Yes, that is precisely the problem and the toys that need to be put away. First of all let me agree with you. Spiritual health is essential to getting our shit together. As with the very nature of this universe, that is a process of evolution. The challenge is getting to a baseline understanding of the universe that gives us the personal and social spiritual balance we are missing. This is of particular interest to me but we have more immediate and fundamental changes happening that are not so loaded with childish fears and triggers. This is not to put our spiritual health at a lower priority than social organization, technological goals or ethical/moral standards. We have to deal with all of these, ultimately, as unified.
The practical problem is that if I start writing on that I can’t do anything else. But I will, for what that is worth. This is a discussion that cannot be allowed, any longer, to be held as if it were religion. It’s far too important. One of our greatest successes in the modern world, unfortunately, set us up for a potentially even larger failure. The European based rise of science in the 17th century bypassed the entire spiritual question by simply refusing to deal with it. They put religion away. It worked and religion has been steadily dying ever sense in any culture that becomes fully scientific. The hope was that this would take care of itself and it undoubtedly will. If there is time.
Unfortunately we have been hoist on our own petard. Our scientific and technological successes allowed us to seriously change our climate. In order to fix that we must function at a planetary level. We also need to understand our potential as a species and figure out how to integrate the power of our diversity into our spiritual philosophies. We have been making real progress for the last century or so (check meditative forms, mindfulness, etc.) but the decision to allow the old religions to control the “spiritual world” needs to be addressed now. We do not have time to allow this to happen by slow default although it would happen within the next 25–50 years. We are already seeing climate disasters exacerbating political instability driven by dependency on petrochemical power sources pushing hundreds of thousands of refugees into paradigmatically unstable states, etc., etc. It’s well known that the old climate change timing was incredibly conservative to try to get buy in. The reality is much faster and it is only going to get worse. We are very shaky now, the US has already failed as a leader, so think how hard this will be in five or ten years.
The bizarre religious role, as a justification for racist, etc., that politics has come to play in the this country is an aberration and a major part of the collapse now happening. The real problem is rest of the planet with old religions causing ever greater suffering and confusion as the educated struggle to define their culture as valuable without the religious malignancy.
And that is the petard we are now hoist upon. Hence my simple lament that we need to put away childish things the hard way now. We don't have time.
