I listened to the imam’s Friday sermon recently and – as he exhorted us to various good things such as forgiveness, abandoning jealousy and resentment, cleaning our hearts of greed and wishing for others what we wish for themselves – I thought: easier said than done.\nPersonal ethics, character traits, and the emotions that drive them, largely arise at a subconscious level – they happen before your thoughts, and are more likely to control your thoughts than the reverse. Sometimes they even evade your conscious control – like they live in a part of your mind that your rationality isn’t in control of. It’s very difficult to control your character traits consciously even if you \ndo\n fully accept that you should make a change (eg “I should stop being jealous” or “I should be grateful for what I have”). I speak from personal experience, and recognise what Sufyan al-Thawri meant when he reportedly said ‘Never have I dealt with anything more difficult than my own self, which sometimes helps me and sometimes opposes me.’\nConsciously implementing character trait changes requires good levels of interoception (internal awareness), special tools and practices, and hard work. Many of these tools and practices are today the domain of therapy, coaching or self-help. These are things like routines, journaling (regularly writing down thoughts and feelings in order to unravel and understand them better over time), affirmations (personally-meaningful positive statements stated repeatedly on a regular basis in the hope that they sink in subconsciously), manifesting (the practice of thinking aspirational thoughts with the purpose of making them real) and meditation.\nReligious traditions also embody a heavy investment into such personal development. Contemplation of personal errors, repentance for mistakes and sins, mindfulness of divine power and powerlessness of man (and therefore acceptance of what cannot be altered), monitoring intentions, abnegation and fasting, and other practices are strong features of Islam. Spiritual schools (such as Sufism in Islam) went even further into this, with mentorship, meditative practices and induced altered states of consciousness and other tools and practices (many of them sadly likely lost to time) used to cultivate internal strength, discipline, moral upstandingness and other positive character traits.\nUnfortunately, our contemporary media-driven society lends itself to preaching more than it does to long-term building, and much modern religious discourse centers on telling people \nwhat\n to achieve rather than \nhow\n – as though they should be able to achieve these things easily if they only made the decision. The problem is the reverse – most moral intuitions are capable of discerning a good destination, but the path is very difficult and people aren’t equipped with the tools by default (unless you were very lucky, most of these tools weren’t taught to you by your parents, school or community).\nThese tools have proliferated in fields other than religion today (such as therapy and self-help), and have seen rapid development over the last few decades – we now understand how the human brain works, the basic psychological principles at play and the mechanisms through which these tools and practices have impact. We also have large and growing bodies of experimental data (informal and scientific) on the efficacy of different practices.\nThese tools still need a fundamental value system to give them meaning, as well as an epistemological framework through which that system is derived, and that’s an area where religion still has a leading role (albeit a diminished one, no longer a monopoly). Rather than condemn religion to obsolescence, I think this provides a roadmap for what they could become. They provide a guiding philosophy arguing \nwhy\n to pursue self-improvement already – but in adopting the most effective of modern tools, in conjunction with spiritual communities, they could become a far more powerful force for personal good than they have been for a long time.

