Thoughts About Isms

Some thoughts from reading "The Portable Atheist" an anthology of essays about that topic. Sometimes it helps to look at the larger context of a phenomenon rather than the phenomenon itself.

• Attribution Error - a lot of negative attributes are assigned to religion. This includes the irrationality of various beliefs, their improbability, their contradictions, their morphing for expediency, .... A lot of the tragedies of our histories are assigned to religions. However, these tragedies also occurs with "isms" that are not religions, e.g., communism, nazism, capitalism. There is some argument that science is immune to these tragedies. However, science, as in survival of the fittest, has led to eugenics, pogroms, ethnic cleansing, colonialism, ... It is in believing in a particular "scientific" model that can lead to these kinds of tragedies. All isms are quick to point out that the "pure" / "right" form of their ism would not create these tragedies.
• The form and enactment of these tragedies has become more sophisticated independent of any religion. This is often missed in critical analyses of the religion. Most of our  religions had no issues with doing inquisitions, slavery, ethnocide, genocide, ... We do the same acts in a more sophisticated manner. Inquisitions are replaced by "black sites" that are clandestine. Slavery takes the form of wage slavery, limited resources for health and welfare, bankruptcies, .. Ethnocide / genocide is managed with secure borders, boat drownings, economic deprivations / sanctions, ...
• Flat earth view of practitioners - each of us is at a different level of development in terms of degree of understanding, care / compassion, inclusion / exclusion, short term / long term thinking, love / hate, open / closed, ....  Most critiques point out flaws in the myth and make the myth the causal agent and leave out the practitioner.
• Aspects of our biology determine our dance with isms / myths / religions we generate:
• Tribal Biology - One source of these tragedies is our biology. We group into  tribes / ethnicities  / nations / .... To rationalize / justify our selection of a tribe, our biology directs us to ding / criticize / demean / disparage / vilify / demonize other tribes. This justifies our selection and charts a pathway to take advantage of the "other" when opportunity arises since they are lesser. Another aspect of our biology is the "alpha" drive. We (individually and as a group) want to be the "best". The only way to be the best is for everybody else to be lower in our mental geography.
• Grouping / herd management / memes as glue / myths as glue - myths / belief systems are tools that have side effects, good and bad. These myths glue us together so that we can form groups larger than our biology may otherwise allow. These larger groups are what allow music, art, literature, science, ... at a significantly higher functional level. Since our biology also has made us tool making / using creatures, these myths are tools in the "hands" of the "most alpha" among us for their own ends. They are used to pit tribe against tribe, group against group, team against team, ... for the ends / benefit of the "most alpha" / "herd / group managers". The managers use whatever tools are necessary for their objectives. Religions have been the handiest tools for the greater part of our histories so far. However, as equal opportunity employers of tools, race superiority, nazism, nationalism, communism, capitalism, .... have all come in handy for group management.
• Meaning making - in the scheme of evolution, our neurologies have the capability and the drive to try and make sense out of our existence. Why are here, who are we, how did this all come about, .... We create answers to these questions to satisfy our neurologies. These answers are our myths, our religions, our models of understanding via science, our philosophies, .... One can look at the answer to the question of why, who, and how as a causal chain. Initially, our causal chains were short and contextual. Where we saw phenomena, we surmised an actor behind the phenomena. Hence we had the spirits of the forest, the river, the mountain, the seas, ... As our development continued, our first cause(s) became our god(s). Some of us simplified this with a single god and monotheism. With our stages of development, our causal chains got longer and longer. Words can get rather confusing and hide the underlying structure to which they are pointing. We generalized first cause to "god". Science too has a first cause, hence a "god". At our current level of understanding, first cause / "god" in science is "probability". Randomness in the quantum foam seems to have started the whole process rolling. It may be useful to note that first causes have attributes. Our gods as first causes had attributes like us - love, anger, vindictiveness, favoritism, envy, .... The god of science does not have attributes that we can recognize or understand. Hence, sometimes there is a sense in science of "meaninglessness". That there is no point to this existence. However, our psychological research seems to be indicating that a sense of meaning is very important to the health and well being of our individual existences. So, our developmental challenge at this point is to create a "mythology" that is meaningful to us and makes us a more viable species without the tragedies of our previous myths. Another question that may be even more pertinent than any particular causal change is whether we presuppose this existence to be meaningless or meaningful. This seems like an a priori assumption that is meta to the causal chain.
• Marketing - to form groups / tribes / nations, we market the benefits of our group. Isms that can be useful, good glue to form a group are marketed by their sales people who use the isms for their own ends.
• Camouflage - a marketing related biology is camouflage. The isms are camouflaged to hide the agenda behind the marketing. The features that are brought forth are the ones that appeal, give meaning to phenomena, give a sense of belonging, .... The use and agenda are camouflaged in piety, holiness, sacredness, the hereafter, ....
