I have been a utopian since reading Edward Bellamy’s “Looking Backward” a long, long time ago. When I was forty or so, it occurred to me that if I turned everything my father believed around by 180 degrees, I had collective image psychology, a reasonable explanation for today’s human behavior. It’s simple. We become the species we think we are. Since we don’t think much of “human nature” we don’t think much of ourselves and act accordingly. Hierarchy results when some strive to prove themselves different from that despised mass. You can find the theory in detail on my site at http://www.egalite.com
I wrote a book about the theory deemed so uncommercial, I cannot get an agent, let alone a publisher, so I self published it. In the last five or so years I sold three or four copies. I suppose the theory boils down to the thought of death makes us so crazy we collectively decide there is a God and a heaven. We kill those who express doubt. Since everyone happily worships in the church of their choice, persuading them religion is the problem in that it casts us as sinners and lowers collective esteem makes for a tough sell. I’m new to blogging. It’s interesting, but I doubt bloggers are ready for a new faith in humanity, current events notwithstanding, to replace the old faith in God.
i don’t know what ‘bloggers’ are prepared to do, but I believe in the separation of church and state, which means I don’t proselytize or discourage religion in this forum. Others are free to do so. But defeating Republicans is a totally different goal than pimping the Enlightenment. Although, pimping the Enlightenment is a worthy goal that should be pursued and can have politically beneficial results.
What is pimping the Enlightenment?
advocating humanism.
Hi Booman
I agree to a point. I cannot see any politician getting elected on a let’s question the existence of God platform, but God plays a huge roll in politics-abortion, stem cell research, and what appears to be a coming Christian-Islam battle. Supposedly more than 95% of Americans believe in some form of God. Do you?
That said, discussing religion is like improving someone’s self image by saying, “You wouldn’t do those self destructive things if your self image were better.” Damning with extremely faint praise.
Do you have any ideas on how to improve someone’s self image without being destructive? (Only the individual can improve his or her image, but is it possible to help?) How, for example, does one broach the possibility that present perceptions of an all seeing, all knowing God smack of collective paranoia and grandiosity in that they have God, creator of this enormous universe, spending his or her days monitoring what we humans do?
Ed
Injecting religion into politics is a mistake. It’s a mistake that Republicans make all the time because they have no other way of tricking majorities into voting against their own financial self-interest.
Democrats should not try to convert people to a different religious viewpoint, but a different political viewpoint.
Advocating humanism is an essentially non-political mission…advocating that people make their decisions about policy based on facts, not beliefs, is a political mission.
Republicans have used religion successfully for some time. As you say, religious belief trumps financial self interest. It trumps everything actually with clergymen of all stripes recommending candidates, implying God endorses their choice. I do not know how to approach religion in politics without it blowing up in one’s face. What, if anything, can be done is an extremely reasonable topic for a political discussion. I’m not sure how the religious implications in politics can be approached, or if they can be approached at all.
That reminds me a bit of some of Ernest Becker’s work, as well as some recent trends in the area of experimental existential psychology (Terror Management Theory springs directly to mind).