Will the Revolution be “Spiritual?” Occupy, Spirituality, and Social Change
Charlie Cross Senior Integrative Exercise April 9, 2014
Abstract: This paper explores the various ways that spirituality has been construed and used in the discourse surrounding the Occupy movement (often called “Occupy Wall Street”). I start with scholarly works on the history and broader cultural and political implications of the “spiritual, but not religious” movement, finding that the two movements can indeed be linked, especially through the process of subjectivization, as outlined by Paul Heelas and Linda Woodead. With Occupy in view, I reject the characterization of the “spiritual, but not religious” as politically apathetic to this instead suggesting that this perceived apathy is better understood to be the fault of the political system at large. Moving into the thought of those that seek to connect their spiritualties to Occupy, I find a similar sentiment as espoused by the “spiritual, but not religious,” viewing religion as largely politically awry. This slice of the discourse maintains a connection to tradition, but only after a politically transformative “spirituality” is established. Thus, the notion of “spirituality” is expanded to include multiple traditionally secular pursuits, aligning it with the whole of the cultural trend of subjectivization. I then move into a second common usage of the term “spirituality,” by what I call Transformational Culture. This context speaks of a “spiritual revolution,” or a “spiritual crisis,” pointing to a flawed attitude or idea—sometimes called the “Paradigm of Separation” at the root of Western culture and its problems. While the strictly secular discourse surrounding Occupy speaks with similar language, grasping for wholesale revolution, I assert that the understanding of spirituality emphasized by Transformational Culture corresponds most closely to the spirit of Occupy’s critique. I then seek to summarize the process of social change imagined by prominent articulators of Transformational Culture, which I see as fulfilling the visionary impulse expressed in Occupy, through the gradual installment of systems assuming and encouraging a cooperative paradigm.
“Problems cannot be solved with the same mind set that created them.” Albert Einstein “Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.” 1 John 4:20 "Every glorious disaster / every one is gonna bring you out faster / into the light.” TV on the Radio - Second Song Introduction On November 2, 2011, the day of Occupy Oakland’s General Strike, two signs at the entrance to the Occupy encampment formed a diptych: “You have left home” and “Welcome to Life.” 1 The Occupy movement has mainly been discussed in terms of its relationship to mainstream politics or other social movements. Although no official demands were released by the movement, commentators searching for the meaning of Occupy are quick to emphasize economic or political issues, such as wealth inequality (“The 99%" vs. “The 1%”), the power of Wall Street and its relationship to politics, or the ineffectiveness of our political system as a whole. Undoubtedly, these topics constitute much of Occupy's instigating frustration. And in place of formal statements, many discern implicit critiques in the structure of the movement—a fiercely leaderless, frustratingly deliberate, consensus-based, participatory democracy. Bernard E. Harcourt, Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, calls the system “political disobedience.” Civil disobedience accepts the legitimacy of the political structure but resists the moral authority of the 1 Deborah B. Gould, “Occupy’s Political Emotions,” Contexts, 11: 2 (2012): 19.
resulting laws. Political disobedience resists politics “writ large”—conventional political rationality, discourse, and strategy.2 Still, even though assessments such as those made by Harcourt focus on more fundamental impulses and ideas instead of isolated issues, they do not necessarily capture the essence of the movement. Arthur S. Brisbane notes that mainstream media, in attempting to understand Occupy according to traditional political standards, can miss the message of the movement entirely.3 Scholars risk committing the same error in only looking at the movement through the established theories of political science, sociology, anthropology, etc., saying Occupy is “about money,”4 “about democracy,”5 or “a generational movement.”6 However, the signs at Occupy Oakland suggest that the protesters themselves see the movement to be about much, much more. Religious studies has not been significantly involved in the quest to make sense of Occupy, despite considerable conversation about the relationship between religion and the movement. Indeed, the Huffington Post has a subsection on its website entitled, “Occupy Faith."7 For the most part, discussion has taken two forms: attempts to locate expressions of spirituality at occupation sites, and explorations of the dovetailing language of Occupy and various theologies. However, both of these approaches miss rich perspectives where religious thought, and even the language of religious studies, 2 Bernard E. Harcourt, Occupy: Three Inquiries in Disobedience. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 44. 3 Arthur S. Brisbane, “Who Is Occupy Wall Street?” in The New York Times, November 13, 2011. 4 Benjamin Barber, “What Democracy Looks Like,” in Contexts, 11; 2: (2012) 14-16. 5 Buell, John, “Occupy Wall Street’s Democratic Challenge,” Theory and Event, 14: 4: 2011, p. N/A. 6 Ruth Milkman, “Revolt of the College-Educated Millennials,” in Contexts, 11; 2: (2012), 13-14. 7 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/occupy-‐faith/.
intertwines with Occupy ideas. The discourse has been about religion within Occupy or religion and Occupy, not how Occupy itself could be seen as a quasi-religious movement. And many understood Occupy to be a quasi-religious movement. A documentary entitled Occupy Love asked the question, “How could Occupy be understood as a love story?” Books named Occupy Religion and Occupy Spirituality were written. A post on the Occupy Wall Street twitter said, “Occupy was a spiritual experience.”8 Reimagining Occupy in this light makes relevant the theories of religious studies. Looking at the movement as a whole through ideas about spirituality emphasizes illuminating elements that are latent in other approaches. In this paper, I seek to understand the broader religious or spiritual trends that Occupy is a part of. I suggest that Occupy is partially understandable as an expression of the “spiritual, but not religious” phenomenon—an increasingly present part of contemporary American religious life. However, the category fails to explain the entirety of the spiritual expression of the movement. Looking deeper and drawing on several influential “spiritual” thinkers associated with the movement, I analyze ideas about secular spirituality and cultural paradigms often emphasized in certain arms of the movement. In both types of thought, spirituality cannot be separated from the political sphere—or, indeed, any other sphere of society. These understandings and forms of spirituality, I suggest, better correspond to the fullness of Occupy’s critique. In sum, through tracing these pathways where spirituality and political and social change intertwine, we can affirm that a revolution in the tradition of Occupy would indeed be 8 @OccupyWallSt Twitter, February 12, 2014, https://twitter.com/OccupyWallSt/status/433658538347347968.
spiritual.
