Robert Henderson
“Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder ‘why, why, why?’
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.” ( Kurt Vonnegut Cat’s Cradle )
Trying to understand history without understanding the religious mind is like teaching someone the vocabulary of a language without explaining how the grammar works. Nor is the religious mind simply concerned with what are generally called religions. Such minds can be and often are attracted by secular ideologies such as Marxism, Fascism or political correctness. These are substitutes for what are normally called religions. Beneath such formalised ideas there is the natural human preference for the culture and people in which an individual has been raised. Social animals need habits and humans being the social animal par excellence require very sophisticated ones.
Memes
The idea of memes comes from the evolutionary theorist Richard Dawkins. A meme is the mental equivalent of a gene. They contain ideas. Dawkins introduced the word to the world in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. The meme, like a gene, is self-replicating and can undergo mutation. It affects behaviour creates cultural.
There was nothing entirely novel about such an idea, it having been discussed in Darwin’s time. For example, T. H. Huxley believed that ‘The struggle for existence holds as much in the intellectual as in the physical world. A theory is a species of thinking, and its right to exist is coextensive with its power of resisting extinction by its rivals.’ (Huxley, T. H. “The coming of age of ‘The origin of species” (1880) Science. 1, 15-17.) But Dawkins gave the idea a new clarity and set it against the background of genetics.
Memes can form entire ideologies such as religions or political theories like Marxism or they may be a stand-alone social rule such as wear black to a funeral or don’t eat with your mouth open. Memes like genes can be beneficial, harmful or neutral in their effects.
It might be though that judging a meme as objectively good or bad is impossible, but it is possible if the judgement is based upon the evolved nature of a particular society. For example, if a society is a warrior society, individuals with a penchant for violence can, other things being equal, be valuable. Conversely, a society in which non-violent behaviour is the norm the violent mentality will be a handicap to the individual who has it and a danger to the efficient functioning of the society.
The problem of consciousness
We are in a prison of self-consciousness amplified by high intelligence and above all language. Both these things set humans apart from any other organism. These qualities naturally lead to attempts to explain what humans perceive to be reality, a reality which will often seem threatening, especially if the person is living in a society which has no science to explain natural phenomena such as volcanic eruptions, thunder and lightning, plagues and floods.
Imagine the existential context of a hunter gatherer band. It is not that its members are innately stupid or ignorant. Indeed, they will have a considerable repertoire of useful and essential skills from understanding how to trap and kill animals, where to gather berries and nuts, how to make tools and other artefacts. But their world will be a constant source of wonder and bewilderment. They will have not have any idea of why rivers flood, volcanoes roar as they belch lava or the sun appears to die every day and gradually burns less brightly as the year progresses before returning with regained vigour. To these phenomena will be added the dangers and fears which result from living amongst dangerous animals and in competition with other groups of humans who do not belong to their band or tribe. Magic is the only means these people have of making sense of what they experience and most importantly it is an ostensible means of controlling reality.
Magic can take a wide variety of forms. It will not necessarily involve a god because the belief may come simply from a belief that if X is done Y will follow. Drawing a scene of a successful hunt on a cave wall supposedly makes a successful hunt more probable; the casting of a spell supposedly makes a woman fertile; the drinking of a potion is said to cure a sick child; the sacrificing an animal or human to the gods is done to ensure a good harvest or victory over another tribe.
Of course the desired outcome of the magic will often not materialise, but it will sometimes by pure coincidence. Moreover, it is not always by mere chance. The Shaman of the band will probably have a knowledge of plants which may indeed have a positive effect as a result of by trial and error over many generations – indeed some animals self-medicate – and there is also the powerful placebo effect which when linked to ritual is likely to be heightened. The performing of ritual will in itself will have a reassuring effect.
But even if failure to produce the desired result of magic occurs it will not automatically be taken as evidence of the futility of the magic but more likely be attributed to the god’s disfavour or merely to the magic not being strong enough or the time unpropitious .
Magic may be as the author of the Golden Bough James Frazer defined it, “a spurious system of natural law as well as a fallacious guide of conduct; it is a false science as well as an abortive art”, but it is still a psychological comfort, not least because as with true science it provides rituals to follow as well as the belief that they are shaping reality.
Superstition
Magic in the form of superstition is very common even in advanced modern societies. More often than not it has nothing to do with formal religion. Sportsmen in particular are notoriously superstitious: insisting on dressing in a certain sequence, using a favourite bat or racquet, taking the field in a team sport in a particular order and so on, but few humans are entirely untouched by it.
Looked at rationally such behaviour seems absurd to those who live in societies in which rational scientific explanations can be given for most things and even where such an explanation cannot be given people will believe that one exists but has yet to be discovered. Yet the grip of scientific rationality is only skin deep. No matter how rational humans think themselves the majority, and probably the large majority , will still use such psychological tricks to deal with the stress of self-consciousness .
