The Conundrum Of Religion

[Antlerman]

I've been mentioning this concept lately in other threads, but felt it might make a good discussion topic in itself. I see the cycle of human religion along these lines: the spiritual/social visionary sees things in such a way as it resonates with the needs of the time, offering a language to express and experience those ideas. This becomes a movement of adherents, and in a larger society it garners the attention of the masses and is adopted as the popular thing to do. At that point it begins to morph radically into a popularized version of the original, changing and adapting to meet the mass market demands. Now it's a target for those who desire power, and the thing becomes organized and controlled under industry rules that now make it the Institution.

 

As this Institution lumbers along trying to govern the masses with this system, it fails to be responsive and stifles the dynamic human spirit that created it in the first place, and the cycle begins again. This is the conundrum: How can a philosophy or a religion ever meet the needs of the masses, yet how can the ideas ever be brought to the masses without the organization? If the human spirit is a response thing to a changing and dynamic environment, how can it ever become a religion or philosophy for the masses and continue to be the living, dynamic thing that began its creation in the first place?

 

Below is a quote from myself from another thread that really started this line of thought lately. I was inspired by the fact the company I work for was absorbed into an extreemly large corporation, and experiencing that system, I related it to the Roman Empire's adoption of Christianity into the entity known as the Roman Catholic Church.

 

This is actually where I wanted to see the conversation go, in one part of it. It has to do with the nature of Bureaucracy!! The people on the street, who are the feet of the machine are the ones touching reality around them and know the work that needs to be done. But way up, far up, in some bureaucrats office next to another bureaucrats office is a wholly separate reality! A reality of politics and culture of its own. Now keep going up further into the bureaucratic hierarchy. especially in the RCC, and you have this entity riding atop this lumbering beast that spans countries and cultures the world over, and long histories of traditions and practices, trying to move and adjust as a massive corporate entity in response to the voices down, way, way, way down there on the ground who talk directly to people on the streets, understanding through direct interaction with them.

 

It's a conundrum. The whole thing is a conundrum. As a massive organization, it can be effective in enacting changes, yet as a massive organization it is difficult for it to be able respond dynamically and fluidly. This brings us to Protestants! Like the little upstart, entrepreneurial enterprises in the business world, they fill the niche markets where holes are left exposed because the large corporation was unable to get their product to market in time to rapidly changing demands in a highly dynamic marketplace! What defines the Protestant is something different than what Mother Church offers. They're market niches is YOU! It's YOU and YOUR salvation! It's about the direct, and personal relationship with God! No longer do we work through the system, we go straight to the throne of God himself!

 

The downside of the Protestant enterprise is that it cannot be as effective on a global market. Instead it splinters and defines itself into many different start-up businesses, each clamoring for a piece of the available market, and all selling the "direct, personal relationship to God" products. Now along comes Fundamentalists!! They take this ME relationship with God, to a whole new level of market spin. It's not only about a direct relationship to God, it's about personal blessings! Talking in tongues, getting off on Jesus! It becomes so self-focused it shifts it's buyers away from society into an almost drug-culture. Yuk! That's what American Evangelical Christianity has become, and what it exports into 3rd world countries, exploiting impoverished countries with failing governments and warlords, promising truth and meaning to their lives! What they need is not Jesus - they need bread and water and stable governments.

 

So now the grand conundrum. I see someone like Jesus as having quite possibly been (or a least the movement that created the icon of Jesus) to be a social/spiritual reformation movement at the ground level, the grass roots level, within the religious bureaucratic system of Judaism, originally looking for reforms within the system (much like our new guest who started this thread is rightly pleading for). As this failed to make the sorts of inroads necessary during that period of history, as it is hard to move lumbering beasts quickly you know, this off-cast internal reform movement finds a niche market, becomes a popular product, then becomes a target for exploitation by another, even larger massive Bureaucracy: The Roman Government! It was the Corporate purchase of a small company, sending in their Mergers and Acquisition teams to assimilate them into the collective, while re-branding themselves in a new market strategy, as it was time for the corporate name to take on a new look and feel. Yet in and amongst the parts that make up new the corporate entity, you have the essences and cultures of the business they've consumed - the Jesus movement of love and charity, being an important part of them.

 

The conundrum is how does one function as a dynamic system to speak to the marketplace of humanity, yet be effective as an entity that can effectively bring the product to market? It can't be resolved in my opinion. So even though I admire the sentiments expressed in the opening post, does the answer really lie in the individual when dealing with a bureaucracy. Has it ever? Did it with Jesus? The RCC is the oldest, longest living bureaucracy in the history of the planet.

