I keep hearing from people in my life that spirituality is an essential part of living a meaningful existence. I hear the phrase "let go and let God" and "everything happens for a reason" used a lot as advice and comfort. However, I'm an atheist and a materialist. I don't know how I could even be spiritual with those beliefs. At the same time, my life is not fulfilling despite the fact that I am not struggling financially. Moreover, I feel paralyzed when I try to get off my privileged ass and do even the bare minimum for socialist organizing because I realize that it goes directly against my labor aristocratic class interests. I feel like knowing that sticking my neck out and contributing to the real movement to change the present state of things is the morally correct thing to do isn't enough to drive me.

In short, what is spirituality? Is it compatible with materialism? If so, how? And if spirituality is the wrong tree to bark up, how can I drive myself to do what is to be done?

  • RiotDoll [she/her, she/her]
    ·
    3 months ago

    This video might be a jumping off point (the entire channel is good, and some of his other videos touch on this). It's a primer on atheism and how it's a funky label, and defines some atheistic spiritual practices therein, and why they are still academically atheistic.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfcwTiOGnig

    I personally have found meditation, mindfulness, and a lot of activities that induce altered states used in mystic practices to be immensely rewarding to cultivate, and I feel like being atheistic and materialist is likely to prime you to shut off those avenues, but they cultivate control over your interior experience like nothing else, and a materialist should be able to slot that into their ontology just fine.