Letter: Spiritual truths? (1990)

Letter to the Editors from the May 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors

Re your article on Socialism and Ecology in last month's Socialist Standard, I am glad to say that the people who sell me the Standard are more courteous and tolerant of people's beliefs than your writer.

By what right has anyone to say that a belief in Gaia (which is symbolic modern representation of a very ancient concept), UFOs and astrology are “manifest nonsense"? Does he/she have evidence of this, or are they merely toeing the stuffy old. stoic party-line7

In which case, why does someone like myself who has an open mind about such "spiritual ' precepts bother to read your materialistic mag? Simple, it's one of the sources of an alternative politics which I can hardly get from most of the daily sewer sheets. I do however believe that there are things we can and should change, and other things we cannot.

I would just like to ask you two questions on this point, namely:

1. If much of humanity is not searching for deeper spiritual truths, then how do you explain the resurgence of the concepts your writer derides—the increasing interest in the occult, etc which began with the 60s hippies et al? and,
2. If a person has a deep faith and deep political convictions, which do you think they would drop, if forced to, by the sort of clash between them which your article alleges? I can assure you. it is bound to be the latter.

Until you realise that spiritual people can contribute as much as anyone toward a socialistic economic system and that the two viewpoints are not irreconcilable: and until you stop ridiculing potential supporters in this way, then I'm afraid you will remain what you are: a small and insignificant party, with no hope of making the world a better place.

R. E. Wilson

Warley, West Midlands

Reply:

Our correspondent, presumably, regards the view that the earth is flat as ‘manifest nonsense". How, therefore, would he answer a flat-earther who protested that this was an insult to his deeply-held beliefs? Would he not reply that the truth of a statement does not depend on how deeply or sincerely it is held but on whether or not it is backed up by hard evidence?

We take up the same attitude towards those who say that "nature is peopled by wood sprites and other spirits headed by a goddess". Our correspondent says that this is only “symbolic" (the pagan religion obviously has its Bishops of Durham too), but others take it literally:

  We who live in rural parts are lucky enough to have many sacred wells, standing stones, stone circles and oak groves where we can gather to worship or be alone with the gods and goddesses (from a letter in Green Line, March 1988).

Here, then, is an unambiguous claim that "gods and goddesses" exist and are present at the places mentioned. This statement is either true or it isn't. It can easily be tested. You simply go to some oak grove and look for evidence of the presence of these “spiritual" beings. None has ever been found.

Astrology, the doctrine that claims that the lives of individual human beings on the planet Earth are influenced by vibrations emanating from the stars and the other planets, has also never been able to produce any evidence of its validity. Not only has no astrologer ever been able to explain the physical mechanisms of how this operates but the astrological tables that appear in papers and magazines are wrong even on their own terms:

  In the past 2.000 years, the suns apparent position in the sky has slipped backwards by one whole sign of the zodiac. Astrologers have stuck with tradition, even though it is now out of step with reality. So an astrologer will tell the parents of today's newborn baby that he or she is a Cancer: "highly sensitive, moody, reserved' (Teach Yourself Astrology, Jeff Mayo 1964). If they instead looked at the sun's position in the sky. they would find the sun is in fact in Gemini, the sign of someone "communicative. witty. chatty".

(Misreading the message in the stars". Nigel Henbest, Independent, 22 June 1987).

Why do so many people believe that their lives are influenced by "occult" forces of one kind or another, whether these be God. Jesus, the stars. Satan. Gaia or whatever? Basically, because we are living in a society which is not under human control but one where humans really are at the mercy of blind, impersonal forces— the economic laws of the capitalist economy. People feel, rightly, that they are governed by forces they can't control but attribute this, wrongly, to forces operating from outside the world of experience. This is what Marx meant when he talked about "the fetishism of commodities": humans attribute mystical powers to what are in fact the products of their own activity. Astrology, paganism and other cults have revived over the past few years but largely at the expense of the traditional religions whose emphasis on personal guilt, sexual repression and the inferiority of women have become unacceptable.

The answer to our lives being controlled by impersonal forces lies not in searching for "spiritual truths" (which will never be found, because they don't exist) but in bringing about a society in which humans consciously control the forces of production.

Editors

Blogger's Note:

See also 'A plea for some rational skepticism' from the same issue of the Socialist Standard.