Following this with much interest as its been mostly polite and less strident, maybe all are getting old?
I see a lot of discussion around the idea of pursuing spiritual and ethical enlightenment inside the framework of organized religion or as part of a personal journey. I find this usually boils down to personal temperament and acculturation.
The benefits of a traditional framework are the stress-tests and practices, the accumulated wisdom to know when something has been tried and found wanting or harmful, the guideposts and signs that help to keep us on track. The drawbacks are veering into hide-bound inflexibility, the unwillingness to discard what is no longer needed (and maybe was), the danger of collective judgment and harshness.
The benefits of going it alone are the freedom to start from first questions, the courage to look for and find better and safer paths, the boldness discard the harmful and unnecessary. The dangers are in wasting time on solved problems, getting lost when a path is available, and in missing the correction that every person needs.
And I think both preferences are legitimate and hubris starts when you begin to insist that one way is the only legitimate way and gets worse when you ascribe bad intentions to those who find another way more enlightening and helpful.
Its sort of like what architecture inspires you. Are you drawn to the ancient Romanesque edifice, with worn foot paths and centuries of soot, icons, and smells— even if we don’t need walls that thick, even if it will need constant repairs, maybe if we need to wall off some rooms and pull down some walls. Or do you open up in a pristine, airy space filled with light and the supporting elements exposed and visible? Even if it may be less cozy, may be missing some of the familiar and comforting, and maybe if all that glass and metal does need way more care and attention unless it falls into ugly dinginess rather than lived-in and homey.
This is indeed a preference and not a moral judgment. And more than that, both paths compromise to each other even if we don’t care to recognize it. No Romanesque cathedral looks as it did upon consecration, every century has made its repairs and renovations and modernizations and it is chauvinism to think the current generation finally got it just right.
And the most spartan and glistening modern showpiece will begin to accrue the detritus of human existence— the sops to comfort, kitsch, sentiment, and utility— that would offend the architect’s eye if living and breathing people are ever allowed to actually move in and use it.