Imagine no Religion...
By
Roberto Diego
Chapter 9.
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Table of Contents
Chapter 2. Modern Cultural Paradigms
Chapter 3. The Principle of Progressive Benignity
Chapter 4. Ritual as Allegory
Chapter 6. How Does Altruism Feel?
Chapter 7. The Psychology of Collectivism
Chapter 8. The War against the Ego
Chapter 9. The Psychology of Moral Triangulation
Chapter 10. The Influence of the Enlightenment Link coming soon
Chapter 11. A Culture in Moral Crisis Link coming soon
Chapter 12. The Tyranny of Organized Religion – Cult as Culture Link coming soon
Chapter 13. The Separation of Church and State Link coming soon
Chapter 14. Is Religion the Foundation of Society? Link coming soon
Chapter 15. Rationalism Link coming soon
Chapter 16. Cynicism and Chauvinism Link coming soon
Chapter 17. Definition of Religion Link coming soon
Chapter 18. Curing Man Link coming soon
Chapter 19. Disenfranchising Unreason Link coming soon
The disenfranchisement of religious cultural leaders Link coming soon
The disenfranchisement of the Suffering Savior paradigm Link coming soon
The disenfranchisement of the good/evil paradigm Link coming soon
The disenfranchisement of the chorus (collectivism) Link coming soon
The enfranchisement of the ego Link coming soon
The establishment of reason Link coming soon
Prologue Link coming soon
In order to understand the cultural bankruptcy inflicted on mankind by the three cultural paradigms we are examining, we must look at the difference between rationalized interpretations of cosmic evil as represented by religion and the interpretation of the same facts by a reason-based moral code. To use an extreme example, let’s look at a red light district like those found in many major cities around the world. Here we find some clear distinctions that will illustrate the point. Most of these areas are replete with brothels, female nudity, sexuality and lonely men seeking sexual experience. Religion would call this area the den of iniquity and temptation, ruled by the devil, sick, dirty and evil, all part of the devil’s cosmic plan to lead man astray. According to this view, the devil deceives men, depletes their bank accounts, ruins families and destroys lives. The women in these areas are considered to be Jezebels, home wreckers, wanton creatures who love sensual delights and who laughingly enjoy their sinister hold over the hapless men who cannot resist the excitement of open sexuality. The men who frequent this neighborhood are viewed as weak, having given in to the lustful temptations of carnal, this-worldly delights, anxiously living in the grip of the cunning devil who rules man’s passions and hidden secret urges.
What is the reality here? Is this a place of cosmic conspiracy or a den of self-destruction? In reality, the women are nothing more than girls who did poorly in school and don’t know the difference between love and attention. They think poorly of themselves because most of them were abused as children and haven’t paid very much attention to the things that mean a good future, education and intellectual pursuits. They have dropped the context of the knowledge that would tell them they are not pursuing real values in their lives. They’ve lost the ability to connect their minds to the real world because they belong to the world of fantasy and addiction and they don’t want to admit that they are not in control of their lives. They enjoy the attention they receive from men, thinking that such attention means they are beautiful and worthy; they believe that this attention makes them the equal of the wives and children that are waiting for these men at home, believing that the money that pays for their sexual acquiescence will someday give them a way out of the situation they willingly got themselves into. The stark truth is that soon they will no longer be desired and the money will stop. They are afraid to look every day at the mirror that reveals the sagging lines and the squandered lives.
The men who frequent this neighborhood have long ago given up on trying to be “good.” They seek the excitement of younger, sexually freer women, soft skin and sweaty intercourse; the excitement of having someone, anyone, pretend that they are really handsome conquerors and men of the world. They’ve dropped the context of the knowledge that real values require a dedication to life and happiness because in their “real” lives they are pursuing values that are a relentless drudgery for them, values that they’ve been taught to pursue in order to be moral – rather than values that they have chosen with their own minds and knowledge. Then because of their fear of others and their inability to act for their own selfish interests, they are drawn to a seedy world of fantasy and addiction, afraid to look in the mirror at the sagging lines and squandered lives.
