A number of people have written me, and said that they appreciate that there is a blog with a spiritual take on technology. I initially intended to do a lot more about that, but got kinda caught up in the geeky stuff. (I can’t help it.) But I do want to spend more time thinking about this issue.
One of the things that I have tried to do with this blog, and will continue to, is to get underneath the surface issues. Like getting underneath the surface issues of the recent CRM vendor mergers, or getting underneath issues relating to open source software. And, like the tradition that the name of this blog comes from, I want to look at technology without attachment or aversion – with an openness to different ways of thinking about, or doing technology in the nonprofit sector. I don’t think I live up to that quite as well as I’d like, given my preference for open source solutions. (Which reminds me of what was said by the 3rd Zen Patriarch – “The Great Way is not difficult for those with no preferences”)
But it is all pretty unformed – how do I bring my deep commitment to spirituality (and, in fact, a commitment that is at the core of my life) to this work? How do I talk about these issues in a way that people from all perspectives and traditions can appreciate, from completely athiestic, to deeply religious? How do I help people to dig deeper into the core of issues when we usually spend a lot of time on the surface? These are the questions on my mind, and as I think more, and learn more, I’ll write more here. Feel free to comment on things you’d like to see me explore, or the kinds of things you’ve explored yourself.
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I enjoyed reading Louis Menand’s “The Metaphysical Club” a story about the rise of Pragmatism as a philosophical idea. But in his epilogue, Menand cites Martin Luther King, Jr. as “distinctly non-pragmatic” and rather emblematic of Pragmatism growing out-of-favor after WWII. In Menand’s view King’s philosophy was all about principles.
Menand thinks that the social values as in Pragmatism: contingent, relative, fallible constructions, were not compatible with King’s moral imperatives.
Okay, raising that seems really beside the subject of spirituality and technology you raise. But the thing is I don’t agree with Menand’s conclusions about Martin Luther King because of the way I imagine spirituality.
It’s quite likely I’m wrong about Pragmatism, King, and spirituality. But as an unchurched guy the confluence between my thinking about spirituality and the views of spirituality of the religious people I know seems connected to Creation Spirituality, where prayer is “responding to (with) God, by thought and by deeds.”
Spirituality is in creation.
Dr. King called on us to create. I can make no sense of the radical love Dr. King talked about, imagining love as a principle. Rather love as “relative, contingent, fallible constructions” of real-live breathing people seems to resonate with his ideas. He called on us to create something good.
The architect Christopher Alexander implores us to take seriously the “quality which has no name” the quality present when things are alive. And it seems very much like the radical love Dr. King spoke about and lived. Dr. King spoke across boundaries pointing not to principle but the real quality we must take seriously; and that is a quality in relationships between and intertwined, but as Alexander points out that cannot be named as it is not a thing but a quality in relationships.
Sorry to babble on so. But I don’t see this blog spending so much time on the surface of things. You explore relationships our interactions with technology. Being towards the “completely atheistic” on your continuum of readers, the discussion of relationships comes pretty close to my idea of spirituality.
Dear Michelle:
Thanks for raising these questions. You’ve inspired to reflect on them and write my own blog article!
Warm regards from Deborah
Deborah Elizabeth Finn
Boston, Massachusetts, USA
deborah_elizabeth_finn@post.harvard.edu
http://www.cyber-yenta.org
“What is good…but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your god?” (Micah 6:8)
This reminds me of my fried Jacob Ner-David. He is a venture capitalist, living in Jerusalem, who has a blog that addresses some of these issues. You can see it at
http://vcinjerusalem.typepad.com/vcinjerusalem/
Thanks for writing!
Interesting idea here – informing technology with spirituality.
I think that until politics and business generally are more informed in this area, we’re pretty much in danger of becoming an extinct species in much shorter order than the dinosaurs did!