Scotland’s spiritual wealth
Chris Thomson looks at contemporary Scotland and concludes that modernism is failing us
There is a scene in the film Dances with Wolves where the Lakota are discussing the threat posed by white people. The tribe’s holy man, Kicking Bird, captures the mood of the meeting when he says “The whites are a poor people, but there are too many of them”. When he says “poor”, he does not mean they lack money or material things. He means they are spiritually poor. Of course, that was just a film. Yet the fact is that devious means, modern weapons and superior numbers were used to overcome the indigenous people of North America. That brought disaster to the tribes. Out went the health, dignity and ecological living that were relatively common before then. It is surely no accident that, once they had been overcome by the whites, alcoholism, obesity, addiction, depression, crime and suicide became widespread.
The experience of the North American tribes has a lot to teach us. If Kicking Bird was here today, he would note that poor health, unhappiness and the absence of dignity and ecology are all too common, and he would not be surprised to see that alcoholism, obesity, drugs, depression, crime and addiction have taken hold in many communities. However, unlike many of us, he would probably attribute this to spiritual poverty. While it is true that material deprivation may be the cause of some problems in some communities in Scotland, it is worth noting that the tribes were at their happiest, healthiest and most ecological when they were materially poorer than everyone in the Scotland today. The implications of this for Scotland are immense, for it suggests that money and material things alone are unlikely to solve our problems. Indeed, there are many in Scotland who believe that the relentless pursuit of money, property and things may be a major cause of our problems, and that the solutions lie instead in replacing spiritual poverty with spiritual wealth. This is a very complex issue, but a useful point of departure is to examine the nature of modernity, because it was modernity, in practice, that defeated the tribes and ushered in their problems.
Modernity is the set of values, beliefs and practices that have shaped the modern world. It has its roots in the worldview of modern science. At the heart of this worldview are some apparently harmless beliefs; “The universe and everything in it, ourselves included, is physical”; “The universe and everything in it is essentially a machine…a very sophisticated machine, but a machine nonetheless. For science, there can be nothing beyond this, such as God.”; “The universe has no intrinsic meaning or purpose”. Science has become so influential that all metaphysical, religious and philosophical claims that contradict it must be rejected. Yet if, as science insists, the universe began suddenly for no reason (the ‘Big Bang’), and life on this planet emerged by chance, then the world that science wants us to believe in must be totally meaningless. The fact that this statement, as part of that world, must also be meaningless is little consolation! In any event, a life without meaning is a bleak life indeed. Many people today are desperately searching for deeper meaning, which no doubt explains the popularity of The Da Vinci Code. There is little doubt in my mind that one of the characteristics of modernity and modern society is loss of deeper meaning.
The modern world is also suffering from loss of wisdom. If science rejects the accumulated wisdom of the ages in favour of its own empirically derived body of knowledge, then, since science is the dominant form of knowledge today, wisdom is effectively devalued. Perhaps we should not be surprised that we have become the most dangerous and destructive form of life on the planet. Nor should we be surprised that older people, who in non-modern societies are the respected wise elders, have been pushed to the margins in Scotland, many of them right out of sight into care homes. A wise society values its elders and the group. A modern society produces the cult of the young and the individual. In a wise society, the stock of wisdom increases because wisdom is valued. People wise up. It seems that modern societies have a tendency to dumb down. The modern world is also characterised by loss of ecology. Non-modern societies know just how important it is to live in harmony with each other and with the planet. How many of us can put our hands on our hearts and say that we truly live in harmony with each other, let alone the planet? The modern world has made many of us anxious and insecure. It is little wonder that we engage in frenetic activity, such as work, shopping and travelling, when we should be finding ways to live gently and simply, with ourselves and with the world around us.
When taken together, loss of meaning, loss of wisdom and loss of ecology may be one of the main reasons that we now live in an era of unprecedented materialism. For many people, acquiring and consuming material things must seem like the only thing left for them to do. Our economics, our politics, our education, our healthcare and our culture have become steeped in material values and beliefs and the behaviours that flow from these. We are paying a high price for this, as we exploit and damage each other and the world. It is short step from materialism and loss of wisdom to economism. Economism is the tendency to view the world through the lens of economics, to regard a country as an economy rather than as a society, and to believe that economic considerations and values rank higher than other ones. Economism is clearly evident throughout Scotland and is a strong influence in Scottish political circles. It is reflected in the growth ethic of the business world and in the widespread belief that happiness is to be found through money and possessions. It is significant that non-modern societies regard economics as a means to an end, whereas modern societies have made economics the end itself, in the sense that perpetual economic growth seems to be the central purpose of most countries today. If the Partnership Agreement (between Labour and Lib-Dems) is anything to go by, it is certainly one of Scotland’s central purposes.
