Language is an instrument for dealing with the details of reality. All of our words, along with the ways we string them together, contain or reflect concepts — signs or semiotic constructs – by which we refer to elements of a dynamic world. Because they are essentially pragmatic and context-specific, if we scrutinize any of […]
Posts Tagged ‘religion’
Why religion isn’t (coherent)
Posted in Spirit matter, tagged global catastrophe, global crisis, Peter Sloterdijk, practice, religion, religious studies on February 29, 2024 | 4 Comments »
Ways to inhabit the world
Posted in Eco-theory, Process-relational thought, tagged bioregionalism, Fribourg, Hanegraaff, imaginal practices, imagination, inhabitory practices, placemaking, prehension, reinhabitation, religion, religious imagination, ritual, Ritual Creativity, ritual studies, Whitehead on June 24, 2022 | Leave a Comment »
The following post elaborates on some comments I made this week at the Ritual Creativity conference at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Deep thanks to conference organizers Katri Ratia and François Gauthier for inviting me to what turned out to be an immensely rewarding event, and to my co-panelists Graham Harvey, Sarah Pike, and Susannah […]
Reimagining religious imagination
Posted in Philosophy, Spirit matter, tagged cognitive theory, image, imaginal, imagination, Jeffrey Kripal, philosophy of imagination, philosophy of religion, religion, religious imagination, T. M. Luhrmann, visual culture, visual theory, Wouter Hanegraaff on December 14, 2021 | 5 Comments »
Wouter Hanegraaff has proposed that we rethink the study of religion as the study of “imaginative formations.” Much of my research has focused on something like that, or at least on the creative role of imagination in mediating the ways people come to live in the world, shape that world, and contest it among each […]
The humors of democracy
Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged A. N. Whitehead, Alfred North Whitehead, Bakhtin, C. S. Peirce, democracy, eco-egalitarianism, eco-justice, humor, religion, revolution, Whitehead, Whitehead reading group, Whitehead Research Project, wit on March 12, 2021 | Leave a Comment »
I had been avoiding the Whitehead Research Project‘s monthly reading groups because of conflicts with other scheduled activities, but today I joined. The reading was a short, unpublished manuscript somewhat misleadingly titled “Freedom and Order,” as it’s mostly about humor, wit, and imagination. Now I understand why I’ve always been put off by, and a […]
On being a mortal
Posted in Spirit matter, tagged beliefs, Buddhism, Christianity, cosmology, humanism, immanence, indigenous philosophy, mortality, perspectives on life, reincarnation, religion, transcendence, world philosophy on May 21, 2020 | Leave a Comment »
Some people believe you’re born from nothing; you live, which is something; and then you’re gone again, back to nothing. (Here’s a poignantly compressed version of that, a life in under 6 minutes.) Others believe you’re part of a much larger thing, which keeps recycling itself (including you). Maybe there’s progress or development over the […]
Long-term civilizational prognosis: a hypothesis
Posted in Climate change, Manifestos & auguries, Spirit matter, tagged abduction, C. S. Peirce, civilizational crisis, climate crisis, climate emergency, eco-religion, global civil religion, global disorder, globalism, Latour, politics of meaning, religion, Varela on October 14, 2019 | 3 Comments »
Here’s a hypothesis: If the human community exists in some more or less unified form in 880 years (in the year 3000 by our calendar), that feat will have been accomplished, at least in part, in and through the emergence of an ecological religion. What does this mean, and how could we test it? Religion, […]
Interview & autobio
Posted in Process-relational thought, Spirit matter, tagged Adrian Ivakhiv, autobiography, Buddhism, Dzogchen, interviews, Lacan, meditation, pagan studies, paganism, Peirce, post-traditional Buddhism, religion, Shinzen Young, spirituality, Whitehead, Zizek on May 31, 2016 | 4 Comments »
Interviews are funny things: you have to think on the spot, but later realize how deeply and profoundly imperfect (!) was your choice of words. The Imperfect Buddha Podcast has an interview with me in which host Matthew O’Connor (of Post-Traditional Buddhism) and I talk at length about Buddhism, process-relational metaphysics, panpsychism, social constructionism, cognitive science, […]
A process view of “religious Nones”
Posted in Spirit matter, tagged Bron Taylor, cosmopolitanism, dark green religion, Foucault, mestizo, non-fascist life, polytropism, religion, religious Nones, spirituality, tuteishyi on May 18, 2016 | 4 Comments »
While I’ve done no formal surveys, my best guess is that about half my students here at the U of Vermont (at least those in Environmental Studies) would fit into the category of “religiously unaffiliated,” the so-called “religious Nones” — a category that now makes up almost 1 in 4 Americans and over a third of those […]
A cultural cold war wind
Posted in Cultural politics, Politics, tagged cultural values, environmentalism, fundamentalism, gay rights, liberalism, Olympics, religion, Russia, Sochi on January 20, 2014 | 2 Comments »
I predicted back in 2010 that globalizing and technological trends would lead disparate religious traditions to find common ground on socially divisive issues like abortion and gay rights. Just as environmentalism, feminism, and indigenous rights were partnering various more liberal church groups with environmental and social justice organizations, contributing to the development of an “eco-egalitarian” global […]
SAR “Nature, Science, Religion” volume out
Posted in Eco-culture, Science & society, Spirit matter, tagged anthropology, cosmopolitics, nature, religion on May 20, 2012 | 1 Comment »
I received my copies in the mail this week of the book that arose out of the School of Advanced Research seminar on “Nature, Science, and Religion: Intersections Shaping Society and the Environment.” It’s a handsome volume, whose contents provide a level of cross-cutting conversation that, I think, is rare among edited collections. Catherine Tucker […]
‘Self-help,’ James Ray, and spiritual culture
Posted in Spirit matter, tagged religion, self-help, spirituality on June 23, 2011 | 1 Comment »
The news that self-help guru James Arthur Ray has been found guilty of three counts of negligent homicide brings to an end (of sorts) a saga that began with three deaths and numerous injuries at an October, 2009, sweat lodge ceremony outside Sedona, Arizona. Since I’ve written a handful of articles and half a book […]
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