Spiritual valentines gifts
Increasingly, North American millennials identify as spiritual as opposed to religious. To them, part of this spirituality means being compassionate, empathetic and open-hearted. What does it mean to be spiritual? Disclosure statement Galen Watts receives funding spiritual valentines gifts the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Laboratory based in the School of Religion at Queen’s University. Queen’s University, Ontario provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation CA. Queen’s University, Ontario provides funding as a member of The Conversation CA-FR. Spirituality has become a kind of buzzword in today’s culture, especially for the millennial generation. Increasingly, North Americans identify as spiritual as opposed to religious.
What is behind the rising popularity of spirituality without religion? Some critics have suggested it is a byproduct of the self-obsessed culture of today, evidence of a narcissism epidemic. Although I don’t disagree with these characterizations, I believe there is more to the story. Since 2015 I have conducted in-depth research with Canadian millennials, interviewing 33 Canadian millennials who self-identify as spiritual but not religious — in order to better understand their beliefs and practices. I believe when people call themselves spiritual they are basically signaling three things: first, that they believe there is more to the world than meets the eye, that is to say, more than the mere material. Second, that they try to attend to their inner life — to their mental and emotional states — in the hopes of gaining a certain kind of self-knowledge. Third, that they value the following virtues: being compassionate, empathetic and open-hearted.
Christian theology, lie in the Latin noun spiritualitas, which derived from the Greek noun pneuma, meaning spirit. Today it is taken to mean that which we cannot perceive. It therefore gestures towards that which we require to live, but which we cannot perceive or measure. Religion, many conventionally think, attends to the field of human experience that concerns our most fundamental questions — questions of meaning, purpose and value.
But since the Enlightenment, many individuals in North Atlantic countries have developed a self-understanding of themselves as secular, or modern. For many, religion does not seem like a viable option. Yet, despite this shift, questions of meaning, purpose and value remain. Moreover, for many of my study participants, science is incapable of adequately answering some of life’s most crucial questions: What is beauty? How should I relate to the natural world? Although science can provide answers to these questions, the answers rarely inspire my participants as they would like them to.
And for many, science’s answers simply don’t suffice to help them live their lives as they experience them. So when people speak of spirituality they are generally invoking some framework of meaning that enables them to make sense of that which, for them, science fails to address. This is why atheists, agnostics and believers can all — and often do — identify as spiritual. One need not believe in God in order to have questions that scientific materialism cannot answer. Western culture too focused on material success The second aspect of spirituality involves a move inward, or an attention to one’s inner life, often as a means of honouring the immaterial dimensions of life. Most of my study participants think contemporary Western culture is far too outward focused, glorifying material success and procurement at the expense of the things that really matter.
They would agree with the famous cultural critic Erich Fromm, who in the 1970s argued modern societies emphasize having things as opposed to just being. Spirituality stresses the importance of attuning to our inner life — both as a way of resisting the constant pressure our culture exerts to value what lies outside of us, as well as a means of finding a place of refuge. This is one reason why, for instance, environmentalists have often endorsed spirituality. One of the major causes of climate change and environmental destruction, these environmentalists argue, is the never-ending quest for economic growth, fuelled by a capitalist logic of acquisition and expansion. The Dalai Lama once said, while the West was busy exploring outer space, the East was busy exploring inner space.
