Reconciling Science & Spirit: The Imperative of Cultivating Cultural Wisdom

Since the beginning of the modern era, the scientific exploration of the world has dissociated from the quest for self-knowledge. We now understand the workings of the body and the cosmos with greater depth and complexity than ever before, but our understanding of what makes life meaningful and profound remains as mysterious as ever.  Our surfeit of scientific knowledge has become divorced from wisdom about what makes life intrinsically valuable. In other words, one could read an entire psychology textbook and know everything about perception, emotion and psychopathology but have no clue how to sympathize with a suffering individual. One entails objective knowledge, a static collection of facts. The other requires a complex interplay of emotional and social awareness that adapts to life’s uncertainties—simply put: one is knowledge, the other is wisdom. We can find examples of this split everywhere, and I believe that this autistic divide between IQ and EQ, between sense and soul, between science and philosophy, or between truth and meaning is arguably the greatest crisis of our time.

What the world lacks is not more data, but more meaning. Science can only provide facts about the quantitative universe, but not everything in life can be measured. In fact, most meaning and purpose comes from relationships with others and inner awareness, both things that are invisible to the gaze of science. MLK Jr. said if we are to go forward, we must also go back and rediscover the precious values and moral foundations that give life deeper meaning and purpose. These values have always existed and will always exist. But I feel they have been displaced by our myopic endorsement of the material world over the intangible little things that make life special. Reconciliation between what is (science) and what should be (philosophy) and could be (imagination) is absolutely necessary if we wish to create a future that aspires to the highest of human potential.

I know this may all sound like a hippie reiteration of “Why can’t we all just get along? Love triumphs all!” Although admittedly I’m idealistic, I’m not calling for political revolution or a fairy-tale utopian society. What the world needs is a transformation in consciousness: a change in the way we live and engage with the world. There’s a growing sentiment that the continuation of life as is, that is to say scientific progress without equal development of consciousness, is a perilous path for humanity. As the philosopher and visionary Ken Wilber says, “The predicament of modernity is that for the first time in history we have both the knowledge and awareness to overcome our ignorance, precisely at the same time we have the means to make this ignorance absolutely genocidal on a global scale.”

We see that if we continue mining, drilling, and polluting our Earth, we will face serious ecological consequences. We see that if the developing world continues to use resources at the same rate as the developed world, it is simply untenable. A recent study by SAMHSA (The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) revealed that approximately one-in-five American adults suffer from some form of mental illness. Moreover, according to a recent Gallup poll, Americans are more pessimistic than ever about what the future holds for today's youth.  Less than half of adults believe that the current generation will have better lives than their parents, the lowest number on record since 1983. And the list of social ills goes on and on. Although I do not claim that mental disease is a product of the dissociation of science and spirituality, I feel strongly that widespread social malaise and loss of meaning among today’s youth is largely a product of this rupture in the internal organs of today’s global culture.

I don't want to sound like a radical railing against American culture and the progress of science. The modern era has spearheaded material development with spectacularly tangible results—in many parts of the world lifespans have doubled, calories are in surplus, housing and transportation are ubiquitous, communication technologies are cheap and readily available, and so on and so forth. None of this would have been possible without the amazing scientific discoveries and technological advances of the last hundred years. I don’t think we need to simply replace a goal of outer progress with a goal of inner progress; we need to integrate the two in a way that’s acceptable to everyone.  Actually, when people see the complete truth, they will realize that inner progress is outer progress. They are inseparable.

For a truly integral solution to this divorce of truth and meaning, we need an internal science to complement the external science. We need a science that develops the capacities of the mind and the virtues of the heart in the same way we have developed a better life through chemistry. This is where I believe Buddhism and other spiritual practices have a lot to contribute. They are sciences of inner-life in which the apparatus is contemplation, the inquiry is the nature of the mind and the aim is greater self-knowledge. Although not testable by scientific standards, their ability to help people attain greater awareness has been repeatedly proven for thousands of years. Thus, I believe a judicious integration of sciences of the mind and sciences of nature has the restore balance to our incomplete worldview.  By integrating the two, we can humanize our technoscience culture into something that is both physically comfortable and spiritually meaningful.

In addition to bringing the scientific disciplines and spiritual traditions onto mutual ground, I am passionate about changing the way people are educated. Having taught and studied in classrooms around the world, I have seen how schools emphasize cognitive skills while ignoring deeper personal development. We have naively assumed that filling people’s minds with better information will inevitably create better people. This is not only mistaken, but it is dangerous.

The unspoken credo of our formal education system is that learning can occur without self-reflection. We think that information can be absorbed without anything of importance changing in the learner’s mind. Syllabi delineate what is required for the test and letter grades measure the outcome of a class. Whether the class impacted you on a personal level and encouraged you think and act in a new and improved way is of little relevance to most educators. Even schools that use Bloom’s taxonomy to guide lesson plans can rarely ascribe to true higher-level thinking. I can attest that most classroom interactions remain firmly in the surface realm of ‘remembering’ and ‘understanding,’ while inner reflection and open-ended evaluation of potential outcomes remains an infrequent afterthought. 

Although educational reformists are quick to point fingers at teachers or schools for the lack of critical thinking, we must concede that the use of scripted, lock-step curricula undermines the judgment of teachers and ensures mediocrity. Moreover, our shallow and egocentric popular culture has also devalued deep learning and wisdom. We idolize celebrities not for their trenchant insight or intelligence, but for their ability to entertain and amuse us. Just look at the Jersey Shore (enough said). The superficiality of the media begets superficial social interactions. Conversations center on spectacles of opulence and fame rather than substantive discussions of peace and virtue. To create lasting change in the way people engage the world, we need a mainstream culture that nudges people towards evolving into better human beings rather than distracting themselves with trivialities. 

                At this point you make think this is stupid, foolhardy or even elitist. Maybe Jeff has just completely lost touch with reality? He thinks he’s living on a pedestal high up on Mount Olympus. Undoubtedly, a call for a new global consciousness is a daunting undertaking. Some might even say it is impossible. However, I strongly feel that we cannot truly understand the universe without understanding ourselves. This understanding will not come overnight, nor will it come individually. We need both a transformation in individual consciousness and behavior as well as a shift in the social institutions and worldviews that support our ways of living. We need leaders with strong personal integrity and a worldcentric mindset. We need systems and institutions that empower people to act virtuously instead of appealing to the lowest common denominator and incentivizing mediocrity.

We need a culture that embraces discomfort and allows people to fail—trial and error, attempting, failing, and learning from those mistakes. This is a crucial part evolution. Unfortunately, our developed world has become so predictable, so comfortable, that many people are never challenged in such a way that builds character and deepens awareness. If necessity is the mother of all invention, then discomfort is the mother of all personal transformation. But what are we to do in a society that goes to every possible extent to minimize even the minutest suffering from our daily lives? If the pain of not changing is never greater than the pain of change itself, then why bother? It was the Dalai Lama who said the problem is that the majority have lost, or ignore, the deeper human values—compassion, a sense of responsibility. That is our big concern. So my question is how can we reinstill this sense of compassion and responsibility into the system we have today? Where do we even begin reconciling and integrating the fracture of between the inner spiritual life and the outer scientific life? I have some ideas, but I’d like to hear yours.