“We need leaders who really know who they are”
10 Oct 2011
Labour MP Michael Meacher shares his views on science, spirituality and being a politician
It’s a rare event when a politician puts his personal and professional reputation on the line but the highly regarded, lifelong Labour MP Michael Meacher is doing just that. His latest book, Destination of the Species: The Riddle of Human Existence, launches an impassioned plea to the divided worlds of science and religion to put their differences aside, join forces and engage in nothing less than an evolution in human consciousness.
Now working closely with Ed Milliband, Meacher has spent over 40 years in politics with six years as an environment minister within government. He has often been a lone voice against contentious government policies, including those of his own side. He spearheaded a personal challenge against what he believed was an unjust war in Iraq and vehemently opposed many destructive environmental policies.
Caspar Walsh: What makes you believe science and spirituality can work in partnership?
Michael Meacher: There is clearly some kind of intelligent design in how our planet began to evolve life forms and this has continued to evolve into who we are today. Science is now struggling to get its head around the sheer scale and possibility of the universe and the unlimited scope of human consciousness. Science cannot reduce consciousness to fit the models it currently has for understanding the world we live in. Spirituality and faith can help us understand. Scientists are beginning to realise the limitations of sticking to reductionist models.
The Gaia theory [that all living things on Earth form a single, self-regulating complex system] was once seen as a far-fetched concept but as a result in a shift in scientific understanding and study, it is now universally accepted and seen as fact. The evidence of intelligent design is becoming clear.
Our increased secularisation, where science is the overwhelming paradigm, is now beginning to shift towards a bridging of science and spirituality. More and more scientists are opening up to this possibility, and growth materialism is losing favour.
Where are our understandings of the world, through science and religion, leading to?
The question for us is are we humans part of the continuation of this cosmic plan or just a stage in it? Our ruthless unchecked destruction of our planet makes that debatable. Humans are not the pinnacle of evolution but simply a stage in the process. It is essential we all strive for the truth of why we’re here; but I think none of us will ever reach an ultimate truth because ultimate knowledge has no boundary or defining end.
We have achieved great things in science but the greatest individual characteristic of us, as humans, is the emergent property of our spirituality. It is not for us to transform and dominate the world through science and politics, but to transform ourselves.
Would you recommend politics to a newcomer?
I was first going to go into religion, then social work. Politics was last on the list. I wonder if it would have been better if I had stuck to one of the first two. But there is an opportunity for politics to effect real change and to be a wonderfully uplifting experience. Change is always possible.
I would say don’t do it unless you’re doing it for the right reasons. Whatever you do, don’t lose touch with your inner self, with what is driving you. Set your eyes on what’s going to help benefit your fellow citizens not just your self-satisfaction. Don’t lose touch with what needs to be done for others and for your nation.
How important do you believe personal awareness is to those in power?
The only way to deal with the issues that power brings up is personal awareness. There is a desire for some politicians to want to retain power through a simple fear of losing it. Power can be very dangerous, the more power you have, the more you want.
I am guilty of wanting glory. All of our motives are mixed and tangled. The people we need in power are those who really know who they are, and there needs to be an open public assessment of the personality of our leaders. It needs to be transparent and clear so the voting public can really know the true workings of those they are voting in to lead and govern their country.
But ultimately it is people power that will change everything.
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I agree 100% that our leaders should be people who have experienced many different things in life, through which comes perspective and empathy, common sense and self-knowledge. People who enter politics because they are sick of career politicians being in charge, with the power-hunger that often goes with it.
But please dont try and convince me about intelligent design. Your spiritual beliefs are personal to you, please keep them that way. Religion and science are polar opposites and should never mix. Respect for the world around us could be considered spiritual but certainly not religious.
If what you say appears too religious, you alienate a lot of people who would otherwise have taken away a valuable message.