Occupy and the “Spiritual, but not Religious” As Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam has observed, “It’s hard to name a progressive movement in American history that did not have powerful religious allies and influences.”9 While surely this is a unique moment in the history of the relationship between religion and politics (potentially even a watershed) it is misguided to overlook the possibility of an important spiritual element to Occupy. Still, as religious authority has come into question, finding a single, obvious and unifying tradition behind the intentionally radical structure of Occupy is unlikely. In the place of established traditions, however, the “spiritual, but not religious” phenomenon is a prime candidate to serve as an accompanying philosophy or practice. Indeed, behind the term “spiritual, but not religious” is a distinctly political sentiment. The namesake feature of this phrase points to a sense of a valuable “spirituality” that is connected to but often impeded by “religion.” As Jeremy Carrette and Richard King point out in Selling Spirituality, the emergence of the term “spirituality” in late nineteenth and early twentieth century discourse, despite its lurking presence since the seventeenth century, “relates to tensions between conventional, organized religious traditions, and a sense of a ‘spiritual life’ which seemed ill-served by such institutionalized traditions.”10 The assertion of spirituality is a rejection of authority, 9 Jane Eisner, “Why ‘Occupy Judaism’ Is Turning Point,” Forward, October 13, 2011, http://forward.com/articles/144298/why-occupy-judaism-is-turning-point accessed April 29, 2012. 10 Jeremy Carette and Richard King, Selling Spirituality. (New York, New York: Routledge, 2004).
placing one’s own experience or quest before the doctrine or established order of religion. Zinnbauer et al. (1997) suggest that the popularity of spirituality, especially in the last 50 years, arose in tandem with another familiar response to religious authority—secularism. Both relate to disillusionment with religious institutions as public leaders and guides to the valuable, important, or sacred in life.11 Paul Heelas and Linda Woodhead assert that behind the impulse of spirituality and secularism alike is the movement towards “subjectivization.” In fact, this trend is much larger. They suggest, “the subjective turn has become the defining cultural development of modern western culture.”12 They write: The turn is away from worlds in which people think of themselves first and foremost as belonging to established and ‘given’ orders of things which are transmitted from the past but flow forwards into the future. Being ‘higher’ and ‘greater’ than the individual self such transcendent, collective, supra-self orders serve as people’s primary ‘sources of significance.’13 They call this previous ethos, “life as,” and see it as being intimately tied to religion. Conversely, spirituality is associated with the subjective life. Fittingly, popular contemporary spiritual thinker Deepak Chopra states, “Religion is the belief in someone else’s experience. Spirituality is having your own experience.”14 Occupy could be seen as an extreme subjective response to politics. As political disobedience, a wholesale rejection of politics writ large, it resists the same fields of authority rejected by spirituality. Just as spirituality rejects the supra-self orders of 11 Zinnbauer et al., "Religion and Spirituality: Unfuzzying the Fuzzy” in Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 36, 4: (1997), 549-564. 12 Paul Heelas and Linda Woodhead, The Spiritual Revolution: Why Religion is Giving Way to Spirituality. (Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley Blackwell, 2005), 5. 13 Heelas and Woodhead, The Spiritual Revolution, 3. 14 @DeepakChopra Twitter. May 25, 2013 https://twitter.com/DeepakChopra/status/338312910658998272.
religion, Occupy sees the larger and “given” order of politics as indelibly corrupt or doomed. Moreover, the two align in what is emphasized in place of “life as.” Occupy’s model of direct democracy and consensus-based decision making seeks a quasi-anarchist empowerment of the individual.15 Likewise, in the life of the “spiritual, but not religious," Heelas and Woodhead explain, “the subjectivities of each individual become a, if not the, unique source of significance, meaning, and authority.”16 As applied to the avenues of individual lives, both Occupy and the “spiritual, but not religious” movement emphasize a greater purpose or capacity for individual lives. A popularly circulated sign at Occupy Wall Street read, “Lost a job, found an occupation.” Heelas and Woodhead see subjectivization encouraging one “not to follow established paths, but to forge one’s own inner-directed, as subjective life. Not to become what others want one to be, but to ‘become who I truly am.’”17 This connection between the “spiritual, but not religious” and the intense political action of Occupy runs counter to much of the prevailing thought concerning the political nature of much contemporary spirituality. Significant scholarship has criticized those that fall under the categories of “spiritual, but not religious” as being politically inactive, despite their ostensible strong opposition to the status quo. Many have concluded that spirituality has ironically and unfortunately fallen prey to consumerism, materialism, and political passivity. In other words, spirituality has become a new iteration of Marx’s "opiate of the masses." Carrette and King state, The territorial takeover of religion by psychology (individualism) offers the platform for the takeover of spirituality by capitalism (corporatisation). 15 Dana Williams, “The Anarchist DNA of Occupy,” Contexts, 11; 2: (2012) 19-20. 16 Heelas and Woodhead, The Spiritual Revolution, 3-4 17 Ibid, 4
Psychology provides a way for the market to embrace religion through the language of ‘spirituality’ and politically removes its threat to the status quo. While “New Age” followers dance the gospel of self-expression they often service the financial agents and chain themselves to a spirituality of consumerism.18 David Webster, in Dispirited: How Contemporary Spirituality Makes Us Stupid, Selfish, and Unhappy, suggests that what follows is a glamorized and atomized spiritual “community.” In turning inward and re-evaluating material, worldly concerns as squalid and shallow, “spirituality” is “an engine of depoliticization.”19 Robert Bellah complains that the contemporary spiritual practitioner “has made the inner trip and hasn’t come back out again.”20 However, Heelas and Woodhead suggest that these are hasty characterizations: ‘Subjectivization’ should not be confused with ‘individualization.’ Whilst it is true that the subjective turn sees individuals emphasizing their personal experiences as their source of meaning, significance and authority, this need not imply that they will be atomistic, discrete or selfish… above all else subjectivelife spirituality is ‘holistic’, involving self-in-relation rather than a self-inisolation. Hence it is common for the subjective turn to involve what Carson McCullers (1973) refers to as the ‘we of me’ (p. 39) being understood as the true, subjective, ‘me.’21 Given that Occupy is tied up with the “spiritual, but not religious” movement, we can use it to reflect on these conclusions about the political habits of the contemporary spiritual practitioner. In the context of Occupy, the previous observed political inactivity becomes as much or more the fault of the difficulty of meaningful engagement with the current political formation. Deborah B. Gould suggests that Occupy forces a reappraisal of a 18 Carette and King, Selling Spirituality, 79. 19 David Webster, Dispirited: How Contemporary Spirituality Makes Us Stupid, Selfish, and Unhappy. (Arelsford, UK: Zero Books, 2011), 7. 20 Robert N. Bellah, “Habits of the Heart: Implications for Religion” (paper presented at St. Mark’s Catholic Church, Isla Vista, California, February 21, 1986). 21 Heelas and Woodhead, The Spiritual Revolution, 11.
