I keep hearing from people in my life that spirituality is an essential part of living a meaningful existence. I hear the phrase “let go and let God” and “everything happens for a reason” used a lot as advice and comfort. However, I’m an atheist and a materialist. I don’t know how I could even be spiritual with those beliefs. At the same time, my life is not fulfilling despite the fact that I am not struggling financially. Moreover, I feel paralyzed when I try to get off my privileged ass and do even the bare minimum for socialist organizing because I realize that it goes directly against my labor aristocratic class interests. I feel like knowing that sticking my neck out and contributing to the real movement to change the present state of things is the morally correct thing to do isn’t enough to drive me.
In short, what is spirituality? Is it compatible with materialism? If so, how? And if spirituality is the wrong tree to bark up, how can I drive myself to do what is to be done?
Being generous in how I interpret this, I think probably getting to know poorer people might help. Even just researching testimonies about the suffering they go through in various aspects of life should stir something.
It sounds more like an executive functioning issue than a moral one from how you phrase it.
That is probably it. I think a very difficult to treat depression has taken the wind out of my sails to a point where it’s hard for me to be motivated co do anything I’m not already in the habit of doing.
I didn’t want to presume, it just sounded very familiar. There are lots of resources online for executive functioning problems, though. My biggest piece of advice is to try to break things down into the most minute steps possible. Your goal shouldn’t be jumping out onto the streets and punching cops at protests, it should be just, looking up what’s in your area and reading about them, for example, and when you’ve done that, set a new goal (e.g. maybe write one of them an email).