Inverted Spirituality - The Duality of the 1960's
Introduction
What is inverted spirituality and how is it different from ‘regular’ spirituality? Spirituality is a concept that can be hard to define and often means different things to different people. It’s a philosophical and theological word with old roots but has developed to mean different things over time. The root of the word is the Latin word “Spiritus” meaning a few things including; soul, vigour, ghost and breath. In the Latin translation of the old Greek Bible (the Vulgate), the word spiritus is used to translate the Greek word pneuma. The term was first popularised by the early Christian church which used the word spirituality to refer to a life oriented towards the Holy Spirit. In more modern times the term is used much broadly and applies to more religious traditions than the Christian one.
Today the word is often associated with a context outside of organised religion and is not only limited to religious belief. It’s also used to describe a belief in the supernatural, a life philosophy, or various religious experiences and generally refers to the belief in the concept of spirit. Spirit being the inner animating force of every living being. Spirituality means “concerning the spirit”. Because of this linguistic ambiguity, there is no single, widely agreed-upon definition of spirituality. As stated, today we often associate it with a belief in things outside of religious institutions but the term can be used in those contexts as well. Because of this, it’s perhaps most commonly associated with New Age beliefs and practices. However, it’s often used in contexts outside of the religious and the term extends to politics, culture, philosophy and much more.
Generally, spirituality is viewed positively albeit a bit airheaded and lofty, and it’s viewed generally as the individual’s search for ultimate meaning and purpose in life. It’s a way to engage deeper with one’s inner dimensions and to engage with reality more sacred and profound than the everyday. It’s a way to make sense of the world and to strengthen one’s connection with the force which birthed the universe. Today in theological terms spirituality is associated with unitarian universalism and similar ideas - that profess all religions pointing towards the same truth. It’s therefore generally considered good for anyone, regardless of the belief that they engage with this aspect of life. Understanding this positive relation to spirituality is going to be key to understanding what inverted spirituality means.
The Dutch theology professor Dr Kees Waaijman said that spirituality is the process of transformation that “aims to recover the original shape of man; that is the image of God”. This re-formation according to Waaijman is accomplished by following a “mould” which represents the original shape e.g. Christ in Christianity, the Torah in Judaism and the Buddha in Buddhism. Inverted spirituality is the antithesis and distortion of this image. Instead of being an ideal for humanity and a perfected human being, it is the complete opposite. It’s a human depraved of their animating life force, a human completely devoid of morality and higher purpose.
If spirituality is the search for a sacred, higher meaning then inverted spirituality is the opposite: it is the depraved and destructive force which has tried to snuff out life since its conception. It’s selfishness and a complete absence of love, it’s deceptive and a forked-tongued serpent, consuming itself endlessly.
This blog post seeks to explore this important time in human history through this understanding of spirituality, its positives and its negatives. This at times paradoxical and strained relationship between good and bad, liberty and authority and what we can learn from it.
Times of Change & Soul-Searching
Our association with the 1960s, especially looking at America, is a time of personal liberation, self-experimentation and the pursuit of liberty. It’s a time characterised by philosophical and personal freedom, marked by youthful liberal politics fighting against the hegemony of the old world. Despite the flower power, the anti-war and the social movements, there is a darker side to the 60’s, one we often overlook. In this time of soul-searching, there was a profound interest in the spiritual and religious, fueled by mind-expanding drugs and an interest in the inner workings of man more than ever did young people set out to find God.
While we often associate the spirituality of the 60s with being Eastern-oriented and new-age, there was also a never-before-seen revitalization of organised religious institutions and many churches saw records in baptism and attendance. It was also a tumultuous time, and many churches including the Roman Catholic saw big changes happen, the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican was the 21st and most recent ecumenical council for the Catholic Church and saw a great deal of change and controversy amongst traditionalist, not least of all the fact that mass could now be held in other languages than Latin. The liberalism of this era extended beyond politics to every aspect of life including theology and faith. British author and layman theologian G.K Chesterton wrote in 1908
“The modern young man will never change his environment; for he will always change his mind.”
There was a growing interest in Eastern religions and philosophy, and there were several attempts made to form communes of people. The goals of these communes varied from supporting free love to religious puritanism, and while these communes and ideologies varied in their experience they all had one thing in common: providing a spirituality for people. There was not only a social and religious crisis in this era but also a deeply personal and individual one and this led people to seek out things like spirituality. One thing we often forget when we want to undo the contemporary culture is the movement which led it to be where it is.
