Re-discovering religion
Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2017 2:48 pm
Are the Greek myths true?
What about Norse myths?
Does it matter? If Achilles and Loki are purely fictional, does that somehow diminish the power of their stories?
These mythological religious traditions' stories are still told today because their characters represent classic, universally appealing archetypes: hero, king, trickster, rogue, wizard, and so on. These archetypes reflect aspects of our own personalities--courage, compassion, leadership, cleverness. In this respect, they are no different from modern non-religious stories. For example, Clint Eastwood's character Dirty Harry reflects the archetypes of rogue and hero at the same time. This combination appeals to people whose senses of courage and justice are bottled-up and infrequently expressed.
People are intrinsically drawn to stories with characters that strongly express classic archetypes, and all cultures have produced such stories. Prior to the modern age, most of these stories were religious and mythological, refined over millennia to increase their appeal and power. But today we swim in a wide sea of shallow stories, and our modern understanding of science and the natural world allows us to deflate the power of any story we choose by applying rational analysis to its fanciful, unrealistic elements.
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Priory to modernity, most people practiced Religion 1.0. In Religion 1.0, you believe that your religion's teachings are literally true: forest spirits oversee and influence everything; God created the world in 6 days; the ancestors demand animal sacrifice; bad karma will get you reincarnated as a mosquito; and so on. Your belief gives you power. It makes you feel contented and centered. It gives you pre-recorded narratives to call upon in challenging situations. It allows you to externalize mental problems. It provides powerful or morally positive role models to aspire to. It helps you contextualize yourself in the world.
But science proves that forest spirits don't exist, that the Earth is billions of years old, that animal sacrifices are a waste of good meat, and that when you're dead, you're dead. Modernity makes it obvious that our own religious traditions are just as fictional as ancient Greek or Norse myths, so we lose the ability to authentically participate in Religion 1.0. This presents us with a difficult choice: throw Religion 1.0 away entirely, keep it and deny science, or try to reconcile the two.
Throwing Religion 1.0 away means losing that religious power. You are cut off from spiritually powerful archetypes and must scavenge for them in the charnel ground of mass media or among the flawed humans around you. You frequently feel alone and unmoored. You engage in a lot of unhealthy pleasure-seeking behavior. Downtime becomes uncomfortable. And you lose access to religious communities and perks. Life becomes a series of increasingly elaborate distractions and rationalizations.
Denying science looks ridiculous, and people who try suffer from tension and cognitive dissonance, because becoming modern is like eating the fruit of the tree of good and evil. It cannot be un-eaten, just as modern knowledge cannot be un-known. The heart may want to deny science to preserve the ignorant bliss of Religion 1.0, but the head knows that it is impossible because science successfully underpins 100% of modern society. The only way to make it work is with force--either mental force, inside the mind, or physical force, to destroy the contradictions in the real world. This risks destroying modern society itself.
But reconciling Religion 1.0 with science also looks ridiculous. Religions are pre-scientific; the two are not compatible. Attempting to force them together requires favoring science where the two contradict, and selectively removing anything controversial. Such watered-down religions are bland and indistinct blobs of metaphor that explain nothing, their power and appeal drained away.
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I feel like there's a way out: in Religion 2.0, you don't literally believe the truth of the stories, but you acknowledge and access their spiritual power. This is what I now realize MediumTex was doing every time he would describe his journey back to Christianity. In Religion 2.0, it doesn't matter whether or not Jesus rose from the dead; what matters is his intense personification of the King and Healer archetypes. People flocked for miles to be led by him, to be healed by him. His generative leadership attracted millions. It was so strong that after he was gone, people created a new religion worshiping him and drove it to become the most popular religion in the world. Christians can access those King and Healer powers within themselves--in an unconscious manner in Religion 1.0, or consciously with Religion 2.0.
With Religion 2.0, you separate out the functions of explaining the world and explaining ourselves and our feelings. Science explains the world better, so you use science for that. But religion gives it meaning, power, and significance better, and still provides universally accessible positive archetypes to draw upon in our own personal lives. It does this much better than anything else in modern society, which is why people who turn to pop culture and politics for their sources of meaning and aspirational role models seem so unmoored and unsatisfied.
And for the first time in my life, I'm finding Christianity to be appealing. Jesus Christ is an immensely attractive and admirable figure to me, quite apart from whether any of his miracles actually ever happened. His King and Healer energies are intoxicating, which makes sense to me personally since those are the parts of myself that are the most underdeveloped. Other religions emphasize different archetypes, and they're all fascinating in different ways.
For people interested in these ideas and themes, I recommend the following for further reading:
https://www.amazon.com/King-Warrior-Mag ... 0062506064
https://meaningness.com/choiceless-mode
https://meaningness.com/systems-crisis-breakdown
https://vividness.live/2015/10/12/devel ... ompetence/
https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/16/b ... e-a-state/
P.S. what are our culture's modern myths? I believe the answer is superhero stories. See how they depict strongly archetypal characters and are continually re-told, refined, and iterated over. And they are enormously popular--almost universally so outside of the upper middle-class. They are our culture's attempt to build secular myths to replace the religious ones we're losing.
