Impression

Workshop review of the supporting convergent technology involved in the phenomena of Spirituality

Presenters: Luis Miguel Martínez & Pablo Martinez

Links:
"Second Life, Darwin & God"
tecnologías para el aprendizaje

Considering that online worlds have served as community enablers, the present research traces convergence lines between resident's activities inside this platforms and the possibilities that those activities can be understood as spiritual practices. Within the context of Second Life, we adopted an operative approach to spirituality. The former implies that we take user's actions and concrete manifestations (such as meeting places inside Second Life) as windows for identifying spiritual content and activities within SL.
The first question tries to establish the relation that these kind of computer mediated communication platforms, beyond institutionalized religious practices (that is, conceptually limited groups related to a belief corpus -Christian, Buddhist, Catholic, etc...-), involve belief-based interaction beyond pre-conceived narratives such as the bible. How does SL involve a process of belief? After the recognition of existing concessions of certainty upon the experiences shared among participants of Immersive Worlds, we stepped into more specific content and practices related to spirituality. If SL and other immersive worlds represent a space where issues such as economical competition, political debates, authority vacuums and crime, take place on an everyday basis, we agreed that we should not be surprised how different institutions (preexisting and SL based). Then, we explored the way in which in Second Life spirituality is expressed. For this we interviewed some avatars in some more explicit religious places. Second Life could be a possible source of information about the believes of youngsters and adolescents (but, considering the age of users, an average of 30 years, we identified a broader scope). The problem is that we have to make a difference between the avatar and the way he or she expresses him or herself and the persons beyond the avatar. This is related to the operative dissonances that manifest between on-line and off-line action.

Researchproject on Media, Religion and Spirituality

Presenters: Juan Carlos Henríquez and Isabela Corduneanu

Links

The davinci code
What the Bleep

Presentation

Phases of the research project

• 2005-2006: qualitative research focused on uses of the movie What the bleep do you (k)now?
• 2006-2007: The Da Vinci Code (book and movie) and The Pasion of Christ, plus products as documental movies in History Channel, Discovery Channel
• Present: Add the Internet Dimension: Second Life

Objectives of the research project

• Analyze the construction and exertion of the subjectivity in the narration/performance of the belief while using media consumptions .
• Secondary objectives: Analyze the behavior of the Operational Belief System and its components when consuming media products linked with pop-esotericism

Research Questions

• Main research question
  -How subjectivity is constructed and exerted while using media consumption in the narration/performance of believing?
• Secondary research questions
  -How do the three systems of the OBS coexist without annihilating each other?
  -What is the role of pop-esotericism in facilitating this coexistence?
  -Is it a new phenomenon that generates a new macro-structure or is it already present in pre-existent structures that were ignored so far in social science studies? This is, are new spiritualities revealing new structures of something that has been already there?
  -How does the Belief system relate to the postmodern context?
  -Which are the differences between “Beliefs” and “Believings”?
  -Who/How is, ultimately, a Believer?

Methodology and methods

• Qualitative
• Focus groups (19), discussion groups (18), Delphi groups (7) focused interviews (21), narrative interview(3), in depth interview (27), participant observation (3). 35 session for What the Bleep and 50 for The Da Vinci Code and The Pasion of the Christ
• Particants: 18 to 55 years old, higher education, middle to middle-upper class, urban area (inhabitants of Mexico City and Bogotá).
• (Inter)reflexive method of analysis

Concepts: Operational Belief System

Operational Belief System (OBS):

• Set of performances organized in systems that individuals use as a platform to “operate” transcendently their reality
• Comprises three sources: Inscribed, Ascribed, Acquired.
• Inscribed: the well organized explicit creed forms which are adhered to in the primary socialization circle
• Ascribed: involves secondary socialization circles where identity roles and belongings are defined which is to say, the cultural environment beyond the first circle of socialization.
• Modulates and informs the inscribedAcquired: the processes of appropiations and colonizations, adoptions and adaptations of territories engaged in the meaning making. Expressed in narrative form and practices

Concepts: Pop-esotericism

• Any mediatic product or pop-culture item, produced and distributed by the cultural industry, to which its audience attaches the meaning of esoteric and uses it as such.
• The products are not pop-esoteric per se; the audience makes them to be that.
• ‘Pop’ refers to a symbolic form (item or media content) that belongs to the popular culture or “pop-culture”
• Esotericism: the knowledge acquired by initiates in occult beliefs and practices.
• The massive feature of pop-esotericism implies a visible non-initiatic community, with series produced pieces empowered and managed by the cultural industry (producer and distributor)

Theoretical framework

• Media and Religious Studies
• Post-estructuralism, beginning with a phenomenological and ethnomethodological approach (exploratory study).
• Strategy of research: Reflexive Sociology Perspective

Results: From de Modern Self to the Narcissus

• Narcissus: not mourning, but accepting multiple realities and voices (polyglot, nomadic subject). Multiple practices and believings.