“Tradition is a set of solutions for which we have forgotten the problems. Throw away the solution and you get the problem back. Sometimes the problem has mutated or disappeared. Often it is still there as strong as it ever was.” - Donald Kingsbury
That of course isn’t to say every tradition is good or morally right, there were a lot of things uprooted during the 60s that have been beneficial in moving towards a better and fairer life for a lot of people. But when it comes to the soul-searching and spiritual life of people the 60s saw a rampant increase in cults, charismatic religious leaders and dangerous approaches to the sacred. The 1960s stand as a tall landmark for progress, but this part of history also casts a long and sinister shadow, and some of the bright flowers that were blooming then were watered with blood.
Flower Fields Watered with Blood
This uncertainty and uprooting of the old did leave a lot of people searching and a lot of them would turn to conmen and bad actors. In this vulnerable state of trying to make sense of themselves, their place in the world and perhaps in hopes of changing the world a lot of people turned towards radical and even dangerous ideas and beliefs. This time of pivotal societal change is blemished by the rise of cults, murder, censorship, drug abuse and sexual abuse. The swinging '60s was a time of political corruption, bloody conflicts and tension between two forces.
This uncertainty and youthful rebellion led to a lot of people seeking answers to these big problems, as it seemed the more the people pushed towards peace and love there was an equal force pulling towards the opposite way. Protests like the Civil Rights Movement experienced violent backlash and police brutality. The threat of nuclear war was looming over the heads of everybody, and politicians and activists alike were brutally assassinated in broad daylight. John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr, Robert F. Kennedy and Malcolm X were all shot and murdered.
The folk music revival and counterculture saw a cultural revolution happening across the world, and while the ideals were good and based on unity and sought to mend the damage that oppressive authority had caused to the human spirit, there was darkness moving amidst the crowds. Woodstock was one of the world’s largest and most renowned music festivals, and while the legends of it are numerous its tragedies are often overlooked. There were several cases of sexual abuse, harassment and violence and the whole thing was a logistic nightmare. Hosted in 1969 this festival marked the end of the 60s and stands as one of the most recognisable events of the time. It’s become synonymous with the counterculture and the ideas and spirituality of the time. The festival was billed as “an Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music”, Aquarian referring to the concept of “the age of Aquarius” an astrological and new age belief. The festival was plagued by criminal gangs and fights, and this soft activism had a dark spot of evil.
The 1960s also saw the rise of cults like the Manson Family, the expansion of the People’s Temple and many more smaller fringe groups. The Manson Family is perhaps the most notorious, especially for the so-called Tate-LaBianca murders, where members of the Manson Family brutally killed 5 people including pregnant actress Sharon Tate. The members of the Manson Family mostly constituted of young, middle-class women who eventually became radicalised by Charles Manson and came to view him as a manifestation of Jesus Christ. A claim which hasn’t been uncommon throughout history but saw an increase in the 20th century. It’s estimated that the Manson Family killed up to 24 different people. Charles Manson was far from the only person to use religious lingo and spiritual terminology to further his own agenda and works.
There was, and still is a deliberate inversion of spirituality; it serves selfishness and egotism and it uses a language of metaphysics to deceive and manipulate people. This perversion of morality only seeks to further drive people away from the good, as when we see people do horrible things in the name of what is good we become dissident and driven further from it. The inversion of spirituality leads people towards moral relativity and ultimately nihilism, and we lose all the positives that spirituality and religion can provide, I think ultimately it leads the cycle back to where it was. When we reject spirituality we become materialistic, and as we saw in the '60s this leads people to feel unfulfilled and seek out something more than the material world. The danger of this is that we invert our relationship with something so innate to us as humans, and we make it ugly and dangerous.
Inverted spirituality is a perversion of values and ethics, and it makes the moral immoral and vice versa. It leads towards self-destruction through a false pursuit of liberty and it promises individuation through the elimination of others. At its centre is a narcissistic solipsism which cares not for others and sees humans as objects and resources to be abused and used to the ego’s liking. It makes shallow the profound and it curses the conscientious by hedonistic self-indulgence.
Deepening a relationship with your innermost being I believe is a source of beauty, compassion and love, I think that’s what hides in the core of just about every person. When we are guided by egotism instead we make idols out of the sacrilegous and we commit grave sins not only towards ourselves but to our fellow humans. Standing on the outside we might ask ourselves what would lead someone to follow these con artists and why would people who seek a relationship with something higher than themselves sink to such dark depths?
Mass Media and Material Philosophy
There are many reasons why a person may have joined a cult in the ‘60s or engaged in risky behaviour, and why so many were initiated into inverted spirituality, but the two main ones are mass media and material philosophy.
