The Psychological Function of Religion https://propertarianism.com/2020/05/25/the-psychological-function-of-religion/
Source date (UTC): 2020-05-25 18:10:18 UTC
Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1264982136215527425
Theme: Religion
-
The Psychological Function of Religion
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.
-
The Psychological Function of Religion
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.
-
The Bicameral Mind Is the Result of Two Hemispheres Needing to Time Their Movements
Jan 27, 2020, 10:10 AM A rather strange bias we see in archaeology tries to explain everything they don’t undrestand as mystical or religious in origin. We watch horror movies and tell campfire stories, and we enthrall each other with suspension of belief and woo woo, but that does not mean we are not eminently practical in real life. While reading the ancients – even though it is very difficult – it’s very clear that they thought as rationally and practically as we do while still ‘going all woo woo’ over the same nonsense. In fact, most letters are pretty tedious and could have been written a century ago. It’s one thing to read the iliad today in translation and another to hear someone recite it in its rhyme and tempo. When you hear that tempo and rhyme you realize that homer whether one person or many, and shakespeare are the same man. The difference that we cannot imagine today is the pervasive violence in everyday life of the ancient world,and how dependent we were upon family structures for mere survival, and how terrifying it was to be left along without their support – ostracization was a death sentence. As for the general bicameral mind, this story has not played out well against the evidence. It’s true that each of us varies in cognitive agency, and we may even say that what differs most between us is agency (or ‘executive function’). It’s true that all language is a means of calculation and the more precise and non-false the terms and complete the linguistic transactions the more we are able to devote the processing power of our frontal cortex to yet another iteration of thought. So it’s more that language and knowledge increase the radius in time, space, population, and permutation of our thinking, just as prices assist us in imputing, and managing our resources and time. But my understanding is that the wooo wooo apparent in ancient myth is just a tool for holding attention under suspension of disbelief so that the narrative is accompanied by sufficient emotional novelty that the story is remembered. That does not mean that a tribe of warriors conducting a raid or a set of 10k bc flint miners were doing or thinking any differently than we are. I am old enough to remember that class of our fellow white men that could not read. They did not think any differently. They simply had less accumulated knowledge, and less confidence in their knowledge. So you know, I don’t buy the whole thing because I see that there are woo woo people and empirical people in every generation across time. As far as I know language will eventually emerge in any creature with sufficient cognitive capacity (neural density in relation to body weight), that has a body that can move through space (because that is the origin of consciousness – spatial modeling). Once you have language it is such a fucking competitive advantage every competitor is screwed. So the bicameral mind is the result of two hemispheres needing to time their movements using the cerebellum. But in our brains the corpus callosum especially in women ensures that the hemispheres are working on concert. The major difference is that men are more longitudinally connected (fast, limited info, and time) and women more horizontally (slow, lots of info, in present moment). And even as such these are only limited biass not complete differences.
