1) For one thing, many millennials never had strong ties to religion to begin with, which means they were less likely to develop habits or associations that make it easier to join a religious community.
2) Young adults are also increasingly likely to have a spouse who is nonreligious, which may help reinforce their secular worldview.
3) Changing views about the relationship between morality and religion also appear to have convinced many young parents that religious institutions are simply irrelevant or unnecessary for their children.
The older I get the more I wonder about our approach to life as it applies particularly to the current "modern world" generation of the 21st century.
I can't help but think that there is an urgent need for a sense of our own existence which is in accord with the physical facts and which overcomes a feeling of alienation from the universe. All of which leads me to ask: "Is there, in other words, some inside information on life and existence that most parents and teachers either don't know or fail, for some reason, to relay to the upcoming and naturally impressionable younger generation.
It seems to me that we have lost the art of molding young minds, leaving it instead to chance, good luck...or someone else.
I began to contemplate the question almost 50 years ago after being asked to review a book written by Alan Watts, best known as an interpreter of Zen Buddhism and Indian and Chinese philosophy. As a fledgling literary editor and all-purpose news editor at the time, I always intended to follow up my book review by interviewing Watts personally, but he died in 1974 before I got a chance to do so. I still have the publisher's review copy of the book (see accompanying photo deeper into this post) I received at the time.
Drawing on the insights of Hindu philosopher Vedanta, Watts presented his thesis in a completely modern Western style -- an interesting cross-fertilization of Western science with an Eastern intuition that impressed a still wet-behind-the-ears scribe like me.
Watts wrote about "the taboo against who you are." He formulated his own solution to the urgent problem of personal identity and proposed a method of self-examination that shattered "the big lie and hallucination" of alienation.
He immediately caught my attention by referencing a Japanese custom of giving young people about to be married a "pillow book," a small volume of wood-block prints, often colored, showing the details of sexual intercourse. It wasn't just that, as the Chinese say, "one picture is worth ten thousand words." It was also that it spared parents the embarrassment of explaining intimate matters face-to-face, unlike today when that type of information is readily available any place you may choose to look, book shelves and online included. Interesting...
In today's world sex is no longer a serious taboo and teens generally know more about it than adults. So let's zero in on the question: "If sex is no longer a big taboo, what is?" There is always something repressed, unadmitted, or just glimpsed quickly out of the corner of one's eye. What, then, would be "the book" which fathers might slip to their sons and mothers to their daughters, without ever admitting it openly?
Well, to begin, in some circles as Watts pointed out, there is a strong taboo on religion, even for those who go to church or read the Bible. Religion is considered private business and for some it is bad form or uncool to talk about or argue on the subject. Heaven help those who demonstrate piety in their everyday lives.
As shocking as it may sound, "The Book" we are talking about would not be the Bible, the "good book" that it is -- that fascinating anthology of ancient wisdom, history and fable which has for so long been considered a blueprint for living.
There are indeed secrets in the Bible, and some very subversive ones, but they are complicated and in archaic symbols and ways of thinking that are incredibly difficult to explain to people in a modern society. As a lay minister lacking a formal theological education and forced to continually play catch up, I can attest to the challenge.
In all honesty the standard-bred religions, whether Jewish, Christian, Mohammedan, Hindu or Buddhist are, as now practiced, are like mines -- very hard to dig. With some exceptions their ideas about man and the world, their imagery, their rites and notions of the good life do not seem to fit in with the universe as we know it, or with a human world that is changing so rapidly that much of what one learns in school is already obsolete on graduation day.
In applying the creative thinking cap, and readily acknowledging the fact that young people today are not as gullible as in previous generations, it is safe to suggest that they cast a questioning eye on the old-fashioned religion that we oldsters cling to as generally having little appeal to them.
I well remember the time I took my then teenage daughter to church with me after a lengthy hiatus due to moving from one province to another and other extra-curricular activities. When we got home that Sunday I overheard her saying to her mother: "I couldn't believe it...They actually chanted in church...Then I looked over at dad and he was doing it too!" In truth I cannot remember the "chanting" but we did recite in unison The Apostles Creed in keeping with the Presbyterian worship service of the day. Regardless, that one incident told me something about how my daughter had perceived a church ritual as kind of strange and old fashioned...And unsaid, probably still does to this day as a mother of three.
