Matt Thornton' | Writings from Martial Artist and Skeptic Matt Thornton

“Oh, you’re an atheist?” he said, in manner that betrayed disappointment. “I could never be an atheist. I consider myself spiritual, but not religious. I simply find too much wonder and awe in the universe to believe it was all an accident.”

How many times have you heard this sort of comment? For those of us who are skeptics and atheists, the answer is likely to be, a lot. Inherent in such a statement is the misconception that atheism is a knowledge claim, as opposed to what atheism actually is, a statement of non-belief. But there is also another commonplace falsehood being spoken there, one that gets addressed less. The notion that skepticism and atheism are antithetical to mysticism, wonder, and awe. It is as common to hear as it is incorrect to say. It’s a fallacy that rests on the unexamined assumption that non-belief and a healthy mind steeped in doubt are roadblocks in the way of self-actualization, as opposed to necessary ingredients in the recipe for it. I don’t just think this is wrong, I think it’s backwards. There is an essential link between mysticism and skepticism, one directly related to liberty, one that directly leads to maturity, and one I’d like to address now.

As human beings who value liberty and appreciate the freedoms afforded to us in a post-enlightenment Democratic Republic, it’s easy to assume everyone desires the same power of choice, but a quick look at history, ancient and current, might give us pause. Do all people hunger for liberty? How important is freedom of the press to someone who pays no attention to anything but entertainment? How important is freedom of speech to someone who refuses to distinguish between the valuable and the silly? How important is freedom of movement to someone happy to stay in one spot? It’s relatively simple to convince uniformed and unqualified people that the informed and qualified people who are in the arena, engaged and in charge, are stupid, corrupt, or both. Once that happens, there is a choice. Do they take personal responsibility for their own education and involvement in the world? Or do they prop up a strong man, a daddy figure, someone who can drive the car while they sit in the backseat? From the Arab Spring to Osho to Donald Trump, the message is clear, the love of liberty may be rarer than we think. True freedom requires personal responsibility, and memorizing one’s entitlements always takes less effort than upholding one’s duties.

America’s founding fathers wanted a society built on the principle of inalienable liberty. And they were a rarity in history for that reason. Had they not drafted the first principles which guide this Nation, had they instead left it to the populist vote, is there much doubt that mob majority would have preferred a monarch? After all, they offered a crown to Washington.

The people of the early American colonies were not unique in their tendency towards autocracy. More than 4000 years ago a people from the North began to migrate south into India, and with them came their religion and its scriptures. Songs and fables told by those in charge to those that followed – the Vedas. The Brahmin, the class of clerics who ran this ideological racket, would, for a fee, bring better crops, better health, and more wealth – that is, if you believed. And while the majority bought into the theology, a few remained skeptical. The Nastikas, which translated means nay-sayers, were those few.

Brihaspati was one such man. What we know about him we know from his agitated critics, since they were forced to mention him in their efforts to refute his arguments. Brihaspati taught that the Vedas were nonsense, the Brahmin were lazy and soft bellied charlatans, and the game itself was rigged. He noticed that when the priests incantations seemed to work, they took credit, and when they didn’t, they blamed the people, who, regardless of result, had to pay. He was astonished that anyone would allow their lives to be governed by a book of verses and its needy interpreters.

A gentleman named Charvaka was another popular nay-sayer. He taught that what the priests labeled “spiritual”, was really just frivolous make believe. “All that was” Charvaka would say, “was matter”. And while these priests claimed that touching women was akin to touching ‘vermin’, something ‘unclean’, Charvaka taught that it was in fact the priests themselves who were the vermin, the unclean.

These men were the Indian skeptics and atheists of 2000 BCE, and their wisdom both predates and sets the table for the Upanishads. They opened the door for those who came after. These Nastikas cleared a path. They bulldozed through the bullshit. They used the most powerful tool the human animal has at its disposal for the discovery and implementation of true wisdom – reason; and in so doing, they provided the space necessary for progress in the profound.

Freedom to discover the new requires comfort with the unknown. It necessitates a liberty of movement, both internal and external, that can only exist if we are willing to let go of preformed conclusions.

Ask yourself this question, what thing or things, have served as the greatest catalysts for positive growth and change in your own life? When I reflect back, the thing that’s had the largest impact on me in as human being wasn’t any particularly spiritual experience, focused practice, Buddhist or religious doctrine, or individual teacher – it is instead an ongoing process of ever increasing levels of understanding, complexity, compassion, and impulse control. A process we broadly label maturing.

In a healthy individual maturing is something that should come organically with life experience, and as a consequence, with age – that is, assuming someone is capable of enough honest self-reflection. It is also something that should accelerate the moment you have children, loved ones, community, tribe – which you hold yourself accountable to. But it isn’t automatic. Blunt self-reflection and unwavering accountability aren’t optional to the process. A fact I’ve too often forgotten.

A desire to do right by those I am responsible for, for those I hold myself accountable to, has changed me more than any doctrine, discipline, or deed, because that desire altered my priorities, changed my perspective, and ultimately, affected my behavior.

