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masque wrote (edited )

The authors developed a new measure they call “spiritual superiority.” It measures whether people feel superior to those “who lack the spiritual wisdom they ascribe to themselves.”

The measure’s questionnaires ask people to respond on a scale of 1 to 7 to a series of statements. Example statements include “I am more in touch with my senses than most others,” “I am more aware of what is between heaven and earth than most people,” and “The world would be a better place if others too had the insights that I have now.”

I kinda dislike the idea that thinking you understand something that others don't is "feeling superior" and a bad thing. I'm sure that some of the vegans on this site can get where I'm coming from.

To be clear, I'm always suspicious of "spiritual knowledge" that has no evidentiary or rigorous logical basis and which draws from disparate, often contradictory religious sources. It seems deliberately vague, in order to not alienate people with differing belief systems, and that vagueness also serves as a bulwark against demands for evidence or supporting arguments. And in its most secular form, "spiritual" basically describes a loosely-defined subset of mental health & philosophical knowledge that is only investigated by adherents on a shallow level.

But in principle, if there is any truth in the domain of knowledge that "spiritual training" practices are supposed to relate to then it would make sense for people who have studied them in greater depth to feel that their understanding of these topics is better than the average person.

I mean, it's not weird if someone with a math degree thinks that they're "more aware of geometry than most people," right? And lots of anarchists probably in some sense think that the world "would be a better place if others too had the (political) insights that I have now"?

This research is a) entirely unsurprising to me, and b) almost feels like an attempt to have your cake and eat it too by indirectly "debunking spiritual training" without actually addressing the truth of the underlying claims.

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kingshit wrote

Regardless of domain do we all not believe what we choose to think and do is somewhat 'better' than the things we used to think/do (and what others continue to think/do)? And having made an educated decision we have more certainty about our actions.

That being said, I had a spiritual experience that I would describe as my ego losing its grip on me for a couple of months, and I was described as having a big ego during this time despite my experience being the total opposite. My confidence presented as having a strong ego, and I imagine other spiritual liberations have similar effects.

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