The “Narcissus”: multiple reality, multiple practices

• “Budha had said that, as all the traditions did. What the bleep is an update of this: The mind controls matter and external reality. Of course, if you say, well you have to sit down like Budha as he did thousand years ago, well, maybe that is too sophisticated and I am living in the 21st century and, well, how is going to be that, I, well, yuk, religions, yuk the traditions of the religious days” FI-A-M
• “because theoretically this is something real, I mean if you do believe it, then it is something real real real for you. The Da Vinci Code, hummm, was a novel" (78FG-H)

The Narcissus and the discourse of Science

• (The movie What the bleep) “is very good because they indeed demonstrate (the thesis) scientifically and everything is proved” (FG.A-M1)
• “people who are very interested in science, because (the movie, What the bleep) is very well explained, one does not need to know about science, only to like it”.
• “I think that he (Dan Brown) is a person that has studied, researched, and he wants to publish and speak out, no matter who accepts it or not. I do not think that it is made to annoy someone, no, he simply presents his research” (FG82)
• “The quantum physics is more than just a science, is a Way of Living, because the point is: what are you doing with your life? (…) I am a Catholic but I am participating, for eight years now, in a group that studies quantum physics, and it is not religion, but a complement because one can belong to any religion and still participate in this group”. (DG.H-2M)

The Narcissus: relativism, multiple realities, multiple truth

• “It is a diversion, the thing that this person (i.e., Mel Gibson) makes you think that this was what actually happened and full stop, instead of making you understand that this is only the construction of the reality from the viewpoint of one person and that there are many more, to have only one is to have this one, this is, the deviance to fanaticism, to believing only one thing and … knowing moreover that the possibilities are open to many more realities and one can construct his own criterion” (FG78).
• “The Mirror Stage”
  - “The most important, I think, is that the first person in whom I believe is in myself, in Lorena. She is the only person that would never let me down, and after this, it is my family. Now, what is going on? what is religion good for? For when you are in trouble, for not feeling badly in a moment of anguish, I think this is what is good for” (FG49)
  - “And Jesus said: you are God as well, and you will be able to do bigger things than I did, so, where did this come from. So, to freak you out, for me Jesus is not God, he is just another prophet who came to teach us the road to God. Where did you listen this? Where I listened this, I told you I grew up with this, always, Jesus is not God. Jesus is God, but you are God and I am God. The same, if we are one, how something can be outside of this unity. We are all God. Jesus is not more than us, or he is more than us because he is a soul that transcended and that lovely came back to show us the way” (FI81).

The Modern Self and the OBS

• About the impact of The Passion of the Christ) it is like a gate of faith that is opened, and all that Jesus had to endure, and making us aware that we complain about trivial things while he endured without having done anything and without deserving it, and all these leads to what he came for, for giving us the form of living as Catholics, of more love, more tolerance, more endurance, and I think that this is a demonstration of love, a very cruel and blunt one” (GD39)
• “Jesus was like us in body and soul, was humane as us, less in sin, this is the only difference that Jesus had, less in the sin” (GD39)

The Narcissus vs. The Modern Self: the oneself vs. The other

• The Modern Self: reports to The Other
  “When one does a good deed, when you do a good thing for another person, then you feel well, isn´t it so? And when someone else do to you a good thing, you also feel well” (FG49).
• The Narcissus: reports to the Self
  “It locates the human being at the core of everything, it is like you are the center of all your own reality. You create your own reality” (FG.A-5M)
  “It is that the religion tells you that if you do this, that will happen to you, it puts forward a good God, when there is no such thing as good or evil, the only thing is that you be a better person (…) I have learnt that we have the responsibility of taking control of our own life” (DG.H-4H)

Conclusions

• Pop-esotericism: nest of new spiritualities for postmodern self (powerless)
  Operational Belief System (OBS) is constituted by the ascribed, inscribed and acquired sources
• These three sources can be either juxtaposed – in the modern selves – or intersected – in the postmodern, Narcissus self.
• The subjectivity constructed while consuming media products like those researched or mentioned by the participants behaves in a resonant manner with the Operational Belief system: it is a modern subjectivity when the OBS is juxtaposed and a postmodern subjectivity, rhyzomatic and polyglot when the OBS is intersected