• Magical thinking - not applying science to the understanding of belief phenomena. One of the recurring criticism of religion "isms" is the magical thinking which is the basis of these religions. However, there is magical thinking involved in this criticism in the presupposition that things should be different than they are. People should be more "rational" / "logical", Science / a more rational approach does not decry the "nature of things". It simply seeks to understand at a deeper level the structures, the relationships, the entities and their characteristics that give rise to the behavior "that doesn't seem to make sense" from the mental models currently in use. Science / rationality does not vilify the law of gravitation. It seeks to understand what it is, how it operates, how it may be of use / manipulated / ....  Similarly, these myths / memes that we are prone to need to be understood in terms of how they arise, how they are propagated, what are the necessary ingredients to make a myth / meme viable. How can these myths be created, morphed, eliminated, .... What are the types of myths. What are the side effects of the different types, how can we create better / more useful myths, .... 
• Leaving out context - who is the actor / agent in the phenomena. What is left out in a lot of discussion about religions / myths, is
• who is it that is the agent of the myth, 
• what are their characteristics
• what is the spectrum of behaviors the agent is capable of 
• what are the agents objectives
• what is the level of development of the agent
• what are the biological factors at play for the agent
• ....
Our mythologies are evolving along with us. The more we understand, the more sophisticated our myths get. The commentaries on the "magical" thinking of our religions has gotten more and more sophisticated. These commentaries and justifications now include "scientific" reasoning. These same issue apply to the critiques of religions from a supposedly "unbiased / objective" point of view. As finite beings in an infinity, we can not know anything as an absolute because we can not know all of  infinity. So, the pattern of believing in the "absolute" rightness of our particular mental model / myth / morality is the same, independent of the content of that mental model. I think we need to tread carefully in being so sure of ourselves and condemning members not of our tribe / group. It is easy to forget the value of "glues" that allow us to form complex societies and that have gotten us to this level where we can begin to smell the odors and fragrances of these glues. And we can begin to be more intentional about our choices of the glues that bind us together.
• Life cycle - myths, like us, have a life cycle. They mellow over time. The Islamic calendar is 1400+ years. The practice of it is similar to the practice of Christianity in the 1400s. It seems like this is not taken into account when we think of any our isms / myths / memes / ...
• Patterns and context - it may be useful to point out that both in religions, science, any ism, the actors are us, with the same biology / attributes. Hence, science, like religion, has
  • its high priests who guard the current "theories". Careers can be made or broken by espousing the "right" theory.
  • schisms - different groups espouse different theories of a phenomena and thence arises the resulting tribal / "religious" warfare for the "true" faith.
  • denial of credit / acknowledgment to actors / theories that don't espouse the current orthodoxy. Kuhn elaborates on this in his work on "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions".
  • exorcism of false "beliefs" by incentives such as grant funds, job prospects, ....
  • exclaimations of the "purity" of the scientific process (ism). Any exception / tragedy is attributed to "bad" actors, not to the "ism". To actors who don't understand the "true" faith / ism.
  • ...
  As mentioned above, our techniques have gotten more sophisticated in herd / group management. We are now using incentives to enforce our policies / theories rather than pillories, prisons, .... The pattern of enforcing alignment to a "thoery" / myth / model is the same. We are the same biological beings that practice all these isms. Part of our journey is being able to transcend our biologies. We have transcended and included our reptilian brain, our limbic brain to some extent. It seems that our current context now requires another jump / transcendence.
• Directions from here and questions that may be useful to ponder:
• We are easily programmed. Belief systems are imprinted before full cognitive development is available in children. These imprints go in deep and are rather difficult to change. Does this explain the longevity of isms and religions in particular?
• What kinds of myths / memes would be more useful for children during their development so that they can be more intentional in their myth selection when they are at some requisite level of cognitive / emotional development?
• What is it about our neurologies that allows us to be easily programmed and managed? Are there ways to "vaccinate" us against counter productive and dysfunctional memes / isms / myths ?
• As recent incidents like targeted political and other ads, politic tilting via misinformation, ... have shown, we are easily manipulated. Are there memetic "vaccines" for this biologic feature that we have?
• How do we begin to deepen our understanding so that simplistic solutions like finding scapegoats for our problems are not our most common response?
• How do we begin to change our group association / identity from tribe to species and then to consciousness arising?
• How do we begin to get past simple categorizations (us/them, good/bad, rational/irrational, ...) and begin to see the deeper structures driving our dance with existence?
• How do we stop seeing the other as irrational, infidel, stupid, .... ? And start the journey of seeing the larger context in which we are all part of this dance that none of us really knows the music to, the steps, the ending, the movements ? And yet aren't we all part of this stumbling dance that is our past, present, and future?
• How do we begin to transcend our biology ?
• How do we begin to create narratives / myths that make our existence meaningful in a deeper, healthier manner? Can we be intentional in our myth creation?
• .....