You say tomato I say tomato. I grok your point-of-view. I am not romanticizing some past time (I am pretty much with Hobbes, “the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” in the past). I am just more pessimistic than thou. The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” rather than Lennon’s “Imagine”.
Be that as it may, the question remains: why do so many people today feel disconnected from the richness and wholeness that is the world?
In the USA a Congressional Research Service Report (R40535) points out the burden of disconnectedness among the young and Cornwell and White (“Social Disconnectedness”) identifies the impact on the aging (like me!). There is even a “new” neurological disorder, “Functional Disconnected Syndrome”. Okay, maybe we are crying in our beer a little here, but whether it is because we had to spend a good deal of time scrounging out a living as hunter gatherers and we feel disconnected because we just have more free time, or it is because we (like children) had a magical feeling really does not matter.
My own opinion is that this is a function of Modernism. We in the West killed G!D in the ravings of Nietzsche and cooked H!R up in the ovens of Auschwitz. The materialists (Communist and Capitalists both) substituted empirical facts for faith and the Vienna Circle banished emotion as meaningless. Worse yet, eliminative materialism (see Churchland, Dennett et al) has eliminated even thought.
Is there a counter-current? Yes. Rosenzweig answered Nietzsche, Whitehead answered Carnap et al. Chalmers counters eliminative materialism. Yet, is the answer to little, too late? I just do not know.
What does this mean for Faith and Spirituality? Many of our young people are educated to be closed-minded about it. Either they are Radical Religious Fundamentalists (take your choice… Shinto, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, or Christian) or they are Radical Rationalists (thank you, Ayn Rand).
Where can one find the handful of like-minded souls who just want to share Spiritual stories and insights, without judgment, and answer “that was insightful, now this is what my people believe”? (actual quote from a sweat lodge with lots of diverse Natives and Aboriginals in the dark).