By marginalising wisdom, deeper meaning and ecology, we have unwittingly created a spiritual vacuum. Many people in Scotland probably feel this at some level. They feel that something big is missing from their lives. They may not be able to put this into words, but they feel a vacuum inside them that cries out to be filled. They experience this vacuum as anxiety, discomfort, fear, insecurity, despair, or a sense of pointlessness. Understandably, they try to fill the emptiness, and they do this in a huge variety of ways. They overeat, they overshop, they overindulge, they watch a lot of television, they engage in a lot of activity (no surprise that being busy is regarded as a virtue today), or they use sex, drugs and alcohol as pain-killers. These behaviours, unhealthy in themselves, often lead to other forms of ill health, such as alcoholism, obesity, addiction, depression and suicide, as well as the health problems that follow from these, such as diabetes and heart disease. Health professionals in Scotland will recognise this picture. But so long as there is a spiritual vacuum, people will continue to behave in these ways. Telling people to live healthy lifestyles will not change things, so long as the greater influence in society is economic growth and endless consumption.
So, if modernity is indeed the main root cause of the spiritual poverty that is widespread in Scotland and across the world, what can we do about it? What can we do to reverse the downward drift into even more materialism and further loss of wisdom and meaning? There is no single, easy answer to this. However, I do think that it is possible to outline a few of the general conditions that will favour the emergence of spiritual wealth in Scotland.
• Bringer back Older People. Older people have been pushed to the margins in Scotland while the young occupy centre stage. Many TV programmes, for example, give us the impression that older people have been airbrushed out of existence. Far from being seen as our main source of wisdom, older people are often portrayed as a burden on society or merely as a market for retirement services. Is it any wonder that so many of them feel unvalued and isolated? It has become a self-fulfilling prophecy that as one gets older, one gets less healthy, more dependent, and less valuable. The fact that so much potential wisdom is being lost as older people are marginalised is one of the tragedies of our times. We could, if we wished, enable the re-emergence of a vast amount of wisdom simply by raising the status and value of older people. That alone would have a profound effect on Scotland.
• Bring Back Education. Although we continue to use the word ‘education’ to describe what happens in schools, colleges and universities, there is not much true education around these days in Scotland. True education is about bringing out the best and uniqueness in each individual, even if that means they end up questioning and opposing prevailing beliefs, values and behaviours. To a large extent, education has been replaced by its opposite, schooling – which is the process of shaping people to believe and follow prevailing beliefs, values and behaviours. There are, of course, some notable exceptions, but these are the exceptions that prove the rule. Education allows wisdom and meaning to emerge. Schooling acts against this. When schooling is combined with economism, ‘education’ ends up being little more than a training in how to perform well in the economy. In some places it has gone even further than this - young children are being encouraged to become ‘entrepreneurs’! It is time we allowed children to have a childhood, and it is time we replaced schooling with education
• Bring back Self-reliance. One of the hallmarks of modern societies is their dependency on business, government and experts for goods, services and knowledge that, in many cases, individuals and communities would be better providing for themselves. As a rule of thumb, dependency is unhealthy and self-reliance is healthy. The Lakota and other tribes were self-reliant, empowered communities. They were living cultures, who could do everything for themselves, rather than vicarious cultures, who depend on others for most of their needs. They recognised the central importance of basic human capacities, such as caring, growing their own food, cooking, healing, educating, creating, and entertaining, and would not dream of having these things provided as commodities and services by government and big business. Wisdom and meaning arise naturally out of self-reliance. Insofar as Scotland is a society that is very dependent on business, government and experts for the basics of living, it is a society that inhibits wisdom and meaning. One of the ways of enabling wisdom and meaning is to encourage as much self-reliance as possible.
I am acutely aware that I have covered a lot of ground at some speed. Inevitably, I have been unable to go into much detail. My intention at this stage is simply to draw attention to the fact that modernity is not a health-producing or happiness-producing culture and that the prevalence of modernity and its policy counterpart, modernising, is holding Scotland back and preventing us from becoming the great country we could be. Modernity and modernising marginalise wisdom, meaning and ecology and they lead to spiritual poverty. If we are ever to solve Scotland’s problems, we have to replace spiritual poverty with spiritual wealth. This means many things, but ultimately it means allowing wisdom, deeper meaning and ecology to take centre stage in our private and public lives.
Chris Thomson is Director of Central Purpose
