I try to understand reality through the principles of a non-theistic humanist philosophy based on the human capacity to lead an ethical existence where compassion and empathy play a crucial role in giving meaning and purpose to a biosociocultural and political being as part of an extended community that includes humans, animals, and nature.
What this really means is that the conduct of human existence in society must be guided by principles and values that actually respect people, animals, plants and the environment in a broad sense instead of the current paradigm in which literally everything is seen as mere resources.
The way we live is intrinsically unsustainable and leads us to believe in the need to accelerate society's technologization process inspired by the most recent theology of salvation, techno-scientism.
About twelve thousand years ago, agriculture was “discovered”, known as the Neolithic Revolution. Over time, agricultural communities became sedentary and with the agglomeration of people, cities emerged. The division of labor and the creation of social classes based on rigid hierarchies became the dominant paradigm that is still in place nowadays, either through the use of deceit and/or the use of violence.
In my view, credulity led people to accept being commanded and controlled by others who deserved their trust.
It turns out that, over time, a group of influential citizens, or even a single megalomaniac psychopath, created for himself a legal system that authorized him to centralize power and a moral code to glorify its functions and idolize him as a godlike figure.
We are still hindered in the paradigm started twelve centuries ago in which we became dependent on "specialized" saviors, deified heroes and shamans endowed with special powers to cure physical, psycho-emotional and "spiritual" problems (misalignments) because they have privileged access to energies, entities and supernatural being and they function as intermediaries between the celestial realms and the world of ordinary mortals.
For earthlings like us, perception (fiction) is more real than reality, designating to individual biases, believers feel relieved and "clean" (spiritual cleansing) with "out-of-body" experiences induced with the use of psychoactive substances and/or ritualized hypnotic trances with(out) the repetition of mantras, prayers or other methods that induce altered states of the human mind.
What we believe greatly conditions individual and group behavior, but what we believe in the form of consciously belief may have less influence on the final calculus of behavioral logic than the beliefs founded on implicit memories that subconsciously shape the biosociocultural identity that really defines who we are.
With this statement I do not intend to deny the relevance of conscious reasoning but rather to put it in perspective so that we can understand in a more integrated and clear way the motivations behind the motives, drives and compulsions translated into adaptive and/or reactive behavioral patterns as responses to environmental requests.
Spiritual practices in general can be beneficial for people, but the "professionals" of the impalpable also exploit the credulity and existential emptiness of common people forced to conform to the rules of a dysfunctional society that generates psychosomatic and psycho-emotional disorders.
Techno-scientism presents itself as the rational alternative to save humanity, the cult requires an unshakable faith in science and technology.
Techno-scientism has a complete set of cultural and ideological instruments at its disposal, but which in the end promise exactly the same as all previous dogmas, believe us because only we have the power to save you.
Salvation requires blind faith and voluntary servitude and for the system to reach maximum efficiency in mass control, transhumanist (bioengineering an enhanced human species) technofascism is the solution.
Life is a holistic process, the need to understand reality in a compartmentalized way makes existence easier, but it that doesn't mean that life should be lived that way. Incidentally, I think this is one of the reasons why our existences managed as disconnected modules, profession, family, personal interests, society, leisure, entertainment and lived without the concern to make sense and have purpose integrated into the wholeness of life.
Everything becomes possible when we do not cultivate a holistic approach to problems and look for solutions rooted in the wider ecosystemic reality.
The societal paradigm and the political economy must be ingrained in the awareness of the impact that individual, institutional, corporate and governmental choices, decisions and actions have on the environment. We cannot pretend that we are ethical beings and simultaneously neglect the consequences that our thoughts, attitudes and behaviors produce in the short, medium and long term, an ethical existence stems from an examined life.
Spirituality is a broad concept that includes a sense of connection with something bigger than ourselves.
Spirituality for many is the search for the meaning of life in the form of something that is beyond life.
For others, spirituality has to be manifested in an existence that makes sense and has purpose while we are alive, regardless of individual beliefs.
Human beings share the feeling of conscious respect that goes beyond what we can rationally understand, this feeling can be defined as spiritual awareness.
It is likely that most people associate spiritual awareness with the sacred and the transcendent. However, there are people who associate spirituality with the feeling of interdependence, belonging and integration in a larger reality called nature, in practice these people seek to systematically and consciously cultivate respect and admiration for all beings that exist regardless of personal preferences and whims.
