Billy Bragg & Wilco, Blood of the Lamb
Mermaid Avenue Vol. II (2000)
I usually listen to sports radio during my commute to and from work, but with the mathematical elimination of the Jazz from the postseason, all the talk has been about been baseball, soccer, and golf. I hate the first two sports, and have never understood the spectacle of golf (playing it is fine, except that I suck), so I had to look for something else to accompany me in the car. I scanned around the A.M. dial, and between the Mexican stations and right wing conspiracy theorists, I found a Christian station that I've been listening to whenever it's not playing ear-splittingly awful Christian Rock.
Recently, one of the topics on whatever show I happened to catch was the importance of using fear and the Bible to make sure that children are protected from atheists. Atheists, the commentators noted, are all over the world wide web trying to seduce children into the cult of godlessness (and as we all know, the only thing worse than normal atheists are radical Muslim atheists--heaven help us if they ever figure out how to work the internet).
This got me to thinking more about the extent to which religious beliefs derive from our psychology (and our biology...maybe I'll write about that later). I've written before concerning my doubts about personal experience being a legitimate epistemology, and recently I came across something that contributed to my skepticism. I read a book called The Culture Code by psychoanalyst Clotaire Rapaille. The premise is essentially that certain words have emotional meanings as well as literal meanings. Rapaille put his knowledge to use in marketing, helping corporations use code words to evoke emotional responses to their advertising in order to sell more shit. It's an interesting and useful book. And as I listened to the Christians on the radio endorse scaring the shit out of little kids in order to defend against the impending onslaught of atheists infiltrating elementary schools, I was amazed by the number of "code words" they used.
That got me to thinking about the way the emotional responses evoked by code words mirror the confirmation of supernatural "truths" by personal experience. It's all just emotion, which is startlingly unreliable and subject to manipulation. As individuals, we all form psychological templates. Some of these are uniquely individual, but many of them are quite common. The utility of understanding code words to advertisers is that if they can identify the psychological templates common to a culture, they can market by using words that elicit emotional responses from people. People are then motivated by those emotional responses to act, i.e., buy shit. The utility of code words to religionists is even more impressive. They get our hearts and minds and often, we pay them to take these away.
What the talk radio Christians were talking about wasn't just identifying and exploiting psychological templates the way advertisers do. They were advocating the creation of psychological templates for the specific purpose of propagating a particular worldview. This isn't a new discovery; an old Jesuit saying is "give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man."
C.S. Lewis wrote that "Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys." Given the measure of religious inculcation of psychological templates you have to ask, "Who is actually playing the keys?" If Chrysler has figured out how to use the word "horse" to get people to buy Jeeps, just imagine what self-appointed ecclesiastical authorities have done with with "Father" at their disposal.
To the extent that my life is about more than buying shit (or working to get money to buy shit, worrying about shit I can't buy, using the shit that I've bought, etc.), I think it is important to question how I know, or how I think I know. The more I do that, the more I find myself identifying and then deconstructing my own psychological templates. As I take those templates apart--particularly those templates that were constructed by religion--I can't help but see their pieces everywhere.
6 comments:
Something I have found bewildering is how people adhere a "follow the leader" mentality when driving and exhibit certain quirks. One is that they move inside of the lane as the person in front of them does. If the car in front moves slightly to the right, the car following usually does too.
My absolute favorite is how some people seem to forget that there are multiple lanes on the freeway. I have been driving on I-15 in the Salt Lake Valley at 2 in the morning with no one else nearby when a car speeds up from behind me in the same lane.
The car slows down and stays right behind me for a minute before changing lanes and continuing on. Each time this happens I want to follow that person and then ask them what they were thinking during that experience.
People get locked into these ideas that they have trouble breaking out of. It's as if most people are afraid to question what is happening and why. Those are not bad questions to ask or at least to wonder about. I don't think everyone should suddenly revert to being 3 year olds and constantly ask "why?" for everything that is said to them, but I do think we need to keep that inquisitive nature nearby.
For example, I've taken a lot of math classes of late and I'm going to be taking more. Invariably when learning a new concept someone asks what it's good for or why it works the way it does. Sometimes you get insightful answers that let you appreciate the complexity of the concept and sometimes you don't get an answer at all. At least not immediately.
Seeing as how I will one day be teaching math, I've tried to keep aware of my own struggles with learning it and trying to think how I can explain it to someone else that is learning. There are times, though, that such an attitude won't work. There are concepts that are beyond understanding without the framework of previous math classes which leads to a response of something like, "I can't explain this to you right now because you have to learn something else before, but I can assure you that should you continue in this course you will eventually obtain that understanding."
People need to be more willing to regularly take a step back and ask what is going on. Demand an answer if you feel it is absolutely necessary but don't be upset if you don't understand that answer (unless the person answering is just a jerk and is making a simple answer super complicated).
When it comes to religion and belief systems, I'm often amazed at how people respond to such situations. As if they are going to be punished for asking a question. I don't think anyone should ever feel like they can't ask a question. That being said, whether that person is "ready" for the answer, whether they are asking the "right" person, or whether the other person is willing to share their thoughts are entirely separate issues.
Keeping someone, and especially kids, from asking questions feels entirely wrong. If someone grows up in a family with particular beliefs or in an area with a dominant belief system, it should be only natural for each person to question what is going on, and even encouraged.
When I hear things along the lines of this radio show it makes me sad. Fear should never be used on a person to get them to do what someone else wants that person to do. That's the very definition of fear-mongering and I don't know of anyone that thinks such behavior is acceptable, except for maybe the fear-mongers themselves (and only as long as it agrees with their own mongering).
To make a long story short (too late), we should all spend more time evaluating our lives and where we are as compared to where we might be going and where we want to be.
And these faux-Christians (Yeah, I went there) scare the crap out of me.
(I say "faux-Christians" because I am left wondering, did Jesus EVER teach ANYTHING that used fear to teach people? Or was it all about love?)
That driving thing is so true...and add to it the almost competitive way that people approach commuting. As though one car length is a scarcity that is worth costing thousands of dollars in property damage if not a life or two. I'm glad to hear you're asking lots of questions. I think that's a good way to be.
This blog drew me in because the title of your blog sounded like an R.E.M. album and that Wilco song is great.
Then you got too smart on me.
So, in a way, Ryan, you manipulated me just like those Christian Radio retards.
I hope you feel good about that.
You ever read Cialdini's book "Influence?"
It talks about some of this stuff...
I ain't read it. Does joo has it?
Yeah, I gots it. Its really quite an amazing book. We can totally be programmed, and most of are everyday without really knowing it.
I use this knowledge for the forces of good, of course.
I will have to get it. To use for the forces of evil, of course.
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