Spirits and Culture
The term spirituality has now gained considerable currency in American culture.
Celebrities avow their spirituality orientation, politicians justify their actions on spiritual grounds, and booksellers stock their shelves with little volumes of daily affirmations.
But the use of term has only recently become part of popular parlance, and only in relation to our contemporary pluralistic culture.
In previous generations people found transcendence in the sectarian religious denominations into which they were born.
The trappings of other religious groups were dismissed as misguided even dangerous.
“Spirits” were associated with séances, ghosts and the netherworld. Nor does spirituality appear in anthropologic studies.
“Spirits” are conjured up as ancestral figures that wield power in what some might call “primitive” societies.
They are associated with shamanistic practices that we see as being quite different from our own.
The contemporary perspective on spirituality became evidence following the radical cultural transitions that took place in the United States over the latter part of the twentieth century.
This took place decade by decade following the halcyon days of the “Eisenhower Era,” on through the dramatic social changes of the counterculture, and then toward a tentative resolution on what is meaningful to people in the domain of personal belief.
Consider the changes that disrupted established attitudes over this period in relation to religion, race and ethnicity.
Gender roles and sexual behaviors were also dramatically transformed. Widespread access to contraceptives led to the acceptance of premarital sexual intercourse.
The women’s movement began to erase distinctions between the sexes that had defined home life and work life for generations.
Another dramatic change had taken palace in how people assumed their identities of mature adults, as the developmental norms for adolescence were evolving.
When the twentieth century began, people ended their education to begin work at a relatively young age.
By the latter part of the century, adolescence was prolonged as parents ceded their children to liberal educational institutions where youth could devote themselves to contemplating their direction in life, even their life’s very purpose.
The demand of marriage and child rearing were deferred.
Young people could now take advantage of these opportunities to move away from their families to other parts of the country and to find cultural relativism as they traveled across any continent they chose.
Spirits and Culture