For many people, spiritual experience is intrinsically associated with belonging to a church, temple, mosque, synagogue, or other congregation.
Others find comfort in a personal relationship with God or a higher power through prayer, meditation, and contemplation.
Others need to believe in extravagant interventions that generally involve the supernatural energies and abilities to solve spiritual malaises rooted in real or fictitious problems related to the physical existence, without the need to face them.
The search for the meaning of life, its purpose and meaning is a personal experience and the notion of spirituality most probably will change and/or “evolve” throughout life with the acquisition of new knowledge and experience.
Spirituality has to start as a moral life project and since no one exists in a social vacuum, the sociocultural environment in which we live and where we have to satisfy the basic needs and enjoy minimum comforts must encourage and reward ethical behaviors.
Society is an artificial system made up of institutions with the function of maintaining social cohesion through the collective recognition of rules, laws, norms and regulations that allow it to function.
The societal paradigm is materialized in the way society is organized and normally reflects the interests of a ruling class that over time create for themselves laws that authorize the exercise of power by normalizing an hierarchical system of classes.
Society as we know it is not a randomly evolving natural ecosystem. It is impossible to control all variables, but society develops and undergoes intentional reforms that take into account the interests of the ruling classes that seek by all means to control society through the accumulation of wealth and the concentration of power.
A society is a political-cultural system supported by a specific model of political economy determining the way people lead their lives.
What we believe, the choices we make and the decisions we take are conditioned by prevailing material, political, ideological and cultural circumstances.
We are under the constant pressure of laws, rules, norms and regulations that shape the way we perceive reality and determine the strategies to satisfy material needs.
The structural laws, rules, norms, values, principles and regulations of any society are implicitly rooted in the neurocognitive system and frame conscious reflections, thinking is never completely free and is always imperfect. I believe in complementarity, quotes like "standing on the shoulders of giants" are misleading because intellectual "progress" is a collective experience, what happens is that some are able to express in a more comprehensive way.
Not even the creative imagination can avoid the influence of the dominant narratives, the means, methods and languages we use are part of the collective heritage and what appears to be a creative expression of a genuine critical position reflects the historical moment in which we live digested by individual idiosyncratic sensibilities in the form of a symbiotic process of personalized experiences.
The point to emphasize is that the dominant narratives (because they are ubiquitous and influence determinately the way we decide and choose) shape a set of responses that become normative patterns, and people make choices and decisions within the limits of these underpinning “objective” parameters.
The cultural, artistic, religious, political, ideological and professional choices, as well as personal preferences in the form of consumption habits, reveal a schizophrenic society in which people resort to cognitive dissonance in an attempt to reconcile universal moral principles and values with the rules and norms of a dysfunctional society.
To a large extent, we conduct our existence trying to reconcile the irreconcilable, that is, we try to raise a part of our being to a higher moral level, pretending that we are capable of separating the wheat from the chaff, while managing the uninterrupted flow of deceptive narratives and cultural pollution that clouds our discernment as we struggle for survival.
There are people who believe that it is possible to live apart from society, to found communities committed to spiritual development. These projects focused on the search for spiritual liberation and holistic harmony with nature are not based on the principle of self-sufficiency, which should be the foundational principle of anyone who wants to live in harmony with nature.
When the spiritual liberation depends on the “importation” of essential and superfluous goods and services to maintain a fake sense of self-sufficiency (autonomy), what we have is a community founded on hypocrisy and for me the sacred principle of any initiative is intellectual honesty, which means that we must assume the factual truth instead of constructing a fiction that is incompatible with basic ethical principles. What we are doing is continuing to resort to cognitive dissonance and even denialism to reconcile the irreconcilable.
This type of community project aims to attract Western citizens disillusioned with the materialistic culture in search of spiritual guidance (retreat) and consequently open to experiences that connect them with supernatural energies and entities.
That's why they turn to people who are apparently imbued with spiritual powers and are willing to use them to free people from earthly shackles, treat spiritual illnesses and clean the body of toxins that obstruct the flow of cosmic energies essential to the discovery of the "true" Self in order of transforming existence into a true spiritual journey.
Imperialism has long sought total domination of planet Earth, we call it civilization, characterized by the growth of cities into megalopolises. Political (global governance), military (global hegemony), economic (global colonialism), financial (global enslavement) and more recently the claim to dominate nature resorting to the financialization of the so-called ecosystem services.
