Wrestling with the Rottweiler: On Reading Mr. Dawkins

So I finally read the controversial bestseller The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, two years after I read--and almost unquestioningly accepted--one of its formal rebuttals, Karen Armstrong’s The Case For God. Critics of Armstrong who also happen to be fans of Dawkins may be disappointed that my respect and admiration for Armstrong has not diminished, after reading Dawkins’s work. This is in part because I don’t believe that they’re direct, natural opponents. But I will disagree with Armstrong in her portrayal of Dawkins as overly aggressive or militant. What I have found in Dawkins is a mind as scrupulous as he is unflinching in his search for truth. The God Delusion is full of wit, robust logic, and great passion. There were moments where his contempt for religion nearly overrode the content of his arguments, but the content itself was virtually airtight, especially where it concerned religion’s track record. But again, his love for the natural world is greater than his hatred for the supernatural. I especially felt his love for the reality of the universe that science has unveiled, in the very last segment of the book, titled “The Mother of All Burkas”. But I’ll say no more about whether he takes it too far or not. You should go and read it and decide for yourself.

Theist? Atheist? Agnostic?

I decided to read this book because I felt it would be irresponsible of me not to. I read Armstrong’s response to New Atheism, so it’s only fair to examine New Atheism itself, right? Prompted by The Case for God I’ve spent the past two years reading books on religion, written by believers and nonbelievers alike. I’ve been reading book after book in an attempt to clarify not just what stance is best to take on religion, but exactly what it is I believe to be the truth about existence. I read this book most recently because I have been trying to sort out a very complicated relationship I have with religion and the idea of God.

To say I had lost my faith in God would be inaccurate, because I’m not quite sure I had any to begin with. My history with faith could be characterized by a series of attempts to get it, as though it were something I was lacking. This seems like a good enough indicator to stop trying,yet I’ve been compelled by and attracted to many aspects of religion all the same. Every time I thought I was done with it, something pulled me back. I felt very confused, and didn’t know where to stand. Whether it was faith (whatever that could possibly mean) or merely a sentimental loyalty, this feeling clearly demanded my attention. I felt condemned to agnosticism, and I didn’t particularly like being there, hoping that if I dug just a little deeper, I could discover what notion is enthroned in my psyche. So I wanted to see if ‘Darwin’s Rottweiler’ Richard Dawkins could tip me--poor, indecisive wretch--in the direction of atheism. I wanted to see if he could change my mind. I hoped to test my own views on religion and see if they stood up to the author’s rhetoric. Any God that could be argued away by just a book, I reasoned, was obviously a god I didn’t truly believe in, and not something worth believing in in the first place. Not just considering his arguments, but observing my reaction to his arguments would reveal myself to myself. So reading a book like The God Delusion was a method of honing, sharpening, and clarifying.

Biting Back

I was surprised by it, in a few ways. First, I didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as I did. I’m not a huge fan of polemic, but I must admit it was great fun to read, thanks to the wit and clarity of Dawkins’ prose. The kind of atheism Dawkins espouses is a much more politicized one. He encourages atheists to stand up to the discrimination they face. Atheists and skeptics are not given the same respect afforded to believers in many parts of the world, the uber-religious United States being one of them. Yes, he does outright attack religion in many places (mainly the parts where it sucks), but he wasn’t nearly as aggressive as I thought he would be. He seemed less pugnacious as Sam Harris in The Moral Landscape (and even less so than Hitchens in God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything). But if his words do seem barbed, you can hardly blame him, seeing as his own profession and everything he’s worked for is itself under threat from religious lobbyists trying to force schools to teach creationism and Intelligent Design alongside evolution. And let’s not forget when he was writing this book, the Bush administration had been halting funding in the U.S. for stem-cell research, a potentially life-saving pursuit. He feels his world--which is also everybody’s, by the way--is under attack. They bite, and he bites back (with pen, sans sword). So, fair enough.