-
The Bicameral Mind Is the Result of Two Hemispheres Needing to Time Their Movements
Jan 27, 2020, 10:10 AM A rather strange bias we see in archaeology tries to explain everything they don’t undrestand as mystical or religious in origin. We watch horror movies and tell campfire stories, and we enthrall each other with suspension of belief and woo woo, but that does not mean we are not eminently practical in real life. While reading the ancients – even though it is very difficult – it’s very clear that they thought as rationally and practically as we do while still ‘going all woo woo’ over the same nonsense. In fact, most letters are pretty tedious and could have been written a century ago. It’s one thing to read the iliad today in translation and another to hear someone recite it in its rhyme and tempo. When you hear that tempo and rhyme you realize that homer whether one person or many, and shakespeare are the same man. The difference that we cannot imagine today is the pervasive violence in everyday life of the ancient world,and how dependent we were upon family structures for mere survival, and how terrifying it was to be left along without their support – ostracization was a death sentence. As for the general bicameral mind, this story has not played out well against the evidence. It’s true that each of us varies in cognitive agency, and we may even say that what differs most between us is agency (or ‘executive function’). It’s true that all language is a means of calculation and the more precise and non-false the terms and complete the linguistic transactions the more we are able to devote the processing power of our frontal cortex to yet another iteration of thought. So it’s more that language and knowledge increase the radius in time, space, population, and permutation of our thinking, just as prices assist us in imputing, and managing our resources and time. But my understanding is that the wooo wooo apparent in ancient myth is just a tool for holding attention under suspension of disbelief so that the narrative is accompanied by sufficient emotional novelty that the story is remembered. That does not mean that a tribe of warriors conducting a raid or a set of 10k bc flint miners were doing or thinking any differently than we are. I am old enough to remember that class of our fellow white men that could not read. They did not think any differently. They simply had less accumulated knowledge, and less confidence in their knowledge. So you know, I don’t buy the whole thing because I see that there are woo woo people and empirical people in every generation across time. As far as I know language will eventually emerge in any creature with sufficient cognitive capacity (neural density in relation to body weight), that has a body that can move through space (because that is the origin of consciousness – spatial modeling). Once you have language it is such a fucking competitive advantage every competitor is screwed. So the bicameral mind is the result of two hemispheres needing to time their movements using the cerebellum. But in our brains the corpus callosum especially in women ensures that the hemispheres are working on concert. The major difference is that men are more longitudinally connected (fast, limited info, and time) and women more horizontally (slow, lots of info, in present moment). And even as such these are only limited biass not complete differences.
-
Life After Death
Life After Death https://propertarianism.com/2020/05/25/life-after-death/
Source date (UTC): 2020-05-25 18:03:14 UTC
Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1264980359269228544
-
Life After Death
Jan 27, 2020, 11:30 AM (hard questions) (life after death)
—“Is there life after death? Watching my father die recently has made me question my faith and the meaning of existence.”—James Louis LaSalle
Do socrates, Alexander, and Jefferson still live? Do your ancestors still live? Our current understanding of the universe is that it is constructed of information (differences in state). We certainly live on as information. We certainly live on as information in both genes, words, deeds, and the debt we pass on to our ancestors. But does that information in any way exist such that our memories can be accessed, our experiences revisited, new experiences felt, or new memories formed? No. Of this we are scientifically certain I’m afraid – although I won’t go into the completeness we see today. There is no room in the universe for information that can interact with any information we are capable of sensing. Conversely can the fragments of our genes, words, deeds, be assembled in ‘gists’ in the minds of those that follow us? Of course. How many of us have been in an ancient place and felt the generations, centuries, millennia, aeons pass? How many of us can ‘feel’ the lives of the generations that have lived in a medieval house? A gothic church? A roman ruin? An oak grove. We make marks upon genetic, physical, and informational existence. And as such we make marks on our perception of eternity, just as surely as a craftsman leaves a mark on stone, an author ink on parchment, a philosopher or scientist on man, a mother and father on the generations to follow. The greatest mark we can make is a war of liberty, conquest, or genocide. It’s these marks we make as a people. But it is those marks we leave in genetics, in our arts and letters, and in knowledge, that live forever. So is there a life after death? Of course not. It was a lie told to those in exchange for obedience – a novel form of cheap slavery. An addictive drug for the weak and ignorant. One of the great lies of history – a lie that violates reciprocity because it cannot be warrantied. But do we persist after death? Only in the capital we create that persists after us. Bear young. Live well. Speak the truth. And exit this life having made works that leave the world better for your having lived in it. This is the promise of our people.