Conclusions: Beliefs and Believings

• Beliefs: part of a creed, are propositions belonging primarily to the acquired system, even when they come from the inscribed or ascribed source. This is, one has to defend or justify his/her beliefs in a rational way, using proofs (either scientific or historical).
• ‘Believings’: haunted performances of realities that are beyond language and expressions, and beyond rational, logical operations.
• A more elusive reality that can be grabbed through social conversation and interaction, although does not completely correspond to what the subject might experiment

Conclusions: Pop-esotericism

• Prematurely to say if it is a completely new structure or if corresponds to a pre-existent structure
• Pop-science and manifestations of esoteric practices have existed in the modern times, and our participants echoes some of these practices. Although pop-esotericism might be a new form and content, its operational schema is a persistent one

Comments

From the point of view of spirituality and especially from the point of view of the mystical tradition of Christianity it strikes in this research on the Operational Belief Systems of Modern en Post-modern persons in Mexico and Columbia that the religious experience of these groups of people is above all ego-centered and in that sense narcistic. Both the historical and scientific reference systems of these research groups of ‘polyglot and nomadic subjects’ are concerned with creeds or (rational) propositions to make human life understable. It would be very interesting to see what will be the spiritual development of these persons, of the consciousness of themselves and the transcendent of divine reality. The temporarily construction of an understandable world - fit to inhabit as human persons - develops in dialogue with the surrounding culture and is therefore in part the result of the ongoing media consumption - as this research clearly shows – but arises also from the inevitable personal confrontation with the divine reality which is the origin of our human existence. Modern culture is mostly shaped by media, films, television etc. and by common speech in the dominant and global culture. The spiritual question is however how and in what way forms of self-forgetfulness – shown in the mystical traditions and present also in modern culture – are elicited by personal or common traumatic experiences (serious illnesses like cancer, earthquakes, floodings etc.) or by intense experiences of love, beauty and social engagement provoke processes of spiritual development not foreseen by the dominant culture. In many cases spirituality is put in motion by experiences of counterculture. It would be enough to think about Francis of Assisi or Ignatius of Loyola, but also modern films like ‘As it is in Heaven’ or ‘I am Sam’. Spirituality and mysticism focus not so much on constructions which offer security and footing, but above all on disturbing and confronting process of breakthrough. Might research on media consumption in modern culture be able also to give documentation about these spiritual or mystical processes which can be noticed also nowadays.

Spirituality International

Presenter: Jos Huls

Jos Huls presented in short:

• the idea behind Web 2.0 and the use of open source software,
• the Titus Brandsma Institute,
• the international network for education (Spirin Education) and Spirituality International (Spirin) especially the Encyclopedia.

Web 2.0:


For the presentation of Web 2.0 see:
http://titusbrandsmainstituut2.blogspot.com/

The Titus Brandsma Institute

For the presentation of the Titus Brandsma Institute download: tbi.ppt

Spirituality Network for Education

For the presentation of the international network for accademic education in spirituality download: spine.ppt

See also

The website: Spirituality Network for Education

Spirin & Spirin Encyclopedia

The Spirin Encyclopedia is embedded in bigger project Spirin. In this we have five relatively independent projects.

• Spine or Spirin education
• Bibliography
• Who is who?
• Forum
• Bulletin Board
• Spirin Encyclopedia

Most of these projects are near to be published on the net.
As you can see, Spirin Encyclopedia forms the center of this project. It is the heart of the matter.
Our purpose is to create an international platform connecting researchers and teachers of spirituality living and working in different academic settings, countries and continents, offering opportunities to remain informed on new insights, to share a bibliographic database, to meet and discuss concerning these insights by means of a digital Encyclopedia in process and discussion forums.
We are developing a digital encyclopedia of Spirituality with the help of Wikimedia Software.

https://wiki.science.ru.nl/Titus-Brandsma-Instituut/spirin/Main_Page

The idea is not only to organize and collect information, but above all to create an international workplace of creative thinking.

This is a platform for scholars to present their research and to discus their insights with other colleagues.

