Spirit

Quantified Self T-shirt

Yesterday I was reading interesting information on a group called Quantified Self. This form of self-discovery and personal development is truly secular and aligned with scientific methodology. It could be described, from what I have read in their literature, as better living through math. I hope to learn more about it.

Thinking about this information and my own humanist practice, which includes similar behavioral techniques, I thought of the common marketing jargon used by many in the Feel-Better-About-Yourself industry: Mind, body, spirit. I wince a bit at the word "spirit" in this context. It stimulates post-traumatic ripples of horror from my early life when The Holy Spirit was used alternately as good fairy and avenging angel by burqa-clad nuns, wielding yard sticks.

The Quantified Self-ers raised another mental question mark in my neural network. If we reduce ourselves to composites of nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms with a few other elements thrown in for good measure, do we run the risk of being too narrow-minded about the equations of good health and social fellowship? What are the mathematical equations for fear, anger and joy?What are the mathematical equations for love and commitment?

Now, I am sure I can hear the chalk screeching across an M.I.T. blackboard (quaint metaphor) with mathematical representations of hormones and limbic system. But, how specifically quantifiable are my mind-emotion-body complexes into one equation that represents individual human emotional response? Is there a point where we have to let go of math and physical science in favor or psychology and social science? I think so.

I believe the Middle Way of the ancients is translatable to crafting math, physical science and social science into personal practice. The mind is a product of the chemical responses of the body. The body develops from and responds to genetic and environmental causes. The emotions are the instinctive and automatic responses to internal and external stimuli. The whole, the person, is a synthesis of all these simultaneous streams of experience. So, when I now hear the word "spirit", after a brief reflexive wince, I hear "integrated emotional response".

I see my own humanist practice as scientific. I am my own walking laboratory. In this, I agree heartily with the Quantified Self folks. The challenge of humanist practice for me is learning to apply the science of my laboratory in harmony with the results of the personal laboratories of the millions of people around me. This is the element of compassion, which is most likely undefinable in one equation.