Zeitgeist

But above all, I was also surprised at how much I agreed with him. A lot of his arguments I had at least heard the gist of before (such as were phrased by Comte-Sponville in The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality, and John Shelby Spong in The Sins of Scripture), while other conclusions he made were ones I had arrived at on my own, only to find them articulated better here. For example, I was always troubled by the way people tend to be selective of which parts of the Bible they obey, depending on their own cultural standards. This suggested that people don’t actually derive their morals from the Bible, but rather from standards outside and independent of it. Dawkins covers this in the chapter titled ‘The “Good Book” and the Changing Moral Zeitgeist’:

Remember, all I am trying to establish for the moment is that we do not, as a matter of fact, derive our morals from scripture. Or, if we do, we pick and choose among the scriptures for the nice bits and reject the nasty. But then we must have some independent criterion for deciding which are the moral bits: a criterion which, wherever it comes from, cannot come from scripture itself and is presumable available to all of us whether we are religious or not.

Of course, many religious people today don’t take the Bible literally, and don’t feel as though they have to, in light of the Bible scholarship that has emerged in the past two hundred years. But a non-literal view makes it much trickier to hold on to religion as we know it. Some can manage it, others can’t. I have been trying to find out which camp I belong to, and if God has any meaning left to me. If anything of my spiritual ties to Christianity remains, it has a closer resemblance to Spong’s non-theistic version. And for that reason, I actually found it easy to side with Dawkins on many points.

Religion = Child Abuse

Another point Dawkins raises that’s bothered me so often in the past is the contingency of religious belief. The biggest reason why I might prefer to be a Christian rather than a Muslim or a Rastafarian is because I was raised, more or less, as a Christian, and have lived in a predominantly Christian culture. How unfortunate for those living outside of Christendom! Are they to be damned forever because they weren’t lucky enough to be raised with a bias toward Lord Jesus Christ? More often than not faith is not a choice, so how could a loving God force an impossible choice on us? The habits we’re taught in childhood are incredibly powerful. And what Dawkins wants us to consider is calling a child a “Muslim girl” or a “Christian boy” is as ridiculous as calling one a “Marxist child”. He does not ask people to raise their children as atheists per se, but to raise them to think for themselves and decide what they believe after they’ve learned enough about the world and are mature enough to make that decision on their own. Makes sense to me. At first, I was a little shocked that he went so far as to call indoctrination a form of child abuse, but the more I consider it, the more I realize he’s definitely on to something.

“Gateway Drug” Religion

Religious moderates and religious liberals may resent the way Dawkins lumps them in the same camp as fundamentalists, but he does make a compelling case for doing so, however much it rankles people. One thing he mentions which I hadn’t considered before, and which I find very difficult to shake off, is that even though a religious practice and the doctrine behind it may be perfectly innocuous in most cases, it may lead to more sinister strains, as so many are based on something not based on conclusive evidence, and driven by faith, which doesn’t require evidence. The fact that so many of the 14th Dalai Lama’s followers regard him as a reincarnation of the semi-divine spirit Avalokitesvara makes them vulnerable to all sorts of abuses of power. Thankfully Tenzin Gyatso is an open-minded and compassionate person, and has given up his role as head of the Tibetan government-in-exile, and remains only a head of state and their spiritual leader. This is great, but this lineage is still a gamble, like all monarchies that claim power by divine right. Again, he has done much to bolster the hopes and morale of his people and promote peace throughout the world; I think this can’t be overstated. But while the Tibetans of Dharamsala are more democratically organized now, keep in mind that it took thirteen (Buddhist) predecessors to get to this point. And those ones didn’t seem to mind having all that power.

Credo: A Rough Sketch

If nothing else, I realised from reading this book that I have much more in common with atheists than I do theists: I believe in evolution. I believe the universe came into being 13.7 billion years ago. I believe that human beings are just another form of complex life, one more species among the billions on this planet, and we have an intelligence to which other animals are not entirely restricted, therefore we are not as special in the animal kingdom as we thought. I believe we are capable of uplifting acts of goodness, as well as chilling acts of evil, and neither are necessarily proof of a good or evil will pervading the entire, non-living universe. We are extraordinary, but we are not the be-all and end-all of evolution, because it’s an ongoing story and something better than us will emerge, (if we don’t destroy the planet, that is). I believe in all of these things which we have learned through the scientific method. And if new evidence came along to discredit it all, I would simply have to change my beliefs to suit the facts.