conventional understanding of the American public as politically apathetic. She says, Rather than indifference, high rates of non-voting and a more general political withdrawal might better be understood as a response to the ineloquence of the political… The Occupy movement invites a different, more active relationship to the political. The enthusiastic response reveals a widespread desire for political engagement22 In place of characterizing the “spiritual, but not religious” movement as hypocritical, politically apathetic and self-serving, a more complex dynamic is emerging. It seems more likely that, in the absence of promising avenues to transform society, individuals instead jumped at the possibility of transforming themselves—which, as we will see, they understand to be a political activity itself. If (or when) more effective methods of engagement with objective political systems emerge, contemporary spiritual practitioners will correspondingly become more politically engaged. In this regard, I agree with the actor, comedian, and former MTV host Russell Brand, who says, “Apathy is a natural reaction to a system that no longer represents, hears or addresses the vast majority of people.”23
The Political Nature of Spirituality Moving into those that tie their spiritualties to Occupy, we see talk of “a new spirituality.” In an article in the online magazine The Good Men Project, Avi Zer-Aviv states, “We may be on the verge of a spiritual renaissance, with the Occupy movement on the cutting edge.” Others understand this new spirituality to be the tool that will steer our
22 Deborah B. Gould, “Occupy’s Political Emotions” Contexts, 11: 2 (2012): 21. 23 Russell Brand, “Russell Brand on Revolution: ‘We no longer have the luxury of tradition,’“ The New Statesmen, October 24, 2013, accessed January 28, 2014 http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/10/russell-brand-on-revolution.
civilization away from global disaster.24 Like the “spiritual, but not religious,” movement, this form of spirituality draws on religious traditions, but is emphatically devoted to their spiritual cores over any divisive dogma—part of the larger dichotomy that they seek to heal between the religious or spiritual and the political. In Occupy Spirituality, Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox present as a new spirituality, but trace its seeds to previous religiously inspired social movements. They note that, “Its promise is no different from what Martin Luther King Jr. called the ‘beloved community.’”25 The difference is that of scale. Largely through the connective capacity of the Internet, politically radical spiritual seekers are no longer lonely. Now, Fox and Bucko suggest, “a whole generation is primed for this, and it’s a global thing.”26 This fits nicely with many characterizations of Occupy as a manifestation of the attitudes of the Millennial generation. Ruth Milkman traces their engagement with the movement to their collective experience. She says, They followed the prescribed path to prepare themselves for professional jobs or meaningful careers. But having completed their degrees, they confronted a labor market bleaker than anytime since the 1930s. Adding insult to injury, many are burdened with enormous amounts of student debt.27 Furthermore, they were also seduced and abandoned politically, after enthusiastically supporting Barack Obama in 2008, only to perceive no substantial change or hope in mainstream politics. Bucko and Fox suggest a similar dynamic might be applied to spirituality. Millenials have confronted both politically conservative religious institutions 24 Chris Saade, Second Wave Spirituality, (Berkeley: North Atlantic, 2014). 25 Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox, Occupy Spirituality, (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2013), 21. 26 Ibid, 34. 27 Ruth Milkman, Revolt of the College Educated Millennials, Contexts, 11: 2 (2012): 21.
and New Age seekers insensitive to political realities and instead have embraced a path that unites spirituality with activism.28 Still, while Bucko and Fox suggest that the emerging generation has rejected religious dogma, largely due to the political bent of religious communities and teachings, they haven’t rejected tradition altogether. Indeed, both Bucko and Fox are Christians—in a sense, “spiritual, but also Christian.” Rather, they seem to emphasize that emerging relationships to tradition are tempered by a “deep ecumenism” and “inter spirituality,” following the “God of Life,” not the “God of Religion”—a distinction they credit to Howard Thurman, one of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s mentors. They quote Thurman in saying that the God of Life, found in spirituality, is “the life within life” and the “'heart of the universe’ that puts love first and justice first.” The “God of Religion,” by contrast, can easily saddle up with the idols of the "God of Empire, of Commerce, of Greed, of Power, of Militarism."29 Thus, Bucko and Fox's conception of the distinction between the spiritual and the religious largely has to do with the attempt to shed the political associations of religion in a way that preserves the values and truths found in each tradition. However, this does not happen through embracing a depoliticized spirituality (which is impossible, in their eyes). Jeorg Rieger and Kwok Pui-lan’s Occupy Religion explicitly confronts this popular conception (amongst the secular and spiritual alike) of the religious or spiritual as 28 Bucko and Fox, among others, often speak harshly of the New Age movement. In the introduction to Occupy Spirituality, Andrew Harvey says, “The continuing, bewildering success of inanely narcissistic new age mysticism makes it clear that the baby boom generation is unlikely to wake up any time, let alone commit its immense resources to doing anything real or radical enough to avert or temper catastrophe. Any real hope for our future lies in the energy, passion, wisdom, and commitment of the young” (xvi-xvii). 29 Bucko and Fox, Occupy Spirituality, 6.
