Innovations in Communitas

Is it time to play with culture?

Every year, on Good Friday, in Nocera Terinese — a village in the Calabria region of Southern Italy — an unusual ritual takes place.

In what’s known as the Vattienti procession, men from the local town wear black shorts, black shirts and black scarves - as well as a crown of a local prickly asparagus known as sparacogne - and slowly wind their way through the streets while beating themselves on their legs with a piece of cork with shards of glass lodged in it. The ritual - with its display of penance, suffering and copious bloodletting - is symbolic of the Passion of Christ. It finds its climax when the Vattienti (as the participants are known) unite with the statue of the Madonna and focus their devotion towards her. The presence of the Madonna's statue embodies divine intercession, providing spiritual comfort and a sense of hope to the participants and the onlooking community.

At first glance, the whole thing may seem bizarre and irrational - a product of ancient and primitive thinking. This would be the assessment of the modern-rationalist sensibility, which, if it were to take anthropomorphic form, might roll its eyes and ask “when will we move beyond such superstitious, irrational, nonsense?” (I don’t know about you, but in my mind I picture Sam Harris).

The postmodern mind, in contrast, would take issue with such an assessment. It might laugh and ask “what makes you so sure you’re right? Everything’s constructed bullshit anyway - why is this ritual any less valuable than the rituals of science and capitalism that you’re so impressed by?” Of course, although dismissive of the modern’s superiority, the postmodern wouldn’t embrace the Vattienti ritual - it wouldn’t allow itself to be lost in the communitas of the experience. Instead, it would look on with a detached and jaded cynicism, keeping a safe distance from the vulnerability of any genuine emotional involvement.

Enter the metamodern, “Hey you two, would you stop bickering? Can’t you see how beautiful and deep this is? I want to get closer.” The metamodern sensibility would understand the modern and postmodern takes, but it wouldn’t need to be caught by them. To the metamodern sensibility, the ritual is bizarre and it is constructed. But just because its bizarre doesn’t mean it’s not full of meaning and value, nor does the fact that its constructed mean that it’s bullshit. Perhaps it makes it all the more wonderful. In fact, a brief glance at different cultural forms from across the wold shows they’re all bizarre in their own way.

Take for example one of the most popular cultural forms enjoyed by people all over the world every week. It involves two groups of 11 men or women competing to kick an inflated-leather bag into two different rectangles at opposite ends of a field. It’s sometimes known as soccer but — and this is for the benefit of any American readers 😜 — should only ever be called football!

Again, on the face of it, a bizarre and pointless exercise, and yet it brings community, meaning, purpose and enjoyment to hundreds of millions if not billions every week (if you count fans and spectators).

Or take another example, that of the funeral - usually a solemn and mournful occasion. In New Orleans, however, there is the tradition of the Jazz Funeral, where the music begins sombre but becomes more celebratory and joyful as the procession progresses. To the unfamiliar it might seem strange that a funeral can become a time for joy, but in New Orleans the ritual becomes an opportunity to celebrate life.

Our world is full of weird and wonderful cultural forms with countless different purposes: from the spectacle of courtroom trials or the Oxford Union debates, to the Dionysian joy of the world’s various carnivals, to the conviviality of South American asados, to the spiritual ceremonies of Tibetan pujas. We humans have collectively constructed these activities to enable our societies to function, to spur our spiritual and educational development, to remind ourselves of the sacred, and to celebrate and participate in the joy of life.

And yet we also live in a time where these activities of collective meaning-making are in decline. The modern and postmodern hold on our consciousness has caused us to look down on our traditions, sneering with derision at their irrationality, or keeping our distance in a kind of non-commital ironic detachment. Add to this the culturally corrosive effect of smart phones and the addiction economy and its no wonder we are experiencing a meaning crisis, growing loneliness, alienation and mental ill-health.

So where do we go from here? Can we rediscover, or perhaps create, forms of collective cultural activity that give life meaning and help us to come into right relationship with reality?

Some would argue that the way forward is to go back - back to our roots, to rediscover the wisdom of our ancient traditions and the accompanying communal rituals and practices. This is likely the view of the many recent high-profile converts to Christianity like Paul Kingsnorth, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Jordan Hall. Indeed, they can now count Russell Brand as part of their movement, who was baptised recently.

This reaching backwards towards the exploration and renewal of our ancient spiritual traditions will no doubt be essential. Like the beautiful underground caves containing stalactites and stalagmites that form over millions of years through the slow deposit of minerals from dripping water, our religious traditions are cathedrals of consciousness, hosting the accumulated wisdom of billions of humans beings over thousands of years. It would be wildly hubristic to believe we don’t need them.

And yet, to imagine that we’ll meet the challenges of our times by simply reviving the rituals and practices of old is, I believe, also wrongheaded. We live in a particular historical moment that is different to the past. The tectonic plates of our consensus worldview is shifting as our understanding of reality, and indeed of ourselves and our place within it, is transforming. There is a need to flow with that unfolding, and playfully create new cultural forms that serve the needs of people and planet today.

This doesn’t mean throwing out the old. The binary choice of old vs new is not in tune with the spirit of this moment. Old cultural forms will and should continue and they will shift and evolve. But I believe we should also be bold enough to experiment with the creation of new practices of collective meaning-making, just as in the world of art where old forms evolve and adapt, alongside the creation of entirely new mediums or movements.

