Irreligious people: what does "sacrality" mean to you? How does that answer affect your behavior?
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I asked in part because I have trouble characterizing my sense of sacredness. Here's my attempt:
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Replying to @kanjun and @_Jose_Miguel_S
I'll try.
For me, "sacrality" describes a way of relating, emphasizing reverence, awe, majesty, transcendence.
Some things reliably exist in this relationship with me: Pale Blue Dot, forests, dancing cellular mechanisms, Falcon stages landing. Most flicker in and out.
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I was surprised how resistant many replies were to notions of the sacred. A number of people assumed—sometimes a bit self-righteously!—that I myself am religious. I'm not! But sacrality is still very real for me, and it's only become more so over the past decade.
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This from Jonathan Sacks nicely captures a piece of it for me: "In essence, spirituality is what happens when we open ourselves to something greater than ourselves." rabbisacks.org/introduction-t (via Luke Burgis's "Wanting")
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Maybe sacred things have utility that isn’t understood or defensible by many or anyone living. So sacrality would be a cultural mechanism to protect those things.
Just thinking out loud
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I don't have a good concept of it (What things would be sacred for me). I interpret it as a concept that makes sense when thinking about what a religious person would think about.
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to me “sacrality” sounds like an anatomical word.
but i do think things are sacred, like ancient trees, unique landforms or biomes. it’s not spiritual at all. more like a deep respect & sense it must be protected
ancient things humans made too. it’s species heritage.
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Sacred is that which is imbued with meaning or power which is harmed or destroyed by deconstruction or rational explanation. An in-joke which stops being funny when it’s parts are explained or analysed too closely.
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A team’s internal memes is another example. An observer coming which makes them too explicit and too legible harms their ability to be shelling points or conveyers of culture.
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Things that are very meaningful, make life worth living, and evoke feelings that go beyond any kind of rationality, like spending time with my daughter, helping others, achieving hard goals, etc.
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If there's something that other people find sacred/sacral I treat it with respect, probably out of respect to those people, regardless of my personal opinion.
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