personal, not political. While the word “Occupy” in the phrase Occupy Spirituality is more of an adjective, Rieger and Pui-lan here invoke the verb. They state, “This book is titled Occupy Religion because we want to challenge traditional ways of thinking about religion and the space that religion is supposed to inhabit.”30 Primarily, Rieger and Pui-lan emphasize that all theology is political, "even if it is not aware of this truth.” In doing so, they are not so much speaking to politically active, conservative churches and their images of God that resemble the powers that be, but rather the religious left, which is all too often politically silent or discouraged. Rieger and Pui-lan point to the dangers of reiterating the dynamics of Nazi Germany, where churches withdrew from public life in order to practice in private, and eventually realized too late that their withdrawal amounted to tacit support of the system. Conversely, they argue in favor of reclaiming the “radical images of God in our traditions that present us with an alternative understanding of power and inspire new relations among people and communities.”31 Occupy provides language and ideas upon which to base this new theology, which they call the “theology of the multitude.” It’s worth noting that, unlike Bucko and Fox, Rieger and Pui-lan do not argue that a new form of spirituality is emerging with Occupy. I’d suggest, though, that "Occupy Spirituality” and the “theology of the multitude" are new expressions of what they all understand to be the true teachings of the main religions. Fox states, "“When I look at history, I realize that this is not the first time that spiritual revolutions have happened in this way. This was the spirituality of Jesus, Kabir, Ramakrishna, Gandhi, and many 30 Jeorg Rieger and Kwok Pui-lan, Occupy Religion. (Plymouth UK: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012), Kindle Edition (Location 124). 31 Rieger and Pui-lan, Occupy Religion, location 193.
others.”32 Although Rieger and Pui-lan do not use the language of “spirituality” or attempt to speak to a “spiritual, but not religious” audience, they bring a similarly radical attitude towards religion. They say, “At a time when religion is once again more and more identified with the status quo, at stake is nothing less than the future of religion itself.”33 In the end, the understandings of religion and spirituality expressed in the two works suggest that Occupy is not to be bound philosophically to the “spiritual, but not religious.” Rather, the movement is to be associated with a shift within both traditionally religious and “spiritual” thinking.
An Expanding Spirituality As we have seen, this shift in some areas of religion and spirituality correlated with Occupy stems from an observed entanglement between religion, spirituality and politics. But whereas Bucko and Fox, as well as Rieger and Pui-lan (who, collectively, can be called the Occupy Theologians, or the OTs) articulate the unavoidable political nature of religion and spirituality, they only allude to the religious or spiritual nature of politics—a point increasingly emphasized within certain trends of thought associated with Occupy. I’d suggest that this difference in emphasis is to be tied with somewhat different usages of the terms “spirituality” or “spiritual.” The first way the terms are used—especially by those who, like the OTs, align themselves with a specific tradition— emphasizes secular, humanistic ideals and values. This trend bleeds into but is distinct from the other usage, which uses the term “spiritual” to point to the core part of a worldview or a fundamental heuristic of experience. The discourse with this usage often 32 Bucko and Fox, Occupy Spirituality, 14. 33 Rieger and Pui-‐lan, Occupy Religion, location 126.
talks about a “spiritual revolution.” The first usage of the term, employed by the OT’s and others, is associated with a tradition of progressive spiritual politics that are on the conservative end of the entire spectrum of views associated with Occupy. In the "politics of meaning” associated with this movement, appeals are made to a ubiquitous sense of spirituality, which has been conceived of in different ways. Spirituality so conceived easily spills into the terrain of the secular, emphasizing ideals of moral seriousness and creative imagination. Rieger and Pui-lan, seeking to paint an aesthetically enticing state of affairs, point back to Max Weber, who “characterized modernity in Western Europe by rationalization and the ‘disenchantment of the world’ at both the personal and societal levels.” Bucko and Fox, bemoaning the tension and disjunction—even within Occupy—between activism and spirituality,34 say, “This new spirituality says that spirituality that does not include action is no spirituality at all.”35 This blending of the spiritual and secular is a continuation in the flow of the history of “spirituality.” Peter H. Van Ness, commenting on the relationship between "secular spirituality" and religious spirituality, suggests that spirituality is best “conceived in phenomenological rather than metaphysical or institutional terms.”36 It is more an attitude than an identification.37 The Network of Spiritual Progressives—run 34 And indeed there is a significant tension and disjunction. Replying to the previous tweet from @OccupyWallSt, saying “Occupy was a spiritual experience,” @dinogore said “@OccupyWallSt I’m going to occupy my toilet with vomit” https://twitter.com/dinogore/status/433714333940736000. 35 Bucko and Fox, Occupy Spirituality, 28. 36 Peter H. Van Ness, Spirituality and The Secular Quest, (New York, New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1996), 1-2. 37 Van Ness continues, “Facing outward, human existence is spiritual insofar as one engages reality as a maximally inclusive whole and makes the cosmos an intentional
by Rabbi Michael Lerner, a central figure in the push for a “politics of meaning”—says they use the word "spiritual" to Include all those whose deepest values lead them to challenge the ethos of selfishness and materialism that has led people into a frantic search for money and power and away from a life that places love, kindness, generosity, peace, nonviolence, social justice, awe and wonder at the grandeur of creation, thanksgiving, humility and joy at the center of our lives.38 In this regard, many leading figures in the “spirituality” movement are aligning themselves with the trend of subjectivization. Heelas and Woodhead note that the subjective life has to do with “states of consciousness states of mind, memories, emotions, passions, sensations, bodily experiences, dreams, feelings, inner conscience, and sentiments—including moral sentiments like compassion.”39 This represents a shift in values. Heelas and Woodhead note, Ronald Inglehart’s analysis of successive rounds of value surveys shows that the number of ‘post-materialists’ has been growing steadily, both in absolute terms and relative to the number of ‘materialists.’ The latter are those whose prime concern is with obtaining the material necessities and securities of life, whilst the former are those who value self-expression and are intent on ‘maximizing subjective well-being (1997, p. 36).40 And indeed, this movement finds this sort of spirituality in Occupy. In an article appearing in Tikkun (a magazine edited by Lerner and associated with the NSP), John Helmeire states, The spirituality of the Occupy movement is not one that references God, the Divine, or even the numinous, but instead is found in the imaginative object of thought and feeling. Facing inward, life has a spiritual dimension to the extent that it is apprehended as a project of people’s most enduring and vital selves and is structured by experiences of sudden self-transformation and subsequent gradual development” (5). 38 “Spiritual But Not Religious,” The Network of Spiritual Progressives, accessed April 7, 2014. http://www.spiritualprogressives.org/article.php/spiritual__butnot 39 Heelas and Woodhead, The Spiritual Revolution, 3-4. 40 ibid, 79
