Archive for the ‘Religion As Emotional Tech’ Category
Well, Duh!
A newspaper reports American researchers on the effects of low-frequency sound waves such as can be caused by passing traffic. They can, apparently, create neurological phenomena that might explain the experience of ghosts. It concludes that the scientists found the same effect from large organ pipes, which might, the paper said, explain feelings of “spirituality” […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, Religion As Emotional Tech
Mood-Making
Religion is not solely about the economic, political and social-climbing technologies. There is also emotional technology, what Idries Shah has termed “mood-making”. Different kinds of mood, however, are made. Moreover, Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs is quite wrong. Even when adequately fed, clothed, sheltered and laid, few people seek this thing he called “self-realisation”. […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, Religion As Emotional Tech
Are You Being Served?
Small children are sometimes heard to wonder why the tedious events to which their churchgoing parents drag them are called “services”. They probably find it a most unconvincing explanation that they are there to serve God, as the innocent childish mind does not see any such serving going on. Unless, perhaps, the church is like […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, Religion As Emotional Tech
The Varieties Of Religious Entertainment
Time was when church attendance was compulsory; in some parts of the world it still is. It may not be formally required, but non-attendees can forget all about doing business in the community. Networking is important everywhere, particularly for immigrants, the poor and the corrupt. Perhaps some people go in order to improve their own […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, Religion As Emotional Tech
The Churchwomen
The Anglican women who arrange the flowers for Sunday communion like to pretend that they are performing an unsung service entirely pro maiore gloria Dei. It may well be true that the men take their work for granted, but the other core females of the congregation know perfectly well who has done what and that […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, Religion As Emotional Tech
The Goodman Deal
The New England Puritans used “Goodman” and “Goodwife” – often abbreviated to “Goody”, which we moderns have trouble hearing without fits of the giggles – as perfectly serious titles of address. We meet them, for example, in The Crucible. There are two ways of looking at this. We might think it respectful, as suggesting a […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, Religion As Emotional Tech
The Moral Compass
It seems so typical of American conservatives as to be almost diagnostic that they believe that the whole of moral philosophy with its questions and dilemmas is unnecessary, and there can never be a situation in which a good man is in doubt as to the right course of action. “Motivations? What are you talking […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, Religion As Emotional Tech
It Shouldn’t Happen to ME!
The Psalmist kvetches about the things he does when someone else for once is doing it back to him. He suffers because the natural order has been disrupted; woe, woe, woe, he is receiving it rather than handing it out! In the Psalms there is no sense of karma, of “what goes around comes around”. […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, Religion As Emotional Tech
Clean Hands And Dirty Deeds
Just as our aural imaginations supply the “right” notes (that we have not actually heard) so as to resolve musical dissonances (that don’t actually resolve), so too can what we may call our social imaginations supply the “right” facts and perspectives to enable us feel good about ourselves. Now, not everyone has a sufficiently powerful […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, Religion As Emotional Tech
The Thirst For The Absolute
If fundamentalists had truly arrived at their perspective through a close reading of the Bible or the Qur’an, then they would have a decent scriptural knowledge. It can easily be demonstrated that the great majority have very little. Only half of American fundamentalist Christians can tell you who preached the Sermon on the Mount. Ergo, […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, Religion As Emotional Tech
