A NECESSARY NEW THING

Disclaimer: My theory is that considering ideas about things like the sacred must necessarily involve accept the possibility of being wrong. This means a considerably reduced number of readers. One of the values here is a plurality of minds.

“In religion, emergence grounds expressions of religious naturalism and syntheism in which a sense of the sacred is perceived in the workings of entirely naturalistic processes by which more complex forms arise or evolve from simpler forms. Examples are detailed in The Sacred Depths of Nature by Ursula Goodenough & Terrence Deacon and Beyond Reductionism: Reinventing the Sacred by Stuart Kauffman, both from 2006, and in Syntheism — Creating God in The Internet Age by Alexander Bard & Jan Söderqvist from 2014. An early argument (1904–05) for the emergence of social formations, in part stemming from religion, can be found in Max Weber’s most famous work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.[26] Recently, the emergence of a new social system is linked with the emergence of order from nonlinear relationships among multiple interacting units, where multiple interacting units are individual thoughts, consciousness, and actions.” (Wiki?)

Kauffman is on YouTube with some pretty high grade thinking, but it’s not impossible to undertand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVL2Y5z2jLU

NEW EMERGENT ASSUMPTIONS:

A human being is a dynamic complex of myriad interactions within the individual, in the immediate environment, between intimates, among communities, and formed by the world by arising according to the mathematical theory of Emergence. This happens because of the enormous number of connections between neurons in the brain and through the whole body and their ability to record experience.

Each human follows the rules of all life: beginning from pre-existing forms, rising to a climax/blooming, falling into disfunction and then ceasing. This is often the pattern of a story

Every former stage of evolution — plus remnants of some that no longer exist — remains present and operative in the most recent versions.

The body of a human being entwines both flesh and mind and bounds it with skin, except for passing the world through the GI tract and the lungs.

Each human body extends itself through the sensory system which is in electrochemical code that must be translated by the brain. This makes a human a part of a community with a culture and the world at large but limited by the capacities of the code.

This process seems to be related to the six layers that enwrap the cerebrum and possibly the dialogue between the two specializing halves of the brain. We know this because humans are the only ones with six layers. Other mammals have only the first few bottom layers. We don’t know about split brains in sub-humans.

The most recently evolved part of the brain is consciousness and self-awareness. This is evidently located in the prefrontal lobe of the brain along with all “humanities”, capacities in art, morality, logic, and empathy.

It’s possible that the glimpses of transcendent intensity that come arbitrarily or sometimes after preparation are a new and developing capacity of humans. Only some people seem to claim these moments but a few people find them negative and terrifying. There are accounts in writing over the millennia, so “recent” is relative to the existence of humans, maybe after the development of the prefrontal cortex. (I’m leaving drugs out of discussion.)

Since one of the crucial tasks of the brain is to organize systems/networks with assigned tasks — like waking-up/going-to-sleep, or listening to music or navigating the six directions — our functions we call “focus” or “paying attention” are related to moving the brain’s energizing of the effective network. This is a crucial skill that develops lifelong. It can be overwhelmed. “Education” in the sense of coaching can help.

The present task of the study of humans in psych and anthro is to reconcile all observations, logical systems like that of Freud, and evidence from surgery and lesions — all basically constructs — with what highly technical evidence shows us with instruments. It is possible that everything we have thought of as mysteriously mental or even virtual to the point of being supernatural is simply the result of the brain’s neurology, perhaps at a quantum level we can’t perceive. The other scientific task is reconciling Newtonian and quantum mechanics.

Victor Turner’s idea of going over a threshold to a privileged space and time (liminal) describes a way to change the brain’s system focus from an earlier habit to a system that is mentally plastic and open to relationship with others. It is related to what Merleau-Ponty and Susanne Langer called “feeling.” That is, crudely put, it helps a person “feel” meaning. The threshold is sensory. My piece called “The Bone Chalice” is a pursuit of ceremonies and liturgies that include the sensory triggers of shift.

Understanding this brain shift and how to support it is crucial in our time of needing to reconcile many cultural methods developed in other ecosystems, since each eco-system is what supports “religious” liturgies and what has been made sacred. Robert Schreiter’s attention to the deep meanings underlying human feeling, originally thought out to help missionaries, is key to doing this. Simply assembling artifacts or quoting old ceremonies will not do the work of penetrating understanding to the “meta” level.

Sacredness and taboos are matters of feeling that are anchored in the community, not concrete nor present in the nonhuman world but located in the “feelings” of humans. Since it is a ceremonial season, let’s look at a simple example that nevertheless needed to be brought up to consciousness.

At a First Unitarian Church of Chicago meeting meant to address congregational grumbling about not liking the hymns chosen, the cause turned out to be that the members, though in sympathy with the principles of the UUA, had many origins from Christian Protestant mainstream, to Southern Black, to Catholic liturgical traditions. The connected preferences weren’t always conscious.

Each group had a particular style and canon of songs that they had internalized early in life. Now, short of creating a new body of music that became part of them all, there was bound to be dislocation. It was sensory, not so much about the words to the songs. Consciousness meant opportunity and called for the Emergence of new significant hymnody. Carolyn McDade was asked for new songs. Starting from a Baptist origin, she has made the leap through feminism to near-universality, even for virtual choirs assembled online and even with the deaf community!

This song is beloved by many.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LikvoIiN_bU

Carolyn’s autobiography is pure poetry.

https://www.carolynmcdademusic.com/bio.html

I’m not saying everyone will love her songs or that they will even fit every congregational style. I’m saying that understanding the complexity of bringing together cultures might very well give rise — an Emergence — to a new way. UU’s were self-selected to some degree, so blending was easier than reconciling lullabies and hard rock. Music is only one way to approach the complexity of religion.

A hard rock version of “Away in a Manger?” Consider “Jesus Christ, Superstar.”