transcendence of the consumerist, individualistic, hierarchical constructions of self and society that we in America are spoon fed from birth.41 It is worthwhile to note that the value of imagination is exalted even amidst the strictly secular discourse of Occupy. Occupation sites were understood by many to be blank canvases of sorts—places where people could explore their way into more meaningful, sustainable, or even radically different relationships and senses of self. An imaginative leap enabled spaces and experiences of real, if fleeting transformation. Michael Taussig relays the account of an Occupy-going student in his sorcery class, who compared visiting Zuccotti Park, (the original location for Occupy Wall St.) to going to the movies and getting entranced into another reality. She said, “I would be hypnotized and turned into someone else.”42 Another student suggested that “maybe OWS (Occupy Wall St.) is something like that awakening that is between sleep and consciousness. We are emerging from slumber but are disoriented, stupored, caught between the dream logic of capitalism and the newly forming world.”43 Others have emphasized that the battle for social justice is a fight of imagination. Max Haiven, proposing that capitalism encloses our imaginations as well as our time, community and environment, states, We can credit the relatively minimal involvement in social movements less to ignorance and apathy and more to a sense of utter futility. If capitalism and its cooption of all that we value is inevitable, why bother to resist? Why not simply seek to do the best one can within the system?44 The Politics of Paradigms There isn’t too large of a philosophical gap between the ideas of the conservative 41 John Helmiere, “The Spirituality of Occupy,” Tikkun (Spring 2012; 27, 2) : p 22 42 Michael Taussig, Occupy: Three Inquiries in Disobedience. 4. 43 Taussig, Occupy, 10. 44 Max Haiven, “Crises of Imagination, Crises of Power,” ROAR Magazine, January 17, 2014, accessed April 7, 2014.
and the revolutionary sides of the Occupy spiritual discourse. The core difference is that the latter focuses less on an idea of “spirituality"—instead of defending a spiritual identity or a spiritual element to the movement, the revolutionaries invoke the term in order to communicate the magnitude of the revolution they prescribe for our collective disorder. They speak of a “spiritual revolution,” transforming our understanding of self and experience of self; or a “spiritual crisis,” a rumbling in the fundamental values or ideas of Western culture. Thus, the more intensely revolutionary side of Occupy uses the term more sparingly. In a way, they might be conceptualized as a group seeking to plunge to the deepest conceptual blueprint of the “established and ‘given’ orders of things which are transmitted from the past but flow forwards into the future,”45 and attempting to build on the blank canvas behind it an entirely new culture, based on new, somewhat spiritual blueprints. Such discourse has by no means crystallized into a single movement. The fields stand with multiple, overlapping hubs emphasizing different ideas—some specializing in always evolving New Age esoteric practices of consciousness, and others explicating holistic ecological or cosmological models upon which to understand humanity’s place in the world and cosmos. To describe and understand this emerging milieu I suggest Transformational Culture, a term taken from the online magazine Reality Sandwich. The website’s self-description accurately captures the movement’s various and often interweaving elements: Reality Sandwich is a magazine of ideas for the transformational community. We cover subjects like shamanism, non-local consciousness, visionary art, alternative economics, psychedelics, permaculture, transformational festivals, meditation, democratic engagement, near death experiences, and tantra, to name but a few. 45 Heelas and Woodhead, The Spiritual Revolution, 5.
Together these topics are the heart of a vibrant new transformational culture that’s addressing the social, spiritual, and ecological crises of our time.46 This culture understands itself to be at the leading edge of a global awakening demonstrated in events like the Arab Spring, the Indignados of Spain, and Occupy. Members of Transformational Culture engage in many of the same decentralized social and political processes embodied by Occupy, and were present at Occupation sites, where signs read, "The revolution must be a revolution of consciousness," "Welcome to the Paradigm Shift," and "Occupy Consciousness.”47 This discourse approaches social problems as manifestations of underlying cultural beliefs comparable to religious systems, and in doing so follows a tradition of religious thought that sees religion as inextricable from the other cultural phenomena. Amongst its many definitions, religion is often conceived of as a heuristic through which the world is interpreted and related to—a process so fundamental that those living in it don’t even notice it. The American sociologist Talcott Parsons said that the greatest insight about religion of his French forebear, Emile Durkheim, was not so much that “religion was a social phenomenon” but that “society is a religious phenomenon.”48 As Harvey Cox points out, the movements of global society today are increasingly coordinated in relation to the ideals of economics, a process aided by the metaphysical assumptions of neoliberal economics. He says, “there lies embedded in the business pages an entire theology, which is comparable in scope if not profundity to that of 46 “About Us,” Reality Sandwich, accessed January 28, 2014, http://realitysandwich.com/about/who-we-are/. 47 Jonathan Talat-Phillips, “Occupying Consciousness, Spiritual Activism 2.0,” The Huffington Post, June 7, 2012, accessed April 7, 2014 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-talat-phillips/occupying-consciousnessspiritual-activism_b_1576091.html. 48 Talcott Parsons, Structure of Social Action. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1937), 365.