There are theists who believe all these things as well, but where I differ with them is that whatever transcendent experience we can acquire in this lifetime--satori, Grace, Brahman, creative flow--it is not likely to be the result of a Super-intelligence coming in from outside of our universe and deliberately injecting us with Himself. Whatever divinity is, it probably comes from within us, not from Elsewhere. Also, I don’t believe in the literal Virgin Birth, Resurrection, or any other such miracles, any more than I believe in the literal virgin birth of the Buddha or the literal resurrection of Osiris.

I can’t express how tempted I am to think in theistic terms, but if I were to be ruthlessly honest I would have to admit that there is no proof that our access to enlightenment is caused by Someone Else. I believe our focus on the hereafter is a threat to the good that comes from the here and now: this is the only good we’ve known, because now is all we have. There’s a reason our visions of heaven resemble Earth but shinier; it’s the only point of reference we have. C.S. Lewis’ assertion that because nothing on earth could satisfy his deepest longing implied there must be something beyond this world that does is unconvincing, though extremely attractive. It feels redundant to state these empirically verified beliefs, because I’ve held them for a long time now. But this book confronts me with them, and reminds me that to accept these things as truth and then adopt a worldview not based on them is irresponsible and lazy.

“To you be your religion; to me, mine.”

What I also appreciated about this book is that Dawkins cuts admirably through all the moral relativism that floats around in secular society. In a culture where it’s more P.C. to say ‘I don’t agree with you’ than to say ‘your argument is wrong’, I’m kind of impressed by his brass. If a Christian believes that only through accepting Jesus can we be saved, then this belief implies the corollary that souls of non-believers are in mortal danger.

He may not admit it in polite conversation, but it’s there. And yet I can’t even count how many conversations I’ve had that have shied away from it, out of politeness, or politics. Of course, a Christian can also believe in another person’s right to disagree. But that same person believes in a God who presides over believers and non-believers alike. It’s the same with an atheist. Even if an atheist says “You can believe what you like, I don’t agree with you,” he is implying that he thinks the other person’s worldview is false. We associate argument with discord and aggression, but it can have positive benefits as well. Being goaded into a kind of intellectual sparring match can helps us to clarify what it is we're defending. In arguing "your views are incorrect and here is why..." he forces readers to be really honest with themselves.

Let’s Talk

Attacking, demonizing and belittling the other side is obviously no solution. As the religion debate is enflamed more and more every day, I think we’ve got to be as compassionate and respectful as possible as we attempt to carry on a dialogue. Of course, it is difficult to hold a conversation when the other side is wholly devoted to your annihilation. But even in more peaceful company there is a danger in simply saying ‘you have your beliefs and I have mine’, agreeing to disagree and then going off and living in one's own hermetically sealed worlds. Living so subjectively makes it nearly impossible to speak meaningfully about anything, and we start to teeter over into nihilism. I think by taking a bolder stance on the matter Dawkins is trying to call our attention to that danger. Just because, as the truism goes, truth is subjective, it doesn't mean we aren't allowed to have our own convictions about the world. We’ve simply got to keep talking, and be open to our minds being changed. People accuse Dawkins of the same narrow thinking he diagnoses in his fundamentalist opponents, but he claims that if there was any sufficient evidence to discount evolution by natural selection or the Big Bang for that matter, he would be obliged to abandon these concepts, because that's what scientists must do. A fundamentalist, on the other hand, would dig their heels in deeper. Skeptics may have the upper-hand in this ongoing dialogue, because they are more ready to say “I was wrong” than their religious counterparts.

Homo Religiosus

Alright, so once finishing, the question remains: has Dawkins changed my mind about God? How about religion?