 

 

OK, I'll leave it there for now. Thoughts?

[insanezenmistress]

hum well.....i get ya but i havn't the time to absourb and dredge myself for thoughts. Just wanted to say i was here and ............ill be back.

 

This thought is not what i was expecting. I thought you ment to go into how the symbols of religion express the same ideals. That these symbols change or take time to get molded into the forms we have today is what you brought out.

 

So my little " it all is symbols for the same ideal" ruberic i been working on is useless for this topic. Dang i thought hard for it too. And i want to get it off my head.

 

So here is the ruberic use it or destroy how ever it fits.

 

Reason, Self Awareness, believe as you understand.

 

Sangha, Buddha, Dharma

 

Creator, destroyer, preserver

 

Father, Son, Holy Ghost.

 

 

There are many gospels and there are many reasons. These pairings of words stand for the same intangible things in their respective mythical places.

 

The holy ghost tells a christian the way to go, and the buddhist calls it living his dharma. Reason tells us how to go, and the hindu crouches it in terms of god being all things for all purposes.

 

So forth and so on.

[Antlerman]

This thought is not what i was expecting. I thought you ment to go into how the symbols of religion express the same ideals. That these symbols change or take time to get molded into the forms we have today is what you brought out.

 

So my little " it all is symbols for the same ideal" ruberic i been working on is useless for this topic. Dang i thought hard for it too. And i want to get it off my head.

Well, comparative religion is definitely a viable topic, with the expression of ancient archetypes in similar symbols, etc. Where symbols ties into this is where they are not allowed to be adaptive to the culture because it has become a doctrine of the institution. They're no longer living symbols, but the truth themselves. They no longer are pointers, but the end. What I'm looking at is that difficulty, if not impossibility of an expressive, dynamic language being anything that can possible talk to the masses. I don't believe at this point it can, and that's probably because of the nature of those in the middle of the Bell Curve. They're looking for a system to tell them how to live, rather than looking for ways to explain things to their minds and spirit. The institution is the marketing machine that takes the vision, makes it dumbed down for the masses, sells it to them, then holds them as customers.

 

Whose really is at fault in this scenario? The marketing machine, or the customers?

[insanezenmistress]

 

humm What speaks to the massess? Off the top of my head, music.... YET memories attached to tunes provoke personal as well as ordinary expression. Language? What for? to comunicate what *you* understand, to bring another to your mind? Or A reaction to the particular form ( language?) that provokes and is the "universal ideal" ? Hey! maybe we should all mime.

 

I agree *they* should look for to explain things to their minds and spirits and experience the same.NO you cant sell or market the real thing. Only which way you think wil get you "there". You can only sell your advice or opinion. And the vision is mostly fantacy. We need to concider what *we* are.

 

 

And who is at fault?

 

The customer creates the demand for markets otherwise we would would all be self-sufficient hunter-gatherers.

 

Now a bit on the powers the be dont want a civilisation of idealistic hunter gatherers.

 

Why it seems "religion" and "politics"are twin rails of a crazy train bent on the People's ignorance?

 

(getting paranoid..wheres my pills?)

 

 

 

[insanezenmistress]

Some religions and facisims solve the bell curve thing thru dumbing down education and fear and a healthy dose of social brainwashing. I dotn think that a group of humans sat down and divied up offices of control. You take the chrisitan religion you take communisim. Both try to sell an unrealilistic ideal ruined by their own corruption. So we dont know that the marketing machines arent able to do the human dilema solveing becasue we may have never given them a proper chance. We never seen their ideal in function. We have only witnessed the corruption and cheapening of it.

[Guest end3]

This is the conundrum: How can a philosophy or a religion ever meet the needs of the masses, yet how can the ideas ever be brought to the masses without the organization? If the human spirit is a response thing to a changing and dynamic environment, how can it ever become a religion or philosophy for the masses and continue to be the living, dynamic thing that began its creation in the first place?

 

 

The religion or philosophy fails due to lack of unity in spirit. It is living and dynamic on a small scale....an individual scale. The visionary you speak about could be and should be each of us. As each person is an individual, so is each vision. The organization brings the visions together, but without unity, the organization of spirits remains unorganized.

 

I would speculate that you have to identify visions of the individuals, recognize that each brings a vision, put them together in an orderly fashion with a common goal, and I would near promise dynamic.

 

Why does it not work?.............pretty simple

[florduh]

I probably won't be challenged much if I assert that the majority of people are intellectually lazy. A large part of society wants direction and to be relieved of too much thinking.

 

All sorts of authoritative bureaucracies spring up to fill the needs of both those who yearn to wield authority and those of the majority who wish to be ruled.

