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The Spirit of Non-Spirituality: A Short Treatise on Materialism

Among the aspects of Taoism that first attracted me was its general answer to what Douglas Adams called the big questions about Life, the Universe, and Everything: “Stop asking questions.” Nowhere in any Taoist text will one find such a succinct pronouncement, of course – or at least it isn’t likely – but the idea pervades the literature, as when Lao Tzu said, “The Tao that can be spoken is not the Tao.” Mahayana or Zen Buddhism teaches another answer to the Big Questions: “Who is asking?” That is the jumping-off point for a lot of further dialogue concerning identity and ego and pride and desire and so on – for another time. To me the most striking of these closely-related perspectives is their insistence on the importance of the experience rather than on the knowledge that experience begets. In slang terms, the essence of Taoism is “work with the flow of the universe” and the essence of Zen is “be mindful.”

Now take a modern example: a sweater. Most of us own one. The typical sweater is a long-armed wool, cotton or synthetic garment, sometimes with a hood and usually sown pretty thick. They’re also decorated, most of them anyway, and some are bright and festive; some are dreary or fierce with skulls on them; some are hand-sown and “rustic”-looking; and still others are embroidered with logos for teams or groups or their manufacturers. And all of these things are symbolic. Just as it is considered vital to the modern experience to know what letters mean (all of which are entirely symbolic), or how to interpret – at terrific speed – all the various dials and signs within and without our automobiles, it is also considered vital to be able to see the “deeper meaning” behind a sweater. This one means its owner is thrifty. That one means the owner is stingy or poor. She got her sweater as a gift. He’s wearing one that demonstrates membership in his respective tribe (say, “punk” or “hipster”). More socially-conscious people can see deeper meaning still: that one was made cheaply in the Philippines by underpaid laborers; that one was made by a craftsperson with a sewing machine; that one was made in a big, polluting factory in Oregon; and so on. And why is that one so dirty – is its owner a slob? A hard-laborer? A dirty hippie? And why is that dude wearing a sweater in the middle of July?! These and myriad other questions all frame the following: what does the sweater mean?

It’s a sweater. The only meaning it has is in your head. It has no essential nature beyond “sweater,” at least not one that is self-evident; remove it from its cultural context and those meanings all change or disappear. Furthermore, no matter what you think a sweater represents, I’ll bet it’s something altogether else to a dog. It’s an olfactory reminder of its owner. It’s a bed to lie upon. It’s a chew-toy.

This is what’s implied by one of my favorite old Zen stories: someone once asked a Zen master, “What is the eternal nature of the world?” He responded, “It’s windy again this morning.” In other words: the deeper meaning of the world is the world itself, just-so. In still other words: stop asking. Of course, Zen tales aren’t meant to be interpreted in the way of a myth or a fable; they’re structured more like jokes than like moral tales, in that the intention is to create or induce a state of mind. But one is free to interpret them if one so chooses, in the same way that one is free to try and interpret a sweater. Whatever answer one finds is in his or her own mind – the thing is still just the thing.

Now take another example: a chunk of quartz crystal. To the geologist it is an example of a process, specifically a crystallization process. To a gem collector it is either “a marvelous new addition” or else “another one of those things I’ve already got.” And then there’s the spiritualist… It is a frozen beam of cosmic energy. It is a receptacle for mental powers. It is a vessel for ancient spirits to inhabit. It is a conduit to a realm of spirits that inhabit all of nature. It is a magnet for good fortune. It is a healing scepter. It is an aura-cleanser. It is…

It’s a rock.

Furthermore, it’s doing a superb job of being a rock, better than any actor with any amount of training. A chunk of quartz crystal is absolutely the finest example of a chunk of quartz crystal you can find in this wide world; anything else is an imposter. And the same can be said for everything else in the world – for trees and bushes, birds and flowers, and rocks and rocks and rocks. The world is beautiful, interesting and amazingly, intoxicatingly complex just the way it is; isn’t that enough?

Many people have, in many ways, pointed out the decline of religiousness in the modern world, which has left a lacuna that I find rather annoying, exemplified by what I like to call the Agnostic Credo: “There’s got to be more to all of this!” Yeah, maybe, but then maybe not; any philosophy that begs its own question is a three-legged one. Worse still is the more nebulous and begging phrase, “Everything happens for a reason.” Yes, as if there was a purpose for the movement of all energy in the universe – which may, in fact, be true, but if you can demonstrate to me how that purpose is made plain to human observers I’ll eat my hat. A more honest way to say that would be to cut “for a reason” off the end of it, but of course then you would just be stating the obvious. “It’s windy again this morning.”

For my part, I think this sort of thinking has more to do with socialization, acculturation, and the more simple psychological idea of imprinting than with people trying to fill a void previously filled with rampant religiosity. See, it was Pavlov who introduced us to the theory of imprinting when he got his dog to salivate at the sound of a bell – he, in other words, taught the dog that a ringing bell is more than just a ringing bell. He taught that the ringing bell had meaning. Note the word “taught” in that sentence, as opposed to “showed.” His teaching was within the parameters of a contrived experiment, and what it shows is contrivance. Pavlov did not just demonstrate learned behavior, which is no great thing; most behavior is learned. What he demonstrated was how learned behavior can be a conditioned response, and, more importantly, that interpretation can be taught in such a manner. Pavlov literally taught his dog that a ringing bell has a deeper meaning, a symbolic meaning, specifically interpreted as “food cometh.” What’s the difference between that and the person who sees deeper meaning in a sweater or a crystal?