Civilized humans, born, raised and educated (programmed) in the imperialist ideological-cultural mindset are willing to serve special interests through careerism (human resources) to achieve success (wealth & power) operating in a system, called society.
Civilized humans have to live centered on themselves to climb the social ladder leading to an existence devoid of sense of belonging to a broader reality designated by nature.
For the civilized human, nature is an enormous larder preferentiality under private control to exploit and plunder indispensable resources to satisfy the basic needs but also and often with even more disastrous impact to satisfy superfluous "needs", as well as vane and ignominious whims.
All societies are artificial systems, but contemporary societies have reached a level of disconnection and at the same time acquired unparalleled power to control, modify and destroy natural systems, that many people are beginning to question the legitimacy of a morally bankrupt system.
Economic and techno-scientific development in the context of the capitalist system dehumanizes people, transforming us into delusional hypocrites and insensitive cynics. Humans crave honesty, trust, empathy, compassion, simple joy, fairness, and genuine experiences and relationships but we get nothing but deception.
We are not conquerors by nature but we are culturally conditioned to follow, obey, honor and worship the most perverse psychopaths and sociopaths who seize power and resort to violence and propaganda to engage us in their megalomaniac imperialist enterprises.
We have become complaint servants of a system designed and improved to serve the interests of those who control the top of the social pyramid, at the local, regional, national and global level.
If the current course is not changed, we will enter an era of transhumanist spiritual experimentation.
The process of indoctrinating this trend as one more alternative to free us from earthly shackles is already underway. We will have the opportunity to experience techno-levitation, virtual teleportation, transtelepathism and other trans-enhancements to be prepared to live in the limbo between a dystopian world and the metaverse.
The human ability to imagine, design and build artificial systems like complex societies and civilizations can be understood as progress and no one can deny that it has some positive aspects but it also annihilates the within humanity that exists in us.
Disguised as civilized traits, artistic beauty, architectural and engineering achievements, technological marvels, scientific ingenuity and even good manners I feel a deep disconnection with what really means to be human.
Following the precautionary principle in the context of contemporary civilization would be an expression of spirituality, especially when grounded in the refusal to cause unnecessary suffering to humans and animals and to break the cycle of destructive dependence on natural ecosystems to keep the profit-centered system working, where the few accumulate the wealth and the many bear the loss including the larger community called mother Earth.
To achieve this as a society, we need to cultivate simplicity, empathy and compassion as moral pillars of constructive coexistence and creative ingenuity embodied in a living community where justice and trust are structural rules and the institutionalized political economy has codified in law what really deserves to be rewarded and certainly it is not greed, nor disruptive consumption patterns, much less the idolatry of celebrity culture and false entrepreneurship that contribute to the construction of a dystopian world while exploring psycho-emotional weaknesses and make people dependent on an economic system that is supposed to grow forever.
The unfortunate tendency to uncritically follow the advice of “credible” authorities (largely a class of sophists) scientists, politicians, analysts, journalists, infoentertainers, artists, academics, intellectuals, ideologues, theologians, celebrities, opinion makers and spiritual leaders says more about a top-down organized system than it does about liberation and personal empowerment.
The perpetuation of a system that demands reverence and obedience to established authority and exploits popularity, fame, public projection manufactured by the mainstream media through the repetition of slogans and messages framed in a way to convey messages to shape public opinion.
The manipulation of the perception of everyday life is carried out by the systematic repetition of selected ideas framed in the form of symbolic and metaphorical narratives, to be inculcated as long-term implicit memories functioning as assembling blocks of the biosociocultural identity, a transversal and systemic process that defines who we are and why we are the way we are at every stage of our existence.
The public relations machine draws the necessary illusions to manufacture consent in all strata of society. This is the reality that we have to learn to dismantle and prefabricated solutions for immediate use don’t change the course of history.
Most paths and solutions sold as spiritual liberation fit this paradigm, they are not solutions, they are distractions, surely attractive to a certain type of person, but it takes a huge leap of faith or gullibility to believe that a new spiritual Age will emerge through supernatural intervention.
The blunt truth is that we are on the way of allowing the institutionalization of a transhumanist techno-feudal system, where spirituality will be mediated by AI super-entities.
In the current context, ordinary citizens are practically deprived of political agency, it is a society made up of political aliens who are impotent to actively participate in defining the societal paradigm that best serves the interests of the populations.
Citizens are treated as disposable pawns, living in a limbo between integration and marginalization in a society where technological progress, robotics, automation and AI make humans redundant and useless.