On Practical Religion, Self-Improvement and Why Sermons Don’t Work

(\nThis is a two-year old draft that I finally decided to update and publish.\n)\nThe western world, especially the US, is becoming allergic to getting involved in international conflict. This is down to two major dynamics. The first is the extreme unpopularity of wars abroad, making them politically toxic. Western populations have simply had enough; they’re acutely aware that they have frequently been the villains on the global stage for decades. Being forced to consistently stand on the wrong side of history is a moral injury, and despite the widespread opposition the democratic system has resisted them for too long. They have also watched the total capture of their governments and decision-making processes by special interests who profit from war (military-industrial complexes and foreign lobbies), and it has made their democracies less accountable and less representative.\nThe second is the more-than-anticipated economic pressure caused by these wars (the $2.3tn spent by the US on Afghanistan will go down as one of the worst blunders by an empire ever), The political elite belatedly realised the hubris of this, given that these decades of conflict failed achieved any permanent success, only damaging their soft power and draining economic resources – this was the realisation behind Obama’s desire to disengage from the MENA region, even though he was repeatedly thwarted. This takes on a new importance given that there’s now great power competition vs China – the west can afford even less to squander resources now than when it was a hegemon.\nAdd to that, I believe the US specifically will become more inward-looking over future decades as it is forced to address long-running internal problems of economic inequality, simmering for years, and racial inequality, which came from being long-dormant to being politically explosive in the last two years.\nAll else being equal, western countries would simply scale back foreign military presence and become less interventionist, but they can’t – the problems are now looking for them, rather than the reverse. The UAE is trying to start World War 3 by goading attacks on Iran, whilst Iran threatens war on Israel and the entire gulf bullies Yemen. Putin encroaches ever further on Europe, undermining and then invading western democracies piece by piece. Authoritarians attempt to subvert democracy as a concept through disinformation and electoral interference. The last few years have even seen outright attacks on an unprecedented level, including:\nRepeated election meddling (US elections ’16)\nCyber attacks on important infrastructure (Solarwinds, DNC hack, UK Salisbury investigation hack, En Marche election campaign hack)\nIP theft (costing upward of $300bn/year by most estimates) – inc aerospace\n1\n data on 21 million US federal employees \n2\n, network tech\n3\n and much \nmore\n (this one has been going on for years).\nOutright attacks on individuals on foreign soil (Russian Salisbury nerve agent attacks, Saudi attempted attacks in Oslo, Canada, UK and US)\nmedia attacks and concerted disinformation campaigns, which are far too numerous to count but have had incredibly severe consequences, including playing a contributory role in Brexit and undermining COVID response.\nMilitary attacks on allies of western democracies (pick a Russian campaign)\nCompare the severity of each of these actions with the unprecedented response, or impotent total lack thereof. Imagine what the response would have been at any point in the last century – this level of passivity was last seen during the appeasement of Hitler. It’s deeply unsustainable – how far will Putin and the CCP go before they decide they’ve had enough?\nAnd at the same time as the west’s disengagement and the empowerment of malicious actors, we’re also living through an incredible democratisation of speech and media, bringing with it the empowerment of voices never heard on this scale before. The oppressed of the world are speaking up, telling their own stories, shaming their oppressors and demanding that the wrongs which led to their subjugation (often involving the West) are corrected.\nThe world is in the middle of a major rebalancing – decades of total unipolarity and a power imbalance that were the consequence of a unique time in history (primarily colonialism’s aftermath, then the world wars and the cold war). The future of the world will be more equal.\nSo on the one side is a deep western desire for disengagement, unpopularity of war and a geopolitical rebalancing to end the unipolar world order. On the other side is energised autocracy expanding ever wider, as well as the internationalised democratic uprisings in the MENA and the coming age of African populations demanding solidarity and support from the world to right historic wrongs. Both extremes – the interventionist and the anti-interventionist – are deeply unsustainable positions. How do these conflicting dynamics combine? What will the outcomes be in the long-term, for the position of the west in the world, the world’s geopolitical balance, and for populations attempting to emerge from decades of tyranny and corruption?\nObviously this evades any simple answer, and these trends will evolve over decades and reveal the answer slowly rather than all at once. But we’re in an unsustainable place – something has got to give. And as usual, all these problems are exacerbated by conformist thinking by those in institutions clinging to “normality”, unwilling to contemplate that new problems in a new context will require solutions and modes of thinking that weren’t even on the menu over the last few decades.

Diverging Trends: A Geopolitically Active West

The original promise of Bitcoin was that it would free people from dependence on a banking and financial system many consider corrupt, unethical, arbitrary and unaccountable. 12 years on from its creation, can it be considered anything other than a failure?\nSure, Bitcoin’s phenomenal performance as a speculative asset made many people rich – that doesn’t replace a financial system though. Volatility makes it a poor and risky store of value, as well as a difficult-to-use medium of exchange – due to constant fluctuations, numbers mean so little, meaning you just have to mentally operate in fiat and constantly convert back and forth.\nAs a person who runs a human rights NGO and deals with activists every single day, what can I \ndo\n or tell others to do? I can pay people inside authoritarian states censorship-free, converting to FIAT at both ends, but that’s it. And as someone running an NGO, I can’t make an annual budget of $XX and then wake up one morning and find I have Y% of that available due to volatility. Which means I’m locked in FIAT banking, dependent and vulnerable. That’s what I thought Bitcoin was going to fix.\nI’m asking these questions because I was (and still want to be) a believer in the original promise of Bitcoin. I want to be free from an arbitrary banking system that can sanction and cut people off as easily as social media apps do. Is there still hope?\nI want to commit to this idea and technology, including with resources – so what role can I play in making this vision actually play out? I feel those developing this stuff don’t see people like me, only speculators tweeting #HODL all day. Smart, non-dogmatic people who care about this space, please reach out with thoughts, ideas, solutions, projects etc.

Did Bitcoin fail in its promise? Where next?

