Casting our minds out to try and picture the unknown or invisible seems to be a natural human activity. We all wonder about what other people think and feel about us. Under pressure or expectation we can project catastrophe or pleasure into possible futures. This ability presumably started with early humans wondering about things they couldn’t see - the future, how a planned hunt might play out, what some other group of people in the next valley might be doing.
However developed, feats of imagination are intrinsically human, whether highly developed in creative arts or second by second wondering about the minutiae of life. Earlier generations of humans saw life and spirit wherever they saw movement, in water and the wind, or growth and stature, in trees and mountains. After settling in cities, they dedicated these new living spaces to a god, but recognised other gods. As empires formed, the need for a god big enough to cover all that territory, and maybe for a means of dominance and control over lesser gods, eventually evolved into the notion of a universal, omnipresent deity. We imagined gods and god into existence, partly as a way of explaining the world perhaps but also because we just seem to need to do that, to project our imaginations outward as a way of feeling our way towards the future, and understanding the present.
Fewer people hold on to traditional religious beliefs, as time moves on, but most still seem to want or have some kind of ‘spiritual’ belief, as with this piece of research: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-m...email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_aboutus
In other quarters, what has been within certain circles a very reductionist reaction against spiritual belief seems to be coming round to a broader acknowledgment of the need people have for something of this sort. Whether it is thought of as spiritual or in some other way doesn’t seem important; there is, though, a need intrinsic to being human to imagine and to attempt to predict and understand the future and the present, whether it’s about what another person feels about us, or our personal ambitions, or whatever. It seems important to recognise that activity as something common to us all that isn’t so easily quantified, and maybe doesn’t need to be. The more extreme people I’ve come across, who believe everything is reducible to some bland set of material interactions, seem to me to be lacking some essentially human quality. At the other extreme are people who insist that life is meaningless without a belief in their particular religion.
If we can dream up gods, though, and even live for millennia with the belief that these imaginary creations give meaning to human life, why should imagination stop there? If my imaged world, the things I think of as having value, daydream and think and feel about, has meaning for me, in what way is that any different to belief in a religion or god? We do seem to be living in a time when the imperative for such thoughts and feelings to be shackled to some particular religious text or group is losing ground, Maybe being an Ubermensch just means recognising that your imaged life is just as loaded as any religion with the power to give life meaning and purpose.
However developed, feats of imagination are intrinsically human, whether highly developed in creative arts or second by second wondering about the minutiae of life. Earlier generations of humans saw life and spirit wherever they saw movement, in water and the wind, or growth and stature, in trees and mountains. After settling in cities, they dedicated these new living spaces to a god, but recognised other gods. As empires formed, the need for a god big enough to cover all that territory, and maybe for a means of dominance and control over lesser gods, eventually evolved into the notion of a universal, omnipresent deity. We imagined gods and god into existence, partly as a way of explaining the world perhaps but also because we just seem to need to do that, to project our imaginations outward as a way of feeling our way towards the future, and understanding the present.
Fewer people hold on to traditional religious beliefs, as time moves on, but most still seem to want or have some kind of ‘spiritual’ belief, as with this piece of research: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-m...email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_aboutus
In other quarters, what has been within certain circles a very reductionist reaction against spiritual belief seems to be coming round to a broader acknowledgment of the need people have for something of this sort. Whether it is thought of as spiritual or in some other way doesn’t seem important; there is, though, a need intrinsic to being human to imagine and to attempt to predict and understand the future and the present, whether it’s about what another person feels about us, or our personal ambitions, or whatever. It seems important to recognise that activity as something common to us all that isn’t so easily quantified, and maybe doesn’t need to be. The more extreme people I’ve come across, who believe everything is reducible to some bland set of material interactions, seem to me to be lacking some essentially human quality. At the other extreme are people who insist that life is meaningless without a belief in their particular religion.
If we can dream up gods, though, and even live for millennia with the belief that these imaginary creations give meaning to human life, why should imagination stop there? If my imaged world, the things I think of as having value, daydream and think and feel about, has meaning for me, in what way is that any different to belief in a religion or god? We do seem to be living in a time when the imperative for such thoughts and feelings to be shackled to some particular religious text or group is losing ground, Maybe being an Ubermensch just means recognising that your imaged life is just as loaded as any religion with the power to give life meaning and purpose.