The fabric of society is crumbling before our eyes and a large part of the population lives in denial, believing that the situation will get better.
Others seek explanations and answers by resorting to unconventional sources.
We already knew that imagination knows no limits, but today's civilization discards the notion of limits, ridicules and ostracizes anyone who dares to defend their existence.
Genetic manipulation, bioengineering, biotechnology, bioelectronics, nanotechnology, cybernetics, digital life, metaverse.
The normal state is permanent innovation: artificialize, synthesize, virtualize, digitalize, disconnect, dehumanize and transdehumanize.
Faced with this reality, many people seek comfort, connection and meaning in the paranormal, open their bodies and minds to the intervention of supernatural powers and seek to align what they consider to be the true Self with cosmic energies.
They resort to alternative medicinal practices, yoga classes, spiritual retreats, out-of-body experiences and spiritual cleansing performed by shamans to align themselves with the telluric forces and regain existential harmony.
I have no doubt that the quality of life improves with these practices and life choices, but I also have no doubt that they contribute little to nothing to a radical change in society for the simple reason that they are parallel alternatives in the search for personal well-being and/or alternative family life options.
To radically change the societal paradigm, it is necessary to cultivate political awareness of the problems that affect society to implement a model of political economy in which society, economy and ecology walk side by side, and progress has time to be assimilated and, as innovation does not always mean progress, if we take into account the externalities, that is, their true ecosystemic impacts.
Spirituality, ethics, morals are not distractions to fill free time, they have to be inscribed in the legal code and in the fabric of society.
A society cannot be ethical, moral, just, honest, empathetic and harmonious if the instituted reward system is not based on the rules, principles and values mentioned above so that social activities become an expression of them.
And, furthermore, it is imperative to establish a permanent democratic surveillance system to control and correct the normal tendency of institutional degradation.
Institutions are permeable to the infiltration of less trustworthy citizens who will take advantage of systemic flaws to parasitize and take over the legal mechanisms and over time they will reform and shape them in their favor.
Nothing can be taken for granted and the democratic control of institutions is essential to prevent society from being controlled by particular interests and becoming a machine at the service of oligarchs and plutocrats.
The ruling class over time projects a meritocratic hierarchical system distributing privileges and entitlements to the roles, functions and positions that best serve the consolidation of power and accumulation of wealth at the top of the social pyramid.
Many people believe in the existence of supernatural forces and cosmic energies that can be focused to heal the body and cleanse the spirit.
Shamans, healers, gurus and "professionals" of alternative healing techniques mediate and use cosmic energies and natural remedies to relieve, heal people that believe in the benefit of this type of experience.
In my view, it is possible that it works in individual cases and restricted realities, but it is implausible that it can be scaled, let alone that it could treat the structural diseases that corrode the social fabric from within.
In the past, civilizations in crisis and collapsing societies went into collective delirium and adopted aberrant behaviors, including practices of human sacrifice (abominable crimes) to appease the divine fury, believing that the shedding of innocent blood would bring back normality. But trying to appease divine fury or resort to supernatural intervention to solve structural problems in complex societies could be identified as delusional denialism.
The profound social malaise, existential nihilism, feeling of disillusionment with a dysfunctional and dystopian society leads people to look for the meaning of life in supernatural forces and cosmic energies emanating from nature itself or from the universe in an attempt to treat physical, psycho-emotional and spiritual troubles to regain the joy of living.
A lesson in spirituality that we should take into account, in order to have a holistic view of societal problems: comprehensive cultural knowledge and intellectual instruments are needed to deconstruct the demagogic PR narratives used by the megalomaniac psychopaths to manipulate public perception and create the necessary illusions to manufacture the collective consent.
For a minority to satisfy insane whims and rule society with an iron fist, the majority must survive on the brink of destitution.
An examined existence is, in my view, a dignified form of spirituality, for those who seek to lead a moral life within a corrupt system have to be more resilient than those who seek the meaning of life in the "immaterial" universe.
After all, our physical existences take place on planet Earth, the physical existence must be valued and complacency with systematically inflicted unnecessary suffering and destruction cannot be tolerated. Confronting the powerful that control society is a liberating moral choice and, to some extent, a spiritual experience.
Nobody lives outside society, we grow and become what we are because we are interdependent social beings and society is our common home, why do we accept the humiliation of having to serve the greedy rentier class? This is rhetorical question and a spiritual challenge?!