Thomas Aquinas or Karl Barth.”49 The sociologist Roland Robertson suggests that common images of revolutions ignore the importance of the conceptual sphere in striving for social justice. Real revolutions must seek to transform culture and consciousness as well as material and political structures. He asserts, “The modern form of revolution requires a form of culture and consciousness which gives meaning to the newly framed concern with secular matters.”50 To a significant extent, Occupy discourse—both spiritual and secular— congregates around this paradigmatic element of our culture. Matt Tiabbi, a journalist for Rolling Stone, recounts his realization that Occupy Wall Street was always about something much bigger than a movement against big banks and modern finance. It’s about providing a forum for people to show how tired they are not just of Wall Street, but everything. This is a visceral, impassioned, deep-seated rejection of the entire direction of our society, a refusal to take even one more step forward into the shallow commercial abyss of phoniness, short-term calculation, withered idealism and intellectual bankruptcy that American mass society has become. If there is such a thing as going on strike from one's own culture, this is it. 51 Strikingly, the editorial staff of the magazine Adbusters, which released the initial call for the Occupation of Wall Street, feels comfortable using the term “spiritual” to describe this scenario: “Can't you see capitalism is heaving under its own swollen brain? … We all know what’s ahead: a quickening beat of ecological, financial, political, spiritual, and 49 Harvey Cox, “The Market as God: Living in the new dispensation,” in The Atlantic, March 1, 1999, accessed April 7, 2014, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/03/the-market-as-god/306397/. 50 Roland Robertson, “The Development and Modern Implications of the Classical Sociological Perspective on Religion and Revolution“ in Religion, Rebellion, Revolution, edited by Bruce Lincoln, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985), 258. 51 Matt Taibbi, “How I Stopped Worrying and Learned To Love the OWS Protests,” Rolling Stone, November 10, 2011, accessed April 7, 2014, http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-i-stopped-worrying-and-learned-to-lovethe-ows-protests-20111110
personal crisis. Everything about this insanity is the same. It’s time to wake up from this dead dream.”52 The paradigm being criticized is often characterized as dehumanizing, materialistic, or propping up an outdated scientific worldview. Russell Brand—an emerging spokesperson for Transformational Culture—focuses his critique on the tragic image of human nature that the paradigm assumes and perpetuates. He suggests that our social, political, and economic structures depend upon fearful, acquisitive, and deadened individuals, and from this quality of consciousness arise our global environmental crisis and gross inequality of wealth. David Korten, a former Harvard Business School professor, notes the connection between the capitalist assumption that the competitive instinct is the primary and essential driver of prosperity and progress and the broader scientific attitude that life is a brutal competition for survival, the accidental outcome of material complexity with no larger meaning or purpose. Likewise, he rejects a common religious worldview, where “life on Earth is but a way station on the path to paradise,”53 and humans have the authority to utilize nature for our temporary use and comfort. In place of these cosmologies, he suggests a new “sacred story for our time.” He quotes Thomas Berry to the effect that, “For people, generally, their story of the universe and the human role in the universe is their primary source of intelligibility and value.”54 This new paradigm holds a panentheistic view where “God is in the world, and the world is in God, yet they are not identical.”55 Korten sees life as fundamentally cooperative and 52 Adbusters Magazine, #102, July/August 2012 53 David Korten. “Religion, Science, and Spirit: A Sacred Story for Our Time,” Yes! Powerful Ideas, Practical Actions, January 17, 2013, accessed April 7, 2014. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid.
self-organizing—a view he understands to be supported by new findings in psychology, biology, and physics. Korten also suggests that this story, which he calls “Integral Spirit,” is “the underlying cosmology of a reassuring number of religious leaders and devout members of many faiths, including a great many Catholic nuns, as well as most people who define themselves as spiritual but not necessarily religious.”56 Because the dehumanizing, materialistic, and individualistic paradigm is seen as the source of our political, ecological, and personal problems, it assumes a central role in Transformational Culture’s political strategy. Charles Eisenstein, an articulate spokesperson for the movement, sees our different systems to be interconnected reflections of fundamental perceptions and beliefs. Our environmental problems, for example, cannot be solved without changing our economic system, which in turn arises from a specific idea about the nature of humanity and the world. Our crisis, therefore, is a spiritual one. Real political change must accompany a certain spiritual process. Eisenstein speculates, What kind of people work at jobs that satisfy no desire but the desire for security? What kind of people stand passively by while their nation prosecutes one unjust war after another? The answer is: fearful people. Alienated people. Wounded people. That’s why spiritual work is political, if it spreads love, connection, forgiveness, acceptance, and healing.57 And this view isn’t restricted to Transformational Culture. Jonathan Rowson, director of the Social Brain Centre, emphasizes the need for a broader secular spirituality—a better understanding of who we think we are and why we think we are here before addressing institutional problems. Only then, he says, “might we build the requisite will 56 Ibid. 57 Charles Eisenstein, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible. (Berkeley: Evolver Editions, 2013), 87.
and insight needed to create a better world.”58 In this regard, Transformational Culture seeks to reunite spirituality and activism. The movement believes that a change in society is not possible without a breakdown in our sense of self and the beliefs that uphold it. Likewise, a spirituality that is not attuned to social realities cannot survive. In the words of Bucko and Fox, Occupy Spirituality is a spirituality that “completely transfigures people and society.” This spirituality, in turn, informs a large amount of their political strategy. Eisenstein suggests that much of the despair over the magnitude of the crisis facing the world today arises from the paradigm that caused the crisis in the first place. This outdated paradigm stipulates that political change has to happen through the application of force on the political system. "Engaged Spirituality” or “Spiritual Activism” is seen as a motivator or resource for work in the “real” world of politics. Indeed, this is largely understood to be the relationship between religion or spirituality and activism.59 Even though Paradigm Shifters may use spirituality in the same way (for example, meditating at protests to sustain a nonviolent attitude), this dynamic, as a theory of political change, is rejected as an artifact of the Cartesian dualism between body and mind. When the old paradigm falls apart, individuals experience a much more enchanted world. Eisenstein, explaining a new paradigm based on a principle of profound interconnectedness, suggests that every action has cosmic significance. They understand themselves to be engaging in political activity when they are meditating, on retreat, at 58 Jonathan Rowson, “The Spiritual and the Political: Beyond Russell Brand,” January 26, 2014. Accessed February 5, 2014 http://www.rsablogs.org.uk/2014/socialbrain/spirituality-russell-brand/. 59 Gregory C. Stanczak, Engaged Spirituality: Social Change and American Religion. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. 2006.
music festivals, taking psychedelics, engaging in alternative healing practices, creating art. In fact, it goes beyond that—basic, everyday moments take on a political, even revolutionary ethos. As politics is conceived of as the entire dynamic of human relations, any instance in which individuals relate to others or even themselves is seen as activism. The political sphere is an ocean, and each daily moment is drop in it.
