What Does Spiritual Mean?

[luka]

To you.

 

[luka]

This is not a banter thread no jokes no laughing allowed.

 

[versh]

This is not a banter thread no jokes no laughing allowed.

Fuck sake. I was just about to type "bollocks".

 

[entertainment]

shock absorbers from the material world. the belief in something that makes life worth living that you can create amongst each other or maybe by yourself.

i'm not sure but it's something that's very uncool right now isn't it?

what do you think about the left's spirituality luka? should the radicals have stayed out of the classroom?

did punk have spirituality? for me it bridged the gap between 60's peace and love and modernist concept art. Both Dionysian and Apolllonian. Both carnal and stupid and filled with sweat and blood but also tied up in an intellectual statement that all this stupidity is the point of it. A commentary about the importance of its nature.

did Duschamp's Fountain have spirituality?

 

[luka]

I'm not sure how uncool it is. I think it's easier to talk about, much easier, than it was when the forum first started. My sense is that attitudes have softened and there's not the same desperate desire to guard against any incursion of religious mystical sentiment.

 

[luka]

I don't know anything about the Lefts spirituality. The Marxist tradition is still inflexibly opposed to any attempt to Resserect those ghosts. What did you have in mind?

 

[entertainment]

maybe because people are seeing the results of unmediated cynicism? if i thought that all there was was discourse and power and hierachies and superstructures, i would have blown my head off by now.

 

[luka]

As for the fountain my instinct would be to say no, it's a purely intellectual gesture without any spiritual component.

 

[versh]

The word itself makes me think of wishy-washy new age-types, Gwyneth Paltrow etc. If someone says "I'm a very spiritual person" then I'm already starting to tune out and roll my eyes. I think anyone with something substantial to say in that area will probably use different words -- 'spiritual' has been co opted by grifters.

 

[luka]

maybe because people are seeing the results of unmediated cynicism? if i thought that all there was was discourse and power and hierachies and superstructures, i would have blown my head off by now.

I don't find it attractive either. I think any attempt to make reality boring should be violently resisted.

 

[entertainment]

i have in mind that leftist theory has decomposed into a set of attitudes that sneer at things like love and kindness

 

[luka]

i have in mind that leftist theory has decomposed into a set of attitudes that sneer at things like love and kindness

I honestly don't know enough about it. I can't stand politics. Grubby. Diseased. Poisonous.

I just know the Marxist tradition has their materialist thing and they won't hear talk of anything that contradicts it.

 

[versh]

I think any attempt to make reality boring should be violently resisted.

This is what's happened to the term 'spiritual', imo.. It's been diluted and whittled down into something you stick in your Insta bio when you go through a yoga phase, buy a few 'exotic' rugs and stick crystals on your shelf.

 

[luka]

The word itself makes me think of wishy-washy new age-types, Gwyneth Paltrow etc. If someone says "I'm a very spiritual person" then I'm already starting to tune out and roll my eyes. I think anyone with something substantial to say in that area will probably use different words -- 'spiritual' has been co opted by grifters.

Yes, I understand that. But do you have a category of experience which you would associate with the word? Do you feel a bit funny in the head sometimes and go, hmmm, that felt a bit spiritual? How queer.

I don't really care about the word I'm interested in what it designates for people.

 

[entertainment]

one of these theories could be anti-essentialism.

obviously it comes from a good place as stuff like race and gender essentialism must be fought.

but where does it end? are all notions of a core self to be punctured analytically? should we think of ourselves as nothing but a set of properties tied together by the cultural narratives of the historical circumstance of our birth?

 

[versh]

I don't. It's just a word to me really.

 

[versh]

I treat it like I do science or history or anything else. I just find it interesting, but don't have any real engagement with it beyond observation. You give me a sacred text and an article about music and I'll read them broadly the same way -- it's all flat to me. I haven't had any notable spiritual experiences that I can recall.

 

[luka]

That's ok. It's probably healthier not too.

 

[luka]

And particular types of music don't don't affect you in any way you might regard as vaguely 'spiritual' either presumably?

 

[luka]

one of these theories could be anti-essentialism.

obviously it comes from a good place as stuff like race and gender essentialism must be fought.

but where does it end? are all notions of a core self to be punctured analytically? should we think of ourselves as nothing but a set of properties tied together by the cultural narratives of the historical circumstance of our birth?

You think the notion of the core self is inherently spiritual and should be defended?

I'm not up on all this stuff to be honest. I haven't followed the arguments at all.