Apocalyptic language is everywhere: in the marketing copy of wellness influencers and pseudo-documentary makers selling spike protein detoxes and vaccine fear-mongering videos, and in the fervent anti-trans panic stoked by right-wing Substackers.
How we use language — and we use that how language to inspire actions — is everything.
Derek imagines a better use of language, and of understanding, through the lens modern secular Buddhism.
Show Notes
The World-Ending Fire — Wendell Berry
A Paradise Built in Hell — Rebecca Solnit
After Buddhism — Stephen Batchelor
Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist — Stephen Batchelor
Buddhism — Alan Watts
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They are religious because they are asked at the limit of what I know.
They acknowledge mystery and honor its presence in the creation.
They are spoken in reverence for the order and grace that I see and that I trust beyond my power to see.
That's Wendell Berry.
It's from an essay that he wrote in 1968 called Native Hill.
Shortly before these exceptional sentences, Berry writes that he doesn't like the term religion, or much of the concept itself.
But he also recognizes that the English language hasn't created the right words to express the feelings he has when walking around his native Kentucky.
Though he fled to New York City to make it as a writer in the early 60s, he returned to his homeland.
He said the land was calling him.
At 88 years old, he's spent most of his life now farming and writing, turning over the land with his hands, and turning over ideas with one hand, writing only by pencil in a journal.
He refuses the technology of a typewriter, as well as that of a computer.
Barry's not about romanticizing the past, per se.
Technology is supposed to make things easier.
But if you're accustomed to and enjoy writing longhand, it's of little use.
His ideas around religion aren't new, either.
And to me, they're quite Buddhist.
And I want to explain what I mean by that in this bonus episode.
They are religious because they are asked at the limit of what I know.
This line haunts me as I scroll through the endless certainties I see online.
We've spent three years dissecting the monetized and frantic merging of political cultures into this strange blend called conspirituality.
I've pointed out that the main intersection appears in the drive toward individualism, the constant yearning for the sovereign self that's completely independent, completely certain, and ready to take down the forces that be at any moment.
Of course that's a charade.
Interdependence is woven throughout existence.
But there's another link that I've noticed more of lately.
Apocalyptic language.
Of course, imagery of biblical fires, plagues, giant locust parties, and satanic goblins have long been with us.
But the marketing copy for the next Plandemic movie, and the email subject lines pimping a barrage of spike-protein-detox supplements, they all bear the mark of this internal battle for the soul.
I don't know.
Maybe they need to ratchet up the language to make people pay attention in this abundant sea of choices that we have.
And the lingo always matches the mindset.
Good vs. Evil.
God vs. Satan.
A flood of binaries designed to think you're aligned with the forces of divinity and anything that you perceive to be gaslighting is the mark of the beast.
Here's a short example from J.P.
Sears' latest newsletter.
You have a choice to choose God or choose control.
I recommend God.
Besides the fact that this is a marketing copy to sell a Trump t-shirt, for which I'm pretty sure he doesn't have the licensing rights to, I think what he means is to choose God or choose to be controlled.
I would imagine that having control is something most so-called sovereign warriors value.
Unless he's literally saying that you don't have control over anything so just have faith, which, honestly, is sometimes the case with the religious.
Regardless, it's presented as a binary that, while lacking any sense of meaning, not that I expect much from him, it hits an affect due to this citation of a supreme deity that you're partnering with.
And this is not uncommon.
Religious rhetoric is having a moment in social media.
I mean, it's always having a moment, but it's definitely hitting a mainstream pitch right now.
RFK Jr.
and Marianne Williamson are bringing God language big time into their marketing campaigns, I mean their presidential runs.
To their credit, it's a bit low on the apocalyptic scale, though they are warning about divine consequences, so there's that.
And they have growing audiences consuming it.
I don't know.
Perhaps it's spending too much time inside during the pandemic.
Maybe it's a disconnect with friends and family and the environment.
Or maybe it's having too small a circle of like-minded friends and family.
Or maybe it is the increasing pressure of the environment having a subconscious effect on us, and the only language we can turn to is religious.
And to think that the incantation of certain words and beliefs puts us on the side of the victorious.
I'm using the royal we here.
Nothing specific, but definitely consumable.
What I do know is that there are a whole lot of words being spoken by people fervently selling you things while screaming into a phone camera, and the entirety of the spectacle just boils down to words, not actions.
And that isn't really the mark of a religion.
It's hyperbole.
Another take on religion comes from American scientist Charles E. Fritz, who specialized in disaster studies.
I was recently introduced to his work while reading Rebecca Solnit's 2009 book, A Paradise Built in Hell, The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster.
I picked up Solnit's book recently to think about the ways that COVID could inspire a better world.
But the challenges that most disasters she writes about were sudden shocks that united communities, like the infamous San Francisco earthquake and 9-11, which certainly brought New York City together in a way that I had never seen before or again in my dozen years living there.
COVID kept people apart, and it made everyone suspicious of everyone else, and of governing bodies.
So the scenario is completely different.
But still, I'm trying to mine ideas from this amazing book.
And Fritz says something important here, namely that religion is not really about belief, but practice.
Here's Solnit writing about his work.
Most religions turn their adherence toward the things we are afraid to face—mortality, death, illness, loss, uncertainty, suffering—to the ways that life is always something of a disaster.
In this framing, religion becomes a form of disaster preparedness.
It keeps people on edge about potential dangers that may or may not exist, and it sets the devotee up to fall victim to whatever propaganda the leaders of that religion decide to instill in doctrine and ritual.
We've made this connection to wellness influencers often.
The fear of getting fat, or of getting old, or of eating impure foods, and the redemption being a program, or CBD oils, or any of the other million holistic tchotchkes for sale.
Side note, I love the word tchotchke as much as I love the fact that it's defined as bric-a-brac.
Maybe those are words religions should adopt, although they'd probably ruin the pleasure of saying them aloud.
Okay, back to Solnit, who goes on to write about the interconnectedness of existence espoused by some religions.
And Buddhism sprung to mind.
And then a paragraph later, she cites two examples of disaster situations through the lens of Buddhism.
One was about a temple being rebuilt during Hurricane Katrina, but the other one I want to briefly share.
In 2008, a serious wildfire broke out in the mountains of California's central coast, and it was right in line with the famous Tassajara Zen Mountain Center.
Everyone was evacuated, but at the last moment, an abbot and four other members of the community turned around and decided to stick it out.
They cleared brush, they kept the sprinklers running, they used generators to survive, and they did survive.
And they saved the center, even as 40-foot flames were within feet of their territory.
The entire perimeter burned, but the grounds were untouched, as was the building.
Now that's one heroic story that I don't think I would have the courage to undertake, but who knows?
We often never know what we're capable of until we're confronted by such a situation.
And as Solnit points out over and over throughout the book, people in disasters often rise to the occasion.
What interests me here, and what Solnit's striving at, is that the philosophy matched the actions.
She writes, Their Buddhist practice had equipped them to respond calmly.
Many were distressed at the possibility of losing a beloved place, but recognized that non-attachment and equanimity were other lessons that might have to be learned.
And they benefited immensely from being a community, with the ability to organize responses and draw on support and resources close at hand and far away.
And then a little later she writes, Transcendence sneaks in everywhere as a survival response.
It's just beautiful.
She's such a good writer.
And as I want to make clear throughout this episode and where I'm building toward, Transcendence isn't about leaving the skin that you're in.
It's rather about being fully alive inside of your skin.
