We like to imagine that something which we do not understand does not help us in any way. But that is not always so. . .myths [have] a direct effect on the unconscious, no matter whether it is understood or not. The fact that its repeated telling has not long since become obsolete can, I believe, be explained by its usefulness.”   

Paul Cudenec, in his 2013 book The Anarchist Revelation, argues for the creation of a religion based on anarchist values, although he avoids the word religion.

This to me seems entirely reasonable, for the simple reason that anarchism is a POLITICAL ORIENTATION more than it is a political program that could be laid out in bullet points and carried out by a vanguard. It is a way of life, based on one simple principle - respect for the autonomy of our fellow human beings.

While some anarchists undoubtedly are utopians, I am not. I do not believe that there will be some moment when history ends and we live happily ever after. In my humble opinion, it would be folly to pin one`s hopes and dreams on such a chimera.

Furthermore, to do so would be to miss the point of anarchism. As the Zapatista slogan goes: ¨We want a world where many worlds fit¨. In other words, there will never be an Anarchist World Order. Why? Because we`re not trying to take over the world! It would be absurd to attempt to force people to be free, and the fact of the matter is not that not everyone wants freedom. As Freud put it:

“People do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility and most people are frightened of responsibility.

Now, arguably, Freud was referring to the psychology of people living in an industrialized society, and the fear of responsibility of which he speaks might be the fear of one´s own agency which statist education is designed to instil. However, I think that we could all agree that most human beings are followers, and prefer group dynamics where they don´t have to make every decision. The anarchist position, then, should be FREEDOM FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO BE FREE.

So what do anarchists want, then? We want to live in peace, to have fun, to be free, to have our wishes respected, to have the opportunity to bring forth what is within us, to pursue our desires without being forced to work for the thieves who claim to own everything.

We want a more joyful world, and we want to start creating it now.

Anarchism, then, is not a political program, but an attitude towards life. And by no means am I the first to say so. In her essay ¨Anarchism as a Way of Life,¨ Zoe Baker explores the thought of the great classical anarchist Errico Malatesta, writing:

Malatesta distinguishes between anarchy as a goal and anarchism as a method of achieving this goal. One of the interesting features of Malatesta’s theory is that he views anarchy itself as both a goal and an on-going process. He refers to anarchy as a “form of living together in society” which has to be continuously produced and reproduced over time, rather than a static unchanging utopia.

Clearly, what Malatesta had in mind was a movement of people united by a powerful commitment to a certain set of ethical or moral principles. Or, as Malatesta put it:

Anarchy is a form of living together in society; a society in which people live as brothers and sisters without being able to oppress or exploit others and in which everyone has at their disposal whatever means the civilisation of the time can supply in order for them to attain the greatest possible moral and material development. And Anarchism is the method of reaching anarchy, through freedom, without government – that is, without those authoritarian institutions that impose their will on others by force ...

Neither he nor Baker framed this in religious terms, but it wouldn´t be hard to express the exact same sentiment in a way that would appeal to Christians, or Muslims, or Jews. In a sense, religions are like languages. Just as the speakers of different languages can express the same sentiment using different words, so too can adherents to different religions use different symbol-systems in order to express similar thoughts. The religions of the world provide us with a framework with which we can speak about the numinous realm which Jung called the collective unconscious.

In The Anarchist Revelation, Paul avoids using the word religion, but as for myself, I`m not shy about using it.

Why? Well, it´s a word, and it contains less syllables than alternative terms such as ¨spiritual tradition¨. Moreover, I think that the difference between a ¨spiritual tradition¨ and a ¨religion¨ is mostly semantic. Now, of course people use words differently, but let me explain how I see things.

To me, spirituality is something personal, which relates to a subjective experience of truth. Religion, on the other hand, serves a sociological purpose. It is not just about the subjective experience of the individual, but a group dynamic.

To my mind, spirituality does not belong to the political domain. Each person has their own spirituality, and it belongs to them alone. It is not negotiated or mediated by culture. It is yours and yours alone, and no one can take it away from you. When the ancients declared that the first task of the spiritual aspirant is to ¨KNOW THYSELF¨, this is what they were referring to.

There is something within you that only you can truly know. Although certain meditation practices or spiritual medicines might help you along your journey, they can also lead one away.

Religion, on the other hand, provides a mythological explanation of the world, as well as a way of transmitting cultural values and helping people adapt themselves to the often painful realities that flesh is heir to. Its function is sociological, whereas spirituality is something more personal.

Another difference is that religions rely on myth, whereas spirituality does not. As Carl Jung wrote in Answer to Job:

“What is the use of a religion without a mythos, since religion means, if anything at all, precisely that function which links us back to the eternal myth?”   

Suffice it to say that to my mind spirituality and religion are two different things, and I see no good reason to avoid the word religion altogether. I think we need both.

That said, I have different associations with religion that most people. I grew up Mennonite, which is a pacifist denomination of Christianity which rejects the legitimacy of state violence. I definitely resonated more with the values that I was taught at church than I did with those I was taught in school. There is also the fact that I now live in Chiapas, where liberation theology has played a central role in revolutionary struggle for decades. It is clear to me that religion can serve the cause of human liberation, just as it can serve the ends of our enemies.

That said, I appreciate you bringing up the connection between religion and the conformity that it so often engenders.

I certainly don´t mean to peer pressure anyone to believe what I believe. I am a contrarian and conformity is anathema to me. I suspect that most of my readership is probably similarly disposed. But does adopting some form of religion necessarily entail sacrificing freedom of conscience?

Not long ago, I shared an essay called Anarchism and Unitarian Universalism in order to share the idea of a non-creedal religion. In my introduction to that piece, I wrote that Unitarian Universalism is ¨a non-creedal religion, which means that it is based on moral principles, not beliefs.¨

This idea might seem strange to some, but probably won´t to those of you who have attended indigenous ceremonies such as sweat lodges, vision quests, peyote meetings, or Sun Dances. There certainly are teachings, but participants are not required to subscribe to a proscribed set of beliefs. The general attitude is similar to that of 12-step programs such as A.A. and N.A., in that people generally believe in some kind of a Higher Power, but conceive of it in their own way. The spiritual beliefs of two members of the same Sun Dance community might actually be very different, and this isn´t seen as a problem. Most importantly, there is no thought-policing.

Personally, I am a lot more interested in what people do than what they say, and I am even less interested in what people claim to believe. People lie to themselves about their beliefs all the time. But actions speak louder than words.

I am currently of the opinion that we need some kind group psychotherapy in order to deprogram us from the socialization that we received in statist institutions. Currently, the best example I have of what this might look like is Soma Therapy, a specifically anarchist form of therapy developed by the Brazilian revolutionary Roberto Freire.

Hopefully this clarifies my thinking on the subject of spirituality and religion, but let me end by re-iterating that I don´t claim to have the answers as to what exactly an anarchist religion would look like. What I hope to do is to open up a new line of inquiry, make a break with the dying paradigm of late industrial capitalism, and hopefully inspire others to engage in their own quest for meaning.

Thanks for commenting, TheQuieterOne! Thanks for providing the impetus for me to clarify my position. Clearly, I have a lot to say on this subject, as I haven´t even gotten to David Graeber´s theory of imaginary counterpower!

Stay tuned, more coming soon!