I've been thinking a lot about a recent conversation with a friend about life in general and its meaning. The morning after our conversation, I was listening to The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC - the best news and talk show in New York - and he was talking to someone who had written a book about spirituality and "seeking," which again brought the question to the fore.
Lehrer’s guest was an educated woman with a family and a job (I believe it was at Google) who took time off to go to Brazil and seek out a spiritual advisor named "John of God." Apparently, it didn’t go well. So, of course, she wrote a book.
Let me get this out first: as a writer, I was appalled. You wrote about that? But as an atheist, I felt more conflicted. On one hand, what anyone does to make themselves more whole is none of my business, and it probably does them more good than harm. On the other hand, traveling thousands of miles to seek spiritual advice from someone you have never met – and someone who styled themselves “John of God” no less -- seemed more than a little naïve. What did she expect?
Thinking it over further, however, I concluded that such people are searching for legitimate things. One of those things is a sense of community, which we all need.
I have no neighbors to speak of, and I’m not a joiner. I've chosen a solitary life for good reasons, but ones which create a deficit of contact. My nearest thing to a community is my friends, but they are mostly far-flung. My most important community, in fact, is the books on my shelves: thousands of friends, waiting to share their disparate visions, voices and experience.
For me, these communities (including family), how we engage with them, and how they expand or (in some cases) diminish us, are the closest thing we have to an answer to the nagging question: What is the meaning of life? I know love isn’t the simple answer. I have needed love, received love, and given love. But it isn’t everything my life is about.
The annual literary seminar I co-host every summer is a form of community, for 48 hours a year. So are the nonfiction reading group and the writing group I belong to. I’m lucky to have these. Likewise, the club where I go to have great conversations over lunch once or twice a month. I’m a late convert to the idea of conversation having value. So, I understand the need for community. We’re nothing on our own.
But I’m also deeply wary of how “groupishness” (to use psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s term) can turn into tribalism, which is both internally enriching and externally narrowing, fixing us in a social context that creates barriers, conscious or otherwise, against other people and tribes. I don’t like groups and I especially don’t like tribes, but that’s just me.
Religion answers the need for community for many people, but community doesn’t require shared religious beliefs. It shouldn’t require that we all believe in the same things, things that possibly were written in a book several millennia ago. Even the secular aspects of Judaism that I grew up with I have always found suffocating. They subtly beckon one to be and act and think in a certain way– and the hell with that. Saying we all need community is simple and true; but communities are morally complex.
Another kind of spiritual hunger is the need for intellectual and moral guidance. Here, too, I don't find it from a community based on faith, common scriptural texts, or rituals. I prefer to figure out on my own what’s right, real, and important, even if I get it wrong.
If I need any help there, I have the philosophers on my shelf. But the help I find there is subtle and indirect. I can’t think of any philosopher who has actually guided a decision in my life. Not the great and saintly Kant; and certainly not Wittgenstein, a philosophical genius and a first-order lunatic whose behavior was a model for nobody.
The Big Box Religions have probably kept a lot of people from descending into lower moral realms (while also causing a lot of harm and oppression, social fracturing, and wars). But there are also a lot of believers in prison, and a lot of atheists like myself running around free.
Religion isn’t a ticket to virtue. Do we, as semi-rational humans bubbling over with needs and drives we don’t understand or can’t control, really need sacred texts to tell us what’s right and wrong? Well, maybe some of us do.
Hence, I take a dim view of this function of religion. But there's nothing inherently wrong with it from an individual standpoint, if it doesn't set you against others but simply gives meaning or structure to your life. I want to say: Don’t pay some quack in Brazil -- figure it out for yourself! But then, I know that’s not always realistic. Not everyone can afford psychotherapists, bartenders, scoutmasters; not everyone can tolerate the existential loneliness (such as it is) of atheism, let alone being a writer to boot. And there's undeniable comfort, rhythm, and aesthetic beauty in the major religions. The faith is genuine. So is the need to dress up, to be seen and heard, to be part of a group. At times I ask myself how I have managed without those things. But I’m never tempted by them.
Politics may explain why one of my cultural heroes, Gustaf Mahler, converted to Catholicism. But it doesn’t explain the conversion of W.H. Auden. (Kant and Wittgenstein pretty much steered cleared of organized religion despite their religious backgrounds. Kant did so with great success; Wittgenstein not so much – but he loved music.)
It seems to me that the most important and "real," aspect of spirituality is simply connecting with anything larger than oneself. That is a nearly universal human need, arguably the common denominator of all authentic spiritual seeking; and it goes beyond fellowship. It goes to empathy, to mercy, to compassion. If you don’t pass those moral bars, you’re no great spirit (but who’s measuring?).
This search for something to connect with beyond oneself doesn't necessarily equate, though it may overlap, with the question of "the meaning of life." Such connections can be achieved through religion, but also through love and family; through nature -- whether hiking in the wilderness or simply enjoying a beautiful view or listening to birds or surf, or connecting to a place; through community and service; through art, and through sports. All are all ways of binding with others, alive, dead, or yet unborn.
The most spiritual American work of art, I believe, is Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. It maps the great American quest for personal, collective, and national meaning, and for fellowship. Some time ago, I attended a marathon 25-hour reading of the book at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. There was a real sense of community among the devotees. Never mind that some of the volunteer readers were poor narrators. It was more important that anyone who wanted (and signed up in time) could be part of the reading of this great American classic.
Another way to connect is through democratic political life, although this is an arena that sets tribes against each other in the endless competition for power. But then, such tribal competition is the very essence of democracy. As a means of deciding a society’s direction, it is the only alternative to anarchy or tyranny. Since the advent of mass media, the internet, and social media, there are no benevolent monarchs.
Thus -- like the economic market with appropriate limits and controls -- democracy is a legitimate and necessary form of competition. And it's offset by other forms of collectivity. When I go to a ballgame, I bond (however irrationally or tribally) with people who may otherwise be Trumpists, Jehovah's Witnesses, or criminals. All that matters is that we love the game and the team. We even share that love with fans on the other side. We worship our team and pray for homeruns. Baseball is the ultimate spiritual bonanza.
So the meaning of life can wait. Play Ball!