The truth is that this is the world of the irrational, not the world of the devil. There is no cosmic evil here in the acts performed by these lost people; in the wanton abandon that all who venture here seek. There is only the decay of lazy minds seeking a life without thought and value and, surprisingly, without pleasure. The underlying current of ideas here, as found in the good/evil paradigm, creates this world because it sets the terms of discussion and provides the definitions of good and evil. The only real evil here is mindlessness.
Consider then, a young boy who accidentally discovers masturbation, who is thereby awakened to the magical feelings of sexual excitation. Before he can begin the process of understanding his new discovery and integrating pleasure into his life as a positive value, he is caught masturbating by his parents’ intrusion into his privacy; told that he is bad, that the devil is tempting him and leading him astray. He has always hated the devil and wonders how the devil was able to get into him so easily. He is told by his parents to stop masturbating or he will go to Hell. He is terrorized and embarrassed that something so private has been discovered. When told that God sees all and knows all, he is devastated. When he is sent to the preacher, he is told about the devil’s cosmic plan to take over the world and about the difference between the “spiritual” good and the carnal worldly delights that the devil uses to lead us astray. He is told to pray and pray and pray and he will be all right. But to learn of his evil nature in this way has shocked and terrorized him. Though he tries to stop masturbating, the more he thinks about it the more his sexual arousal grows; and the more his guilty secret, the capacity of his body for pleasure, controls him. He is now a disintegrated mess, unsure of himself and lacking the foundation in reality necessary to develop certainty and self-esteem. These issues are too overwhelming.
The last place in which this young man wanted to be trapped is cosmic evil. Yet, he is trapped by something that is getting more and more out of his control – trapped without choice, knowledge or hope – trapped, of all things, by pleasure, by his own body. He is terrorized by this thought and engages in huge amounts of tension and energy to stiffen and robotize his body so that he never thinks about sex or pleasure. But he cannot succeed at this and the thoughts and feelings don’t go away. Eventually, as time goes by, he gives in to the struggle by allowing himself sexual promiscuity, possibly even sexual perversion, when the feeling gets strong, sometimes using alcohol to help him release the energy that has been paralyzed by his struggle against pleasure, and at other times, pretending to be a sexless, serious pretender to the good, a stiff, grim, jealous, altruistic personality; jealous because he hates the sexual freedom of others and resentful of the trap within which he is caught – the trap of being the evil in the cosmic struggle. He loses all joy and all love and all hope.
The constant seriousness and despair of this individual is a consequence of his being told that there is something wrong with him. Had this young man realized that there is no such thing as a cosmic moral struggle, had he not been duped by this baseless concept, he might have known some joy in life and some love. Had he known the difference between the morally rational and the morally irrational, he might have been able to free his ego in guiltless enjoyment rather than in guilty anger over the needs of his body. Were it not for religion, he might have been able to live and thrive.
The cosmic struggle between a metaphysical good and evil, as a moral guide, is itself rationalism. If the universe, the world of the real, is evil, what then is the sense of even sacrificing for the nonexistent good of others that are not even worthy of the sacrifice? What could the act of sacrifice possibly mean? What is the purpose then of living in turmoil about the meaning and nature of any act that is performed in a basically evil cosmos? How is religion a morality of the good when the “good” is not possible? On the terms of the good/evil paradigm, if everything one does is part of the evil carnal nature of the cosmos, why should man do anything – or more appropriately, why not do anything? It doesn’t matter either way because the individual man cannot possibly make a difference to the cosmic struggle. Why live in anguish and turmoil and anxiety when there is no choice possible but to do the evil? What is the sense of struggling for the good when there is no innocence to protect? What is the sense of integrating pleasure into life; the pleasure of sex, or the pleasure of listening to a symphony, or the pleasure of reading a great novel? Nothing matters, in the context of the good/evil paradigm because the good, under this view, cannot possibly exist. On this view, the world is only open to the skepticism of Hume and Kant.