Dawkins covers almost every possible angle on religion, and you feel compelled to take a side. Let’s face it: religion’s track record is abysmal. And it is not just because it has been hijacked by human greed, hatred, fear and lust for power. People also do terrible things because they believe in them.

Perhaps religion should just die off, but in all honesty I think it won’t, not any time soon. However, I also think there’s still a great deal we can learn from religion, even if many of us can no longer return to its insane orthodoxies. I’ve talked about this before, but I’ll try to go into more detail about where I stand in a later post. For now I'll finish by saying I can’t agree with Dawkins, one hundred per cent, though I'm pretty close. Does this mean I am an atheist? Well, from everything I've just written it may sound like de facto atheism. This may be so, but even now the matter feels unresolved in my mind, and needs a post of its own, so I'll hold off here as well. I am far from finished with God. As far as religion is concerned, there may be ways of rethinking and reinventing it. It may take an imaginative leap not seen since the Axial Age to do it, but I still believe, however naïvely, that it is possible. If our name truly is Homo Religiosus and we are wired for religion as many anthropologists claim, this leap will have to be possible, or we may be seriously screwed as a species.

Two Month Catch-Up, Harris, and Armstrong

Wowza! It's been almost two months since I've posted on here. Two whole months! Well, enough of that silliness.

Let's see, what's happened since then? We've rehearsed Twelfth Night and recently opened it this past week and it's been generally quite well received. That's always nice, being a part of a show you're proud of AND the audience liking it too! Also, when not performing in the evenings, I spent my Reading Week with my family, which was just great. My sister, Gabrielle Volke, is going to be a published author very soon, with a short story in her university literary journal. Let's all cheer her on! Hurrah! Mazeltov! Olé! I'm quite proud of her.

In class we've been talking a lot about the logistics of going into the "real world" and how to survive there: we had a whole class on how to do taxes as an actor, another on resumés, and another still on writing cover letters and thank you letters to theatre companies. Another prof. of ours came in to talk to us about how to get an agent. We're being constantly reminded that we're not long for this undergrad world. As helpful as it has been, it scared the shit out of me, thinking about it so much. My doubts and uncertainty about my future course were only further fed when we were asked to write out a plan of where we want to be in the next year, in five years, ten years, fifteen. Some people had some ambitious and fantastic goals, and I wish them all the best. Others had a little more uncertainty and vagueness to their plans. I fell into the second camp. I noticed that I couldn't really see where I would be in five years like others, let alone the next one. I was considering attending the National Voice Intensive this summer, but I kept flip-flopping about it. So I decided I would wait on that one, and if I was still considering it around this time next year, then it would be the right decision. Only time will tell.

The through-line of my wishy-washy plan was that I be creating new work at every stage. I think this has revealed a very important strain of my artistic leanings, and perhaps what will keep me in theatre. I am not content to just be performing works that other people have made. I have to make my own. Whether it's in the form of a one-person show, collective creation, or as a playwright who lets others perform it, I need to generate new stories. I always believed in the actor as creator, so why not go the whole nine yards on that principle? That's not to say I've fully abandoned the path of auditioning for repertory theatres and whatnot, but there is a lot about that life that will not fully satisfy me. The writer in me will not be denied. On that note, I'm even considering going back to finish my Writing degree. But that's just one option. I'm pretty sure I want to continue with some kind of post-graduate schooling, whether it's for acting or writing. In fact, here is the complete list of options I've even briefly considered:

-Finishing Writing degree at UVic
-Writing MFA at UVic (after I've amassed a sizeable portfolio of written work)
-Acting MFA at York University
-Birmingham Conservatory at the Stratford Festival
-3-year certificate at National Theatre School
-Acting MFA at Yale School of Drama (thanks to Gen and Sarah for pointing it out)

Right now the first two options burn the brightest. But in the interim I need to not be going to school for a while. Again, time will lend some perspective on the matter, and I have no doubt that things will be a little bit clearer if I wait.