I once read about a teacher who would, at the start of a new course with new students, produce a matchbox and say, “Now what is it?” Invariably some students would reply, “Matchbox!” “No, no, ‘matchbox’ is a word. This is not a word. I mean what is it really?” After the students looked around dumbfounded for a moment he would throw it at them. “There, that’s what it is.” And if you ask a great Zen master what will happen after you die, he or she might reply, “It’s windy again this morning.”

Finally, while it’s no great philosophical trick to show that the idea of something is not the thing itself, where I draw a harder line is on basic, earthly material experience. Most of what I’d call the higher philosophies (and no, I don’t just mean Eastern philosophies, I mean ones that are highly developed and well-worn) preach mindfulness, or being fully aware and involved in one’s doings and experiences, even if not necessarily consciously aware. But your eyes, your ears, and indeed your whole mind can only focus on so many things at once, and much of the time we go around swimming in thoughts and not focusing on the world around us at all. Most of what we see, in fact, is peripheral, and even when we’re staring something right in its face we’re seeing reels and reels of other sights in our minds. Many car crashes are caused by this. Meditation is a practice at focusing the mind, or rather at un-focusing it from trivialities. Better still, in the words of anthropologist Wade Davis, it is a method of calming our turbulent mental waters. But we needn’t go so far as all that. Just look at the sweater or the chunk of quartz crystal and see it, really see the thing without being distracted by the cloud of imagined accoutrements that swarm about and all but obscure it from view.

We are raised in a world of symbols and purpose, and we’re taught to believe that this is of utmost importance. And so it is, if you’re interpreting the symbolism on a menu or a stop sign, or if you need to remind yourself that the purpose of a sock is to keep your foot warm. And a sweater has an evident purpose, if not an evident meaning; its maker imbued it with purpose. But attaching symbolic meaning and, worse, a sense of purpose toward a part of the natural (that is: non-human) world, like a rock, detracts from the full experience of it. Maybe it is a healing rod or a wand of psychic energy and maybe it isn’t, but whatever else it may be it is most certainly a rock and it’s pretty damn good at being one. Show some appreciation.

Riot Starter: An Education in Insurrection

One of the most common questions of disillusioned or angered citizens is, “So what can I do?” There are a myriad of reasons for this feeling of inertia, but one of the simplest is that most people simply don’t know how to proceed, or even begin, to channel their frustration into proactive social change. In fact there is plentiful literature on this very topic if one is inclined to look for it, including the work of University of Massachusetts professor Gene Sharp, author of Nonviolent Action: A Research Guide. My experiences differ somewhat, but the greatest working example of Sharp’s methodology is the story of Otpor.

Otpor (“resist” in Serbian) was formed in October 1998 as a response to oppressive university and media laws in Serbia. Formed by a group of University of Belgrade students, the group based its philosophy on Sharp’s research and publications on nonviolent protest. At first, the group concentrated solely on academic issues; however, in the wake of the 1999 NATO air-strikes against FR Yugoslavia, Otpor expanded its scope and became a political movement against Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic. Police repression of Otpor activists began immediately, and thousands of members and supporters were beaten or arrested. Regardless, the movement stayed on-track. In September 2000, Otpor launched a campaign called Gotov je (“he’s finished”), aimed at mobilizing young voters, which resulted in record voter turn-outs and Milosevic losing his reelection bid. No longer an elected leader, and with many of his atrocities brought to the global eye by Otpor and the media, NATO was able to swoop in and arrest Milosevic for crimes against humanity a few months later. Oddly, Otpor’s role in Milosevic’s downfall didn’t receive a great deal of media coverage in the US.

Personally, I have had limited luck experimenting with this sort of thing, and the results have been less proactive than vicious, but I have learned some invaluable lessons from them. The first occurred when I was 17: three friends and I launched a campaign to have our friend Jon elected Homecoming Queen as a farce on school-condoned popularity contests. He won by a landslide – or he would have, but the people tallying the votes threw every “Jon for Homecoming Queen” into the garbage. The four of us retaliated and sparked a dance-wide brawl. 

The following year, in New Orleans, twelve college buddies and I managed to instigate a full-fledged riot involving over 300 people when the police tried to stop us from dancing and playing music in the street. It was Mardi Gras, and the streets were filled with rowdy revelers, but our big group was the only one rife with visible tattoos, piercings, dreadlocks and instruments, so we were “disturbing the peace.” Sixty-five rioters were arrested and charged with assault; we retorted with a civil suit for excessive force, and the charges were dropped. 