Transformational Culture, the New Age, and Occupy I would suggest that the popularity of this wholesale revolutionary attitude is a result of an environmentally-minded apocalyptic streak that is increasingly prevalent today. There exists broad scientific consensus on the culpability of humans in potentially catastrophic climate change, yet simultaneous widespread public apathy and even denial persist. When one accepts that we are literally killing the planet and thus ourselves, it is understandable to wonder if something is fundamentally wrong in our global psyche. This sort of radical questioning of the entire flow of culture and its deepest causes quickly turns into discussions using language similar to that of Transformational Culture. As Slavoj Zizek states, “Left to itself, the inner thrust of our historical development leads to catastrophe, to apocalypse.”60 Of course, thought saturated in notions of an apocalypse is nothing new. Indeed, Transformational Culture is a descendant of the New Age milieu. As J. Gordon Melton says, The central vision and experience of the New Age is one of radical transformation. On an individual level that experience is very personal and mystical. It involves an awakening to a new reality of self… However the essence of the New Age is the imposition of that vision of personal transformation onto 60 Slavoj Zizek, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, (Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2009), 154.
society and the world. Thus the New Age is ultimately a social vision of a world transformed, a heaven on earth, a society in which the problems of today are overcome and a new existence emerges. 61 From this perspective, Transformational Culture can easily be seen as another iteration of the New Age movement, focusing on the idea of paradigms in the flow of history instead of more supernatural forces. Still, these Paradigm Shifters emphatically seek to distinguish themselves from “New Age puffery,” casting the earlier movement as narcissistic, solipsistic, and politically blind. We are seeing a fundamental shift in political strategy. While New Agers certainly shares certain ideas about the catastrophic nature of our historic trajectory and the primary nature of consciousness, they were much more likely to respond with radical internal action than any collective action. Shakti Gawain, a popular New Age speaker and teacher, suggests that “Being willing to deal internally and individually with the original source of the problem is simply the most practical and powerful way to effect change.”62 Vanessa D. Fischer, explaining her journey with these New Age ideas and subsequent conversion to a more systems-oriented approach, explains that “It was believed that the net effect of significant numbers of individuals ‘becoming their own highest potential’ would inherently destabilize the status quo and bring about transformation to the society at large.”63 In the eyes of Fischer, this view smuggles in the neoliberal ideology of personal responsibility, viewing society as a whole as almost 61 Melton, J. Gordon. "A History of the New Age Movement." In Robert Basil, ed. Not Necessarily the New Age. (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Press, 1988), 48. 62 Hanegraaff Wouter J. New Age Religion and Western Culture. E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1996, 227. 63 Vanessa D. Fisher, “Spirit Inc.: The Politics of Modern Spirituality and the Stalled Revolution” in Elephant Journal, December 13, 2013, accessed April 7, 2014 http://www.elephantjournal.com/2013/12/spirit-inc-the-politics-of-modern-spiritualitythe-stalled-revolution-vanessa-d-fisher/
entirely the composite of the individual pieces. Recapping and synthesizing, members of Transformational Culture may subscribe to belief systems that would fall under the New Age or those articulated by the OTs, but the movement as a whole focuses more on the collective aspect of “being the change they wish to see in the world.” Thus, their primary attitude towards spirituality differs from that of the OTs, who reformulate theology and articulate a new spirituality for the purposes and language of Occupy. In this regard, the fundamental attitude of Transformational Culture is closer to that of the trend of subjectivization, seeking to shed the skin of established and given flows of life, in the process embodying a new society with different roles for the individual. In this shifted emphasis, Transformational Culture more closely aligns with an anarchist tradition of prefigurative politics that many see to be at the heart of Occupy and similar movements. As Mathijs van de Sande explains, ‘Prefiguration’ or ‘prefigurative politics’ refers to a political action, practice, movement, moment or development in which certain political ideals are experimentally actualised in the ‘here and now’, rather than hoped to be realised in a distant future. Thus, in prefigurative practices, the means applied are deemed to embody or ‘mirror’ the ends one strives to realise.64 Thus, prefigurative politics, following the slogan of the Industrial Workers of the World, seeks to “create a new world in the shell of the old.”65 In doing so, anarchists understand themselves to be in a process of self-liberation from ingrained societal patterns, echoing calls from the OTs for personal transformation accompanying societal transformation (Gordon 2008). 64 Mathijs van de Sande, “The Prefigurative Politics of Tahrir Square–An Alternative Perspective on the 2011 Revolutions,” Res Publica, 19:3, (March 14, 2013), 230. 65 Dana Williams, “The Anarchist DNA of Occupy,” Contexts, 11; 2: (2012), 20.
