Ernie:
You are on to something; not sure exactly what to say, however.
What seems clear is that your formulation has considerable potential.
There is one problem, first, which is not a criticism, it is an observation.
You present your thesis as if it was foundational, all about the origins
of religion. But from what I know it really is about religion a few steps
after the foundation era. Which is perfectly OK but this means that
the leverage your are looking for is only partly in the factors you
have identified.
Sort of, by analogy, if you were after the origins of language in kids
for reasons of speech therapy and focused your attention on kindergarten.
But language really begins at, say, age 2.
Funny little story in this vein. Evie sometimes brings her granddaughter with
her
when she takes me shopping. The little girl is now approaching age 2 and
is learning to talk. Mostly she "speaks" nonsense syllables; you probably
recall your kids at a similar stage.
Anyway, last time we were shopping, I thought I'd say something to the little
girl
and said "hello, how are you doing?" or words to that effect. At which, after
a little babbling, the girl said something that sure sounded like "I say
there, old boy."
The "old boy" part was clear as a bell.
This still cracks me up, weeks after that episode.
Anyway, religion really at as its beginning something more "primitive" than
you suggest.
OK, scholars debate this theory, but at least it make sense to me, namely, that
religion arose out of a need to co-operate in groups larger than the ideal
clan size of 150 or so. That is, a tribal society may feature a dozen or even
a hundred
clans, family groups, and how do you get everyone on the same page?
Through shared stories shared values, and shared experiences. Conflicts -no
question at all-
become important in the mix, but very early on that is strictly a secondary
matter.
Survival needs come first, where the "opponent" consists of felines in the bush
or snakes
or a stampede of mammoths; this is paramount at that stage.
War with other tribes eventually becomes a major element but very early on
population densities are so low that war was easy to avoid simply by
re-locating to empty land; no other people will dispute a tribe that
shows up one day in an area with no human population. And this was
the condition of our remote ancestors for a very long time, on the order
of, say, 100,000 years in many areas of the world. The time horizon
would shrink in the neolithic era with the rise of agriculture
and then it was 10,000 years, then 1000 years, then 100 years.
It is at that point when your model becomes important.
In other words, fights about justice come in only after a foundation based
on co-operation is in place
Well, things are not this simple. Conflict resolution exists in the stories
("myths," using the word clinically, not as a pejorative) our ancestors told
and human nature being what it is, there were conflicts if not from
day #1, from day #2.
>From what I can tell, the usual way societies did this was through promoting
aggression outward (towards external enemies) or downward (through
scapegoating<https://2transform.us/2018/10/14/scapegoat-a-love-song/> ...
I think this is about half right. What is interesting in this context is the
relative
absence of scape-goating in the first written religious texts from Mesopotamia.
Instead, even in the myths, everything is straight-forward and not very
complicated.
Which tells me that we can do very nicely without blaming others for our own
shortcomings. The scapegoat phenomenon comes later.
Genesis is similar and clearly is based upon some very ancient stories, but
you do get scapegoating even in the creation legends - which tells me
that the very old cores of these tales have been edited by a later writer.
I am well aware that the viewpoint of a believer is that the Genesis accounts
are utterly old, nothing before them, but to tell you what I have found
in my research.
This, in turn, helps explain where people begin in their quest to formulate
ideas based on human nature. There are basically two starting points
if we are discussing Western civilization, Mesopotamian or Biblical.
Or three, if you count the viewpoint of materialists like Marx,
which says that all relations can be reduced to questions of economics.
All of which gets us far into the weeds.
Maybe I should add a #4, however. I'm pretty much convinced that
we need a fourth factor, namely, the effects of literally thousands
of generations in the wild upon our stone age ancestors, time enough
for genetics to become part of the equation. This is the theory that
we became "hard wired" for religion and, therefore, even if a particular
religion
is discredited, as happens in history the way that the Manichaeans
were discredited, or ancient Egyptian religion, people will still instinctively
find a religion for themselves. It just won't look like the old religion
and will have a new set of symbols and new forms of 'sacred language.'