"The Book", I suggest, would not have to be religious in the usual sense, but it would have to discuss many things with which religions have been concerned -- the universe and mankind's place in it, the mysterious centre of experience which we call "I myself," the problems of life and love, pain and death, and the whole question of whether existence has meaning in any sense of the word.
For years I struggled with the notion that you dilute religious faith by trying to modernize it...Now I am not so sure.
The question, however, has to be asked; is there some kind of explanation on this astounding scheme of things, something that never really gets out through the usual channels for the answer -- the historic religions and philosophies? Well there is and I intend to pursue the matter in future Wrights Lane posts in spite of my limited ability to comprehend it further in the moment.
It has been said time and again but in such a fashion that we, today, do not hear it. We do not realize that it is utterly subversive, not so much in the political and moral sense, as in that it turns our ordinary view of things (our common sense) inside out and upside down. It may of course have political and moral consequences, but as yet we have no clear idea of what they may be and looking for answers has almost been considered dangerous...Hence a taboo.
As we speak, the world is in an extremely dangerous state and serious diseases often require the risk of a dangerous cure. It is not that we simply blow up the planet, strangle ourselves with overpopulation, destroy our natural resources or ruin the soil and its byproducts. Beyond all these is the possibility that civilization may be a huge technological success, but through methods that most people will find baffling, frightening and disorienting -- because, for one reason alone, the methods will keep changing. It may well be like playing a game where the rules are constantly changed without ever being made clear -- a game from which one cannot withdraw short of suicide, and in which one can never return to an older form of the game.
It is also believed that humanity has evolved one-sidedly, growing in technical power without any comparable growth in moral integrity, or, as some would prefer to say, without comparable progress in education and rational thinking. Yet the problem is more basic than that.
The root of the matter is the way in which we feel and conceive ourselves as human beings -- our sensation of being alive, of individual existence and identity. Most of us have the notion that "I myself" is a separate centre of feeling and action, living inside and bounded by the physical body, a center which confronts an external world of people and things, making contact through the senses with a universe both alien and strange. As the aforementioned Watts put it: Everyday figures of speech reflecting the illusion "I came into this world." "You must face reality." "The conquest of nature."
This feeling of being lonely and very temporary visitors in the universe is in flat contradiction to everything known about man (and all other living organisms) in the sciences. We do not "come into" this world, we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean "waves," the universe "peoples," if you get my drift. Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the real universe.
This fact is rarely, if ever, experienced by most individuals. Even those who know it to be true in theory do not sense or feel it, but continue to be aware of themselves as isolated "egos" inside bags of skin.
From my vantage point, the first result of this illusion is that our attitude to the world "outside" us is largely hostile. We are forever in a conquering mode instead of learning to cooperate in harmonious order.
It might seem, then, that our need is for some genius to invent a new religion, a philosophy of life and a view of the world, that is plausible and generally acceptable for the early 21st century, and through which every individual can feel that the world as a whole, and one's own life in particular, have meaning. This, as history has shown repeatedly however, is not enough.
In acknowledging that most of we long-in-the-tooth Christians have at least paid lip service to biblical teachings, we must also concede that it is lacking in youthful allure today. It behooves us to find alternatives and not to leave it all up to God. Therefore, The Book that I would ideally like to slip into my children's hands would of itself be slippery. It would slip them into a new domain, not of ideas alone, but of experience and feeling. It would be temporary medicine, not a diet; a point of departure, not a perpetual point of reference. They would read it and be done with it, for if it were well and clearly written they would not have to go back to it again and again looking for hidden messages or declarations of obscure doctrines.
The Book I would pass to my children would in no way begin to compete with the Bible. It would contain no sermons, no shoulds and oughts. Genuine love comes from knowledge, not from an imposed sense of duty or guilt.
Why then "The Book"?...Why not just sit back and let things take their course, trusting that in the end our young people will work things out for themselves? Simply, that is actually part of "things taking their course" of which I write. Like Alan Watts, as a human being it is my nature to enjoy and share philosophy and things of a spiritual nature. I do this in the same way that some birds are eagles and some are doves, some flowers lilies and some roses.
I realize, too, that the less I preach, the more likely I am to be heard.
My two daughters and five grandchildren, all of whom up to now I have spared "The Book," would tend to agree and understand exactly where I am coming from.