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Now, on the book front, I've had the pleasure of reading two books, the authors of which disagree with each other, and so naturally I'd love to hear a conversation between them. The first book was The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris. This guy has been lumped into the "New Atheism" camp, along with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. The premise of this book is basically this: moral relativists can sit down and shut up, because there is a way of determining "right" and "wrong", and science is going to figure it out. That's right, not only is science able to show how people behave, but in time it may also show us how we should behave.

He says that the values we hold as human beings (morality) can be related to facts about the world (science). The rightness or wrongness of an act is measured by its effect in the physical world, and in a person's brain specifically, translating into well-being or suffering. These are what we should use to measure a system or morality. He is quick to add that he is not claiming that science has the answers already, especially to some morally ambiguous actions. Nor does he claim that there is just one way. Rather, morality is like a landscape with many peaks and valleys. Some moral systems might be at an equal height on this landscape. Some might not. He points out that they are not all created equal: a moral system that multiplies misery and suffering in this world is not equal to one that mitigates suffering and creates well-being. Hence the peaks and valleys. This is why, he believes, we need not stand back and let something like the Taliban repress women in the name of religion. Those who feel they cannot do anything because who are we to say what's right and wrong? can simply view morality not as a mere cultural norm without any absolute value, nor even a set of arbitrary laws sent down from Heaven, but as a set of actions that translate into measurable facts about human suffering or well-being.

He makes some very fascinating arguments, drawing from his own experience as a neuroscientist, from psychology, and philosophy, but he always keeps it accessible and engaging to a broader audience. I'll admit he devotes a great deal of bile for religion, which disappoints me slightly, because I wanted to read more about a science of morality and save the critique of religion for a different book. But he does focus on the way some people have tried to combine science and religion, or rather used pseudoscience to justify articles of religious faith, with disastrous and embarrassing results, and I suppose this has something to do with his argument. Either way, this has been an extremely provocative read. Here's his TED Talk discussing the idea of this Moral Landscape:



The second book was Karen Armstrong's book Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life, which my lovely girlfriend got for me on Valentine's Day. It's a short little book, but it is very clever and has a lot to offer. Following her TED Wish to have leaders of world religions to draw up a Charter for Compassion, an act of restoring compassion, and the Golden Rule to the centre of the major religions and moral systems, Armstrong wrote this book. It's basically what its title says: a step by step guide in becoming a more compassionate person. Cleverly modelled on the Twelve Step program for AA, it is a template for how we can take specific action and make compassion a tangible part of our day to day lives.

As you read it, Armstrong advises us to work one step at a time, and not to move on to the next one until you have a firm grasp on the one you're on. She also reminds us that this will not come easily or quickly. It will take all of our lives and requires diligence, patience, humility and will. It is no less than a summary of what all the major religions are at their best: guides for compassion. On that note, she draws freely from these major religions and moral philosophies as points of reference, from Islam to Confucianism to Buddhism to ancient Greek philosophy (Socrates and Plato). She doesn't say anything new; she just repeats what these systems prescribe as far as compassion goes. But I think it's very smart to organize these actions into steps, from easiest to most difficult. This should make the process a little less daunting, in theory. The first step is basically about educating oneself about compassion, and its history. The next is learning about how it can translate into our own contemporary world. The third is learning to be compassionate toward yourself. It goes from there, in an ever-expanding circle, from "love thyself", to "love thy neighbour", all the way to the final step, which is "love thy enemy". The tools at our disposal, she tells us, are our capacity for empathy, practice of mindfulness, and even restoring the ancient practice of Socratic dialogue, a means of arriving at wisdom and understanding, as opposed to the other ancient rhetorical tradition of proving yourself right at whatever cost and shouting down your opponents, something our political leaders indulge way too much in. This book is a great follow-up to The Case for God, where she explains how religion was originally meant to be a spiritual technique that could only make sense in the doing, in action. Here's her TED Talk about the Charter for Compassion:



Alright, that's all for now. So in case I can't blog again until after school's done, this should make up for lost time.