To mature, to have what matters sharpen and what doesn’t fade. To mature, to be accountable, without excuses. To mature, to gain in patience and compassion, absent the sentimental attachments that serve, not as love, but as symptoms of a dysfunctional past still buried within our patterns.Watch Full Movie Online Streaming Online and Download

Replacing the tired and abused concept of ‘spirituality‘, with the more accurate, functional, and palpable concept of ‘maturity‘, is one more necessary step on the path towards self-actualization, a move made impossible the moment someone pretends to know something they do not know – an advancement unachievable by anyone who isn’t comfortable with doubt.

Mysticism without skepticism isn’t mysticism at all. It’s just another costume.

It is important remember that a process involving critical thinking need not negate the beauty found in authentic surrender or the release from anxiety and fear that accompanies it. Skepticism does not conflict with non-dual realization. Discerning judgment does not impede the non-attachment to unnecessary desire. Intelligence is not the enemy of inspiration. In fact, education, introspection, and contemplation strengthen rather than weaken our understanding of the inter-connected nature of nature, and the compassion that such connection alludes to.

The truth is that doubt, when married to imagination, carries us to a greater aesthetic appreciation in every moment of consciousness. When we let go of what we hold no evidence for, as the Nastikas did, we are given a freedom from delusion we would otherwise not have; a flexibility which grants us a chance at a more profound understanding of our relationships, ourselves, our lives, our universe, and our precious, fleeting, and love filled moments within it.

For the last four years I’ve been reading about, thinking about, and writing about violence. Most of that work will be coming out later, in a different form. But there is one thing I will tell you that is beyond doubt as it relates to violent conflict – the world is getting better, not worse. And sadly, so few of us seem to know that.

As Steven Pinker has written about many times, every form of violence, when measured objectively, is in decline. Of course there are spikes and valleys in every trend line. As an example, Chicago is currently ahead of schedule. As of mid-April, they have already had one thousand shootings. But we must not mistake fluctuations for long term trends. And that long term trend is undeniable.

You wouldn’t know that listening to the Republican candidates running for office this year. According to them the world is in more chaos than ever before. It’s not. The United States military has been gutted. It hasn’t. And America is sliding into deep decline. It isn’t. According to the Republicans, America, under President Obama’s leadership, has grown weaker. The appropriate response is panic. And the only solution is them. All of which, when checked against facts and measured against history, turns out to be irresponsible fear mongering. But few things sell anything, including demagogues, better than fear.

Please don’t mistake my accurate dismantling of Republican nonsense as a sign that I must be a Democrat. On various issues and at various times, they can be worse. How often have you heard the words “the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer,” leave the lips of some Whole Foods shopping-progressive-utopian-leftist? In fact, that mantra of the mistaken has been the cornerstone of Bernie Sanders recent campaign. And yes, it too is flat wrong – factually, provably, wrong.

While true more people are rich (is that a bad thing?), and the wealthiest folks have become wealthier, it is also true that the poor have become richer as well. Though again, most people don’t seem to know that.

This should be phenomenal news. Thanks to the spread of market economics, more people have been lifted out of poverty than ever before in history. As it currently stands, the United Nations predicts that extreme poverty as we know it may end as soon as the year 2030. Imagine that.

There don’t seem to be many progressive Democrats who see it in their own self-interest to tout the massive human benefits that market economics bring – anymore than there seem to be many conservative Republicans who currently find it in their own self-interest to let you know that the United States is still the World’s dominant economic, military, scientific, and educational power – and not by a little – but by a whole lot.

Fear sells and hysteria sells even better. Good news – well, let’s just keep that quiet. When it comes to politics, all sides preach pessimism.

“I knew it!” you say, “Democrats and Republicans, they are all the same. They are all ‘equally’ dirty!”

No, that is not what I am saying. As comforting as those sorts of over simplifications may be for some, they too dissolve under the scrutiny of education and careful thought.

To listen to the typical liberal Democrat ideologue is to believe that most of the problems found within a city like Detroit in the year 2016, which suffers from high crime, high unemployment, and corrupt management, and which has been run by Democrats since 1962 – were the fault of a former life guard, movie star, and GE spokesman who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 1994. No folks, it isn’t your failure to learn grammatically correct English, read above a 3rd grade level, spend your time doing more than watching MTV cribs, or practice birth control that’s holding you back – it’s Reagan’s fault.

To listen to the typical right wing reactionary is to believe that their consistent inability to rise within the class system of the United States is due not to their failure to ever do more for themselves than crack open a beer at noon, or crack open a book written by anyone whose credentials don’t peak at the achievement of FOX News commentator – but is instead, the fault of Obama. Who, after all, according to sources they seem to trust, wasn’t even born here.

It isn’t that markets change over time, and as a consequence, the skills which are more valued within the marketplace change over time. No, don’t teach your kids about that actuality. Instead, stomp your feet and blame those damn politicians back in that Washington DC who are sending your jobs over to Mexicans and the Chinese. After all, why would you ever want more for your child in terms of opportunity, education, or class, then you yourself achieved?

