Posted by
HighlandWindsLLC Miller on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/vol-98-issue-24-psychology-discussion-tp6716848.html
Responding to Nicholas Thompson who referred to David Sloan Wilson's view that human predilection to religion is an adaptation that fosters subjugation of the individual I would like to say this:
Organized religions do tend to foster subjugation, just as most organized institutions do. Universities foster subjugation with their students and even their faculty, governments with their citizens, large corporations with their employees and even their customers. Trying to get a large number of people to do anything with any semblance of order requires some measure of that, and different cultures seem to prefer different levels of subjugation, and so I guess of order. But
religious beliefs are not inherently subjugating.
One can believe in God, Tao, Christ, etc, and try to subscribe to a personal path of --- say kindness, compassion, giving -- without choosing to even be in an organized religious.
Now, if you are arguing that personally trying to follow a path of kindness and compassion subjugates an individual by the very nature of the gesture of kindness or compassion, well -- I disagree. One's path if one's choice.
Furthermore, if in walking one's own religious path, one stumbles on other like minded individuals who occasionally get together to discuss their common interests, I do not find that subjugating either.
I do tend to see subjugation enter, willingly or not, when that group decides on rules that they then want others to follow and go out trying to talk people into their rules and beliefs. If they simply go out to share some level of personal positive experience related to their path, that is not subjugating I don't believe.
Sort of like believing in a more environmental path. It is one thing to try to tell others that it might be helpful to us all and to the longevity of the planet as we sort of know it, if we got off the burning of fossil fuels. Subjugation enters when a government insists on one course (and sometimes I must admit that I see this as a necessary thing because people are slow to act) -- like to insist (I wish) that all new coal fired plants be closed and replaced with wind, solar, wind-to-hydrogen, and/or geothermal plants, or that all new vehicles in 2020 will operate on either hydrogen, solar, or electricity from renewables.
Enough expounding.
Peggy
<
[hidden email]> hat geschrieben:
Peggy, Kim, n all,
One of the features of evolutionary
psychology that I like is that it is less likely to see non-normative
variations in psychological organization as diseases. Rather, it tends
to see them as potential adaptations to different selection pressures.
David Sloan Wilson in his Darwin’s Cathedral holds the
view that the human predilection to religion is an adaptation that
fosters subjugation of individual interests to those of the group. In
short, it works just because it is irrational (given that “reason” is
deployed to determine an individual’s best course of action for himself
and his own genealogy).
Nick
--
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