The Spiritual Actor, or, Where Religion and Theatre Bump into Each Other

AH! The holidays have arrived for yours truly, which means I can spend more time on here! To kick off my holiday blogging, I'm going to bore you all to death with the essay I wrote in Theories of Acting. In it I look at where the art of acting intersects with the central ideas of certain world religions. What I've focused on are Buddhism, Shamanism, and a sprinkling of Christianity for good measure. Feel free to question, comment, critique or condemn at your leisure. I love feedback!

I have often heard actors being identified as “high priests” of theatre—usually meant as no more than a metaphor. But I wonder if there is perhaps some validity in that remark after all. Otherwise, why would the comparison be made so often as it is? Surely there are some spiritual dimensions to the actor’s art. Notable theatre practitioners of the 20th century, including Stanislavski and Grotowski have used these dimensions to inform their work in theatre. One might assume that these spiritual aspects were superimposed on acting from the outside, and that is when they became spiritually endowed. But this seems like an oversimplification of the art, and I believe the conclusions these individuals drew would not have been possible had there not been some spiritual qualities latent within this ancient tradition. But if so, what are those qualities? How does acting resemble a spiritual journey? In observing certain religions and faith traditions of the world, one can draw parallels between the actor’s process and performance, and certain ideas and roles in religion. An actor has all the potential to be a kind of monk on the road to enlightenment, a model for ethical behaviour, a shaman healing the community through story, and a heretic who goes against establishment to keep it from stagnating.

One of the actor’s primary intentions is to pretend to be someone else. In acting training we are taught that to accomplish a truthful portrayal of a character it can only come with the acceptance that we are capable of any kind of behaviour. In studying the art of Half-Mask, we improvise with the mask to find a character, depending on what kind of impressions the mask makes on our bodies. It would be incorrect to say that what develops, what character arises, is not the person from whom it arose. The character is an aspect of the actor, and the mask is a channel that gives that person license to act and behave in ways they would not under everyday circumstances. Even the language used about the creation, finding a character, implies that they were waiting to be discovered rather than consciously contrived by the actor. If we are to agree with Erving Goffman’s theory that all human interaction is acting, then this notion does not seem so farfetched (252). When we embrace a wider view of our Selves, we see that the things we assume to make us us are not as fundamental as we thought. My “Self” is a combination of genetic inheritance and experiences. Free will comes into play of course, but we act largely as a result of these factors. This is a central idea in Buddhist thought about the Self. The Sanskrit word Atman means “Self”, but Buddhism subverts this, and rather acknowledges Anatman, “No-Self”, the idea that there is no fundamental I upon which a person builds their identity (Prebish, 48). Acting as an art form recognizes this plasticity of human nature more than most. The “Magic If” tool used by actors challenges the belief that our identities are solid and unchanging.



A term I always hear when applied to acting is being in the moment. An actor’s hope is to be able to perform with all of their attention focused in the present moment onstage. They are not to be thinking about what they are supposed to be doing next or what their next line is, and must be focused on their character’s objective. Actors must make themselves innocent in a sense, becoming open and childlike to what may happen onstage. This sounds strangely like the Biblical passage about how Jesus’ disciples would never enter the Kingdom of God unless they entered it with the open-eyed consciousness of a child (New International Version, Mark. 10:15). The focus of achieving a character’s objective in a play is a highly complex task, and paradoxically simple. It is as difficult for people every day to live in the present as it is for actors to live in the present of their performance. Often actors use tools to help them attune their bodies and imaginations to the specific needs of the role, a warm-up which can often manifest as a kind of meditation. To be rooted in the present, an actor is like a monk in the Buddhist tradition practicing Mindfulness meditation (Eckel, 63). This often involves physical tasks a monk carries out, to be fully in that task, with their mind not wandering, daydreaming, or thinking to the future while they are carrying it out. The hope is that when a person is doing something, they must do it one hundred per cent with all of their energy. This is exactly what an actor is doing.

