My beloved tensors

I often find myself wondering about a seemingly supposed “war” between secularisation (transfer of property from ecclesiastical to civil possession) and religion (to resolve to end one’s immoral behavior) when I explore for example hate mail sent to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti monster. and rational and intuitive mind embracing a single reality.

In my book there is no war? I see things that others do not see, and hey, others see things I do not see! My grandmother understood, and taught me the Nordic realms and more. Definitely spiritual perspectives, and with a big dose of humor. The ancient Nordics would have rolled off their horses laughing in Greece, finding Gods externalised on a mountain and worshipped like they were. Children’s stories played out, with lots of loooong journeys by heroes, and taken very seriously by adults.

Hmmmm. Herodotus, now that’s *my* kind of hero!

As I went to school, and then onward to university, my growing authority of logical and scientific ideas about nature, cosmology and the realms, health, education, music and art did not replace or collide with my spiritual authority on those issues.

And now, many years into business life, substantial questioning, using empirically confirmed scientific knowledge, and the pursuit of effectiveness, can easily be accommodated in, and is not limited by, my druidic world view.

Still no war. Not even when trying on, by experiential (action based, participatory) learning, some of the spiritualities my grandmother told me about, and then some. Yet one of the spiritual teachers on that journey said all wars start in spirit. Ugh! Ummmmm.

Sorry. No war. On the contrary. As druidry does for me, science supports what can best be named “a sense of ultimate reality” for me, gives me even more faith in the order of nature and confidence for scenario planning and systems thinking.

Looking for differences, the best I can come up with is that scientific perspectives feel more “relativistic”, like art, and spiritual perspectives more like “quantum fields”, like music. Those two are not easy to combine, but it’s not impossible.

For finding minimum effort/maximum impact interventions for systems, and systems thinking in general, I find the “cause and effect” concept very useful in and for a variety of contexts and purposes. But I do not see science as The Solution To All Problems WorldWide. And if science or systems thinking helps promote perverse and dangerous goals like atom bombs and genetic manipulation, or if it supports destructive or less humane behavior like genocide or wishing to irradicate other perspectives and belief systems, it must be regulated. And we cannot expect science to regulate itself. The value of science and systems thinking relies on the purpose for which it is applied. Beta is not alpha.

Having said that, the pursuit of logical thinking for its own sake can actually create the contexts where spiritual perspectives are helpful and the process of “getting somewhere together” has been enjoyable and not boring, like journeying in myths, legends, verses, poetry, and stories from all over the world. Where is that darn “war” then?

My druidic spiritual perspectives can hardly be called universal or substantial. Maybe that’s why I don’t have a war between the two sets of perspectives. My much beloved tensors. I “think” my druidic perspectives are more like contextual and choreographical ethics which takes into account data, experiences and as many multiple points of view from stakeholders as I can juggle.

Yes, I know. She’s a fool on a Ship of Fools.