"Marek Reavis" wrote: > > From the New York Times, 12.30.08. . . . > > "Sacred values come prefabricated for religious believers," Dr. > McCullough said. "The belief that God has preferences for how you > behave and the goals you set for yourself has to be the granddaddy of > all psychological devices for encouraging people to follow through > with their goals. That may help to explain why belief in God has been > so persistent through the ages."
Marek, Wondering if you'd agree with my take on this. If I substitute the phrase "DNA-hardwired axioms that have survival value" for the term, "God," then I'm okay with the conclusions above. Oh, it's not "actual God-God," (not saying God exists,) but attempting to arrive at a meat-robot's "least state of excitation" could be interpreted as "contacting God" -- that is, "a source of 'universal' goodness." Calmness is a state of untriggeredness, yes? The world can use all the untriggeredness it can get, right? That's not "untriggerableness," so we don't have to be worried that apathy is being inculcated in the personality -- decades of TM doesn't seem to produce folks who only sit on their butts for instance. For this reason, I can be okay with anyone meditating-praying (via almost any method) and thinking of it as a mystical experience of "intimacy with an outside agency of infinite potency." Why not have a warm fuzzy fantasy, eh? -- we're all buying into unsubstantiated projections all the time, like, "McDonald's burgers are good food," so look at the ecological damage that that belief has done to the world. Maybe it hasn't risen to the level of damage that organized religion has foisted upon us, but it's a contender, sez moi. Folks dwelling on an inner "soft buzz,"when compared to those "chowing down on burgers" seem far less likely to harm the world after a buzz than a burger. Thinking "Christians should follow the golden rule" is NOT a dwelling upon calmness; "thinking of parochial religious values" doesn't necessarily involve "attending to an inner buzz." Two different beasts altogether. Contacting this "pure set of values within" at least has a chance of fractionally "re-"calibrating" our day to day value patterns. It seems to be a universal experience that quietening the nervous system puts one in a state that is less prone to the spontaneous manifestation of knee jerk negativity -- if two folks are snuggled in each other's arms and, say, half dozing with a reverie of some sort -- even this state is not resonant with most types of negativity since most negativity is found to entail a higher excitation of the nervous system, and leaving snuggy-wuggy-ville is not initially inviting. So, reverie et al at least "dips the cloth" into the "dye" of centeredness, and after that experience, one's a bit jiggier with calmness, and one's skewing away from that may become easier to "catch and stop at the onset," because of such "spiritual" practice. Obviously these are generalities for which there are exceptions, but "calmness" itself can be a goal to which human psychology can become addicted -- in the good sense -- in that, leaving the state of calmness is known to be fraught with the various experiential perils. See? Meditate, snuggle, whatever, and you become jiggy with your calm self and are more likely to eschew activities that prongs your ass out on the street with an urgent agenda. But who has such sophistication or the time to dwell upon matters long enough to get clarity about such things? Cult joiners, yeah, but most folks just don't have the time or circumstance to culture themselves. For this reason, I see organized religions that have some sort of prayer activity being marketed to the general population as providing a spiritual skill with some virility. Yeah, money and power have saturated these organizations, and we know the evil thereof, but at least the masses have been given a technique to "know calmness." It's a start, and who says that the masses are easily led to any trough -- might be a bigtime achievement just to have trained them enough to sit still for awhile, ya know? Take a walk through Walmart and just on intuition alone take a survey of those who you spontaneously surmise would be interested in the least in introspection. The religions of the world may have had folks from pre-scientific times and hammered their various cultures with intellectual priorities (ten commandments etc.,) but the inner calmness experienced during, say, a heartfelt inner repetition of the Lord's prayer, will have an "calmness is good" agenda that is modeled to the entire psychology -- not merely the philosophical parts. See? The words of the prayers can be interpreted as a weak brainwashing of sorts, but the calmness achieved by the rote technique may have deeper impact compared to the rather superficial "instructional impact" of the meaning of the words. Until science comes up with a machine that can reprogram electro-meat with exactitude, prayer of almost any sort is a good tool to use until "then." To hell with those purists who say "only stark reality is allowed in a sane brain," I say, good luck -- admirable goal -- send me a card from the ashram, but for daily life, the masses need to whack themselves with calmness more than they need "a loving guru bathing them in bon mots." Edg
