this question of moral and spiritual renewal requires
some understanding of what needs to be renewal.
In other words, what actions/behavior or beliefs do
we need to reform to accomplish some sort of
moral or spiritual renewal. What are we doing wrong
that needs to be reformed and nenewed?
That we must begin by understanding what we are doing.
As I have noted, we are a martial, warlike society whereas
our moral document of a government budget is directed to
defense and security. That we put so much emphasis on
military and defensive tells us what our priorities are.
that we spend our days working and promoting the religion
of materialism, the buying and selling of goods, gives us another
clue as to our priorities.
Remove those two aspects and what is left?
Actually, not much. So any understanding of what it means to
have a moral and spiritual renewal must come from these two
aspects of our life. The renewal must come from our staunch
and dedicated beliefs in making security and materialism
our guiding principles in life. This renewal comes about
because security denies/negates freedom for true security can only
come about with the denial of freedom. The aspect of materialism
denies that our happiness can come from anything but the buying and
selling of goods and money/profits.
The pursuit of happiness spoken by the enlightenment documents
like the Declaration of Independence,
…….“that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”
And we take the pursuit of happiness to be the materialism, the buying
and selling of goods/money/profits.
But this enlightenment document is wrong. The pursuit should not be
after happiness, because that path leads us to the wrong goal.
The pursuit should be of values that give our live meaning and
purpose. Values like justice, dignity, tolerance, love, charity,
honor, freedom………… those values, these are the values we should pursue,
not materialism or the futile pursuit of safety or security.
So the pursuit of values that give life meaning is the moral and
spiritual renewal that we need. But we do not act or operate
in isolation, by ourselves. We exist within a society/culture,
a system as it were and only by existing within a society/culture
that we need or have use of morals or the spiritual aspect of life.
It is within a society that we need to be moral or spiritual,
individually we have no such need. Morality/spirituality
are collective aspects of our life. they must be shared within
the family, the state, the culture and the society.
It is because homo sapiens are social creatures that
we need morals or the spiritual. So any renewal must
occur both individually and, AND collectively. We must
think about this moral and spiritual renewal in terms
of the individual and society. We collectively must
engage in a moral/spiritual renewal.
So what values are values that we should individually
and collectively have? The same values I would think,
and the reason for that is simple, if we as individuals
have one set of values and society has another set of values,
that means we are alienated from society… For that
is what alienation really means, that the individual has
one set of values and society has another set of values.
If I am set upon freedom as my primary value and
society is set upon security or materialism as its set/primary
value, then I am alienated from my society. Alienation
is a question of values and the difference in values between the
individual and society.
As I have laid out the quest to become who you are individually,
this approach also exists for a society. the society must begin
by knowing itself. Knowing what values are inherited, indoctrinated
within society itself. then the society just as an individual finds out
as they begin the journey to understanding which always begin
by beginning the process of knowing thyself. Then the society
begins to understanding what values are really the values
that a society should hold, overcoming the values that
have been inherited or indoctrinated within society.
And then, then the society after overcoming itself,
can become who it is when its values match the reality
of that society. We are alienated from our society because
individually, we hold different values then the society holds.
and we must match our values, individually and collectively.
To become who we are… our values individually must match
our collective values. And here is where the conflict within
society has been in the modern age. In the modern age,
what have we been striving for? to be better citizens and
engaging in materialism, the buying and selling of goods/money/profits.
We have also adapted the universal commandment about
disobedience. That is the greatest crime in modern society,
to be disobedient to society, to our overlords, the modern corporation.
Therein lies the modern conflict between individual values and the collective
values of the modern dictatorship of the modern corporation.
The modern corporation is about the negation/denial of humans and their
values and the individual values are about justice or love or charity.
Values which have no value in the modern conception of what values are,
in other words, the values of the corporation are nihilistic values
and the values of the individual are positive/ lifegiving values
and this conflict is what the modern society has been fighting about
for almost 200 years.
so we now see that our moral and spiritual renewal really is about
making our societal/ cultural/ collective values match our individual
values. So how do we match our individual value of justice with
the societies values of obedience and materialism.
That is the question of our moral and spiritual renewal.
How do we match individual values with the collective
corporation values of nihilism? Recall that disobedience is the greatest
crime in modern society even by asking such questions, we are disobeying
society and the corporations that run our modern society.
Even by asking if materialism/capitalism is the value we should live
by is basic disobedience to modern society because the values of
materialism/capitalism is considered to be so fundamental to
society existence as to be unquestioned and unchallenged.
To doubt that materialism/capitalism is the value that we should pursue is
to commit heresy… and heresy in modern society for it is forbidden to hold
any disobedience to the cult of materialism/capitalism. For disobedience
to materialism/capitalism is really a religious crime because we are
suppose to accept the materialistic/capitalistic on faith, without question.
Our modern belief in materialism/ capitalism is really religious faith based
upon taking the faith upon the authorities who have given their blessing to
the faith/religion of materialism/capitalism.
So the question of a moral/spiritual renewal must begin with the religious
question of our faith in materialism/capitalism.
Kropotkin