And finally, in early August 1999, my girlfriend and I worked as volunteers at Woodstock 99 where 300,000 attendees were prohibited from bringing food or water into the festival area in the blazing heat. Venders offered tiny bottles of water for seven dollars apiece, shoddy hamburgers for nine. By the third day of the festival innumerable people were suffering malnutrition and/or dehydration, and so about 30 or 40 of us laid siege to the venders. Our goal was to hijack their commodities and redistribute them to the crowd. Instead, we ignited a quarter-million person riot in which everything in the festival area was destroyed, including both stages. National news agencies blamed Metallica.  

What did I learn from these experiences? People, especially in crowd form, are loaded with what physicists call “potential” (resting) energy, like a boulder perched on a cliff. Push the boulder and it becomes “kinetic” (impact) energy. In Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, in the section on raising an army, it is noted that it only takes a tiny spark to ignite a blaze. In each of my cases, as well as that of Otpor, the group that initiated the conflict was a tiny fraction of the whole – but, like Sun Tzu’s spark, it only takes a tiny push for potential to become impact. In fact, the only real difficulty seems to be keeping it nonviolent. 

Enter At Own Risk

The heat radiates above this cursed field of jagged volcanic rock like a palpable spiritual essence. One can almost hear it breathing, harsh whispers, like the tiny black snake in Kipling’s Jungle Book – “be careful, I am death!” Well, I am not careful, but then I’ve never been known for taking advice too seriously, even if it is the sound contention of nature in all its ugly, brutal beauty. It warns you to stay away from it, much the same as a tattooed harlot in black leather with a bullwhip warns you to stay away from her; the warning is as tantalizing as the danger. A sign that says All Are Welcome may be okay for a motel or for one of those sterile, fenced-in swaths of deciduous garden that passes for wilderness in most peoples’ minds, but this is the desert. Out here the signs say Enter At Own Risk and are typically riddled with bullet holes.

So why am I here? Good question… A simple answer would be, “why not?” Take the Socratic high road; corner the bastards with circular rhetoric. Or Mallory’s answer, which always works in a pinch: “Because it’s there.” Well, televisions are there too, wherever there is, and so are shopping malls and bars and trendy cafes and a whole lot of other congealed mishmash to boot. Bad news, plastic surgery, cell phone ring tones that sound like the awful stuff that oozes out of radios and MP3 players all over the doomed, infested countryside… A better answer would be, “because that isn’t there!”

Escapism – there, I’ve said it. It rolls off the tongue with an aftertaste of acidic guilt, like saying ‘alcoholic’ or ‘afflicted.’ You can attach whatever romantic trappings you want to it, roll it up in the sweet dough of life-affirming adventurous whoozafuzz or prop it up with the tinderbox scaffolding of academic pursuit, studying the ecology of ecology firsthand, but we all know the truth. We go into the wild because we need to escape the cages of the daily grind. We need to escape because our cages become filled with shit.

The other day, someone asked me why I thought it was that people drink or use drugs to such an alarming extent as they seem to nowadays, and I replied that we need to numb the senses, dull the spitfire parts of the mind that we no longer need but which continually menace our minds none the less. He looked at me like I was spewing poetic gibberish, but I’m always prepared for that, logician that I sometimes pretend to be, so I brought out some examples.

“There was a time,” I said, “that we needed to know everything that was going on around us, for the sake of mere survival. It looks like rain, so we need to take shelter, and I think I smell a tiger, and that man over there is holding his spear a bit nervously… We had to stay on our toes, because in the wilderness danger can come at you from any side. You’re staring transfixed at a flower, meditating as it were, and you step right on the cobra. So evolution worked its magic, and our species became highly adept at perceiving and gauging its surroundings, being bereft of wings or a hard shell, in order to keep ahead of peril. Only now, with the peril all but gone, our finely-tuned perceptions drive us out of our wits, bombarded at all times by inane and utterly useless nonsense, so that we either succumb to the madness and dive headfirst into our ridiculous culture, invent and bow down to a whole slew of half-illusory new perils like terrorism or obesity, or else we seek refuge. Some seek it in books or ideas, and for them that is enough. Some seek it in the wilderness. For others, it’s the bottle – or something worse.”   

“So… you think everyone wants to escape, so to speak, because we’re still hardwired to keep alert for tigers, but instead of hearing tigers we hear Britney Spears and how contaminated broccoli may be bad for our livers, or something. Is that what you’re saying?”

“Basically. We’re hardwired to be very much in tune with our world, and our world, at present, is absolutely goofballs. You can complain to your congressman, throw away your TV and follow the path of Zen, wind up a friendless but smiling weirdo in the unemployment line. Or you can get ripped to shit on alcohol and other fun substances and act like a heathen.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “There are other options, of course.”

I cocked an eyebrow right back. “But who would want them?”

Well, I was lying, but everyone does that from time to time – it keeps people on their toes, where they belong. There is another option, of course, and a far better one, but the signs say Enter At Own Risk and are typically riddled with bullet holes. Those are the places I like to escape to, such as I am in this journal entry. Scarred, scalded land bereft of lushness or verdure, overgrown with harshness and liberally sprinkled with the sorts of plants and animals that like to poke holes. Abbey’s country. My country. When the doctors finally tell me I can’t hike anymore I shudder to consider the alternatives.  

Journal Entry, July 2009