2) Young adults are also increasingly likely to have a spouse who is nonreligious, which may help reinforce their secular worldview.
3) Changing views about the relationship between morality and religion also appear to have convinced many young parents that religious institutions are simply irrelevant or unnecessary for their children.
The older I get the more I wonder about our approach to life as it applies particularly to the current "modern world" generation of the 21st century.
I can't help but think that there is an urgent need for a sense of our own existence which is in accord with the physical facts and which overcomes a feeling of alienation from the universe. All of which leads me to ask: "Is there, in other words, some inside information on life and existence that most parents and teachers either don't know or fail, for some reason, to relay to the upcoming and naturally impressionable younger generation.
It seems to me that we have lost the art of molding young minds, leaving it instead to chance, good luck...or someone else.
I began to contemplate the question almost 50 years ago after being asked to review a book written by Alan Watts, best known as an interpreter of Zen Buddhism and Indian and Chinese philosophy. As a fledgling literary editor and all-purpose news editor at the time, I always intended to follow up my book review by interviewing Watts personally, but he died in 1974 before I got a chance to do so. I still have the publisher's review copy of the book (see accompanying photo deeper into this post) I received at the time.
Drawing on the insights of Hindu philosopher Vedanta, Watts presented his thesis in a completely modern Western style -- an interesting cross-fertilization of Western science with an Eastern intuition that impressed a still wet-behind-the-ears scribe like me.
Watts wrote about "the taboo against who you are." He formulated his own solution to the urgent problem of personal identity and proposed a method of self-examination that shattered "the big lie and hallucination" of alienation.
 |
| Alan Watts |
He immediately caught my attention by referencing a Japanese custom of giving young people about to be married a "pillow book," a small volume of wood-block prints, often colored, showing the details of sexual intercourse. It wasn't just that, as the Chinese say, "one picture is worth ten thousand words." It was also that it spared parents the embarrassment of explaining intimate matters face-to-face, unlike today when that type of information is readily available any place you may choose to look, book shelves and online included. Interesting...
In today's world sex is no longer a serious taboo and teens generally know more about it than adults. So let's zero in on the question: "If sex is no longer a big taboo, what is?" There is always something repressed, unadmitted, or just glimpsed quickly out of the corner of one's eye. What, then, would be "the book" which fathers might slip to their sons and mothers to their daughters, without ever admitting it openly?
Well, to begin, in some circles as Watts pointed out, there is a strong taboo on religion, even for those who go to church or read the Bible. Religion is considered private business and for some it is bad form or uncool to talk about or argue on the subject. Heaven help those who demonstrate piety in their everyday lives.
As shocking as it may sound, "The Book" we are talking about would not be the Bible, the "good book" that it is -- that fascinating anthology of ancient wisdom, history and fable which has for so long been considered a blueprint for living.
There are indeed secrets in the Bible, and some very subversive ones, but they are complicated and in archaic symbols and ways of thinking that are incredibly difficult to explain to people in a modern society. As a lay minister lacking a formal theological education and forced to continually play catch up, I can attest to the challenge.
In all honesty the standard-bred religions, whether Jewish, Christian, Mohammedan, Hindu or Buddhist are, as now practiced, are like mines -- very hard to dig. With some exceptions their ideas about man and the world, their imagery, their rites and notions of the good life do not seem to fit in with the universe as we know it, or with a human world that is changing so rapidly that much of what one learns in school is already obsolete on graduation day.
In applying the creative thinking cap, and readily acknowledging the fact that young people today are not as gullible as in previous generations, it is safe to suggest that they cast a questioning eye on the old-fashioned religion that we oldsters cling to as generally having little appeal to them.
I well remember the time I took my then teenage daughter to church with me after a lengthy hiatus due to moving from one province to another and other extra-curricular activities. When we got home that Sunday I overheard her saying to her mother: "I couldn't believe it...They actually chanted in church...Then I looked over at dad and he was doing it too!" In truth I cannot remember the "chanting" but we did recite in unison The Apostles Creed in keeping with the Presbyterian worship service of the day. Regardless, that one incident told me something about how my daughter had perceived a church ritual as kind of strange and old fashioned...And unsaid, probably still does to this day as a mother of three.