What about Norse myths?
Does it matter? If Achilles and Loki are purely fictional, does that somehow diminish the power of their stories?
These mythological religious traditions' stories are still told today because their characters represent classic, universally appealing archetypes: hero, king, trickster, rogue, wizard, and so on. These archetypes reflect aspects of our own personalities--courage, compassion, leadership, cleverness. In this respect, they are no different from modern non-religious stories. For example, Clint Eastwood's character Dirty Harry reflects the archetypes of rogue and hero at the same time. This combination appeals to people whose senses of courage and justice are bottled-up and infrequently expressed.
People are intrinsically drawn to stories with characters that strongly express classic archetypes, and all cultures have produced such stories. Prior to the modern age, most of these stories were religious and mythological, refined over millennia to increase their appeal and power. But today we swim in a wide sea of shallow stories, and our modern understanding of science and the natural world allows us to deflate the power of any story we choose by applying rational analysis to its fanciful, unrealistic elements.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Priory to modernity, most people practiced Religion 1.0. In Religion 1.0, you believe that your religion's teachings are literally true: forest spirits oversee and influence everything; God created the world in 6 days; the ancestors demand animal sacrifice; bad karma will get you reincarnated as a mosquito; and so on. Your belief gives you power. It makes you feel contented and centered. It gives you pre-recorded narratives to call upon in challenging situations. It allows you to externalize mental problems. It provides powerful or morally positive role models to aspire to. It helps you contextualize yourself in the world.
But science proves that forest spirits don't exist, that the Earth is billions of years old, that animal sacrifices are a waste of good meat, and that when you're dead, you're dead. Modernity makes it obvious that our own religious traditions are just as fictional as ancient Greek or Norse myths, so we lose the ability to authentically participate in Religion 1.0. This presents us with a difficult choice: throw Religion 1.0 away entirely, keep it and deny science, or try to reconcile the two.
Throwing Religion 1.0 away means losing that religious power. You are cut off from spiritually powerful archetypes and must scavenge for them in the charnel ground of mass media or among the flawed humans around you. You frequently feel alone and unmoored. You engage in a lot of unhealthy pleasure-seeking behavior. Downtime becomes uncomfortable. And you lose access to religious communities and perks. Life becomes a series of increasingly elaborate distractions and rationalizations.
Denying science looks ridiculous, and people who try suffer from tension and cognitive dissonance, because becoming modern is like eating the fruit of the tree of good and evil. It cannot be un-eaten, just as modern knowledge cannot be un-known. The heart may want to deny science to preserve the ignorant bliss of Religion 1.0, but the head knows that it is impossible because science successfully underpins 100% of modern society. The only way to make it work is with force--either mental force, inside the mind, or physical force, to destroy the contradictions in the real world. This risks destroying modern society itself.
But reconciling Religion 1.0 with science also looks ridiculous. Religions are pre-scientific; the two are not compatible. Attempting to force them together requires favoring science where the two contradict, and selectively removing anything controversial. Such watered-down religions are bland and indistinct blobs of metaphor that explain nothing, their power and appeal drained away.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
I feel like there's a way out: in Religion 2.0, you don't literally believe the truth of the stories, but you acknowledge and access their spiritual power. This is what I now realize MediumTex was doing every time he would describe his journey back to Christianity. In Religion 2.0, it doesn't matter whether or not Jesus rose from the dead; what matters is his intense personification of the King and Healer archetypes. People flocked for miles to be led by him, to be healed by him. His generative leadership attracted millions. It was so strong that after he was gone, people created a new religion worshiping him and drove it to become the most popular religion in the world. Christians can access those King and Healer powers within themselves--in an unconscious manner in Religion 1.0, or consciously with Religion 2.0.
With Religion 2.0, you separate out the functions of explaining the world and explaining ourselves and our feelings. Science explains the world better, so you use science for that. But religion gives it meaning, power, and significance better, and still provides universally accessible positive archetypes to draw upon in our own personal lives. It does this much better than anything else in modern society, which is why people who turn to pop culture and politics for their sources of meaning and aspirational role models seem so unmoored and unsatisfied.
And for the first time in my life, I'm finding Christianity to be appealing. Jesus Christ is an immensely attractive and admirable figure to me, quite apart from whether any of his miracles actually ever happened. His King and Healer energies are intoxicating, which makes sense to me personally since those are the parts of myself that are the most underdeveloped. Other religions emphasize different archetypes, and they're all fascinating in different ways.
For people interested in these ideas and themes, I recommend the following for further reading:
https://www.amazon.com/King-Warrior-Mag ... 0062506064
https://meaningness.com/choiceless-mode
https://meaningness.com/systems-crisis-breakdown
https://vividness.live/2015/10/12/devel ... ompetence/
https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/16/b ... e-a-state/
P.S. what are our culture's modern myths? I believe the answer is superhero stories. See how they depict strongly archetypal characters and are continually re-told, refined, and iterated over. And they are enormously popular--almost universally so outside of the upper middle-class. They are our culture's attempt to build secular myths to replace the religious ones we're losing.
