Religion and the Technological Future by Calvin Mercer & Tracy J. Trothen

Author:Calvin Mercer & Tracy J. Trothen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030623593
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

The Quick Fix or Effort and Discipline?

Perhaps it is impossible to be truly happy, content, and at peace without the hard inner work of processing experiences, building relationships, addressing our wrongs, and in a healthy way confronting those who have wronged us. Spiritual enhancement through biohacking is not likely to be sufficient in itself, but perhaps the religions will find that it can play a role in the spiritual path.

Taking a pill and logging onto a computer to have a spiritual experience takes effort, but certainly not the kind and amount of effort typically required for that experience. About once a year, Professor Mercer devotes the time and effort required for a weeklong spiritual retreat, often at a Roman Catholic Trappist or a Hindu monastery. Making this happen entails enormous scheduling considerations, packing, hours of driving, financial costs, time and effort in prayer and meditation, and a good bit of talking to people.

With all the current and looming technologies for enhancing both affect and spirituality, the role of effort and discipline becomes a central issue. Conceivably, effort and discipline are essential ingredients in the formation of a spiritual life and a happy life. However, if so, it is not at all clear how much effort and how much discipline are required. The same question can be raised about knowledge required to make spiritual experiences meaningful. The concern is that these technologies are a quick fix that cheats the spiritual seeker from authentic growth and the person who seeks emotional well-being from a greater wholeness.

It would certainly be much quicker and easier to swallow a pill, if that could provide the same emotional and spiritual benefits. On the one hand, it could be that the end-result experience is what matters most or, on the other hand, it could be that the process of getting to that experience is the essential component. Professor Trothen deliberately spends time in nature as part of her spiritual discipline. She finds that the process of being present in nature and being still in the moment is not only calming but helps to increase her attentiveness to ecojustice and the grave importance of figuring out how to make sacrifices, develop policies, and save our planet. It may be that radically enhanced spiritual experiences may help us to deepen our awareness of the interconnection of life more quickly and spur us to address climate change more radically.

At one level, the question of effort is an empirical one—is the nature and extent of spiritual experience or mood produced by biohacking the same as, or of the same value as, that produced by traditional methods of spiritual practice or the hard work of developing emotional health? Measurements for emotional well-being are more advanced than are measurements for spirituality. We have tools for measuring spiritual distress and some for making spiritual assessments. Theoretically, we will also eventually be able to measure spiritual or mystical experiences, but we are certainly a long way from doing that reliably.

Some spiritual assessment scales have been developed that have been assessed as reliable and valid tools, in social scientific terms.

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