As actors we are taught to not “anticipate”. We must not try to play for an effect or a quality, but play the action of the character only, and trust that the desired effect will arise naturally. This is also directly related to the concept of dethroning the ego, which is perhaps the most central element of all of the major religions. “On action alone be thy interest”, says the author of the Hindu text, the Bhagavad Gita. “Never on its fruits; let not the fruits of action be thy motive, nor be thy attachment to inaction” (14, 2:47). It is this doing something for its own sake, and not for results, money, or approval of critics or the audience, that is prized most in an actor. This says more about human nature than it does about acting, and it might be questionable that acting can even make a person more selfless and trusting, rather than these qualities making a good actor. But it might work on a person in that way. Stanislavski said that “unless the theatre can ennoble you, make you a better person, you should flee from it” (276). He believed it could make people more enlightened, more in tune with the world; and I do not think he was alone. The goal of letting go of self-consciousness in order to become a better actor might be a way of indirectly helping somebody on that path, helping them because they are relieved of the pressure of being aware that they are on it.



This is an extreme claim to make, connecting the path to spiritual enlightenment to the art of the actor—after all, a good actor is not necessarily an enlightened, or even a good person. But many prominent theatre practitioners have argued that this compartmentalizing of art and life is actually counterproductive. Grotowski argued that for an actor to even take part in the act of creation, “his health, physical condition and all his private affairs cease to be just his own concern. A creative act of such quality flourishes only if nourished by the living organism” (260). This comment is echoed in other artists who worked in a more traditional theatre setting. “If you should feel schizophrenic about attempting to stay an honest artist and worker in our present-day theater,” said Uta Hagen, “for the health of your soul and mind, remember that what makes you an artist is your private domain…only when you are functioning can you try to influence or make a better theater” (212). Stanislavski said that the actor’s “part is not played out when the curtain goes down. He is still bound in his everyday life to be the standard bearer of what is fine. Remember this from the very beginning of your term of service to art and prepare yourselves for this mission” (280). The ethical side has been addressed more than once. Theatre is such a highly social art form and demands working as an ensemble to create quality art, so its very nature forces artists to cooperate, which also demands an adherence to moral principles. As a positive result, it creates a strong sense of community under ideal conditions.


A shaman is a figure in non-industrialized cultures that acts as a spiritual leader, a mediator between the world of everyday humans and the realm of the spirits. The job of a shaman is to use ritual and technique to enter this spirit world, in order to bring healing and protection to the community. In a secular, post-Enlightenment society, belief in spirits is a minority. But that does not mean the shaman disappears; rather, he reappears in a form that is compatible with that society. Anthropologist Piers Vitebsky says that a shaman covers the roles which in “industrial societies are played separately by the doctor, psychotherapist, soldier, fortune-teller, priest and politician.” Vitebsky ought to add ‘Actor’ to that list. Although a shaman may be all of those things, he fulfills these needs through theatre, something which only actors actually recognizes as part of their occupation. Vitebsky says the shaman must be able to “sweep the audience along with the power of his or her performance” (52). I think Vitebsky uses terms like “performance” and “audience” to describe what the shaman does, because it is unavoidably theatrical. However, this is not to reduce what the shaman does to mere charlatanry. Rather, if we recognize the spiritual dimension of the actor’s craft, this comparison somewhat elevates expectations of the actor to that of community healer, and spiritual voyager. An actor plumbs the depths of their imagination and subconscious in the way the shaman plumbs the depths of the spirit world (An Actor Prepares, 305). Both must not get lost there, but externalize the experience in the form of a narrative for the audience. Both use a conscious technique or ritual to achieve this balance (Vitebsky, 65). He is careful to note that shamanism is more than ‘only acting’, as if to imply something false. The shaman’s performance transforms the consciousness of everyone involved, which “makes the question of trickery irrelevant” (120). This might separate the shaman apart from the actor, but that might not give the actor full credit for their potential as an artist. I believe an actor is more than a charlatan; but someone who takes part in a public narrative ritual like the shaman, says and does things that need to be said and done for that community, when nobody else can do it. Whether or not one believes in the spirit world, the shaman’s efficacy in healing is in part because of the reality the community believes in. “Shamanic cultures have particular assumptions about what exists (ontology) and how things happen (causality),” says Vitebsky. “If one shares these assumptions, then the possibility of effective shamanic action follows” (143). Likewise, the power the actor has to heal the community relies on a community that is literate in the actor’s art, and the actor’s sensitivity to the things that carry meaning for that community.

