A few quick off-the-cuff observations to follow-up on my post The “Secular” Party. As I note, outright god(s)-deniers/doubters are a small minority within the liberal/Left/non-traditional/non-religious sector of the American demographic. Socializing with people on the Left part of the political spectrum, Blue America that is, you can discern some of the divisions if you look for them.

I suspect that a large number of the people who would be characterized as part of the “Secular” coalition are the Cultural Creatives, in other words, the descendants of the 1960s counter-culture. Many of these people would disavow the appellation “religious,” but would embrace “spiritual.” From my own personal experience those who identify as atheists or agnostics avoid the term “spiritual,” and though there exists a modus vivendi with the “Cultural Creatives,” we (atheists & agnostics) tend to look at them much as the coporate elite of the Republican party might look at the social conservative foot-soldiers-political allies, but not totally all there.

The chasm between “Cultural Creatives” and genuine seculars, who I will call “Hard Seculars,” is more salient than conservatives might imagine. For example:

The majority of “Hard Seculars” are male, while the majority of “Cultural Creatives” are female. This impacts the general tenor of both cultures, the former will debate, the latter will dialogue, the former will breakdown and analyze, the latter will want a “holistic” or “synoptic” impression.
“Hard Seculars” have no respect for “the sacred,” no cows are holy. In contrast, “Cultural Creatives” have a tendency to sacralize everything around them, leading to a thorough environmentalism. While “Hard Seculars” might be environmentalists from a hard-headed cost vs. benefit angle, “Cultural Creative” ecological awareness is rooted in spiritual values.
“Hard Seculars” have explicit values, axioms and enjoy propositional logic, and this results in a lot of clash with other groups. “Cultural Creatives” are in many ways counter-cultural traditionalists who prefer intuition and implicit truths. In other words, “Cultural Creatives” want the “simple life” without its hangups (patriarchy and puritanism).

All of the above are fuzzy on the edges, but I think people can recognize the generalities of which I speak. In the final analysis, I think “Cultural Creatives,” or the broad spiritual majority of the “Secular Coalition,” are a genuine cultural force with their own internal system of values and ways of interacting and speaking. They are a feminist-liberal counterpoint to evangelical/traditional Christians in the United States. On the other hand, “Hard Seculars” are peculiar oddballs, and don’t really have numbers to create a mass movement, rather, they are the aggregate of individuals one end of the bell curve of “spirituality” who act as an annoying reality-check on flights of fancy.

There are few specific issues that I think that “Cultural Creative” and “Hard Secular” values clash. For example, biotechnology. Here the “Cultural Creatives” are Rifkinesque and have a Romantic aversion to tampering with Nature, while “Hard Seculars” are strictly consequentialist. While reason guides the “Hard Seculars,” the heart is the compass of the “Cultural Creatives.”

Some of these issues are pre-figured in The Politics of Architecture, a piece that points to peculiar socio-political confluences in American life.

Posted by razib at 03:12 AM