Alongside these organizations, which the anthropologist :Jean Gebser called “mythic-membership” religions, we must add the great diversity of prehistoric ritual and :spiritplay. We must also include the ongoing :emergence of new sects and the full suite of quasi-sacred activity that takes place outside formal label of religion.
That last category is essential. Perhaps only a tiny minority of human religious activity has occurred among people who would have self-identified as “religious.” We cannot pretend to be engaged in a serious study if we build our definitions out of socialized self-assertions. No competent zoologist would accept a tortoise’s claim to be an artichoke. A natural species is defined by its structure and function within an ecosystem — not by social identity-labels.
So the definition of religion used in this article is something like this:
The set of :interpersonal test practices that elevates a cultural field (ethos) to the empowering experience of divinity. It is a cultural condition capable of the participatory :co-evocation of an :existentially satisfying, inspirational and :intersubjective “Spirit.”
This Spirit may be perceived alternatively as a force, entity or :deeper self but, regardless of the interpretive lens that is deployed, it has :superlative phenomenological characteristics. It might be described as a :surplus numinous coherence that can be felt as an enlivening force between people. This phenomenon can be encountered in visions, pondered, poeticized, :invoked for moral and wisdom-training purposes, :evoked by private and public ritual, projected into images, words, locations, objects, species, ideas and individuals — and communed with directly as an affective accelerant of self-deepening and self-authentication. Arguably, this is simply the well-functioning hum of the organic cultural engine.
This superlative degree of cultural experience is very good for us. We need each other and we also need the psychological, physiological, organizational and motivational benefits that emerge when successful :religionization occurs in the style of any particular cultural, historical and technological niche.
Without this shared, creative and :supra-meaningful activity we not only lose individual access to the :psychobiological and developmental benefits of faithfulness but we collectively become impotent in the face of :meaning crises. The emergent wholeness of a culture, people or civilization is necessary in order to fuel a shared :antifragile identity and to mobilize collectively to implement social changes outside the habitual and highly incentivized range of business-as-usual.
Interpersonal means what happens between people. Interpersonal practices are relational, they can’t be done alone.
To evoke something is to bring it out, bring it forth. Religion is something we do together to bring forth more of the sacred into all aspects of our lives together.
Things are existential that have to do with our basic being, our basic sense of existing and existence at all. Existential satisfaction, which religion provides when it’s working well, is satisfaction and joy about all of life, the sense that life is worth living at all, no matter what we happen to be going through at the moment.
The realm of culture, our shared values and shared experiences.
The concept of a deeper self involves the sense of an active subconscious agency characterized by greater understanding, authenticity, integrity and duration than the ordinary waking-state ego. It is a more complete version of the self that integrates additional ranges of insight and capacity.
Superlative phenomenological characteristics are attributes described by excessive apex signifiers, e.g. best, highest, most holy, absolute, ultimate, unsurpassable.
Surplus numinous coherence is the product of spiritual growth, it’s the special, extra feeling of harmonizing diverse aspects of our being into something more whole and more powerful.
Invocation means to symbolically “call upon” a phenomenon, while evocation is to “bring it up” as an experience. For example, we invoke an authority and evoke a memory. So the sense of a extra-meaningful spirit within a human community can be invoked by citing it as the reason for undertaking personal training and collective discipline. It can also be evoked by various experiential practices meant to produce this feeling in the participants.
To bring something out, to bring it forth, to support something to show itself.
Religion-making, the successful bringing together and deepening of the sacred dimensions and contribution of each individual element of culture.
In supra-meaningful activity we experience an unusual intensity of significance. The symbolic purpose of a wedding ring, for example, is understand in everyday affairs but during the pre-wedding ritual or engagement, the same object might have overwhelming impact. In ordinary life we have normal intensities of meaning. For our patterns of life to be transformed, however, we require more vivid appreciations.
Psychobiological benefits include both psychological and physiological factors. Existing within a trustworthy community of belonging, for example, affects both our mind and body. Viktor Frankl’s famous work on Logotherapy includes an appreciation of the many ways that motivation and purpose can impact our biological health.
A meaning crisis is a cultural breakdown of shared sensemaking. Our social practices for generating a sense of shared purpose and intelligibility have degraded or become maladaptive. The crisis in our ability to performed shared cultural meaning-making inhibits our ability to mobilize effective toward the solution of other kinds of crisis. Often used synonymously with nihilism.
Antifragility is the capacity of system to succeed in the midst of disturbances in its environment. The idea was popularized in a book by Nassim Taleb.