Paleolithic Emotions, Medieval Institutions, and Godlike Technology
“To see a world in a grain of sand
and a heaven in a wildflower
hold infinity in the palm of your hand
and eternity in an hour.”
“There is nothing to writing.
All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
A decade ago, Edward O. Wilson, the Harvard professor and renowned father of sociobiology, was asked whether humans could solve the crises that would confront them over the next 100 years. “Yes, if we are honest and smart,” he replied. “The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology.”
I cannot think of a better summary of our experience with spirituality in the West. The internet age facilitated the democratization of thoughts and ideas, and cryptocurrencies the democratization of economics. Now, spirituality is being democratized and made independent from religious professionals. Stanislav Grof reflected in his work on human consciousness:
Organized religion, bereft of its experiential component, has largely lost the connection to its deep spiritual source and as a result has become empty, meaningless, and increasingly irrelevant in our life. In many instances, live and lived spirituality based on profound personal experience has been replace by dogmatism, ritualism, and moralism.
However, abandoning medieval institutions is not enough to guarantee a clear, compelling spirituality for modern people. Moore’s Law states that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles approximately every two years, while the cost of computers is halved during the same period. The exponential growth of information and computing power gives a small insight as to why homo sapiens are in uncharted waters. It remains difficult to be a spiritual person in the 21st century because our paleolithic minds are interfacing with rapidly evolving technologies that our ancestors would have considered godlike. I will discuss these things in detail in the third section of this book.
What we do have in common with our ancestors is that it still takes enormous reflection and self-awareness to understand our souls’ deepest desires. And, like our ancestors, it still takes great courage to unlearn the unhealthy thoughts and ideas from our past (deconstruct) and start over (reconstruct).
American singer-songwriter and podcast host Michael Gungor shared some thoughts about the process of religious deconstruction on X (formerly Twitter):
He described a process in which the stages of deconstruction are linear and look something like this:
Michael probably meant for this Tweet to be nothing more than an anecdotal observation, but how we view the process of religious deconstruction is important. In my anecdotal observation, many people who deconstruct from an unhealthy form of dogmatic fundamentalism adopt a new form of dogmatic fundamentalism that is just as toxic. The problem with describing deconstruction as a linear process is that it suggests we will one day “arrive” and figure it all out. But there is no “end” to this process.
If we do it right, we remain in a never-ending cycle of deconstructing and reconstructing. During the Reformation, the Protestants declared they were “ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda” or “reformed and always reforming.”[1] In other words, the process of deconstructing, clarifying, reconstructing, and cultivating was an ongoing cycle and never-ending process of growth for them.
In the Christian tradition, Jesus was the deconstructor/reconstructer par excellence. Six times during his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “You have heard it said [deconstructed idea], but I say to you [reconstructed idea]…”[2]
So, what does the deconstruction/reconstruction cycle look like? The statistician George Box famously observed, “All models are wrong, but some are useful.” With that in mind, here is my humble attempt at a model that may be useful:
1. Deconstruct: When You Find Yourself in That Space between Falling Apart and What’s Next.
2. Clarify: What You Often Think You Want is Not What You Really Want.
3. Remove: Spirituality Is More About Removing Your Barriers than Adding More Stuff.
4. Quest: Your Pursuit of Truth and Spirituality Requires a Mindset of Humility and Courage.
5. Re-Construct: Re-Building Your Spirituality with New Tools.
6. Cultivate: Sustaining Habits for a Life of Spirituality.
This is a cyclical model, so here is what it looks like as a cycle:
Alcoholics Anonymous famously uses the “Twelve Steps” of recovery for healing from addiction. However, contrary to popular belief, the steps are not a linear checklist process but an ongoing, never-ending cycle of growth. After a person “works the steps, “ they return to the first step and start over. They emphasize that healing our minds and souls is similar to healing our bodies. When we have a deep physical wound, cleaning it once is insufficient. As each layer heals, we must remove the dressing, clean it again, and redress it—again and again.
Not unlike Alcoholics Anonymous, this book shows you how to “work the steps” of deconstruction/reconstruction repeatedly to facilitate the healing of a wounded mind and soul.
My Intention
Several people have asked me why I wrote this book, so let me be direct: I wrote it for myself. I recently heard an interview with the author Morgan Housel in which he recalled a conversation with Jason Zweig from The Wall Street Journal. Zweig mused that a person should only write a book if, in their mind, they have to do it. Not, “Oh, I should do it.” Or “Oh, that’s a lot of money I could get for doing it.” Instead, “I can’t sleep until I get these ideas on paper.” That is how I have felt during the writing process of the last two years. Verlyn Klinkenborg’s reflections on writing capture a lot of my own sentiments:
Writing doesn’t prove anything.
And it only rarely persuades.
It does something much better.
It attests.
It witnesses.
It shares your interest in what you’ve noticed.
It reports on the nature of your attention.
It suggests the possibilities of the world around you.
The evidence of the world as it presents itself to you.
Proof is for mathematicians.
Logic is for philosophers.
We have testimony.[3]
This book is my testimony.
I’m delighted you could join me on the ride, but I do not intend to try to convince you what to believe about ultimate reality. I will, however, try to convince you to become more open to unexpected moments of ineffable transcendence, because I think that is what we all really want.
I wrote this book because I needed to process my own deconstruction and reconstruction and consider its meaning. As such, it contains some personal things, but it is not meant to be a memoir per se.
Stephen King set the scene for his novel The Body with the following words that I also find a fitting beginning to this book on spirituality:
The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them—words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.[4]
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[3]. Verlyn Klinkenborg, Several Short Sentences about Writing. (New York: Knopf, 2012), p. 117.
[4]. Stephen King, The Body (New York: Scribner, 2018), 1. Many will recognize this story from the 1986 film adaptation, “Stand by Me.” (Rob Reiner, dir. 1986. Stand by Me. Columbia Pictures.)
[1]. Cf. Jaroslav Pelikan, Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300-1700), vol. 4 of The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).
[2]. Cf. Matthew 5:21–38.