-
Life After Death
Jan 27, 2020, 11:30 AM (hard questions) (life after death)
—“Is there life after death? Watching my father die recently has made me question my faith and the meaning of existence.”—James Louis LaSalle
Do socrates, Alexander, and Jefferson still live? Do your ancestors still live? Our current understanding of the universe is that it is constructed of information (differences in state). We certainly live on as information. We certainly live on as information in both genes, words, deeds, and the debt we pass on to our ancestors. But does that information in any way exist such that our memories can be accessed, our experiences revisited, new experiences felt, or new memories formed? No. Of this we are scientifically certain I’m afraid – although I won’t go into the completeness we see today. There is no room in the universe for information that can interact with any information we are capable of sensing. Conversely can the fragments of our genes, words, deeds, be assembled in ‘gists’ in the minds of those that follow us? Of course. How many of us have been in an ancient place and felt the generations, centuries, millennia, aeons pass? How many of us can ‘feel’ the lives of the generations that have lived in a medieval house? A gothic church? A roman ruin? An oak grove. We make marks upon genetic, physical, and informational existence. And as such we make marks on our perception of eternity, just as surely as a craftsman leaves a mark on stone, an author ink on parchment, a philosopher or scientist on man, a mother and father on the generations to follow. The greatest mark we can make is a war of liberty, conquest, or genocide. It’s these marks we make as a people. But it is those marks we leave in genetics, in our arts and letters, and in knowledge, that live forever. So is there a life after death? Of course not. It was a lie told to those in exchange for obedience – a novel form of cheap slavery. An addictive drug for the weak and ignorant. One of the great lies of history – a lie that violates reciprocity because it cannot be warrantied. But do we persist after death? Only in the capital we create that persists after us. Bear young. Live well. Speak the truth. And exit this life having made works that leave the world better for your having lived in it. This is the promise of our people.
-
Exposing the False Morality of The Fundamentalists with The Truth of Scientific
Exposing the False Morality of The Fundamentalists with The Truth of Scientific Morality https://propertarianism.com/2020/05/25/exposing-the-false-morality-of-the-fundamentalists-with-the-truth-of-scientific-morality/
Source date (UTC): 2020-05-25 18:01:34 UTC
Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1264979940828684289
-
Exposing the False Morality of The Fundamentalists with The Truth of Scientific Morality
Jan 28, 2020, 9:55 AM EXPOSING THE FALSE MORALITY OF THE FUNDAMENTALISTS WITH THE TRUTH OF SCIENTIFIC MORALITY (important)
—“Without God who cares. Women can lie and men can harass them. There are endless ways for people to be unfair and cruel. Without the conscience that comes with a Christian civilization people will beg for tyranny to live in peace.”—Bill Amy Grady
If that was true then there would only be one interpretation of christianity instead of hundreds. Astrology, Numerology, and Scriptural Interpretation are the three most common forms of sophistry and deceit. And the jewish method of pilpul (lying by sophistry) was institutionalized by the three ‘books of pilpul’. Instead, there is only one law with two faces, and that is the law of reciprocity: in the negative: prohibitions – that is the contribution of european man; and on the inverse, the law of exhausting interpersonal forgiveness : in the positive: demands – that is the contribution of christianity. The rest of christianity is lies and parables that offer false promises of unwarrantable rewards, in an impossible life after death to simple illiterate people lacking knowledge of reason, logic, science, economics and mathematics. The Jewish method is expressly evolved for the purpose of profiting from free riding, parasitism upon the dominant males, and undermining using false promise and deceit – by demanding verbal or intellectual skills. The islamic method is the same form of parasitism but depends on blind imitation rather than verbal or intellectual skills. The christian method was just, like communism, a false promise to the underclass, in the semitic war against the european, iranic, egyptian, and north african peoples. There is but one law of life: persistence of that form of organization we call life by the defeat of entropy and capture of energy by doing so – and the only difference between the physical world and the human is that we have memories, and can account for debts and credits between each other with extraordinary precision. And as long as our accounts are in balance with one another, or at least as long as we can foresee our accounts balancing, then we can continue to cooperate and to take risks to cooperate. Truth: you use god as a shield by which you can ignore other humans, fail to compromise with other humans, fail to face your worth to other humans, fail to join the collective efforts of other humans, and instead to descend into self centeredness, self-congratulation, ignorance and obedience like the muslims, all while claiming you are doing good. But you are just the man praying while others do the work: free riding on the efforts and honesty of better men.