I would point here, from starnanise's comments, to the level of trust in other people these actions require of us. Many religions have a whole elaborate structure for inculcating and reinforcing belief, hammering at their congregations, but that's a response to internal conflict and to external challenges to their authority (well-deserved, in many cases, as we've learned.) Smaller, community-sized, quieter Shinto-style religions may actually be much more powerful because it's not some distant urban blowhard telling you things that are clearly contradicting the ordinary facts on the ground. This is your uncle telling you the strange miracle that happened when he almost drowned in the fishing net (and your uncle is a really good fisherman who knows his stuff otherwise), or how you saw with your own eyes as your cousins who said something stupid while logging and a tree immediately fell on them. People conflate random events all the time with causation (oh hey, lottery time again??). It's almost irresistible for pattern-making brains not to draw preternatural conclusions from random tragedies and huge natural surprises like floods and volcanoes going off. If you watch the way that people react in smaller New Age cults, for instance, you can see them grasping very hard after familiar modes of thinking while insisting their theology is new and different. IMHO, they also tend to fall into familiar organizational structures depending on the size of the group and its past history in the larger society. I believe there's some interesting TED talks and YouTube videos on how religion is drawing from the pattern-making way we think. We're always trying to read the leopard on the branch out of the leaves and shadows before it can drop on us. That leads to giving god's names to constellations and trying to figure out the date of the solstice so we can figure out what day to plant the beans when they won't rot in the field. I know a lot of folks are more afraid of other predators, but honestly, our evolution might be driven pretty heavily by predation of leopards and lions and African tigers on children. Or, possibly, by the need to recognize lethal snakes in the grass or tiger sharks or crocodiles in the water, which still kill an awful lot of folks in places like India and Congo. Drawing faces in tree bark is nothing compared to seeing a snake before you step on it in heavy cover in places like Panama. (I understand the soldiers give lectures to new residents at the Consulate there about not having time to shoot off your arm before the venom from a bite on your hand hits you with lethal force.) So, useful brain feature under a lot of circumstances, but a problem when your crazy catlady gramma decides she needs to hang up more gods-eyes in the windows rather than pay the vet bill. That insistence on drawing patterns out of random noise shows up really strongly when you talk with very superstitious people, or when you listen to conspiracy theorists, or crazy old coots who retired to the woods or the desert or whatever. You can see that mechanism is just revved up like crazy by conditions like untreated anxiety. Regular folks have it in varying degrees, a lot louder or quieter as their circumstances change. "X strange ritual must be done or bad things will happen!" comes out of the group's history somewhere.
no subject
Date: 8 Mar 2013 07:50 am (UTC)It's almost irresistible for pattern-making brains not to draw preternatural conclusions from random tragedies and huge natural surprises like floods and volcanoes going off.
If you watch the way that people react in smaller New Age cults, for instance, you can see them grasping very hard after familiar modes of thinking while insisting their theology is new and different. IMHO, they also tend to fall into familiar organizational structures depending on the size of the group and its past history in the larger society. I believe there's some interesting TED talks and YouTube videos on how religion is drawing from the pattern-making way we think. We're always trying to read the leopard on the branch out of the leaves and shadows before it can drop on us. That leads to giving god's names to constellations and trying to figure out the date of the solstice so we can figure out what day to plant the beans when they won't rot in the field.
I know a lot of folks are more afraid of other predators, but honestly, our evolution might be driven pretty heavily by predation of leopards and lions and African tigers on children. Or, possibly, by the need to recognize lethal snakes in the grass or tiger sharks or crocodiles in the water, which still kill an awful lot of folks in places like India and Congo. Drawing faces in tree bark is nothing compared to seeing a snake before you step on it in heavy cover in places like Panama. (I understand the soldiers give lectures to new residents at the Consulate there about not having time to shoot off your arm before the venom from a bite on your hand hits you with lethal force.) So, useful brain feature under a lot of circumstances, but a problem when your crazy catlady gramma decides she needs to hang up more gods-eyes in the windows rather than pay the vet bill. That insistence on drawing patterns out of random noise shows up really strongly when you talk with very superstitious people, or when you listen to conspiracy theorists, or crazy old coots who retired to the woods or the desert or whatever. You can see that mechanism is just revved up like crazy by conditions like untreated anxiety. Regular folks have it in varying degrees, a lot louder or quieter as their circumstances change. "X strange ritual must be done or bad things will happen!" comes out of the group's history somewhere.