Pure Brutality

[Belacqua]

Yeah, not a great term. I see how it's misleading.

Given the way I've been defining "spirit" here, I just mean someone who is actively working on improving. 

Our habits determine how we perceive, interpret, judge, value, desire, and act upon the world. If someone comes to think that they could be doing these things a lot better, it may require hard work to change. Some people, unfortunately, try some oddball schemes. But you can't really blame someone for trying different things if they're having trouble breaking out of the bad habits that our society encourages in us.

Improving what? Accepting things you shouldn't accept....? Is that what you mean?

I very much appreciate your asking me to clarify, rather than just assuming I meant something bad. I enjoy the conversation.

Coming to understand what we ought to be doing is a part of what I'm talking about. So no longer accepting certain things would be a part of that, for sure. No longer accepting the values of an unhealthy society, no longer accepting the moral judgments of bad people.  

We are trained from birth to see the world in a certain way, and to value certain things. At some point we may begin to understand that much of what we've been taught is in fact NOT the way we ought to be living. But it's not as simple as breaking a bad habit or making a New Year's resolution. It may require a change at a deeper level of thinking. 

Aristotle thought that there is a certain way people ought to live in order to flourish best. And he thought that this best way was knowable and demonstrable. The Christians adopted his system, though instead of simply being a practical path to flourishing they reframed it as God's will. But here "what God wants" is not some set of arbitrary commandments but simply what is best for ourselves. Dante makes it clear that if we choose to live badly, in a self-harming way, it's because we have made a mistake. We think we have chosen what is best for us, but we're just in error. You can call these bad choices sin or obsessions or fetishes or whatever word you want, but it amounts to the same thing. 

So in the bad old days when everybody was Christian, spiritual change was about re-aligning your mind to the will of God. Which is actually what's best for you anyway. Currently, post-Christianity, a spiritual change would be a similar kind of major reworking, but you wouldn't have to talk about what God wants. You can just say you have to live in the way that's really best for yourself, and discontinue the bad choices that you'd been trained in earlier. 

I think that traditionally spiritual change has tended to aim for less self-centeredness, and learning to value things of actual value, rather than what advertising tells us we should want. So, in terms of "accepting things," yes, it would mean that we would no longer accept the widespread values of Neoliberal capitalist culture. Whether we call this "doing what God would want" or "seeing what's really important," it amounts to the same changes, practically speaking.