All in all, transformation cannot be understood as a step-by-step process. Van de Sande argues that those measuring a prefigurative movement according to traditional ideas of the necessity of particular “outcomes,” (and thus the split between the realm of consciousness and the “real” world of action) will almost always judge it to be unsuccessful or insignificant. Instead, Van de Sande points to a model suggested by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in their description of the rising of the “Multitude”— the namesake idea in Reiger and Pui-lan’s Theology of the Multitude. Hardt and Negri state, “Resistance, exodus, the emptying out of the enemy’s power, and the multitude’s construction of a new society are one and the same process.”6667 Here we can see why Transformational Culture as a form of spirituality more completely captures the fullness of Occupy’s ambitious critique. Daniel Pinchbeck praises Occupy as “not a protest movement essentially, but a harbinger of a new way of being”68 And even as Transformational Culture differs from the spirituality of the OTs in its more sparse usage of the term “spiritual,” this element is a key factor in distinguishing the strategy of Transformational Culture and this prefigurative component of Occupy. Whereas Occupy as a whole did not embrace specific suggestions or demands for new systems (beyond its implicit structure), Transformational Culture wholeheartedly supports the acceptance of a new, spiritually-minded paradigm. It imagines social change happening through an alteration in consciousness that would rework structural connections to the material world, which would in turn generate individual and collective 66 Michael Hardt, and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, (London/New York: Penguin Press, 2004), 231-232. 67 And again, we see here the heritage of previous social movements, namely Gandhi and his conception of the unity of the ends and the means. 68 Jonathan Talat-Phillips, “Occupying Consciousness, Spiritual Activism 2.0.”
healing, individuation, and cooperation. Occupy’s model of direct democracy is just one example of the systems emphasized by Transformational Culture. Eisenstein’s Sacred Economics, which aims to “make money and human economy as sacred as everything else in the universe,”69 is another. He emphasizes the ability of certain economic models, such as the demurrage system, to encourage sharing, cooperation, and sustainable resource management. He says, In an interest-based system, security comes from accumulating money. In a demurrage system it comes from having productive channels through which to direct it. It comes from being a nexus of the flow of wealth and not a point of its accumulation. In other words, it puts the focus on relationships, not on having7071 Conclusion: The Story of Interbeing So, would a veritable, wholesale revolution be “spiritual”? As the contested and varying usages of the term I’ve explored throughout this paper show, this is a difficult question. I suggest that, if we understand large-scale social and political change to be one side of a coin encompassing movement in culture and consciousness as well, revolutions arising from the prefigurative process at the foundation of Occupy would be spiritual. This can be seen in all of the various levels of spirituality explored in this paper: the “spiritual, but not religious,” the expanded, secularized spirituality of the OTs, and the paradigm-focused spirituality of Transformational Culture. As prefigurative politics seek to create change through 69 Eisenstein, Charles. Sacred Economics. (Berkeley: Evolver Editions, 2011), IX. 70 Eisenstein, Charles. Ascent of Humanity. (Berkeley: Evolver Editions, 2007), 397. 71 Demurrage systems have gotten a lot of attention in the economics world recently, suggested by Bernard Lieataer (who helped implement the Euro) in his book The Future of Money and David Korten in The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community).
embodying their vision, at the broadest level we can assume Occupy’s ecstatic expression to be an acute expression of the wave of subjectivization, “the defining cultural development of modern western culture.”72 At a more fundamental level, the deliberately democratic social sphere imagined and enacted by Occupy mirror the images of self and society painted by those confessing a post-materialist, “we of me” secular spirituality. Finally, the large element of the Occupy discourse that expresses frustration at everything about Western politics, society, and culture treads the same paths of questioning worn by the paradigm-shifters of Transformational Culture. Understanding each of these different forms of spirituality as aspects of a collective whole, we can conclude that Occupy is a spiritual movement—or maybe better, we can see both Occupy and these emerging forms of spirituality to be part of the same historical shift. But will the revolution be spiritual? I’m convinced so. At a fundamental level, I’m persuaded that changes to the operating system of our political order must occur in tandem with a change in culture. The exact demarcation between systems altering or enhancing consciousness and culture shifting systems might not be discernible in the long run, but as it stands, with America’s power structure gripping tighter and tighter to an oligarchical process, changes in social and political attitude must come first. The American polity needs to be rebuilt, whether that be through a complete death-and-rebirth or the extraction of money from the election process. And this can only happen with a change in the consciousness of the average American. For the most part, Americans are too cynical, afraid, or tired to do anything but fight for their own well-being, but that individualistic attitude is only making it 72 Heelas and Woodhead, The Spiritual Revolution. 5.
worse. Eisenstein’s demurrage system would be both an expression of and an attractor to what he calls the “Story of Interbeing,” a term borrowed from Thich Naht Hahn and in alignment with Korten’s Integral Spirit. We need such a mythos, a sense of self, realizing that “We are not just a skin-encapsulated ego, a soul encased in flesh. We are each other and we are the world.”73 The only way we could summon the needed collective organization and individual courage is through such a broader cultural unification, which seems to be nascent. Eisentsein suggests that the seeds for the Story of Interbeing exist in all things holistic, ecological, or alternative, but I suggest that they also exist in the democratic ideals of the American political heritage. Thus, we might be closer than we realize to a true empowerment of American citizens. Still, the balkanized, professionalized, and stagnated nature of the American political culture cannot be fully catalyzed without a broader cultural transformation. An organizing system such as the Story of Interbeing could instigate the needed political fire. And as I suggested, reflecting on the relationship between the “spiritual, but not religious” and the political, people would become more engaged when clearer pathways become available. Because seeing these pathways is dependent on our conceptual openness to them, the Story of Interbeing’s emphasis on the profound importance of small actions could have immense power. Stepping into this story might require a spiritual experience of interconnectedness, realization of an expanded self, or a simple leap of faith. But as Deborah B. Gould points out “Occupy participants exude excitement, even euphoria, suggesting how motivating it 73 Eisenstein, TMBW, 18.
can be to engage in collective self-governance and develop new social relations, to come to know your own and others’ intelligences and capacities, and to be changed while building new worlds.”74 If we indeed create the world by interpreting it, any spaces operating under the principles of Interbeing could tap into a feedback loop of transformation. We undoubtedly need to fight our way into our current, deeply flawed system, in order to fully, institutionally empower individuals. Furthermore, we must build communities that heal and nourish their people, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. However, at that point we will be putting the well-being of the whole safely into the hands of a more intelligent, self-organizing force.
74 Gould, “Occupy’s Political Emotions,” 21.
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