Hence today's "liberalism," which is "O so secular" actually is a
new religion with its own shibboleths and rituals and scriptures
even if no-one on the Left thinks that they are religious at all
and may regard themselves as free thinkers, or even Atheists.
But we now have a phenomenon where Leftists despise the views
of conservatives so strongly that they have just about abandoned
the classic liberal value of free speech, replacing it with
anti-"hate speech" codes, and with politically correct codes of speech,
with virtually outlawing all forms of speech that do not assume
the social values of the Left. I mean, this is a new form
of "fundamentalism."
But now we are even deeper into the weeds.
Uhhh, where do we go from here?
Billy
________________________________
From: Dr. Ernie Prabhakar <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2018 5:47 AM
To: Centroids Discussions
Cc: Billy Rojas; Ernest Prabhakar
Subject: Evil, Justice, and Selfhood
Hi Billy,
Congratulations on getting published. I pray this is the start of something!
I’m not sure how this happened, but I have a strong memory of an email saying
you really wanted to talk about Justice, not Forgiveness. However, that email
seems to have disappeared, which makes me wonder if I imagined it.
At any rate, if you did send that email then I think you really hit the nail on
the head. To my mind, how we deal with justice — and injustice — is at the
core of religion, society, politics, family, and psychology. If we are going
to reinvent Christianity (and reform politics), we need to promote better ways
to think and talk about justice.
Justice in the broad sense is a basic human need; perhaps even the most basic,
in that we are quite wiling to trade pleasure, resources, and even our lives to
pursue it. At personal level, Justice (and its hand-maiden, Anger) is essential
for maintaining our sense of self in relation to other people.
Does that definition work for you?
>From this perspective, the theological “problem of evil” is really the
>psychological and political problem of injustice elevated to a higher level.
I want to be me. I want to flourish. I want to be treated fairly. I want my
self-hood to NOT be violated. I want appropriate status and respect.
Those are legitimate, core human desires. Anger is the entirely appropriate
and necessary reaction when those desires are frustrated.
Still with me?
The challenge is that all human systems (from the smallest family to the
largest nation) are never perfectly just — and usually appallingly unjust.
So how did we ever survive? And more importantly, how did we ever manage to
build and maintain civilization?
To a certain extent, I think the philosophers are right when they say that we
became civilized when we turned anger into aggression, and sublimated
aggression into art. However, that is to colossally understate the role of
religion, in the broad sense: whether the ancestor worship of hunter gatherers,
the great world religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity, or the
secular horror of Fascism and Communism.
Religion is often defined as a shared sense of meaning, but (at least in
pre-secular times) I think it is better understood as a story about our
identity. In particular, religion (among other things) tells a story about the
relation of the individual self to the community (communal self), and provides
a framework for managing unresolved aggression via institutional authority and
cathartic rituals.
>From what I can tell, the usual way societies did this was through promoting
>aggression outward (towards external enemies) or downward (through
>scapegoating<https://2transform.us/2018/10/14/scapegoat-a-love-song/> . That
>was the relief valve that allowed people to make sense of (or at least
>sublimate) the many small and large injuries to selfhood that occur in any
>network of human relationships. And societies that failed to do this fast
>enough ending up destroying themselves through internal squabbling or
>revolution.
Does that match your understanding? It covers what I know of semitic and
Indo-European city states, but I’m not sure how it applies to Inuit (eskimo)
and polynesian cultures that were more dispersed.
>From this perspective, the Problem of Evil is really an extremely profound and
>personal one:
1. I want to be me, and maintain my sense of self
2. Other people periodically violate that sense of self
3. The human systems I am embedded in do an inadequate job of redressing
those wrongs
4. What else is out there? Is it any better?
Does that make sense? Does that capture your question?
And have you found an answer that works for you?
Love,
Ernie
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