Most of human history is driven by trauma and ego. These and a shortage of empathy, inability to see others’ perspectives and projection of pain onto others are key ingredients in dysfunctional organisations, coercive cultures and broken families. Most of the current world, including those parts of it which cause most anger and frustration – unaccountable political systems, power dynamics, the cruelty and mercilessness of unfettered capitalism – would be significantly ameliorated by a radical increase in empathy.\nThere are certain substances – natural and synthetic – with properties that include cultivating deep empathy on a chemical level inside the human brain. They facilitate direct and profound personal spiritual experiences, heal severe psychological damage and trauma, enable the reevaluation and repair of personal relationships, and can facilitate the adoption of healthier attitudes across life. Most of these effects are actively being studied in scientific and medical institutions across North America and Europe.\nThey certainly aren’t a silver bullet for our contemporary ethical, spiritual, social and mental health crises by any means, nor a replacement for the years of reflection and moral education required to be a good citizen. However, they make a impressive start.\nMany of these substances are on a direct pathway towards legalisation (or at least regulation) in the west, a few years behind cannabis. If proven safe, are there any moral arguments against encouraging the widespread use of these substances for personal and spiritual growth, mental wellness and spiritual reconnection?

Psychedelics as a tool for spirituality and personal growth

According to the Quran, salah – ritual prayer – is supposed to “\nprohibit immorality and wrongdoing\n” – إِن الصلاة تنهى عن الفحشاء والمنكر – \nQuran 29:45\n. Growing up, I always wondered how this works – I knew plenty of people (as everyone probably does) whose prayers are little more than a habit or compulsion instilled in childhood, and whose religious expressions do little to instil any kind of moral character. But recently I’ve been reevaluating everything I thought I knew about salah, and considering whether we even understand how it works.\nAs \nHassan Farhan al-Maliki asserts\n, Muslims today primarily teach salah as a ritual of physical motions. We study the ritual requirements and the traditions of the Prophet’s prayer to minute detail, but only devote a cursory glance to its purpose – instilling \ndhikr\n according to the Quran, though nobody has a good idea what that means – or the mechanisms by which it’s meant to function. We’re taught the importance of khushu’ (variously translated as focus, humility, presence or submission of heart etc) at a young age, but there’s little discussion of what that means in detail and no guidance on how to achieve it.\nSalah was described as having incredibly deep emotional and spiritual effects on early generations of Muslims. The Prophet had a practice of praying when angry, anxious or distressed, and described it as قرة عيني (his comfort, or the coolness of his eyes). Others described it as a relief for even physical pain – Urwah ibn al-Zubayr reportedly requested that his leg be amputated whilst he was in salah. Salah was also described as not being easy – one of the second generation stated that he struggled with it for 20 years, before being blessed with it. None of this matches my experience, or that of anyone I ever met, with the ritual I was taught.\nPhysical rituals aside, there seem to be strong parallels between the internal aspect of salah – ideas of dhikr and khushu’, and meditative practices from far-eastern traditions. Khushu’, if described as the stilling of inner turbulence, is concentration meditation. Recitations of the Quran can be stilling mantras, as those used to assist in entering a meditative state. Other ideas such as the link between physical positions of ritual prayer and internal states, the practice of observation and disciplining of the mind (muraqaba, as it is known by Sufis), and the applicability of dua as both a gratitude journal and as vision board seem to be other areas where contemporary mindfulness and spirituality practice seem to easily and naturally fit onto traditional Muslim spiritual practices.\nMindfulness\n, the quality cultivated by meditation, makes you more deeply aware of your situation in the moment, more conscious of your choices and more lucidly aware of what really matters. This increases your ability to act against social norms, culture and other forms of conditioning when they push you towards actions that are immoral or amoral. This ability to break out of your default programming and make active moral choices, gives you more moral ownership of your actions, as well as strengthening your focus and willpower. If salah prevents fahsha and munkar by increasing your awareness and moral agency, then mindfulness is inseparable from salah – to the extent that its cultivation must be considered one of its objectives.\nLots of questions arise from this – how much more backing is there for this theory? And how much of a Muslim spiritual tradition is still extant, and excavatable? How do we study and teach it? How far does the analogy between salah and eastern meditation go, and which schools of meditation is it most similar to? What are the differences? Was salah once taught as a meditative tradition, of which Sufi traditions and techniques (such as muraqaba and dhikr) are a remnant? How do we study and practice salah today, and how do we teach it?\nSpirituality is almost impossible to learn other than experientially, which is why it’s so esoteric. If meditative schools of salah existed and were passed down orally, then many disruptive cataclysms (such as the Mongol invasion, the crusades and the colonial era) could explain our spiritual impoverishment today. In these morally and spiritually challenging times, we have an even greater responsibility to recapture and build on what was lost.

Blog

On Practical Religion, Self-Improvement and Why Sermons Don’t Work

Diverging Trends: A Geopolitically Active West

Did Bitcoin fail in its promise? Where next?

Psychedelics as a tool for spirituality and personal growth

Salah as a mindfulness practice