Day 126
Not in the slightest mood to write a word today. This is the trouble with the daily blog: not unlike a daily jog around the block, sometimes you're just in a sour mood for it.
A friend commented to me her opinion that religion thrives on exploiting weaknesses in our minds. My retort was to observe that there is scarsely an institution in existence that doesn't do that, and that we shouldn't go so hard on religion for just trying to keep up. Modern marketing is designed to pinch our primal desires. Government exploits people's weaknesses and ignorances on a daily basis. Essentially every product and service purchasable is either to alleviate a weakness, or alleviate a made-up weakness that marketers have convinced us we have.
So let's not give religion all the credit!
A friend commented to me her opinion that religion thrives on exploiting weaknesses in our minds. My retort was to observe that there is scarsely an institution in existence that doesn't do that, and that we shouldn't go so hard on religion for just trying to keep up. Modern marketing is designed to pinch our primal desires. Government exploits people's weaknesses and ignorances on a daily basis. Essentially every product and service purchasable is either to alleviate a weakness, or alleviate a made-up weakness that marketers have convinced us we have.
So let's not give religion all the credit!
Comments
You'll love it.
The preceding criticism also implies that your friend's statement (or your paraphrasing thereof—whichever the case may be) is lazy, vague, totalizing, self-contradictory, clichéd poppycock. By association, your lame excuse for a 'defense' does not even register at the level of a backhanded compliment. Bah! ;-)
First, religion cannot 'thrive' by exploiting human weaknesses (it universally seeks to remedy them), in the same way that governments do not thrive by way of constant fear mongering and Marshall Law. One might call that 'surviving', but 'thriving'? Thriving by way of others' weakness is a purely Darwinian endgame that manifests on the frigging food chain, not as a human social ideal. More importantly, it is totally unclear what ideas are and are not embraced by the phrase "weaknesses in our minds". Do these weaknesses include 'succumbing' to an environment of mutual trust, faith, and friendship between people who hold a set of shared values, thereby fostering our oft-impeded desire to relate to others on a level higher than that selfish want and malicious impulse? What about providing a community committed to self-awareness, the physical and psychological needs of others, and the rigorous recognition of deeply idiosyncratic devotional response compelled by profound experience of beauty, meaning, compassion, justice— voices that might otherwise go completely unrecognized and unheard of in an increasingly fragmented, frantic, specialized, insular society such as ours? What about taking advantage of the ‘imaginative gullibility’ of our minds to awaken us to new possibilities of thinking and feeling and to recast our private experience in a new light, by encouraging us to contemplate historical and mythological parallels? I'll take those weaknesses any day, insofar as they don't attempt to smother my capacity for individual rational inquiry and emotional integrity.
I believe a specific religion thrives because it is renewed again and again by the efforts of individuals who intentionally cultivate a spiritual relation, with the aid of institutional conventions and forms, to the mystery of their existence, with every fiber and facet of their being: senses, emotions, intellect, will—what have you. These efforts give rise to transformative insights, such as the understanding that each of our lives is absolutely unique and possessing of inexpressible valuable; that none but ‘God’ can ever know a person in his or her entirety (including oneself!). This evokes respect for our limitations and reverence toward the incredible mystery that is other human beings. It also shows us that we are each blessed with unique talents, which it is our joy to cultivate and our sacred duty to use them for the good of all beings. Furthermore, the attitudes of compassion, joy, forgiveness, hope, perseverance, honesty are attitudes that make our lives meaningful, renewable, and thus livable. That being said, I find the totalizing use of the term 'religion' in the context of your post inexcusable; it constitutes the lazy assumption of some undifferentiated, monolithic, malignant force that we are all expected to be familiar with as well as in tacit agreement as to its 'true' nature, which is ridiculous.
I'll hasten to note that I neither criticized religion nor defended it! To exploit a human trait isn't necessarily a bad thing (any more than exploiting the sun or the wind for renewable power), and I never said it was! I think the entry was merely to note that we'd be mistaken to go about thinking that religion is the only institution that does what my friend thinks it does, at least by her terms.
You are attacking what the blog probably would have said (but didn't) had I made it longer and more detailed.
You just happen to know me and my thoughts on the topic, so your criticisms do match up against bunch of stuff you know I happen to believe, but didn't quite pen :P
And yes in a way I'm contradicting my moral imperatives from several days ago. The normative "should" gummed it all up... I'd have been better to stick with descriptive language.
But I do understand that 'exploit' on its own is a value-neutral term. However, to 'exploit someone's weaknesses' does carry the negative connotation of somebody profiting from the intentional harm done to another, which is what I was taking issue with. I wasn't directly refuting any ideas you happen to have voiced on the matter, but merely elaborating on my own feelings with regard to certain kinds of political generalizations that I hear a lot and that tend to get under my skin.