THE PROPERTIES OF RELIGIONS SATISFY A SET OF NECESSARY DEMANDS Most people don’t

THE PROPERTIES OF RELIGIONS SATISFY A SET OF NECESSARY DEMANDS

Most people don’t understand the term religion because they define religion as monotheism and supernaturalism rather than the demands of the human psyche once outside of tribal life, that are satisfied by religion – rituals and regularities that provide the kind of saturation that tribal life provides the always-uncertain-mind.

The tribal mind is constantly receiving feedback from other members in the group. But as scale and division of labor increase this turns into ‘noise’. Because it is noise it is incalculable (impossible to order and rationalize). Because it is incalculable it creates uncertainty and frustration. Uncertainty and frustration that for a time can be satisfied by increased consumption provided by increases in the division of knowledge and labor. But eventually ends on confusion and loneliness (or what marx called ‘alienation’).

Gods, demigods, saints, and heroes provide a unit of measure by which complex sets of phenomenon can be judged across family, clan, tribe, and cultural lines. They provide decidability and therefore the reduction of conflict, a standard of norms, and the production of trust and certainty through repetition, and the elimination of effort of game-theoriizing which failed the human mind by the second or third order.

Sports, Festivals, Holidays, Feasts and Rituals provide trust by evoking the pack response which is one of the most pleasant feelings humans can experience. Repetition eliminates differences. Costly rituals eliminate defection (loss avoidance).

Private rituals and prayers and recitation and meditation provide mindfulness.

So at every level, political, social, and personal, that which we call ‘religion’ creates the equivalent of the pack at increasingly large scales.

And humans like all pack and herd animals, are gregarious toward the pack.

And that is the purpose of religion.

To create gregariousness toward the pack.

And therefore a forgiving and tolerant and gregarious pack despite our ever increasing differences in a division of knowledge and labor.

In propertarian terms: to decrease opportunity and transaction costs including the physical, emotional, and intellectual.