Love thy neighbour
I’m sure this has been discussed and dissected many times over, but it occurs to me that capitalist, consumer-driven society encourages individualism, creates division from communities, each other and ourselves — giving rise to fear of one another and extreme ideologies.
It’s a bold statement but I wanted to be dramatic and profound to grab your attention — more of that later. We live in an increasingly secular world, where religion is viewed with suspicion, for good reasons. If someone were to describe themselves as religious, to me it conjures fanaticism, terrorism, nonces and backward views on race, sexuality and Harry Potter. Describe yourself as spiritual and it conjures crystals, dream catchers, baggy striped trousers with a string belt, a mini Buddha statue above your telly and pithy one-line inspirational quotes printed on a canvas for the hallway. It’s no surprise that neither of these have held much appeal to your salt-of-the-earth average Joe. And still, the question persists — there has to be something more meaningful, more satisfying than *waves hand towards tray of Greggs festive bakes*?
Whether you agree with it or not, all religions point to the same source: God. What’s God? Creator of the universe? A being of infinite wisdom and compassion? A singularity of infinite consciousness? Whatever, it’s an aid to existence, someone or something that will forgive our errors, accept us, set us on the right path and guide us to nirvana or good old fashioned heaven. It’s essentially a word to point to something we’ll never fully comprehend due to our finite pea-brain capacity. Clearly, it’s been interpreted in different ways by dense and selfish humans who have ulterior motives and can’t ever seem to agree on anything, leading to much suffering and sometimes death. This is all a bit of a downer on an otherwise nice idea, so where or what do we look to for help now?
Well, in case you missed it, in recent years there has been a steady rise in secular spiritual practices in the west, the big one being mindfulness — the practice of focusing your attention on something that isn’t your stupid misguided thoughts and beliefs, e.g. your breath, your carpet, your parking eye fine, fucking hell I forgot all about that I’m utterly useless. You can’t avoid mindfulness, it’s everywhere. The term is usually bandied about as something to help us unplug from the permanently connected, overworked, hyper-judgemental reality of modern life. What is mindfulness? It’s essentially Buddhist practice without using the ‘B’ word, so as not to put westerners off. It’s the teaching of Siddhārtha Gautama, an ordinary man (who also happened to be a prince) who had all the riches one could ever need and still couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t happy. After a quest to find the answer, he eventually achieved full enlightenment one day whilst meditating underneath a tree — thereby achieving ‘buddhahood’. He then spent the rest of his life teaching ‘the path’ which was a detailed how-to guide on how to do the same. In simple terms it goes like this: you are not your thoughts about who you are, drop your beliefs and judgements, drop also the idea you are separate to everything else, realise you are not separate from the universe, you are the universe, therefore you are also god, the buddha. The end.
This ‘enlightenment’ doesn’t belong to Buddhism, in the same way football doesn’t belong to Budweiser — anybody can play the game regardless of religious or scientific views. Early western adopters of buddhist practices realised a lot of the dogma and mystical tales and adornments around the religion realised it’d instantly be a turn-off to people like you and me, so they stripped it down to it’s bare teachings and rebadged it as a non-religious, secular practice that anyone can do — kind of like the ultimate self-help technique. And so here we are today: mindfulness is taught in schools, workplaces and has been scientifically proven (in real peer-reviewed academic journals, gosh) to have actual psychological, neurological and physical benefits. In other words, eastern religion and western science have converged to a point where we can now all finally agree that this, whatever we call it, is a good thing.
But what about the end result of mindfulness, awakening, liberation, enlightenment — what’s that all about? Again, the word carries a lot of baggage stemming from misinterpretation, images of floating on clouds in a state of permanent orgasm. Something like that. The reality? By all accounts it’s a series of realisations that culminates in life without ‘the fear’, without permanent judging of situations, others and oneself. If you’re not judging situations to be potentially life-threatening or embarrassing — you’re not worried or anxious. If you’re not judging or believing yourself to be useless or ugly, you feel good. You’re not separate to the world, not in a bubble looking out — you’re part of the fabric and community of the world, fully engaged in a benevolent universe of infinite possibility and opportunity; not a terrified drone constantly worrying about all those other bees stealing your nectar. It’s easier said than done and it’s not something you can do by questioning or rationalising it, the opposite actually.
A nice side benefit of being mindful is that you’re nicer to other people, more compassionate, because you’re not scared shitless of them — then they’re nicer to other people, and so on. There’s an understanding that we’re all in this mess together, we’re all victims of circumstance, we can all help each other out and the realisation that spaffing your wages on booze and clothes maybe isn’t a long-term strategy for feeling good about yourself. This is an extreme example to illustrate an everyday point. Imagine not being so concerned about what other people thought of you, would it make you less anxious about social situations? Would it encourage you to interact with other humans — even ones that you’re told are ‘different’ to you? You could almost say it undoes a lot of the division created by staring at your smartphone all day, consuming information about how X race/religion/generation/government/class/music subgenre has it in for you. Imagine that.
Currently, we live in a world of increasing levels of judgement, look at Twitter ffs. Binary opinions have been gamified, offering dopamine hits to extreme views rather than open minded attempts at understanding and compassion. We strive to elevate ourselves above the others by judging them as less worthy, morally and intellectually inferior. We are actively encouraged to be selfish and aspirational, that we have to beat others to better ourselves. We live in a world where the individual is told that you could finally be content, be complete, can win the race, if you just try harder to be a better, richer, better looking person. This way of operating has terrifying real world consequences when scaled up by senior management. Judgement and opinions can be dangerous and isolating, so it stands to reason that the very dropping of the act of judgement is the thing that could potentially lead to contentment, offering some sort of exit strategy.
Say what you like about organised religion, I’m not a fan of it myself, but it was at least something that brought people together with good intentions, for those other than personal gain. With traditional religions and spiritual practices on the wane, there’s been a gaping void in our shared sense of community which consumerism has tried to fill with Instagram, Netflix, Tinder and Deliveroo — but it’s apparent that no amount of shifting the deckchairs on the titanic is going to save us from the iceberg of shitting on our down doorstep (the global climate crisis). In other words, rampant consumerism is eating up you and your home.
So what’s the answer? How should I know? I’m as utterly ignorant and deluded as you are, these are merely the rantings of a sleep deprived ant. I do however feel like there’s an inkling of a glimmer of hope, a collective waking up from a crap dream, some exhausted acknowledgement that we’ve been toiling away for yonks to discover we’ve been digging our own grave.
Maybe we’d be better off not taking part in the great Cash Grab™ we were entered into the day we were born? Maybe we could all be happy and get along without kamikaze economic growth? Maybe constantly fearing one another is the root cause of conflict? Maybe being angry with each other isn’t the best way to survive? Maybe there’s a shared understanding that we could be happy without all that?
So there you have it: my opinion. I’m fully aware of the irony of this and I’m fully aware that by putting this article online I’m very aware of the judgement and criticism I’m opening myself up to: hypocrite, smart arse, simpleton, crank, idealist, soft lad, dickhead. You know what though? I’m not as scared of all that as I used to be.
