USSR and Materialism
My father told me after a trip to the USSR that on Saturday, while he was visiting Moscow, all the roads were completely deserted – no cars, no traffic. I was a political science major and in a discussion with my Political Science Professor, whose name was Hoover (the FBI synchronicity in my life really seems never to end), he was writing a book about how he felt communism would fail because communism eliminated competition which is a pivotal factor in human psychology (from what I understand he was right in a way because everybody I talk to say Russians do seem to have a “bureaucratic state of mind). Being something of a smart-ass, I pointed out that competition could still exist in that people would compete for “positions” in the communist government-establishment. Hoover concede my point but then went on to say that communism still did not have a market economy, which, historically, for better or worse, has worked. Hoover was right. The communism-economic system did not work.
My father, who was well connected, told me that several economists told him that the ‘Russians’ simply did not understand in any way economics or banking. Though political repression and curtailment of freedoms played a role, the major reason for the collapse was that the USSR was economically bankrupt. As I recall a major impetus that got it started were the young ‘professionals’ who couldn’t get a decent job. The bottom line is that the communist system collapsed because it didn’t work.
I would argue that would be a good analogy for materialist psychology. Strict materialist psychology excludes spirituality completely as well as all meaning, and generally emphasizes - to a fault - quantification which marginalizes almost all intuitive and integrative concepts so vital and necessary for people to make sense of life and the world – especially in today’s fast-paced, digitalized, high pressure, and at times even an ‘overwhelming’ reality. Spiritual beliefs and religious beliefs have been around for tens of thousands of years, and – for better or worse, spiritual beliefs and religious beliefs have worked, and human society has generally grown and prospered. If you look at spirituality, historically spirituality has been very productive and creative. Religious beliefs have, historically, produced very beneficial and creative social norms like compassion, justice, and righteousness. Furthermore, if you look at individuals like William James, Viktor Frankl, and Carl Jung, who were all very creative and productive individuals and icons in psychology, all who had transcendental spiritual experiences, that would seem a significant point that spirituality can be very productive. As I have argued elsewhere, it is clear there is a definite and distinct “materialist bias in mainstream psychology.” I should also emphasize, as one might deduce from the name, materialism has a bias for biological and physiological aspects of human behavior. The fact of it is that, the psychological “norm” for spirituality is that it is “superstitious nonsense.”
In talking about spirituality on FB, I frequently run across people who argue that spirituality is bad because of how some religions and religious people act. That is an excellent point how any Christian can support a racist leader like Trump whose hate speech, in light of the fact that for better or worse Trump is a “role model” (who have been proved to influence others), there has been a very significant rise and increase of hate crime, attacks on Jews, and a surge of right wing terrorist attacks. As a Baptist woman said, very appropriately, “Religion is of Man! Spirit is of God!” Furthermore, from my research into psychology and neuroscience it is clear that the brain regions involved in spiritual processes and the brain regions involved in ideological issues would be completely and totally separate. The bottom line is that spiritual processes are separate functions from other group-related functions.
Lastly, I would point out that as one analyst of religious beliefs said, you can’t understand the recent decline in religious affiliation of the younger generation without understanding the simultaneous rise of Conservatives with the church. As, I have pointed out elsewhere ideologies are extremely powerful forces in human behavior. In a nutshell, people have fought and died for their nationalist, patriotic, religious or ethnic ideologies since the dawn of civilization. Furthermore, as [psychologist in the ‘Unconscious’ school of thought in psychology like Bargh, Kilstrom, as well as Jung and Durkheim have shown is that much of motivation is emotional and unconscious as well as perception.
My argument is that as churches started losing people and ‘vitality’ “Christians” perceived science and psychology as a threat. Frist, the evidence would be that Christianity fought science tooth and nail for centuries (and ironically, as an Episcopalian and Anglican priest agree, failed to question the ‘science’ o psychology for some truly bizarre feature). Second, as the religious scholars Karen Armstrong and Tim Callahan point out “literalism” has never appeared until now. It would seem self-evident that literalism is the ultimate psychological defense against the “superstitious stigma” attack by psychology. The “Christian” (if there I such a thing since I’ve never met two alike) retreats into the fortress of the Bible where the “Truth” is truth completely and totally because the Bible “assumed” to be the “Truth” because it is, by definition, the Truth. This would likely produce an estrangement and alienation from the ‘real world’ I would think. Personally, I don’t believe one can fit “God” into a single solitary book. Truth (and God) appears to be, in my view, incredibly complex and pretty much beyond human comprehension as both St. Gregory of Nyssa, and Einstein emphasize. Also, back around 1900 the generally accepted belief about abortion then was that it was ‘acceptable.’
Now, the conservatives have seized on abortion as a “crusade” and a means to consolidate support for Christianity, by that means (the actual crusades also succeeded in unifying Christians as well). However, I would add that abortion is not totally a black and white issue, as it is made out to be. Genesis 2:7 states unequivocally that ‘God Breathed life into man.” So, the question is, “Could a Christian woman rightfully, religiously and spiritually” choose to have an abortion?” I thought the issue over for some time, and came to the conclusion that a Christian woman could choose to have an abortion religiously and spiritually. Furthermore, I see the right-wing Christians engaging in ISIS mentality in imposing by force their will and interpretation on other people and women. My perception is that when religious people and churches start thinking in terms of “absolutes” is when they stray from the path of “Worshiping in spirit and Truth” (John 4:23-24) because “absolutes” - which most people really can’t comprehend to begin with - depart from human “Truth” and so ‘distort’ the real Truth. In the end, in a worldly context, the abortion issue will not gain them anything and will very likely make quite a large number of women angry.
The bottom line is that even a precursory view of strict materialism shows that it is, without question, "spiritually" bankrupt - both by definition and by viewing the curriculum of psychology courses offered at universities, generally with no meaning, no spirituality, and, in my view, no truth, especially in light of the fact that as Einstein, William James, and Carl Jung all emphasize: a great deal of human consciousness is, in all truth and reality, beyond the ordinary scope of science and materialist "quantification."