What are the barriers to cosmic connection and spiritual yearnings in this disenchanted age?

Dr. Galen Watts addresses this question in this final presentation from our international symposium held at McGill University in November 2024.

Galen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies at the University of Waterloo. His research focuses on cultural and institutional change in liberal democracies, with particular attention to religion, morality, work, and politics. He is the author of The Spiritual Turn: The Religion of the Heart and the Making of Romantic Liberal Modernity (Oxford University Press, 2022), which explores the shift from "religion" to "spirituality" and its social and political implications in the West. Currently, his work investigates the cultural dimensions of the "diploma divide," analyzing how symbolic boundaries and cultural practices shape distinctions between urban university-educated professionals and rural nonuniversity-educated workers in Canada and the U.S. Galen has published extensively in leading academic journals, including American Journal of Cultural Sociology, Sociology of Religion, Civic Sociology, European Journal of Social Theory, and The Sociological Review. He also writes for public audiences, bridging academic insights with broader cultural conversations.

In his talk, Galen addresses the following themes:

Why cosmic connection may be harder to achieve today
The impact of cultural and institutional change on spiritual yearning
The decline of the humanities and the loss of deep formative experiences
The "secular sacred canopy" and its barriers to transcendence
The paradox of ethical progress alongside increasing spiritual disorientation
Can modernity be reconciled with cosmic connection?

To learn more about Dr. Watts, you can find him at:

Website: https://www.galenwatts.com/
Linked: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/galen-watts-a8877a212
Book: The Spiritual Turn Buy here

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This episode is sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation (https://www.templeton.org/) and the Templeton Religion Trust (https://templetonreligiontrust.org/)

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