 

Churches are a special case, because they offer the society The Answer, which is the ultimate concern of most humans. We all want assurance that we will survive physical death and continue eternally in some pleasant way. Since there is no real evidence to support that assumption, the religions create a mythological framework to tell the people what they must do in order to please the proper god or how to cooperate with the rules of the universe.

 

Once such a system is established as the Eternal Truth, nobody dares stray from the One True Path, even if the mythology and message becomes outdated. Most people naturally resist change in any aspect of their lives, but religion is the biggie. The Truth is seen as unchanging and eternally true, otherwise, what value is it?

 

That's when gridlock sets in. The institution has come to believe in itself, and has a formula that has worked for a long time. With advancement of the society people begin to see that what was once a way to the truth, then the actual truth itself, is obviously not literally factual. Nobody seems to return to the mythological roots of the belief system, but tend to discard it completely.

 

I think quite a few people at that point look to other Truths, and find no more evidence or logic there than in the one they abandoned. That realization leads to atheism or at least agnosticism.

 

I agree that there is no solution to the conundrum. The RCC happens to be the oldest of the bureaucracies because they ruled with an iron fist over a relatively small society as compared to today. They began before Bibles were available to the masses and therefore had total spiritual authority and the force to back it up. But today there are millions of Catholics who are such in name only. They don't buy into the dogma but are still afraid to not call themselves Catholic. The Church still owns them in a way, but has no authority over them. So this "marketing machine" is in a no-win. They are losing members, and the ones they keep are bowing less to their authority. A radical change in their policies would disenfranchise the faithful core, but "staying the course" drives away the modern generation.

 

What's an evil empire to do?

[Antlerman]

Some religions and facisims solve the bell curve thing thru dumbing down education and fear and a healthy dose of social brainwashing. I dotn think that a group of humans sat down and divied up offices of control. You take the chrisitan religion you take communisim. Both try to sell an unrealilistic ideal ruined by their own corruption. So we dont know that the marketing machines arent able to do the human dilema solveing becasue we may have never given them a proper chance. We never seen their ideal in function. We have only witnessed the corruption and cheapening of it.

Well, then that places the onus on the consumer. And by that I mean the middle. I don't mean to sound elitist, but there are marketing machines that do talk to the more refined palate, so to speak, whether in commercial markets that appeals to the high-end audio market, versus selling the big box consumer electronics at BestBuy to the average consumer; whether its fine restaurants with world-class chefs, versus the lunch hour McVomit drive through palate. The same applies to religious organizations that appeal to intellectual/philosophical markets, or to your more pedestrian/meat and potatoes. "God, church, home, community" sort of market. Which has more audience? The bell curve is an unavoidable reality, no matter what the issue, or what the market is. There is a weighted middle in statistical normal distribution.

 

Now this question is a "chicken or egg first" sort of question. Which came first, the market or the machine? I'd say the market. Once the market is targeted, then begins the struggle to meet the changing market, along with controlling it in order to secure your place as a marketer to that audience. So it becomes this evil sort of parasite/host sort of love/hate relationship. It's really the outside influences of visionaries that reach into that market place with new messages. As the school of fish gravitate to the voice, then the marketers pick up on that, and copy it to continue selling to their audience. In order for the them to compete they must sell it as easier, faster, cheaper, prettier, and all the like. Dumbing down. Something innate appeals to the visionary, but the cost of ownership is too high a price, too much effort for the general audience, so the competitors offer the cheap rip-off version sold at the big box outlet stores to offer a token to satisfy that urge with crap. McVomit. Barely-edible food matter that poses as a meal. "I'm eating, the new McPheasant". Satisfies the desire for the new. Yet, what are they consuming? Are they satisfied or pacified? Same thing with our institutionalized religions.

 

What was Jesus? I've said it many times, I see him (excluding all traditional trappings of divinity imposed on him) as probably something like a hippie. Idealist, anti-establishment-type radical. Why? Because, again stripping off all the later hero layers as some divine son of God sort of thing, he attracted those of like dissatisfaction with the system (Judaism); they walked around trying to live out some ideal espousing simple truths of humanity, attacking the institution as missing the boat, etc. It's not too much of an assumption based on being able to see this sort of scenario repeat itself again, and again in history (add to this the literary evidence of the evolution of the myth on the man). As the development of the story grew, other schools of thought layered themselves onto this hippie-like figure turning him into the icon of social/spiritual reform from converging disciplines.

