THE FIVE FINGERS OF SOCIAL DESIRE
93
life’, are often derived from Weber’s description of the cultural implications of a
modem capitalism.
Yet Weber’s crucial insights into the cultural implications of capitalism
have often been upstaged by popular critiques of modernity that emphasize
‘rationality’ and ‘spiritual decay 5 as causes of an impoverished quality of
everyday life and work. As in the case of early eco-fascism in Germany, instead
of critiquing capitalist rationalization, theorists blamed modem rationality for
society’s ills .3 And rather than fight capitalism by creating cooperative social
and political institutions, such critics fought the cultural and ecological effects of
capitalism by proposing a spirituality and anti-rationality that would either
co-exist with, or perhaps reform, the capitalist system.
Yet the cause of cultural and ecological degradation is indeed capitalist
rationalization, not a modem fall from spiritual grace. And if capitalism is a set
of social relationships based on exploitation, regularization, alienation, and
commodification, then the antidote to capitalist rationalization is a new
relationality, an empathetic, sensual, and rational way of relating that is deeply
cooperative, pleasurable, and meaningful.
Instead of pitting the idea of spirit against the idea of rationality, we need
to cultivate a new rational and empathetic orientation capable of de-stabilizing
capitalist rationalization. We need to move beyond a focus on spirituality to a
focus on a rational and empathetic relationality to create institutions that will
nurture cooperative ways of relating socially and ecologically. However, the
shift from spirituality to a relationality entails a great leap for Westerners
steeped in normative dualisms between spirit and matter, or intuition and
rationality. Just as we learn that black is the opposite of white, we learn that
rationality is the opposite of intuition and spirituality. Accordingly, when
disenchanted by a rationalized and ‘McDonaldsiari world, we confuse
rationalization with rationality, and look immediately to intuition and spirit for
both solace and a solution.
Today, when we appeal to the term spirituality to discuss cultural and
ecological meaning, we end up taking home more than we bargained for.
Anchoring contemporary ideas of social and ecological integrity to ancient
dualistic
‘activating
principles’
perpetuates
reductive
and
polarized
understandings of reality. The term spirit is embedded within the psychic
trenches of Western metaphysical dualism. Its origin can be traced to the Latin
'spirittLs’, an ‘activating principle’ that was believed to animate an inert,
feminine, and passive body with the invigorating properties of breath.
According to the ancient Romans, it is when we breathe (spirare) an eternal
breath (jspiritus) that an otherwise inactive and ephemeral body comes to life.
Conversely, it is when spiritus leaves the body that we die.