"The Book", I suggest, would not have to be religious in the usual sense, but it would have to discuss many things with which religions have been concerned -- the universe and mankind's place in it, the mysterious centre of experience which we call "I myself," the problems of life and love, pain and death, and the whole question of whether existence has meaning in any sense of the word.
For years I struggled with the notion that you dilute religious faith by trying to modernize it...Now I am not so sure.
The question, however, has to be asked; is there some kind of explanation on this astounding scheme of things, something that never really gets out through the usual channels for the answer -- the historic religions and philosophies? Well there is and I intend to pursue the matter in future Wrights Lane posts in spite of my limited ability to comprehend it further in the moment.
It has been said time and again but in such a fashion that we, today, do not hear it. We do not realize that it is utterly subversive, not so much in the political and moral sense, as in that it turns our ordinary view of things (our common sense) inside out and upside down. It may of course have political and moral consequences, but as yet we have no clear idea of what they may be and looking for answers has almost been considered dangerous...Hence a taboo.
As we speak, the world is in an extremely dangerous state and serious diseases often require the risk of a dangerous cure. It is not that we simply blow up the planet, strangle ourselves with overpopulation, destroy our natural resources or ruin the soil and its byproducts. Beyond all these is the possibility that civilization may be a huge technological success, but through methods that most people will find baffling, frightening and disorienting -- because, for one reason alone, the methods will keep changing. It may well be like playing a game where the rules are constantly changed without ever being made clear -- a game from which one cannot withdraw short of suicide, and in which one can never return to an older form of the game.
It is also believed that humanity has evolved one-sidedly, growing in technical power without any comparable growth in moral integrity, or, as some would prefer to say, without comparable progress in education and rational thinking. Yet the problem is more basic than that.
The root of the matter is the way in which we feel and conceive ourselves as human beings -- our sensation of being alive, of individual existence and identity. Most of us have the notion that "I myself" is a separate centre of feeling and action, living inside and bounded by the physical body, a center which confronts an external world of people and things, making contact through the senses with a universe both alien and strange. As the aforementioned Watts put it: Everyday figures of speech reflecting the illusion "I came into this world." "You must face reality." "The conquest of nature."
This feeling of being lonely and very temporary visitors in the universe is in flat contradiction to everything known about man (and all other living organisms) in the sciences. We do not "come into" this world, we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean "waves," the universe "peoples," if you get my drift. Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the real universe.
This fact is rarely, if ever, experienced by most individuals. Even those who know it to be true in theory do not sense or feel it, but continue to be aware of themselves as isolated "egos" inside bags of skin.
From my vantage point, the first result of this illusion is that our attitude to the world "outside" us is largely hostile. We are forever in a conquering mode instead of learning to cooperate in harmonious order.
It might seem, then, that our need is for some genius to invent a new religion, a philosophy of life and a view of the world, that is plausible and generally acceptable for the early 21st century, and through which every individual can feel that the world as a whole, and one's own life in particular, have meaning. This, as history has shown repeatedly however, is not enough.
In acknowledging that most of we long-in-the-tooth Christians have at least paid lip service to biblical teachings, we must also concede that it is lacking in youthful allure today. It behooves us to find alternatives and not to leave it all up to God. Therefore, The Book that I would ideally like to slip into my children's hands would of itself be slippery. It would slip them into a new domain, not of ideas alone, but of experience and feeling. It would be temporary medicine, not a diet; a point of departure, not a perpetual point of reference. They would read it and be done with it, for if it were well and clearly written they would not have to go back to it again and again looking for hidden messages or declarations of obscure doctrines.
The Book I would pass to my children would in no way begin to compete with the Bible. It would contain no sermons, no shoulds and oughts. Genuine love comes from knowledge, not from an imposed sense of duty or guilt.
Why then "The Book"?...Why not just sit back and let things take their course, trusting that in the end our young people will work things out for themselves? Simply, that is actually part of "things taking their course" of which I write. Like Alan Watts, as a human being it is my nature to enjoy and share philosophy and things of a spiritual nature. I do this in the same way that some birds are eagles and some are doves, some flowers lilies and some roses.
I realize, too, that the less I preach, the more likely I am to be heard.
My two daughters and five grandchildren, all of whom up to now I have spared "The Book," would tend to agree and understand exactly where I am coming from.
No comments:
Post a Comment