 

But then, once the general populace sees these new ideas, then comes the machine, repackaging it in order for it to be more marketable to the current palate, morphing it to fit the larger market sensibilities. It now becomes a new face on the same old thing that started the movement in the first place! It itself is now the new enemy, and another visionary comes and starts the whole cycle over again. But the point is, the only way for the middle to change is that the power of the machine be weakened in their eyes. Yet, with that is huge resistance because it's asking the middle to deal with the task of discovery. That's normally the task of the edges, and to get to close to that (either progressive or conservative edges) is not where most people can live.

 

I look at most everyone in this on-line community of ours here, and I see those who are not in the middle on these issues, but much more towards the breakaway edges. Like it or not, we are part of a predominantly Christian culture, and as such, please forgive the reference, we are more like those who the early Christians were probably like (again looking beneath the glossy layers to the human reality underneath it). I've mused many times that Jesus was probably in effect much like todays atheists are in the face of conventional religious cultural norms. So the point is we are not the middle. If we were, we'd still be sitting semi-comfortably in the pews of the Protestant step-children of Rome, happy with our fast food diets that numb our taste buds to the vibrant flavors of high cuisine (or in my personal example, destroying our ears with digital noise from MP3 players, versus the richness of pure analog ). Each of us is reaching for a different way of finding meaning to our humanity in a vital marketplace of perspectives, systems, philosophies, etc.

 

I'll stop here, lest I ramble on for a single 5 page post which would bring the board down.

[The-Captain]

In political science its referred to as the The Iron Law of Oligarchy

 

 

I don't mean to sound elitist, but there are marketing machines that do talk to the more refined palate, so to speak, whether in commercial markets that appeals to the high-end audio market, versus selling the big box consumer electronics at BestBuy to the average consumer; whether its fine restaurants with world-class chefs, versus the lunch hour McVomit drive through palate. The same applies to religious organizations that appeal to intellectual/philosophical markets, or to your more pedestrian/meat and potatoes.

 

From the excellent Paul Tobin site:

 

 

It is mainly due to their uneducated roots, that Christianity with its strong anti-intellectual character provided such a welcome system of belief. We actually have contemporary reports on the anti-intellectual behavior of these early Christians. It was written by the skeptical philosopher Celsus in his book The True Doctrine (c178):

 

Christians usually flee headlong from cultured people, who are not prepared to be deceived, but they trap illiterate folk ... Their injunctions are like this, "Let no one be educated, no one wise, no one sensible draw near. For these abilities are thought by us to be evils. But as for anyone ignorant, anyone stupid, anyone uneducated, anyone who is a child, let him come boldly." ... Some of them do not even want to give or receive a reason for what they believe, and use such expressions as "Do not ask questions; just believe." and "Thy faith will save thee." And they say, "The wisdom of the world is an evil, and foolishness is a good thing."

 

If anyone is interested there is more here: http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/earlyxtian.html

[Legion]

What you're talking about here Antlerman reminds me a little bit of Thomas Kuhn's description of a paradigm shift in science.

 

Dogma/entrenched paradigm ---> dissatisfaction/accumulating anomolies ---> visionaries/discovery ---> adoption of new way/paradigm shift

 

I still think that genuine discovery is a rare occurance and initiated by a relatively few number of individuals. Perhaps the great "middle" may provide a pressure for discovery by their increasing dissatisfaction with an entrenched paradigm. But I think that true visionaries are a rare thing. I don't see much of a conundrum though. It seems to me that humanity is learning. And I wouldn't be too surprised if there is a pattern to learning that echos this pattern that you've sketched here Antlerman.

[Ravenwing]

Once such a system is established as the Eternal Truth, nobody dares stray from the One True Path, even if the mythology and message becomes outdated. Most people naturally resist change in any aspect of their lives, but religion is the biggie. The Truth is seen as unchanging and eternally true, otherwise, what value is it?

 

That's when gridlock sets in. The institution has come to believe in itself, and has a formula that has worked for a long time.

 

Right on, Florduh! Particularly the point about something being eternally true otherwise what value is it? That is the conundrum faced by modern churches. What parts of the faith are eternally true (sacrifice for sin, repent and be saved) and what parts are culturally specific (covering/uncovering the head, should women speak in congregations)? What about things like sex and marriage? Are they culturally specific? Who gets to decide?

 

It's gridlock ... or division. Usually the latter.

[Guest end3]

Am,

 

You going to post any more thoughts to this?

[Antlerman]

Am,

 

You going to post any more thoughts to this?

Oh yes... I've not let it die. Was out of town this weekend and busy at work today. Doc and Legion, got a lot of thoughts to share to yours. End, I'll touch on your thoughts about the visionaries. I think Legion has a pulse on that quite well. Doc's thoughts on the Iron Rule was quite appropriate. Both plus more. Later... tired right now.