Technological advancements at the time made it much easier to learn about unusual perspectives on life. People were exposed to new ideas much more frequently and self-publishing became easier than ever. New religious movements were able to make and distribute their own culture. This included books, music, imagery and more. Advertising your ideas became easier than ever and there was a huge audience of young people who were looking for something new and something different from their parents. Youth rebellion has always been like this and perhaps always will be, in the individual's desire and need to separate from their parents they seek out extremes or novelty, and this was now easier than ever with the publication of fringe music, poetry and much more.
Journalism was forever changed and magazines and television made the new movements an exotic cultural and visual experience for the public in the 1960s. Initially, journalists played up the new antics and the exotic nature of these movements but soon began to incorporate the rising criticism. Instead of only showing the youth’s side of it now concerned parents were also broadcasted, and this of course made more young interested as a way to rebel, but also caused more conversations around the topic. As some state: there is no such thing as bad publicity. The movements, especially the new religious enjoyed their free advertisement and any second spent talking about them was good for their PR. Even if it was an outrage. This of course wasn’t only the case in the USA, but in Europe and the East, people were generally more against the new religious movements.
Asia was largely communist thanks to China and so was Eastern Europe, communism being completely anti-religion had left a lot of young people rebelling against that as well. Religion would bloom in places where it was fought against, but in Western Europe, the Roman church was still strong, and its new progressive approach would upset some of the more traditional members it would also gain a new popularity. The religious and spiritual movements offered an answer to the material philosophy which had come to dominate the early 20th century.
Both Europe and the US saw postwar economic booms and the emergence of a rising middle class before the 60s. Coupled with a baby boom, society at large seemed to be on its way up. There was education, poverty was being slowly alleviated and the housing market was blooming. The children of these groups were handed a silver platter - but were the dreams of their parents enough to satisfy them? They looked around and saw that they could have the white picket fence, the nuclear family structure, a house and a stable job, despite most of them saying no: this isn’t enough, there has to be more to life than this.
Out of this search and rejection of the material philosophy that had come before them, these young people sought out new experiences through drugs, philosophy and religion. A lot of them looked towards India and saw that there was satisfaction in a simpler life and that there was some allure to a more ascetic lifestyle. Instead of climbing the career ladders this generation sat down under a tree and contemplated life. This often led them to try to create or join alternative communities, communes or even cults. These movements offered people a sense of belonging and a new meaning. A lot of baby boomers were raising their kids with the idea of individuality, and with the promise of the American dream and self-realisation, a lot of them instead sought out community. They rejected this individuality and looked for human connection and social support.
Final Words
With good often comes bad, and the 1960s were no different; as a time often remembered for its social progress and forwarding thinking we often overlook the darker side of it, if we’re stuck in this dualistic thinking we see things in black and white, and in an attempt to uproot the old, we’re prone to create new evils. A lot of good things will come out of progress, but we have to make sure we’re progressing in the right way, and if we only water the soil with blood only swords will grow. We should watch out for charismatic leaders and the promise of easy solutions, and we should be aware of not letting our personal freedom come at the cost of others.
There’s a lot to gain from engaging in soul-searching and there’s nothing inherently wrong or dangerous with it, but if we invert the powerful lessons and valuable ethics it can provide it becomes a dangerous thing. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. It can be easy to look at these things in hindsight, and if we can’t look at history and learn from it we’re doomed to repeat it, and perhaps even learning about it we’re still doomed to repeat it.
Youth rebellion and counter-culture have always been a part of human society, and it’s come to be expressed far more times than just in the 1960s. Various political, social and religious movements have continued to occur and will continue to develop, and our modern age is no different. While the technology and mass media at the time allowed for a previously unseen reach, today it’s even greater and it expands past borders and language barriers. The reason I wanted to focus on the 1960s is because I see a lot of parallels between our current times and those times. There are a lot of social and political movements. We again see a revival of environmental parties, liberalism and other left-leaning ideologies, and also again a rise in interest in both the spiritual and the religious.
Church attendance in the US has been dwindling over the years but is now on the rise again, and we’re also seeing an emergence of internet cults, and just like the ‘60s we’re also seeing an inversion of spirituality. An interest in the occult and mystical has given rise to online groups dedicating themselves to inverted spirituality, a practice and belief focused on egotism, violence and anti-social beliefs. This isn’t a new thing, it was ongoing when I grew up and as a lot of us know, the internet was and still is a wild place. But that’s a story for another time.
