Religious Inertia: The Self-Perpetuating Tribe
We discussed why religions are appealing for the individual, and now we discuss why religions are appealing for groups—and why they seek to spread.
Sunday: On one hand, it makes a great deal of sense why religions want to increase their numbers. On the other hand, it raises the question of why groups care about the beliefs of those not in their group.
An analogy: I love the LEGO Batman Movie and I think it is the best Batman-centric movie and I feel the need to share it and get other people on the same page opinion wise.
Why do I care about other people believing the same thing as me? It’s not approval. I know people can respect my opinion, but I want people to share it.
The same sentiment I imagine is with various fandoms. Like Star Wars, Marvel, the idea of opinion-tribes. They want other people to feel the same way and join their thought process.
And religions are pretty much the same way: they are trying to sell their brand of truth and want to make sure everyone else is buying. Proselytizing. Though, admittedly, not all religions do this, it is the quality we want to discuss since it is a big part of the largest two religions in the world (and arguably atheism). Why do religions proselytize, or rather, why do people in general feel the need to proselytize their ‘tribes’?
Monday: When the same phenomena appears in different contexts, it might be due to an actual connection. LEGO Batman and religious proselytism may be examples of the same thing. It's been widely understood by evolutionary psychologists that the vast majority of human traits represent behaviors evolved in pre-civilizational times. An example of this: our cravings for sugar. Sugar cravings make sense in a situation where sugar is scarce. They do not make sense now, where sugar is plentiful. These cravings are an example of a functional and inherited instinct from a former time. In the case of proselytizing, let's consider two ancient hominid groups:
A group of hominids where everyone in the tribe is deeply invested in everyone else and is constantly seeking to share information and establish cultural conformity
A group of hominids where no one is invested in anyone else, no one shares information and cultural conformity is a total non-factor
Which group is more likely to survive the harsh conditions of early human evolution? The answer is pretty obvious. The vast majority of people are not schizoids. They do care what other people think, they want to share information and, yes, they want to convince each other of what they think is right. It appears to me that this instinctual in us. So it's not surprising that it happens so often. That said, not all religions are concerned with converting the world. Some are concerned only with their own ethnic groups, like Judaism, Zoroastrianism and most forms of Hinduism. But, still, they are concerned with passing their beliefs on to their children and continuing as a separate identity into the future. Rationally, though, none of this matters.
Sunday: I love this take. In the beginning, converting others to the tribe was a matter of life and death and survival of the group—because converting was sharing information and creating a robust tribal organization. But now it’s been applied to ‘junk’. I mean junk in the sense of things of no consequence to survival (e.g. sports teams, media).
Religions, however, seemed to keep converting in two divergent ways:
Self perpetuation via procreation and teaching down (Judaism, etc. as you said.) Keeping the line of belief going downward and keeping the old tribe alive. They do this to keep their tribe alive in a cultural sense.
Instead of converting to keep the tribe alive in a tangible sense (as in life or death), conversion is desired to save the ‘souls’ of the race. So instead of people, say, persuading each other to wash their hands to save lives, they persuade each other to join their religion to save their souls. Religion in many areas no longer impacts life/death matters, so it’s matter of the soul—the impetus is there for followers to persuade others. Save their souls, etc.
But yes, it doesn’t actually matter, concretely, but this is an abstract impulse that is hard wired into (most of) us. If it wasn’t religion, it’d be sports. If it’s not politics, it’s something else.
But, either way, tribes have a desire to survive and self-perpetuate—the group is alive as its members in a way.
Monday: I'm reading a book about the history of the Soviet Union. The parallels between the Soviet spread and mindset and religion are striking. They operate in almost the same way, with the exception that the Soviet Union had state control immediately. In cases where a religion gained control of a government, it often acted with the same degree of totalitarianism as the Soviet Union, and all totalitarian regimes. Nazism also comes to mind. I think it is an atheist conceit that atheism is somehow a more enlightened and noble position, leading to kinder, gentler behavior. History just doesn't show that: atheists through Communism were as vicious as any religion. The apparent fact is that these instincts are innate to humans and they will manifest no matter the location. And I suspect we won't be rid of them until we're rid of being human. In a deeper sense, this desire to control the minds of others demonstrates the fundamental ugliness of the human condition. It is built on double-standards, always. "Justice for me but not for thee." Christianity was desperate to become a tolerated religion in the Roman Empire. In time, it was given that tolerance. What did Christianity do when it got into power? It immediately persecuted and destroyed all other religions, with the exception of Judaism. Similarly, Islam started with peaceful, tolerant propaganda, stating there is no compulsion in religion. Once they got into power, they immediately began "converting" through the sword. Similarly, the Bolsheviks demanded freedom of the press until they owned the presses. Freedom of the press immediately ended. Humans want fairness from others but rarely want to act fairly, in kind. This is true on the individual level as it is on the societal level. And it makes sense why: while polite society gives us the privilege of having our needs met and not being in a life or death struggle, the majority of our evolution took place in such struggle. It was my tribe against yours, my family against yours, and I against you. The war for genetic proliferation. The war for organic persistence. That kind of substratum doesn't just go away because we're suddenly in the midst of affluence and law. Ideally, we would present ideas as clearly and honestly as possible, without tricks or pressure. And if someone disagreed, it would be no problem for us so long as their disagreement didn't lead to tangible harm. This kind of mentality has almost no representation in history, though. Even in the peaceful exchange of ideas, there is still the fact of "rhetoric." People try to sway another by passion or eloquence. It's advertising basically. And dishonest. I think, also, that conversion, persuasion, control, etc. are forms of domination and submission. This gets into a darker territory of the human condition, but I don't believe we can understand the desire to control and convince without understanding it on a hard-wired mammalian level. All social mammals have their own hierarchies. They either want to be the leader, or they want to be in the leader's good graces, submitting to him. Neurologically, serotonin increases when people view themselves as "high status". The colloquial concept of "cool" simply means "high status, serotonin inducing." True to form, someone who is "cool" is unbothered. Serotonin mitigates anxiety. The studies done on apes in this regard mirror human behavior. The desire to convince and control, ultimately, is to rise in status. To see others be convinced or persuaded of one's ideas may be a form of seeing them submitting. To signal submission. This gives us a sense of status and higher serotonin. Of course, not everyone is wired exactly this way. Some have non-social goals and derive their serotonin through their fidelity to inner ideals. An artist, for example, may enjoy her art independent of anyone's opinion. She may pursue her art independent of other concerns. That is an approach I admire, actually, because it's truer to the internal landscape. We all live and die alone. It's an illusion that people's opinions matter. To be internally directed is to be more authentic. And it seems that people know this, fundamentally. We make T-shirts telling other people that we don't care what they think. People make grand displays to others of their lack of concern for other's thoughts. We seek social validation through falsely displaying a lack of care for social validation. It's a deeply absurd and self-deceptive state of affairs...
Sunday: Wow. I don’t have much to add to that! I believe there has to be some way for us to move past these issues without losing our humanity (for better and for worse). Or rather, that we can evolve beyond it. But we aren’t there yet, clearly, the majority isn’t, anyway.
In the meantime, we have to live with our imperfections and the imperfections of the mass of us. It may be a hard-wired part of our Human identity, but we can recognize it and try to mitigate it. If we can deny ourselves sugar, despite the craving for it, we ought to be able to desire these strange impulses.
Do you think Humans can move beyond the need for tribes that seek to assert themselves to others? Are religions more or less than just a tribe?