Mar 20, 2020, 10:22 AM

—“Bill, Why is the religion question not hard? And why is applied-P simple?”—

RELIGION

I think the religion question result from the conflation of two necessary psychological functions:

  1. belonging and cohesion to the community (running with the pack, ritual behaviour increasing amiability to cooperate, signaling between group members)

And;

  1. creating personal meaning for ones life.

This represents the conflation of public and private functions, which makes the problem difficult.

I see this as an artifact of the role institutional religion played in the past as a catch all institution for communities which over time we’ve spun off higher resolution institutions as we began to see the need more clearly.

The former relates to extended identity – identify with our community,find our place with in it then contribute from it… contribution in both directions (what you get from your community, what you give to your community) provides the seeds for this identity (for example the role of “professionalism” with in the military)

The later is for each person to develop on their own. its for the individual to discover and develop a meaningful relationship with their life.

I think the difficulty or rather resistance we find with religious groups stems from using the former (community functions) to lower the costs for the later (as the later exists as a personal responsibility- adopting a personal god allows one to grab a prepackaged product to fulfill what one needs to create on their own).

APPLIED P

Now, as for applied P.

I see this as really really simple because its really just a set of three or so heuristics for guiding personal and interpersonal decisions.

  1. everything is a proxy for violence resulting in trust commons i.e. use trust as a means for measuring others behaviour and your own.

  2. reciprocity as the measure for “contract” and in assessing moral behaviour

  3. view everything by a measure of property. measure costs, investments etc.

And i add this in regarding parenting (and use all of the above for parenting)… autonomy follows demonstrated ability therefore i grant freedoms to my child after they’ve demonstrated responsibility (and thus must give opportunities to demonstrate responsibility) and remove them based on the same criteria.

…I mean these are the ones I have explicit thought into, there maybe more elements which I do intuitively and haven’t realized yet.

I see the above points as essentially dimensions of the same “thing” that being property en toto, and thus can calculate life choices based on these means of measurement (rough measurements)

Trust, reciprocity, property…

Did that behaviour increase or decrease trust and why…

am i reciprocating, are they reciprocating? if not why (do i need to renegotiate the terms of the relationship).

Is this my property, their property, or ours? (For example: it’s not in my purview to judge how my boss runs their business because its their property – not my “business”) (is that friend demonstrating investment in this friendship? or am i the only one investing… if so then they don’t see value in this property so my investment is misdirected (a malinvestment).)

… this one has worked wonders for my daughter navigating teenage dramas.