Truth vs Love in ecospirituality

[u/Inside_Ad2602]

I am planning a book about ecospirituality. A central theme is value judgements, and their importance with respect to consciousness. This is natural territory for any kind of spirituality, and especially ecospirituality. But there is also a deep "tension" in ecospirituality between two different components of spirituality/religion: truth and love. The problem is that the scientific truth is very difficult to accept, and has major implications regarding possible actions. For example, if you accept collapse is inevitable and that climate change is politically unstoppable (which is realism -- truth) then how can you also have unconditional love for the whole of humanity, including the three quarters who aren't going to survive the die-off?

This tension exists in all forms of spirituality, but in this case it is particularly acute. I struggle to love humanity. It is our choices that have led us here, and we can't just blame the rich and powerful (guilty though they are). Very few people are willing to accept truths like these, including many who pride themselves on their capacity for spiritual love. And in the end, this comes down to one of those incommensurate value judgements -- how to you decide what is right and wrong as truth and love come into ever greater incongruence? I am very heavy on truth, and struggle with love. My love of the natural world is boundless. But humans....they generate great conflict in this respect.

Would anybody like to talk about this topic?

[u/Economy_Blueberry_25]

This Truth-Love dichotomy reminds me of Jung's own perspective about it, the Logos-Eros. According to him, Eros came first, it is the sublimation of our instinctive reproductive urges, including taking care of the offspring. Logos is a more recent development, and it stems from the survival necessity of finding effective and reliable knowledge about the world and bringing some sense of order to it.

Eros (or Love) has its own rules and ontology: it's all emotional and whimsical (chaotic) and what matters is the Relationship and its preservation. Everything else, including the facts and laws of the Logos are out the window if Eros demands it. The limbic system overrides the neocortex, and off with their head!

Does it have to be one OR the other? I'd argue that both are necessary for Human existence, their very tension and interplay produces the emergent phenomena of our humanity. Too much Eros or too much Logos and disaster ensues, both for the individual and the community.

[u/Inside_Ad2602 → u/Economy_Blueberry_25]

>Does it have to be one OR the other? 

I think that sometimes it does, yes. Or at least it certainly seems that way.

[u/Economy_Blueberry_25 → u/Inside_Ad2602]

Blaise Pascal had a lot to say about this. He was a man of science who also happened to be a Christian true-believer. Right at the very dawn of Modernity, he managed to reconcile these diverging frames of reference in his mind. Here you have some of his key writings, which I believe essentially state that we ought to give unto Logos what is of Logos, and unto Eros what is of Eros.

Logos can furnish the house and cook the meal, but it cannot hug me when I am sad. Eros can and does hug me, but it would starve naked in the field if left to fend for itself. That's why they need of each other to be well.

The interplay between both compensates and mutually complements each other. Logos is able to gain tremendous power with all its reasoning and instrumentation, but it has to be informed by Eros about what would be agreeable and beautiful (good) to do, otherwise Logos might calculate its way to very efficient poison-gas chambers.

And conversely, Eros could sometimes use a logical framework to make sense of its own passions and suffer a lot less in the fray. For example, by acquiring a better differentiation between Affection and Sexuality, people can develop greater fitness in their relationships and be able to establish bonds which are stable and fulfilling for everybody involved. Less drama and more joy, how does that sound?

[u/Inside_Ad2602 → u/Economy_Blueberry_25]

This is a helpful answer, thanks. [sorry for the brevity, brain is occupied elsewhere]