I keep coming back to the idea that a new Gospel or ideal is needed. It was interesting reading recently that Graham Greene was riling against the lack of any spirituality or ideals in the average English person in the 1930’s. Walking through — on a Saturday afternoon is not an uplifting experience. I go in sometimes because I have to. Many seem to spend most of their Saturday wandering around the shops and market in a sort of purposeless way and without displaying any great joy or enthusiasm.
Whatever the new Gospel is it must be one of action. There is a very interesting chapter in Hayward and Varela’s book, Gentle Bridges by Livingstone on the development of the brain. The nervous system, he says, is built for action. The action consists of motility, which has three categories: visceration, expression and effectuation. The last ties in very well with Marx’s idea that it is through work that we make ourselves what we are. We are above all social beings, made so by our extended childhood which allows the impartation of culture. The new ideal, or perhaps old one rediscovered, must build on what we are and try to correct what is happening in modern society.
Extended childhood is for the communication of culture and a meaning system. The more I think about it the more it appears that the very early and almost constant exposure to the media and the sort of pop culture it imparts is damaging to say the least.
a) We live in a pluralist society. Most children do not identify with any particular culture except in a minimalist way. In fact many are adept at being one thing at home, another with their peers and another at school.
b) Identity is bound up with fashions, clothes, possessions and peer group rather than family, goals, or ideals.
c) The only alternatives on offer seem to be fundamentalist groupings of one kind or another.
d) The prevailing ethic is an individualistic one where the rights of the individual are considered to have priority over any social considerations.
The ideal must be about making society but not in one of the current fundamentalist ways. It must have a worldview which is modern, coherent, attractive and not so outré that it arouses disdain or derision; a worldview that is open to the mysterium tremendum et fascinans.
The new gospel must be experiential. The old religions are too much based on dogma and ideology and this is one of the reasons why they no longer appeal. The ideologies are seen to be hollow and the dogmas were formulated and are expressed in terms of an ancient worldview. Buddhism is experiential. It makes no dogmatic claims. It simply says, ‘Here is the problem. This is the solution. Try it and see for yourself.’ The witness of the Buddha and of those who have achieved peace and serenity are powerful testimonies. So it must be with the new gospel, as in the early days of the Christian era when they said, ‘See how these Christians love one another.’ At present the Church bears witness to faith, to dogma. There is no correlation between the lives of most Christians and the faith they profess. There are more Catholics in prison, for example, than any other denomination. The horrors in what was formerly Yugoslavia are, in part, due to two different groups of Christians.