Jan 27, 2020, 6:24 AM
—“Notes on religion from “Willpower” by Roy F. Baumeister
(Willpower Stabilized/Sense of Place)
“Less obvious benefits included the finding that religion reduces people’s inner conflicts among different goals and values.”
(Practice Habit-Forming)
“Religious believers build self-control by regularly forcing themselves to interrupt their daily routines in order to pray.”
(External Accountability/Internal Consistency)
“Religious people tend to feel that someone important is watching them. That monitor might be God, a supernatural being who pays attention to what you do and think, often even knowing your innermost thoughts and reasons, and can’t be easily fooled if you do something apparently good for the wrong reason.”—Todd E. Magnusson
—“(Willpower Stabilized/Sense of Place) Less obvious benefits included the finding that religion reduces people’s inner conflicts among different goals and values.”—
Mindfulness. This is a neurological necessity. The fact that we are infinitely adaptive does not mean that we not infinitely stressed by infinite adaptation. The stoic method with Epicurean objectives achieves this best.
—“ritual”—
yes. continuous programming of stable state despite continuous exposure to life. Stoic ritual is superior.
–” that someone important is watching them”–
Yes. Again, stoic ritual, casts that person as ‘you’, giving you agency and knowledge of it.
The general argument so far is that ritual religion of slaves is necessary for the bottom, that stoicism an epicureanism for the middle, and stoicism and aryanism for the top.