I think Michael Meacher should be allowed to say it as it is for him. The characteristic of an evolved society is the acknowledgement of different points of view with an agreement on the basics which are as you say “perspective and empathy, common sense and self-knowledge” — the essential qualities of the human being religious or not. Being essential; they might be called spiritual but not necessarily… and I agree about intelligent design as evidence of a “spiritual” dimension. It has been super-ceded by Simon Conway Morris’s Convergence Theory which is very careful not to jump to conclusions.
In the end though, I am not sure it matters how we get to this agreement,( the desire for deep change in the way we see ourselves and how we go about our business on this planet,) just that we reach it without judgement of each other’s paths..
I like the comment “there needs to be an open public assessment of the personality of our leaders”. I would like to be able to choose my leaders on the basis of the values they demonstrate through their actions. That needs to go beyond ‘spin’ — all those in power have some skill in presenting a plausible story that puts them in a good light. Somehow we have to get beyond that I learn about the true character of a leader. I don’t mind a leader having a different perspective from mine, or even taking a decision counter to what I would do. I want to feel confident that they are personally aware and honest, and that they are operating from the highest principles, where personal gain comes low down the list. The best leaders are servants of high principles.
What an awesome statement. I agree, of course. Let us evolve and make decisions based on high principles :) Peace.
I would like to see more round tables and talking sticks,please. Also, the ‘power’ that the politicians ‘feel’ is not their personal power, but has been entrusted to them, whilst in any position of responsibility. That power comes from the land, which is the ancient power belonging to all of us. Only the incorruptible amongst us are fit to hold and delegate the power, into the hands of those who are working for the greater good.
Religion and Politics are emphatically *NOT* “polar opposites” at all. That is the very point made by countless scientists and politicians and theologians throughout human history.
Often when people make such comments they do so out of a fundamental ignorance of what ‘science’ is. The first science was, is, and always will be philosophy — the pursuit of what is “truth”.
To state that religion and science should never mix is like saying love and hate must stay apart, when in fact both of them are defined by the other. But more than this, religion (by which I categorically mean the study of theology and philosophy as per the Catholic and Islamic models) has not only been the bedrock of science but has provided the incomparable majority of the founders of branches of modern science. It is a true pity to see the blindness often quoted that, for example, Galileo was persecuted by the Church for his scientific pronouncements. Galileo was a deeply, deeply devout Roman Catholic who clung to his faith his entire life. Newton was also a theist, as was Einstein, who radically rejected atheism as a former of myopic ignorance not worthy of what he called “true scientists”.
It is no wonder that the highest percentage of believers in a creator, within the scientific community, is reported to be in the fields of astrophysics and quantum physics, where the absolute and the finite seem to overlap in miraculous ways.
Any person truly interested in the nature of existence cannot exclude cause, cannot exclude purpose, cannot exclude destination — science is not opposed to faith and neither is faith opposed to science; anyone with even the briefest understanding of the history of science knows this.
And for those who believe Science has remained a faultless world without heretics and persecutors of its own need only look into the history of the thousands of careers destroyed when scientists proposed breakthroughs the rest of their community called folly. Read up on the bright careers crushed by violence and whispering when those who proposed chemical treatment of depression (instead of physical interventions like the lobotomy) were hounded out of psychiatry.
Einstein once spoke of a day when scientists would climb a hill and look over into a valley where theologians had been standing for generations. He may not have believed in a “personal God” but he rejected the notion that plain physical substance defines the science of reality.
We would do well today to ask what the purpose of science is, when we are using it to utterly destroy the life of those generations who come after us, when we use it to create ever more effective and horrific ways to mass murder innocents, and when we attempt to radically alter the very nature of life itself for short-term, quantitative benefits.
Ultimately, what the layman calls “science” is usually not much more than “technology”, and technology can never take the place of human dignity. We’d do well to start asking “Why?” a little more, instead of simply “How?”
Science is but the language of God / the Universe / the force of Creation. It is not the essence of life itself and never can be.
Three to read: Aristotle, Anslem, Aquinas.