"That's Primitive:" Sorting the Prerational/Transrational Fallacy

Is it "prerational", "rational", or "transrational"?

One of the most demoralizing moments in my preaching career was 15 years ago when a congregant responded to my Thanksgiving sermon (which quoted the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address) with the comment "That's primitive thinking." At the time, it floored me. I was ready to read the feminist, anti-colonialist riot act at him. (I did not.) Over time I realized I didn't have a complete response to his comment. The intensity of that moment helped me see the expression of an attitude that I have found shows up in all sorts of ways. Until I grappled with that feedback I couldn't recognize the "more rational than thou" attitude in others, and more disturbingly, in myself. Until I recognized the source of that prejudice I couldn't undo it.

The age of Modernism gave us the scientific method and near worship of the rational. The Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address begins "Greetings to the Natural World."  Susan Griffin, in the book "Woman and Nature" talks about the separation of the world into rational and irrational and the way that men, culture, and science are identified as rational (and rightful rulers) and women, spirituality, and nature as irrational (and dangerous). A cultural story of enlightened rationality saving the world from bestial nature permeates Western literature and religion.

We see this division in colonialism - as Western culture infantilized and feminized the conquered peoples while exploiting them. We see it in my sermon critic's dismissal of Native American religion as "primitive." We see it in the reactions of many hard atheists or old-style humanists to the use of religious language in our UU congregations.

This division of the world is a brokenness that needs to be healed.

We need language of reverence. We need a relationship to a sacred earth. We need mystery. We need the gifts of insight and intuition commonly associated with women. We need embodied, body-positive, diverse, and community-oriented ways of being.

And it is right to be curious about irresponsible superstition and unthinking credulity.

Ken Wilbur responds to these two categories with the observation that all things that don't fit into the modernist world view get lumped into the "irrational' category. He then separates that second category out into two: pre-rational and trans-rational.

He also grants that all the cautions that men of science have issued about the "irrational" state are appropriate to the pre-rational state, but not the trans-rational state. Using God to justify a system of "haves" and "have-nots", like the prosperity gospel does, is pre-rational. Unthinking belief in scripture or a literal belief in a God which results in wars, intolerance and hate are pre-rational. Superstition and unthinking credulity are the domain of the pre-rational.

When I read cultural anthropology books in the 80's the anthropologists mostly assumed that the native people they were studying were pre-rational. I picked up an anthropology book recently, however, and was pleased and surprised to read that the scientist recognized that the people he was studying had an excellent grasp of scientific concepts, cause and effect, and the nature of the natural world AT THE SAME TIME they spoke about these things in terms of story and myth. These "primitive" people were able to have nimble enough minds to understand reality on two levels at once: the mythical and the rational. Wouldn't it be grand if we modern Westerners had such skill?

The Thinking Mind... And?

On Sunday morning, many Unitarian Universalist children chant a welcoming song that expresses pride that they are part of a church that welcomes the thinking mind. It has been a point of pride for many that our religious communities don't ask folks to follow prescribed beliefs. Many identify as "religious humanists" or "religious naturalists." Indeed, many of the most brilliant scientific minds of our age are very religious and speak about their scientific observations with mystical, mythical, poetry.

"Trans-rational" living encompasses the rational, plus goes beyond it. This is spirituality that does not conflict with science. So, I say to my sermon critic of 15 years ago, "free yourself from the pre-rational/trans-rational fallacy! Open yourself to the gifts of trans-rational spiritual insight. I invite you to listen to the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address again. This time without fearing that your rational mind is under threat. Bring your thinking brain, and join it with your feeling heart and spirit."

Panentheism

As an earth-relating person I spend a lot of time in the Pagan community where I've experienced many who suffer from the opposite aspect of the pre/trans fallacy. To them I send an earnest request: please bring your rational brain. We do not need to toss it out in order to experience the gifts of the trans-rational. And when we take an "anti-rational' attitude we throw out all the gifts of the modern era. As we move into post-modernism, we need to build, not tear down.

Psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg wrote about the stages of moral development. In them we move from an undifferentiated "might makes right" to a differentiated "rules tell me what is right" to a relational "ethics tell me what is right". My experience with human beings is that we move through these stages over and over, in a spiral pattern, each time learning them more deeply.

Both/And

I believe that spiritual development is very similar, moving from the undifferentiated "I'm a believer" to the differentiated "scientific proof arbitrates reality" and on to the relational "both/and of rational mind in a dance with spiritual insight".
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I invite you to dance in the transrational with me!
My colleague Catharine Clarenbach also has written on the transrational.