[Immersive Theatre is a performance art movement that aims to transform audience members from passive recipients to active participants.]

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In what’s sometimes called “this corner of the internet” a lot of exciting work is taking place in the domain of philosophy, theology, and spirituality. It’s often of a consilient/integrative nature - i.e. its grounded in numerous epistemic sources, reflecting our ways of making sense in the world today. For instance, Iain McGilchrist’s work on the hemisphere’s of the brain is grounded in neuroscience, but he also draws heavily on his knowledge of literature, poetry, philosophy, physics and ancient myth to construct a powerful thesis.

John Vervaeke is another good example. He brings the wisdom traditions of the East and West together with research in cognitive science — in what he describes as a “synoptic integration” — to formulate a response to the meaning crisis. There are many others such as Gregg Henriques, Bonnitta Roy, Brendan Dempsey, Bobby Azarian etc.

What I am yearning for however, is to go beyond the development of new philosophy or new worldviews, to the practising of it, to it’s colourful manifestation in dance, music, spiritual practice, even (dare I say it) new forms of worship. (I’m indebted to my wife Kylen for highlighting that new forms of worship might be what we’re after.)

What would it be like, for instance, to not just talk about the importance of valueception (the capacity to perceive value as an ontological primary of the universe), but to actually practice and cultivate it, to rejoice in the experience of it with others? Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not criticising these thinkers, nor their work. They are doing what they are called to do and they are doing it wonderfully. I’m deeply grateful. If anything this post is a circuitous way for me to criticise myself.

I feel a call to begin this work, I feel there’s a readiness for it in the culture at large, and yet I’m not quite sure how to go about it. Perhaps in my next post I’ll write more concretely about what innovations in communitas might look like. For now, let me finish by articulating one metamodern quality I believe we’ll need to embody - or maybe it’s three in a kind of dynamic relationship: self-awareness, sincerity and irony.

If we are to create new forms of collective meaning-making, we’ll need to be conscious that this is what we’re doing - that we’re playing! Bad cults suffer from an absence of this. The leader really thinks he’s God (or has some kind of special access to the Divine) and his followers buy it. They’re trapped in a story with no capacity to step back and look at it, to see the absurdity of it, to laugh at it. This necessarily leads to them being too serious, too earnest, and a whole lot of suffering is sure to follow. Check out the documentary Wild Wild Country to see this play out.

This is where irony can be our friend. We shouldn’t too take our selves to seriously. We can have fun and laugh as we do it. As the Funkadelic lyrics go:

We're just a biological speculation
Sittin' here, vibratin'
And we don't know what we're vibratin' about

This kind of light-hearted humility seems a necessary response to the mystery of this cosmos we call home. Do any of us really know what’s going on? Or the ultimate contours of the vast story of which we’re all apart?

And yet, as Vermeulen and van den Akker argue, if we go too far into irony we risk sliding into apathy. From one perspective, we’re just a biological speculation vibratin’, from another we’re trying to find a way to care for this planet, to care for that which we feel is sacred, and to reduce the suffering we’re causing each other and the biosphere. Things really do matter, at least the experience of my heart and body (my soul?) tell me that’s the case. Somehow we have to anchor to that as well.

This oscillation between seriousness and silliness, between sincerity and irony, needs to be held in a kind of spacious, relaxed awareness. In that way, our devotion can grow without becoming dogmatic, our humour and light-heartedness can grow, without undermining depth and profundity.

Importantly, this is not easy to pull off. It’s hard enough as an individual to relate to life in this way, never mind imagine and co-create new cultural forms that express this sensibility. As such, it’s helpful to “feel into” this sensibility through art, because the artist has the freedom to seed new possibilities before they are ready to come to life in the “real” world as manifest ways of living and being.

Two metamodern comedy shows come to mind in this regard. They are both extremely funny, and although quite different, share this capacity to move between the hilarious and the profound, compassionately poking fun at the absurdity of our human situation, while also celebrating its beauty.

One is the Netflix show Beef, where two strangers living in L.A. become embroiled in a tit-for-tat vendetta. They’re both trying to live lives that society or their parents deem valuable, but under the surface lies their Jungian shadow, and it is this part of themselves that they reveal to each other. Ironically, their mutual hatred of each other is what connects them. Their “beef” is the catalyst for parallel spiritual journeys into new understandings about themselves and life.

Another example is Phoebe-Waller Bridge’s Fleabag. Again there is the mix of humour and depth, but in Fleabag there are also these moments where Phoebe-Waller Bridge’s character turns to the camera itself, breaking the fourth wall. This is often done to great comic effect and is symbolic of this quality of self-reflective awareness - the ability to experience but not be dominated or overwhelmed by the experience. It brings a quality of spaciousness, a sense that the drama is not all encompassing, but unfolding within a larger holding consciousness.

So to return to the question I asked earlier, where do we go from here?

As you may have garnered, I’m not entirely sure. I suppose sensing that something new wants to emerge is like this. The first thing I knew to do, was to express this yearning. Hopefully the universe will respond by providing more hints about what it wants to see come into being. I wonder, do you feel a similar yearning? Do you feel a call to join with others in a sacred celebration of life itself, to explore, to journey, to laugh, dance, cry and sing? Maybe you can tell me the next step.

One thing I do know, I only want to go if it really matters, and if we can have fun along the way.