If I sound harsh, please understand, I am not saying that people trapped in poverty somewhere in the rust belt of the United States don’t need help. What I am saying is that lying to them, telling them those jobs are coming back because some boisterous ‘strong’ man will order them back (to be clear, some may or may not come back, but it will be the market pressures of a growing world economy, and a better educated labor force within the US that bring them back, not indignation) – isn’t helpful. Telling people that illegal immigrants from Mexico are taking their jobs (they’re not, and having grown up in the CA valley I can assure you American citizens were not lining up around the Dairy Queen to apply for a job picking lettuce) – isn’t helpful. Lying to people by telling them that the rich are getting richer at the expense of the poor, because after all, the pie is fixed (it’s not and they’re not) – isn’t helpful.

In fact, I don’t find lying to people who need guidance and help, to ever really be helpful – which is to say, I don’t find the disinformation of the dismal, spread currently by both the progressive and conservative camps, anything other than counter-productive to human progress.

People who feel they are failing, people who have trouble keeping pace, people who believe they struggle more than others, sometimes find solace in the act of externalizing blame. We can all fall into it occasionally, I am certainly no exception. I know when I am indulging that weakness because I am at my most miserable. I try to avoid that. I find it shameful. I try and remember that everyone has to play the hand they have been dealt. Yes, that can feel unfair. Especially when, unlike poker, we can see what the other players are holding. But resentment never turned a pair of threes into a straight flush. To indulge bitterness is to embrace failure. And by selling cynicism, those politicians on the right and left who use dismay and despair as tools to pry free votes, fail the ethical test required of a good leader – honesty and inspiration. Because the world is getting better, and viewing yourself as a casualty of life, rather than an author of it, is nothing less than dis-empowering – always.

If you’re being sold the message from someone that you are a victim – walk away. If you’re being sold the message from someone that you are a victim and you find yourself liking it – run.

Increased inequality should concern us to the degree it reflects diminishing opportunity for upward mobility. To the degree growing inequality is not a reflection of diminishing opportunity; it may in fact be a positive sign. Anytime everyone on the whole is doing better, a small percentage will always achieve even more – they skew the average – and that’s not a bad thing. The economic pie is not fixed.

Those inclined to listen to the populist ideologues of the right will be told their failures are due to other groups – immigrants, Jews, liberals, evil-internationalists, one world government folks, the “establishment”, and depending on how far out on the woo-woo limb we climb, Bilderbergers and the Bohemian Grove crowd. In other words, it is Clinton and Obama’s fault.

Those inclined to listen to the populist ideologues of the left will be told their failures are due to the evil capitalists, and their white, rich, Republican cronies. Every problem on the planet can be neatly and thoughtlessly summed up by the Che Guevara t-shirt crew as the fault of pernicious capitalist-imperialism. And what is their answer to any evil that can’t be remedied by a critique of capitalist-imperialism or a withdrawal of Western military power? Never mind that, after all, everything is Reagan and Bush’s fault.

For the less than well-read, the world’s long standing problems don’t continue to exist precisely because they are complicated, multi-faceted, and hard to solve. They exist because our leaders are stupid and anti-American (right wing populist), or greedy, evil capitalists (left wing populist). In either case, all we need to do is elect a leader who tells us what we want to hear, that those in power are dumb, corrupt, inept, and malevolent, and if we just get the right person in there, they will sort this all out – they promise they will.

It never seems to dawn on some that many of the people serving in our long standing institutions are really smart, really motivated, highly educated people, who are doing the best they can. Especially if you’ve never spent time around people like that, or look around and fail to see them within your own social circle.

Understanding any complicated issue, whether it is health care, foreign policy, or economics, takes effort. It involves reading, studying, talking with those more educated on the topic than you, and thinking through your conclusions. It requires the tools of critical thinking. It demands enough humility to realize that just because you’ve read an issue of Mother Jones, clicked on a status update in your Facebook newsfeed, or tuned into the O’Reilly factor one night, doesn’t mean you have anything at all to add on a topic.

Study habits and humility are socially enforced when you spend your time around smart, knowledgeable people. They are a rarity when you spend your time around ignorant people. And they’re ridiculed when you spend your time around stupid people. For the going-nowhere-in-life crowd, daddies and demagogues are a lot more palatable than the exertion of mature intellectual effort. Why crack a book when you can crack a beer? Why spell out “who is that” when you can just say “who dat”. Baby talk is always easier, right? There can be immediate gratification and short term efficiency, in ignorance – but always at a price.

There is also efficiency in fascism, in the same way that there is efficiency in the back seat of a car when only your dad gets to decide where to go.

The comfort comes from knowing you’re excluded in the decision making process – and therefore, excluded from the responsibility.

But exclusion from responsibility doesn’t mean exclusion from consequences.

That’s worth remembering the next time someone like Donald Trump starts talking about how he will penalize, persuade, or simply ‘fix’ things via edict.

No matter how much you agree with any sentiment, regardless of how strongly it ‘feels’ good – if the means to achieve the end involves everyone else, in this case the House, the Senate, the Judiciary, your brain – and the Constitution, sitting in the backseat of the car – it’s not freedom or a Democratic Republic you are looking for – it’s daddy.