The Profane and The Sacred
First, let's be clear: I'm not the least bit religious.
I may have been baptized, taken first communion and been confirmed, but I dropped it all around the age of twelve, and the years have only hardened my rejection of all organized religion.
When people ask, I say I'm agnostic and atheist – which may sound contradictory. Agnostic because I haven't been around the universe, and there may well be something out there, for all I know. A meaning, an equation, a metaphysics that we might choose to personify and call God. Why not. But deep down, I think we can't know, and we might as well not worry about it – which is the strong version of agnosticism. But – and this is my atheist side – even if there is something up there, I'm convinced it has nothing to do with what religions, past or present, have been trying to sell us for centuries. To me, the Bible, the Torah, the Quran and the rest are bad fiction used to keep people under control.
That's where we're starting from.
And yet, over the past few years, I've found a certain spirituality in myself.
For me, spirituality would be a connection with something bigger than yourself – not necessarily a god.
It could be a connection with nature, for example.
I mean nature in the broad sense: the great whole that has existed since the big bang, probably before, that gave birth to galaxies, stars, planets, which in turn allowed life to emerge in all its forms: bacteria, plants, animals. This gigantic, ever-changing soup that, through laws we're only beginning to understand, is the source of everything we know. That some parts of this whole develop a consciousness of their own and can experience themselves and the world, that all this physical, chemical and biological complexity gives rise to an experience as simple as "I am", which lets each of us live out our life without having to understand the gears underneath, I find there's magic in that. A mystery, at the very least. Beauty, without a doubt.
But above all: this little bit of spirituality is enough to draw a line between the profane and the sacred.
The profane view of the world would see nothing here but a heap of matter and physical laws to be seized and cashed in on. No mystery anywhere, no questions, no wonder, and so nothing to respect. Only resources to exploit. Living things would then be just one more fuel for our idea of comfort and progress.
The opposite view, which Bernard Stiegler defends so well in a video I came across recently, also brings me back to what Alan Watts said on the subject.
Namely, that our relationship with nature rests on a double mistake. The first: that our role is to dominate nature. To fight and master the elements and impose our will. The second: that we're in a position to save it. That the planet – or parts of it – would need us in order to go on being. These two positions, far from having the same effects, both come from missing the same basic truth:
We are nature.
We humans are as much nature as cows, trees, ants or dolphins. We're made of the same matter, shaped by the same evolution – physical and biological – and bound to disappear in similar ways. (For example: by changing our ecosystem beyond the limits of our own survival – which, in the history of species, is nothing new.)
That doesn't mean there's no difference between humans and other species. Of course there is. But when you get down to basics – living, surviving, finding meaning – it seems to me that the fact that we belong to the living world is a better lens than what sets us apart from it.
Because if we are nature, nothing we do can be against nature.
We're part of the great whole. The difficulties we run into are part of the great game. And the mystery and magic at work in the universe express themselves through us too.