On Thu, 19 Sep 2002, Keith Hudson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Pete,
>
>At 20:49 18/09/02 -0700, you wrote:
>(PV)
><<<<
>Every dictator wants a mechanism to control the minds of the people via
>their early youth. Wasn't it a Jesuit who said "give me a child before
>the age of seven...". The virtue of our mutable brain is also our bane,
>when the mind of the child is programmed with ancient nonsense. A large
>part of enlightened and responsible parenthood is being careful to only
>cultivate in the child the ability to find their own answers, not to
>blindly buy into our own. But who are we to proclaim a monopoly on the
>truth? Even when they are so eager to adopt it, and it is so much less
>work, and less thinking, for both the parent and child.
>>>>>
>
>But we need not over-rate the effect of early conditioning. Because
>research in social psychology (vis-a-vis the effect of genes)
>concentrated too much on various comparisons between identical and
>non-identical twins raised apart, raised together, and also of natural
>[siblings], simply not enough research was done using adopted
>children as controls. More recent research suggests very strongly that
>parental/authoritarian conditioning is far less powerful than the
>influence of peer groups from puberty onwards. It is the "loner" who's
>likely to retain the conditioning of his elders.
I have no doubt of that, I saw it in my own childhood, and I see it
among my son and his friends. This can be part of the reeducation I
mean when I refer to "unlearning" - the early beliefs must be slowly
eroded by one mechanism or another before a new, and hopefully, but
by no means always, more enlightened viewpoint takes their place.
But it also seems to me that religious conditioning seems to often
occupy a position more deeply ingrained and immoveable than other aspects
of early learning, such as some aspects of implicit social conditioning.
This is no doubt related to the process of ritual, and in line with my
meme-evolution speculation, probably reflects why ritual persists in
religious practice.
>(Incidentally, although the September 11 terrorists were young men deeply
>conditioned by fundamentalist imams [and no doubt there'll be more], if
>and when there are any revolutions by the young in Saudi Arabia or Iran
>then they're likely to be in favour of modernisation, western music,
>values and so forth [there is evidence for many small scale
>demonstrations of this 'heretical' nature in both countries so far], and
>not the values of their elders.)
Entirely possible. However as far as real liberalization of spiritual
thinking, I don't think the west as a cultural entity has a lot to
offer in the way of advancement, if the Russian experience is any
guide. I think the young Islamic fundies would gain far more by
simply embracing their own indigenous sufism. At least in some schools,
it is one of the few disciplines which is not afraid to accept
"I don't know", and "let's look and see" as an acceptable position on
spiritual matters.
I think though, that we are drifting fairly far afield here...
-Pete Vincent