We have studied a lot of printed Encyclopedia’s. We studied very old and new ones. We were interested in their architecture and purpose. We extracted from them ten dimensions.
As you could see in the introduction our approach is phenomenological. So we want to be as open as possible and welcome many different viewpoints, the more the better. So the ten dimensions of the encyclopedia are meant as orientation points to open a space and not to limit the space. For us the relation between the different dimensions is very important.

For example an article can describe processes from a historical points of view. The architecture gives the possibility to bring to the fore the different perspectives. It is also possible to study the same subject from different point of view. For example I have written a PhD on Beatrice of Nazareth but this is mainly a textual study (texts, words and proccesses). Someone else can write a study from a historical point of view.

We have a journal Studies in Spirituality, that functions as scientific platform. Now we want to extend it to the ICT media. We hope the encyclopedia will become a community of scholars and other interested people in the field of spirituality.

We have already a board covering the different dimensions. This is a collaboration of the Titus Brandsma Instituut and the University of Nijmegen. A team of scholars of the theological faculty of Nijmegen is willing to invest research time for this purpose. They form also the editorial. board.

Our initial idea is:

This Encyclopedia is a platform for researchers worldwide for ongoing research, discussion and collaboration. The final publication in the Encyclopedia is refereed. For this we have an academic board. The new articles will also be published in a digital journal. The purpose is to create an open space so that the content is available for as many persons as possible, working in the field of spirituality.

Questions:

How accessible this encyclopaedia has to be? It will be open for everyone to read, but we are doubting about the people, who contribute to it. Only scholars or everyone who is interested? Especially in the field of spirituality we have a lot of freaks.

1. If open, how may scholars be motivated to work and publish in this encyclopaedia?
2. Is it possible to mix up a popular and scientific encyclopaedia?
3. Is it possible to have different levels in the encyclopaedia?
4. How may articles in this Encyclopaedia be accepted as real scientific publications in order to receive credits?
5. What will be the function of the editorial board?
6. Especially for third world countries source materials are essential. What to do with copy protected source materials? For instance my research is on Dag Hammarskjöld but the text of my research is copy protected.
7. How will it be possible to organize a small institute in such a way that this service can be maintained?
8. What kind of organization is necessary to develop such a web-community?
9. What parts can be done in company and what parts should be done outside the institute?

Spirin Encyclopedia and the development of a research oriented master.

This Encyclopedia will also form the center of the learning process of (PhD and Master) students. For this reason the content of the modules Spirin education will be published in this encyclopedia. But the students will not only find their content there, but the Encyclopedia will also function as a research environment where they develop there own research questions and actual research individually as well as a group.

The department of information technology has done a pilot with the wikimedia software as a kind of digital learning environment. This pilot turns out to be very successful.

See: https://wiki.science.ru.nl/IIwerkplaats/BenB/

Questions

1. What are good and bad practices in the field of web-communities of scholars and students?
2. What kind of new forms of research oriented education are possible with the use of internet?
3. Universities are protecting their students. That’s their revenue. The Spirin network is globally oriented. This means that there is an incompatibility of interest. How do you think it is possible to create a worldwide network of specialist in the field of spirituality and collaboration in the assistance of students? For instance, how can students from the third world take part in it?
4. Especially for third world country source materials are essential. What to do with copy protected source materials? For instance my research is on Dag Hammarskjöld but the text of my research is copy protected.
5. How to use media like streaming video, video conferencing etc. in such a way that they are available in third world countries? What is realistic to develop at this moment?
6. There are a lot of initiatives of universities to make available their content. We want more a living community and a personalized route of the student in which the research question is leading. How this idea fits with initiatives like the Rice University or MIT university and others?
7. What kind of other open source software is available?
8. What is necessary in order that this software may function accurately? (We like the idea of central hosting service of Christian oriented organisations in favour of the use of open source software and the use of new technologies as streaming video.)
9. What kind of structure in the company is necessary to use this software?

Comments

• This project is usefull for those scholars, who are more interested in interdisciplinary issues. Scholars who are more bound to the methods of their own discipline, are less willing to discuss their research in broader scholarly discours. There are examples of discussion groups of scholars with references to articles, that are from a scholarly point of view more interesting than the journals in which the articles are published. In fact sometimes they become journals in itself.
• The encyclopedia can thought as a source of information, but more likely it will be used as a forum for scholarly discussions.
• Articles can be linked to the encyclopedia as pdf files.
• From the point of view of communication it is better to think about small interest groups.
• Science Commons is possibly the most helpful organization by scholarly publications
  (See: Science Commons)
• Begin small and see how it will grow.