The Mind/Body Paradigm
It’s also a response to viewing you in purely materialistic terms. It rejects reducing you to matter and viewing you in mechanical terms. It affirms that you are more than a mechanical body with replaceable parts. You have a mind. You are a living human being.
Those who favor the dualistic mind/body paradigm tend to be religious. (They might prefer to say “spiritual.”) As such they often value mind over body.
They value the invisible over the visible, the immaterial over the material, metaphysical over the physical, and the supernatural over the natural. They value your soul.
Materialists reduce you to matter, particles, and natural forces. Mind/body dualists add the nonmaterial element of your mind. Sometimes they deify it to Mind.
Here’s the core problem materialists and dualists share: They both deny your spirit.
Materialists believe spirit is a religious belief. It’s supernatural and outside the scope of natural science.
Dualists agree that spirit is a religious belief. They draw on religion as a source. They work hard to rationalize it.
Many argue that your brain is not the generator of your consciousness but the receiver of a consciousness that comes from a higher source.
Some even push the mind/body dualism into mind-monism and mentalism. It’s all energy. It’s all Mind. It’s all God. You are Divine.
Whether dualists or monists, those who value mind over body conflate your spirit with mind/Mind and deny that your spirit exists in its own right.
My view, rooted in the natural phenomenon called thumos in the Ancient Greek, affirms your spirit. It affirms your experience of being alive and seeing that others are alive too. It also affirms your experience of seeing that living things die.
The difference between being alive or dead is spirit. Your spirit is what makes you alive. It is a natural force like magnetism and static electricity. Like them, it is an invisible natural force and known by experience.
Where did spirit come from? Where did magnetism and static electricity come from? We don’t know. Perhaps all natural forces are inherent to existence. Our lack of knowledge about natural forces doesn’t diminish their reality.
Whatever is alive has its own spirit. When its spirit goes out, when it expires, it dies. Its body decays, its psyche floats free, and its spirit dissipates in the wind.
We have so much to learn about human spirits as well as the spirits of all other living things.
It’s time to stop denying and start affirming again the reality of your spirit and the spirits of every living thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.