The dirty politics of social identities

Religion is just a powerful organization that has controlled the world for a long time.

 

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better to be secular humanists than to falsely believe we are all divided by some arbitrary bullshit like religion - and then fight endless wars because we THINK we are "different".

better to be a secular humanist than to shout "bakalakakah" while killing fellow human beings.

 

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Doesn't all this boil down to a very basic "In Group/Out Group" phenom?
In the big scope of things, it doesn't get more elementary than that; why is it such a misunderstood concept, and why are we seemingly unable to rise above it?
(Maybe because it IS so elementary...)

 

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My apologies. I just wanted to shake people into coming here. See this thread has been lying 'vacant' for a couple of months now.

Your input was valuable. I look forward to more.

 

Ok, let’s take as a start, religions.

I believe that all large social groups can exist only when members feel a part of the group—when members associate themselves with the group through set structures. All societies therefore have rituals they maintain, and said rituals usually form around ubiquitous natural occurrences like death, life, harvest, etc. Thus from the onset, the first societies usually had simplistic rituals around these occurrences, which through habit and time became sacred. The attachment of sacredness to rituals of course begets an elite to preside over these rituals. Over generations, structures develop along the rituals as they became more imbedded into society. They grow with society and blend into the social lives of the group, and are therefore harder to challenge.

The development and acceptance of the social group of for example, a caste system, is a gradual process that must have developed over a sacred. Citizens accept fewer rights over generations; each subsequent generation finds it easier to accept the existing fabric or rules that govern it. The problem as I see it is twofold:

One, as religions evolve within societies, they mold and take the shape of the society’s mores and values. Therefore, the abuses and neglects of religion often go unnoticed. The rules developed for the benefit of the elite and its structure might impact society in the devaluing/valuing of a gender, genetic traits, etc. However, since developed over centuries, they are accepted parts of social life. The elite even takes its advantages for granted, the abuses imparted by the elite or ruling group over its servants is unnoticed by the elite. That the peasant works and gives half of what he earns to the church is just an accepted part of life, and not seen necessarily as an abuse. That sexual aggression is limited or that human sexuality becomes highly constricted is seen more as a social rule as opposed to a religious structure that has become part of society.

Two, social structures must necessarily exist since the members of any given group must identify with some form of social structure, it is not so easy as all religions must be destroyed or all social structures must be destroyed. The reasoning is that the destruction of one simple means the creation of another structure—structures must exist, and ritualistic structures even more so, else societies cannot exist; and two, these structures form the fabric of value systems, etc. and influence our way of thought even when we challenge these social structures. And yet by their very existence said structures, especially religion, which has the affirmation of a sacred, are by nature breeding grounds for the elite and easy avenues for those willing to abuse.

 

The question is why can't we believe in god and still don't see each other as different.

The point that you're missing here is that:

- by institutionalising faith in god into a social identity;

- by making out others as enemies (as done by Christianity and perfected by Islam);

- by makiing 'their' gods different from 'ours', (the other gods were 'evil' while 'ours' the real one!);

- by making proselytising into 'our' identity a 'noble' task;

- by making the protection and furtherance of 'our' religious identity as our primary duty towards 'god', even (especially) by killing or converting the non-believers as 'evil'!;

the makers of organised religion, while consolidating their social power, sowed the seeds of endless vioilence and hatred amongst human beings.

Human beings who originally all saw god in a similar way --- into symbols of nature, into ideal human beings......and had immense respect for each others gods and goddesses, and never considered each other different on account of what 'god' one worshipped, nor used it as a social identity.

 

While what you're saying is right, things should not have come to this pass!

When tommorrow so-called heterosexuals and homosexuals will be ready to kill each other because of their enmity, you might say, better to be asexual than to be homosexual or heteroseuxal!

 

While Christianity (and Islam) incorporated faith in god into a social identity and saw themselves as Christians and Muslims, they also went about giving other faiths an identity too (whether they wanted it or not!) --- even when the other faiths did not quite see themselves as a matter of identity, and did not consider the 'gods' or prophets of the others as 'different' or 'evil' or 'enemies' and did not see Christianity or Islam as a threat.

Today we are firmly divided into various religious identities! The only way not to have a religious social identity is not to believe in god at all, and that is only available to the westerners.

So a Muslim will be considered a Muslim, even if he doesn't believe in Islam!

But even today non-Christian/ Islamic religions see these two religions with equal respect and reverence as they give to their own gods/ goddesses, and trust them easily, completely ignorant of the fact that these religions see them basically as enemies to be wiped off from the face of the earth.

 

http://sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=51990