Of course, the answer to these questions is that the premise is wrong. The universe is what it is, neither good nor evil as it relates to man. Value is contextual and depends upon a standard established by human beings through observation of reality. The idea that the universe is composed of a cosmic struggle of good vs. evil is not provable. Man can only say that “it is.”
Don’t ask cultural leaders to give up an idea that enables them to define man’s sins. When any innocent, consensual and non-victimizing action is tied to the so-called cosmic struggle, tied to sin and immorality, it creates prejudice, self-prejudice, hate, self-hate and a constant inner struggle for the individual. That no evil has been done by young people in the pleasure trap, no harm perpetrated, has been overlooked by religious people for centuries; overlooked by those who use the aura of dirtiness and sinfulness as a method of control. That the result is lives wasted and self-esteem destroyed is irrelevant to those that wage this struggle against a non-existent evil. Indeed, in spite of the fact that it propagandizes about itself as benign and good, religion, through its war against pleasure and happiness, is the cause of more prejudice, more discrimination, more exclusion and more genocide of innocent people than any other human institution.
This view of morality that uses man’s capacity for pleasure as a proof of his evil turns each man into his own worst enemy, his own accuser, his own ritual mask; expressing, in the quiet reaches of his subconscious mind, anger and hatred at himself. The self-esteem he does not have, the normal acts he is not allowed to commit, the freedom he does not possess, give him only hatred of life and a jealous anger at other men, a cynicism. Is it any wonder he rebels into the very sin that he is forbidden? Is it any wonder he becomes a cynical wretch that proclaims his right to pleasure and takes it with both vengeance and guilt?
If being a moral person means only being altruistic, sacrificing for others, how can the individual develop a full sense of what it is to be good? How can he have any enthusiasm for the “good” if he is not part of the equation except as one that sacrifices? Shermer[1] says that moral sentiments evolved from our Paleolithic ancestors living in small communities, but so did reason and the capacity for it. Why does reason have no place in the moral equation? If reason had a place in morality today, men would not feel that they have to “fake” anything, or pretend to be moral while secretly doing what they want to do.
Since the religious individual incorporates the religious culture into his personality, so to speak, he is perennially in pain over his inadequacy. In life, he assumes that he is at a disadvantage and is moved to avoid dealing with reality. Avoidance and the inaction it creates feed his pain and inadequacy and the individual feels that this avoidance is a flaw rather than a consequence of the message given by the culture. Selfishness, the ego and assertiveness are impossible against such a huge edifice of negativity coming from the culture and its representatives. The individual may even learn to operate in the real world through denials of his pain and feelings of inadequacy but he will never overcome the base feelings because, rather than confront them, he has driven them into the subconscious. This process then automatizes the avoidance by making it subconscious and unacknowledged as well. Avoidance can then only be supported by rationalizations. Whenever the individual must assert himself, right or wrong, he feels, again subconsciously, that he has no valid justification for such assertion and this makes the need to survive into an intense struggle against the individual’s very own morality.
The split personality is the response that many individuals have when they assume that everything they do is wrong. The effort to overcome religious moral failure by projecting a “different” personality, one that is more assertive and strong, becomes a method by which the individual tries to avoid the negative evaluations he assumes are present in the minds of others. He loses the ability to know when people are being reasonable toward him or doing him harm since he has no way of evaluating their actions according to a standard of justice.
Because the Good/Evil Paradigm is based on rationalism, one must challenge the view that man is metaphysically evil. In fact, the purpose of the paradigm is not to help him, educate him or offer him solutions for life, but to create the very confusion under which he is suffering. It is a form of triangulation of the individual’s psyche. By getting him to accept the moral authority of the chorus, and the “existence” of intrinsic evil (moral dualism), the only option for the individual is to become the suffering savior. Religion is psychological and material exploitation of the individual through a triangulation of fear of others, a feeling of being evil and with self-sacrifice as solution. This triangulation destroys his mind and his motives and puts them in the service of despots.
[1] The Science of Good & Evil page 58
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| Roberto Diego |