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 […]
Posts Tagged ‘religion’
On being a mortal
Posted in SpiritMatter, 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 »
Long-term civilizational prognosis: a hypothesis
Posted in SpiritMatter, tagged abduction, C. S. Peirce, civilizational crisis, climate change, 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 SpiritMatter, tagged Adrian Ivakhiv, autobiography, Buddhism, Dzogchen, interviews, Lacan, meditation, pagan studies, paganism, Peirce, post-traditional Buddhism, process-relational thought, 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 SpiritMatter, 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 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 EcoCulture, SpiritMatter, tagged anthropology, cosmopolitics, nature, religion, science 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 SpiritMatter, 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 […]
Enchantments to come
Posted in SpiritMatter, tagged biosemiosis, disenchantment, enchantment, Kauffman, Kerouac, religion, semiosis on March 21, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Thoughts for a spring equinox… Complexity theorist (and colleague of mine here at the University of Vermont) Stuart Kauffman takes stock here of the Enlightenment and sings of a re-enchantment to come. Disenchantment and re-enchantment are long-running tropes in the intellectual currents of modernity, which I’ve frequently explored in my writing (see here for a […]
Religion & the Japanese tragedy
Posted in EcoCulture, MediaSpace, SpiritMatter, tagged animism, eventology, imagination, Japan tsunami, nature, paganism, pantheism, religion, ritual, Shinto, spirituality on March 16, 2011 | 7 Comments »
Just as the Haitian earthquake was followed by a welter of religious interpretations (fundamentalist Christians blaming sinful Haitians for it, Vodoun practitioners weighing in on the events, etc.), so the Japanese quake-tsunami-meltdown trilogy is offering evidence of humanity’s interpretive propensities. You may have already seen the YouTube troll video satirizing right-wing Christian responses, which scandalized […]
Religious (re)turns in the wake of global nature
Posted in SpiritMatter, tagged cosmopolitics, cultural ecology, ecology, environmental philosophy, religion, religion and ecology on January 8, 2011 | 4 Comments »
I’m reorganizing the piece I wrote for the School of Advanced Research workshop on science, nature, and religion so that part of it will fit into the introduction of the book we are producing (which I’m co-writing with the workshop organizer and chair, Catherine Tucker) and the rest will make up the book’s concluding chapter. […]
Green pilgrimage & global civil religion
Posted in SpiritMatter, tagged ecopolitics, ecotheology, fundamentalism, global civil religion, globalism, globalization, left politics, pilgrimage, religion on October 5, 2010 | 7 Comments »
I’m getting ready to head to Spain, where I’ve been invited to give a talk on “green pilgrimage” at the Fourth Colloquium Compostela. Here’s a brief overview of what I’ll be speaking about. Green Pilgrimage: Prospects for Ecology and Peace-Building
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