paying-attention

I just read something that bugged me. I'll get back to the seven deadly sins later. Lately I've been kind of busy practicing them.

Bill Moyers has a new show coming out. That's not particularly newsworthy (although I'll probably watch it) but it is the occasion for me to complain. Writing for the Associated Press, someone named Frazier Moore commends Moyers for allegedly bridging the gap "between absolutists taking their isolated refuge in the silos of spiritualism and secularism."

Let's leave aside the question of whether an interviewer with Moyers' solid history of defending secularism is even capable of bridging such a gap. My problem is with Frazier Moore's choice of the word "spiritualism" for the worldview of the God camp. Does he mean "spirituality"? If so, why doesn't he say so?

According to my computer's Babylon translator (English to English) spiritualism is a "belief in the existence of spirits and the ability to establish contact with the dead through a medium" or a "philosophical viewpoint maintaining that spirit is the prime element of reality." Wikipedia goes on to tell me that "Spiritualism is a religious movement, prominent from the 1840s to the 1920s, found primarily in English-speaking countries. The movement's distinguishing feature is the belief that the spirits of the dead can be contacted by adepts. These spirits are believed to lie on a higher spiritual plane than humans, and are therefore capable of providing guidance in both worldly and spiritual matters."

Babylon says spirituality is the "quality of being spiritual; involvement in spiritual matters; spiritual aspect of a person." In Wikipedia, "Spirituality is, in a narrow sense, a concern with matters of the spirit. The spiritual, concerning as it does eternal verities regarding Man's ultimate nature, is often contrasted with the temporal or the worldly. It may include belief in supernatural powers, as in religion, but the emphasis is on personal experience. It may be an expression for life perceived as higher, more complex or more integrated with one's worldview, as contrasted with the merely sensual."

I realize this guy is only a television critic. From what I've seen before, he's a pretty good television critic. As an example, I seem to recall he called "Friends" the most overrated sitcom of all time. That's good criticism. The problem is, as a media critic he has to use the tools of his trade. The main tool of any writer's trade is the English language.

Especially when talking about how people with different worldviews have trouble communicating, it's important to, well, communicate. I just don't see much dialogue being advanced between those to whom religion and spirituality are key elements of their discourse and the mainstream media, if the mainstreamers don't even know the difference between religion and spiritualism.