Bonus Sample: The Language of Conspiritualist Merchants
Derek investigates the origins of language through thinkers like David Crystal, Michael Corballis, and others, to investigate how two popular figures—Deepak Chopra and Rick Warren—sell their spiritual wares. Their patterns reveal the model many conspiritualist influencers use today.
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Hello, Matthew here from the Conspirituality Podcast Team.
The following is a sample of the bonus episode we produce every week for our Patreon subscribers.
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In America, we enjoy the separation of church and state, in theory if not always in practice.
Yet for most of civilization, such a separation would make no sense.
The trinity of finance, government, and religion were functions of the same entity.
So 6,000 years ago, Sumerian temples housed politicians and bankers.
When you're dealing with 100 people in a tribe, justice is meted out by consensus and resources are distributed evenly.
But multiply that number by hundreds, and even thousands, and suddenly governing presents entirely new challenges.
The only way to make sense of such numbers is through story, and so people started spinning them.
Tribal mythologies were likely traded and reconstructed as villages battled and united.
The invention of writing had nothing to do with poetry and myth, however.
It was for record-keeping.
I owe you this many sheep.
We have that many bushels of wheat.
Agriculture caused the nomadic species to settle down.
And it's been argued that there was a longer transition period, it didn't just happen as once between nomads and agriculturists, but it's still the general shape of our evolution.
So just as hunting in packs is advantageous when trying to take down stronger and faster animals, crop sharing became an effective form of widespread sustenance.
Cities appeared, which meant more data to keep track of.
If you think about it, the epic tale of Gilgamesh, miracles of biblical desert dwellers, and the polytheistic panoply of Indian deities were, in reality, a fortunate byproduct of accounting.
As disparate tribes merged, new stories had to be constructed.
Shared languages were critical to the success of these emerging cities.
Thus in Sumer, which is modern-day Iraq, certain deities had to perish for Abzu and Tiamat to reign.
Enki received his temple, while Anu and Ki were worshipped as the natural forces these urbanites were dependent upon.
If you don't recognize the names, those are dead gods.
So are the ones we have now, will be one day.
The shared story, itself the result of the evolution of language, brought everyone together.
But humans being humans, they sensed opportunity and an elite class emerged to not only control how the story was being told, but to assume the role of translators of divine decree.
So Rick Warren is not new, nor is Deepak Chopra.
In many cases, the leader of a city and god were considered the same being.
This was not a new idea.
The tradition of masking, in which a devotee dons the face of a god to become the god, is much older than anything we have written down.
But never before were so many people under the spell of just a handful of men.
And since these men and their employees, the record keepers, jotting down resource management and tax codes, they were the only ones who understood what those squiggly lines on rock and papyrus meant.
And so they decided how the story was told.
And the story was always to their benefit.
America is a myth.
It's a shared narrative.
And this is true of every nation and religious practice.
We can thank writing in large part for that and take it back a step and we can thank language.
While there have always been accounting errors, the written language enabled humans to implement fiction into societies.
In fact, build them from fictions.
Sure, the spiritual tales of old were all invented, but they could never be broadly disseminated.
Writing changed that game.
If not for an ability to scribe texts, Buddhist communities would never have left India to become so influential in China and Japan.
Three Middle Eastern religions would not be able to proselytize globally without their printed Bibles.
Importantly, writing enabled us to accomplish more than a simple report on events.
We were able to make them up and transmit them widely.
If reality did not fit the story we wanted to tell, all we needed to do was write the story differently.
The internet is just an extension of this habit.
The only difference is there's so many more people writing.
And whoever tells the loudest story wins, regardless of whether it's fiction or fact.
Again, we started this podcast during the pandemic.
It's rooted in language.
We construct our identity by mirroring others and believing the stories they tell.
It's part of the price we pay as social animals.
The construction of religion and society, even of money, itself is a story invented by ancient accountants.
This is all necessary for unifying nations and ideological groups.
Let's face it, we enjoy working in groups.
Without the reflection of others, we'd be lonely creatures.
Mastering language is, in a sense, mastering yourself.
Though importantly, you must learn the origins of the stories you believe in in order to avoid being trapped by them.
Charismatic leaders are also ancient.
Recognizing their narrative patterns is an important step in liberating yourself from cults of personality.
And just because the root of this system deals with resource distribution, and the storyteller gets the most resources, this does not mean we have to fall for those stories, nor do we need to pretend they have anything to do with cultivating a valid spiritual connection.
That doesn't mean people won't try to rope you into their story.
Armed with knowledge, however, we can resist.
By targeting our feeling body, the root of who we are as sentient beings, the businessmen and businesswomen of spirituality gain power over our decisions, especially our purchasing power.
We buy into ideas and then the products that follow.
When the language of consumerism is incorporated into our bodies, we become willing victims to those who manipulate language to make us feel a certain way.
If the story our wallets tell is in alignment with our broader narrative, why not loosen our load and lighten up?
Shopping actually exploits the same neurochemistry by releasing a flood of hormones that give us pleasant sensation, and no sale is too steep when you're buying into a sacred belief.
Carry this a step further.
If you believe transgender people are an abomination and a retreat to Africa will help fund expeditions to combat that, as proposed by Rick Warren at Saddleback, well you feel fulfilled.
If the speaker guarantees that the molecular structure of the universe is specifically tuned to human frequencies, which you can learn more about with his guided meditation, well then money isn't even an issue.
These examples are indicative of a process that promises seemingly mundane items in spiritual experiences like yoga pants, eco-luxe meditation retreats, medical freedom retreats, and a host of other industries that have sprung up to capture your heart and your dollars.
And it's not that many salespeople don't have good intentions, they're just confusing discipline with branding, which drains valuable resources and perpetuates serious ecological problems, all in the concern of our personal liberation.
The historian Yuval Noah Harari thinks that technological triumphs have shifted our focus from survival to the pursuit of happiness.
In a world of instant gratification, the drudgery of patience is eliminated.
Besides, who wants to read a book when a headline says it all?
But a primary component of the human spirit is lost in this transition.
As Harari points out, even the Buddha knew that the desire for constant pleasure is the root of suffering.
The Buddha's antidote was contentment in good times and bad.
Unfortunately, this is not our default mode.
Our memories are short and our desires are many.
Upon acquiring an object, the dopamine rush quickly fades, leaving us craving a more potent dose.
This is as true in much of what is presented in modern spirituality as in any other form of consumerism.
We yearn for the story we want to be true and will buy into anything promising us our illusion.
