Milking the “machine”

Not only are there endless gadgets and machines, but there is pervasive spiritual materialism under which the great (religious) traditions have become just so much milk in the marketplace. – Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche.

With the rise of modern science, the world machine became the dominant metaphor of the modern era, and the Church adapted its medieval cosmology to the new mechanistic paradigm. – Fr. Richard Rohr.

Among the effects of the machine metaphor is that humans are treated as material cogs rather than the sentient beings we are. The dominant institutions of the world—its machines—are far more interested in their own survival and growth than any real concern for their living constituency, which may help explain the significant drop in church attendance and the increase in open system spiritual pursuits like the Buddhist “sanga” and the “Wild Church.” These are more consonant with the Way of the Watercourse.