The Industrialized spirituality of our modern world gets to me. The Ayahuasca retreats where narcissistic techo-bros take an ancient drug with no guidance or knowledge, only becoming more of their shallow selves. Churned-out big budget mysticism 101 books that are the same or worse as that of a decade, a century, an aeon ago. It’s a clicking-clacking machine of sameness where any depth is accidental.
I mean faux-mysticism has been with us forever, albeit at smaller scale since people didn’t have the technology to efficiently spread bullshit on a global level Fake grimoires copied over and over again to deceive royalty. Cults that become governments. Some grifter is always ready to monetize and mechanize spirituality.
At the same time, it’s fascinating to read of small-scale spirituality. People who lovingly copied books for friends and families. Small folios – for instance I own a book on Taoist energetics clearly easy to copy and pass on. Even strange little creations of today, vanity press creations that may be divine madness, or at least one of the two. It’s always been there and it’s there today, and a lot healthier than the latest spiritual bestseller that’s been the same book for five decades.
Now I’m sure some of these “industrial spiritualists” are sincere. But the results speak for themselves, the great sea of uninsightful sameness. Even sincere and smart people may spiral down into the same old same old.
I look, and I think spirituality, really healthy spirituality, can’t be done at a large scale, even sincerely. You can have large organizations, but they need to support the personal touches – and guard against becoming generic. You have to be careful of making stars and rockstars out of your people.
When you industrialize spirituality, you welcome grifters. There are people who are glad to take advantage of scale to profit at scale. That’s no reason to, say, not publish a lot of copies of things like the Tao Te Ching or whatever, but that’s the basics and the historic.
When you industrialize spirituality you have to generalize. There’s only so much you can do it before it becomes washed out and meaningless. You can try to write for a generalized audience, but even the most benevolent will risk generalizing to much.
Besides, spiritual practice needs personal touches. You need that one book that’s just right, that extra post from someone on a forum, or something that fits you. As much as I am skeptical of gurus, I get why many a Buddist or Taoist practitioner talks of needing “mind to mind transmission.” It has to fit you.
The at-scale spirituality we see see now probably can’t generate what people really need, since they need different things at different time with actual depth. Probably some clever, smart, persistent people could do it, but I’m not sure it’d be worth the effort in the end. Time is probably best spent figuring out how to get people the intimate, networked, personal spiritual experiences they need.
– Xenofact