But what does the work of the shaman for the community have to do with the actor in the 21st century performing repertory at a regional theatre in North America? Maybe nothing. Does the content have to be a particular type to benefit society? If so, perhaps only the theatre of a highly moral or overtly religious tone would be permissible. This would leave no room for non-canonical, non-religious drama, subversive or slapstick comedy, spectacle, or art for art’s sake. In that case, the actor’s performance cannot always benefit the community as a whole on a spiritual level. But I think this implies a very narrow view of spirituality, and even morality. The stories we tell ourselves survive because they have something to do with the human spirit. We operate in the theatre with the belief that the spirit can be enriched by joy, silliness, and pure imagination, as much as morality. Humour, even that of an irreverent, scathing flavour has a place in a moral universe. When Augustine of Hippo called theatre an anti-temple, with anti-rituals, and actors its anti-priests, he probably would not have imagined that eventually he would be doing us a huge favour (Barish, 64). If we are to agree with his statement, we must take this as a great complement and a great responsibility. This might be where an actor least resembles a priest. A priest upholds a tradition that a community generally puts their faith in. The actor, as an artist, doesn’t necessarily buy into it as well. That is why the actor must play the role of Heretic. He must be the Outsider who challenges the rites and rituals of the Establishment, not to replace it, but to keep it in check and offer a broader view of the human condition. The actor does this by daring to create new rites, by daring to laugh at the Establishment, and by daring to laugh at himself.

The answer to the question of how acting intersects with religion is complex. At the end of the day an actor is not quite a monk, a priest, or a shaman. An actor is an actor. To overlook the differences of each would do a great injustice to all of them. I am not trying to elevate the status of actor to someone better than anybody else, within the theatre or without. There's nothing worse than that kind of moral superiority complex that runs amok in art and religion. And there is also a danger of mystifying acting in making these kinds of claims. But I believe there is also practical value and technique in what a monk or a shaman do, so the comparison isn't as outlandish as one might think. I also think that there is room for mystery in art, so let's not look on it as a bad thing. And while acting isn’t a spiritual vocation by necessity--sometimes it can't be--it has all the potential to become one. Even in my own experience I have been unable to avoid the parallels. Those parallels imply that there is something in acting as an art that goes beyond itself. It is not simply what story the actor is telling that causes some sort of vague religious experience. It is the act itself—the event of summoning one’s courage, discipline, cooperation and imagination to share something with a community, to share the community with itself—where those spiritual dimensions can be most tangibly found.


Works Cited:

-Barish, Jonas. The Antitheatrical Prejudice. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1981.

-The Bhagavad Gita. Trans. Franklin Edgerton. New York: Harper & Row, 1964.

-Eckel, Malcom David. Buddhism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

-Goffman, Erving. Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Doubleday Publishing, 1959.

-Grotowski, Jerzy. Towards a Poor Theatre. New York: Routledge, 2002.

-Hagen, Uta and Haskel Frankel. Respect for Acting. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons,
2008.

-The Holy Bible: New International Version. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984.

-Prebish, Charles S. and Damien Keown. Introducing Buddhism: Second Edition. New
York: Routledge, 2010.

-Stanislavski, Constantin, Elizabeth Hapgood trans. Building a Character. trans. Elizabeth
Hapgood. New York: Routledge, 1989.

---, An Actor Prepares. trans. Elizabeth Hapgood New York:
Routledge, 1989.

-Vitebsky, Piers. Shamanism. University of Oklahoma Press, 1995.



Whew! You made it! Well, thanks for reading. Hope you got something out of it!

I'm thinking about writing another Christmas-themed tale this year, but we'll see. Either way, I'll be back shortly!

-Liam