What this tells us is that even though there is no rational basis for believing such rituals will have the effect desired, they can undoubtedly provide an individual with psychological comfort and a sense that in some way the individual has exercised some sort of control over situations which do not lend themselves to any rational solution.
The step after magic and superstition
If magic is what might be termed the innate human response to self-consciousness the next step is the creation of formal religion This will have holy texts and develop a sociology to encompass larger populations than the band or tribe. The population will have moved from a nomadic to a settled way of life.
Some like Hinduism will have multiple gods, others such as Christianity, Islam and Judaism will have a single god. Buddhism, at least in its purest form, has no god. But belief in the supernatural is something all formal religions require including Buddhism , because that faith even in its purest seemingly most rational form requires the believer to accept the reality of rebirth with the eventual end of nirvana.
Nor is magic dead within formal religions. Even a sophisticated religion such as Catholicism has some decidedly primitive aspects, for example, the doctrine of transubstantiation requires a belief that the bread and wine given in the Eucharist are literally transformed into the blood and flesh of Christ. Nor will all practices not compatible with a particular religion be ended by the religion’s putative dominance. The widespread belief in and persecution of people accused of being witches in Europe in the early modern period is a classic example of this.
Religion as an organising principle
Larger settled populations require more sophisticated social structures. Religion has an innate organising quality which aids the formation of such social structures. This has routinely meant its has been used to justify monarchical power either by the monarch wielding the religious authority themselves or by having a religious caste which either justified the right of the monarch to rule or which exercised the monarchical authority itself.
The belief that the worship of God in a certain way was integral to the good order and fortune of a country and its people is strong in most religions. A failure to follow the “right” form of religion could mean disaster for a people. Any misfortune could be ascribed to a failure of faith or of observance. The Black Death was put down to precisely that while the destruction of the Spanish Armada to England in 1588, in which the weather played a significant part, was attributed by the Spanish to some lack in their society and as a sign of God’s favour by the English.
The potency of religion
It is important to understand that religious belief is not something simply imposed on people or just a habit acquired through their upbringing. The sufferings of those who have refused to deny their faith are truly extraordinary. The Inquisition did not simply condemn people out of hand. Those who had taken up a variety of Christianity other than Catholicism were frequently excused from punishment if they recanted. Faced with death by burning at the stake many chose that death rather than recanting. Some, like Archbishop Cranmer, recanted than went back on their recantation and were burnt. Foxe’s Book of Martyrs all too graphically bears witness to the sufferings borne over the centuries.
Religion and the secular mind
To understand the religious mind is also to understand the mind of those gripped by a secular ideology, for the psychological and sociological outcomes are the same as those experienced by the religious. That is particularly true of totalitarian ideologies such as Marxism or political correctness which offer the promise of an eventual future state in which the ideology is fully realised.
Marxists believe that the movement of the dialectic through history will inevitably lead to the state of Communism. That belief is psychologically the equivalent of going to Heaven for the Christian or Paradise for the Muslim or Nirvana for the Buddhist. Something similar happens when the politically correct encounter human behaviour which brutally contradicts their view of the world. They do not draw the obvious conclusion, namely, that political correctness is a incompatible with our evolved nature. Instead, they say it shows that that more time must be spent in educating the politically incorrect to believe that the mores of political correctness are the only way to behave and believe.
One of the most peculiar secular ideologies, which has been around since the early 19th Century, is the quasi-religious devotion to laissez faire economics which for its true believers, the neo-liberals, means holding rigidly to the idea that free markets and free trade are a sure-fire means to greatly increase general prosperity and that it is rationally the only economic system to follow. This might seem a very dry subject to engage people emotionally. Yet its believers tend to become extremely agitated if a contrary view is put to them and more often than not refuse to offer any contrary argument or facts when faced with an opponent of their creed. In short they display all the signs of the religious believer.
Why does it attract followers? For the same reason any ideology is adopted. It offers itself as an algorithm to order the world. It is sometimes hailed as a general libertarian good by its proponents which could engage the emotions, but few people who claim to be libertarians actually live their lives by the creed. A much more plausible explanation, at least for the true believers, , is that these are people who find the idea of a neat mechanical ideology which tells them just stand back and don’t interfere with the market intellectually satisfying. In addition, like all ideologies, sacred or profane, laissez faire allows its followers to believe that action is being taken to control the world. Ironically, intellectually and emotionally it offers just what Marxism does, an eventually utopia which comes about automatically when economic life takes on a certain shape.
The fact that humans are so susceptible to the lure of ideologies and habit must mean that this behavioural trait serves some vital evolutionary purpose because otherwise it would not have persisted. The purpose is to unite and order a society.
Living In A Madhouse 