Imagine no Religion...
By
Roberto Diego
Chapter 7.
You can Read the Entire Book
On This Website
133 Pages Price Free
Copyright 2008 Roberto Diego. No part of this
book may be reproduced in any manner without the written permission of the copyright holder.
Below is Chapter 7of this earth shattering book. To order click on the order form link. Special: The next ten copies of this book are free.
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 See Below
Chapter 8. The War against the Ego
Chapter 9. The Psychology of Moral Triangulation
Chapter 10. The Influence of the Enlightenment
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
Exploitation is the collectivist leader’s way of gaining man’s labor, a way for him to enjoy the status of the man of integrity by becoming his ruler and parasite. Collectivism distorts all relationships and all values and makes everything cheap. It consumes men’s lives and destroys them with wholesale guilt for everything they do. It makes doing things for selfish reasons into a crime punishable by anger and turns good men into broken hulks incapable of life, love and pleasure; mere pretenders to the good. Collectivism internalizes and ritualizes one choice: to do things for others. It turns the person away from reason in favor of “others.” This destroys incentive, effort and hope for the future. As a consequence, it destroys the future for the needy as well as the self-supportive.
The young child that follows the exhortations of others to sacrifice himself, is early on, rewarded and complimented for such behavior. Initially, he gains a great feeling of self-respect when he sees the approving faces of others at his selflessness. He may even experience a short-lived collectivist euphoria, a feeling of being one with mankind and the world – a ritualized joining, so to speak. It feels good to know that the world approves of one, that one is “good” and loved. With time, however, the child comes to need this feeling of approval and he does everything possible to please others through additional acts of selflessness. He comes to depend upon his emotions and his sense of how others perceive him. Self-sacrifice, because it gave satisfaction in the past, becomes a ritual that must be practiced constantly.
It is at this point that the individual can choose to internalize altruism and its concomitant collectivism and make them living goals that rule every action, or he can begin to question his dependence upon the opinions of others and the value of self-sacrifice.
One reader of an earlier version of this book wrote to me his feelings regarding the chorus (the collective):
“After reading your document, I realized how overwhelming to me was the idea of “other people.” The chorus is the emotional expression of the fact that other people are everything, almighty, inside and out. Even God is them. They are all you feel because they are all you fear and all that is in you is fear of them. But it is a fear that you’ve inherited because your parents have felt it too. The chorus in you is your pain as it lives in you daily. From the pit of anxiety, you feel you must act for them, you want them to admire you and love you – so you try to please them, you love them, nurture your relationship with them, worship them. They are your life. They are you. You go where they go, do what they do, eat what they eat, say what they say, think what you think they think, try to entice them, lure them, subdue them, solicit them, seduce them. You work for them, plan for them, think of them, dress well for them, exercise and lose weight for them. You watch stories or read books about them, study them, learn of their nature – and you do it all for them, not for you.
Why does everything you do for them not work? Because they don’t care. They are all thinking of the others too and they are not you. The question is, and this is why I’m writing to you, “Do I need them as badly as I think I do?” Do I need to have my entire body, all my motives completely consumed by them? What about me, the I in me? Isn’t that enough if I treasure it, develop it, enjoy it, nurture it? How can I stop feeling this need to please them?
Why am I so afraid that they will disapprove of me for things I do? Why do they make me hate myself so much? I will always be a failure if I live to please and serve them. Why do they want me to think they are more important? It is in everything I’ve learned in church. Why am I so concerned about what they would think about me? My mind is spinning with these new questions.
At the same time, because they are so overwhelming I hate them, criticize them, laugh at them, despise them, am angry with them, rebel against them, pretend I am not afraid of them, love to see them brought down, envy them, am jealous of them, relish their pain and enjoy their suffering.
When I went to bed last evening, I noticed this tension at my temples and realized there was my anger at the position they have put me in. In that tension was my whole life, everything I believed, held firm, pretended, thought of as true, did, taught my children and acted on. That anger was what I had lived – a ritual, like you say. How could that be a rational life? Now I see why I’ve had problems getting along with others. But the angry tension was only one part of my personality. The same tension is used to pretend that I am good, to deny the problems my anger has created and to rationalize my life. Not only is my life anger, it is also pretension. I am stunned that this betrays the meaning and power of both my positive and negative ideas. I am rationalized anger pretending to be a normal person. Why didn’t I see this before?”[1]
This person has been made by the altruism in our culture into the ideal of collectivism. Collectivism is the effort to make all men the same, to corral them into one group that follows the edicts of cultural leaders. It is the effort to destroy the individual in a sea of sameness and promiscuity and then to dictate human actions. Man has been forced into a form of collective addiction where he “must” have the approval of others because he fears their power over him.
The fundamental problem for this person is that he has been taught, since childhood to think only of “them” and their thoughts, needs, feelings, opinions, etc. Every thought inside of him is of “them.” What will they think, what will they do, how can he please them; how can he make them admire him? This is the key to the power of the chorus: once you make it your primary reality and your primary thought, it rules you and will keep you perennially unhappy.
The writer of the above letter will become fully human when he no longer thinks of others as metaphysical primaries within his soul. When he removes the chorus paradigm and its control, he learns that the world is not dependent upon others, and he can cure himself of the constant anxiety. But until then, he will always feel a deep pang in his stomach which is his fear of them and their opinions – and it will manipulate him and control him, make him angry and sad, and force him to rationalize every act he takes in order to please them. When he learns to put reality ahead of the opinions of others, from his very core, he will experience relief and find a chance of happiness. When he no longer fears others, as distinguished from pretending not to fear others, he can experience freedom of action.
In fact, if there is anything that can be labeled as a psychological sickness it is the process of regarding others as the primary source of metaphysical understanding. If there is anything we should teach parents to watch for and become skilled at dealing with it is in recognizing the child whose words and actions reveal the premise that others are above him, who regards his value as intricately connected with the opinions of others. If anything is dangerous and potentially harmful to a person it is this mode of functioning; yet, today, we smile at this young phony and reward him for his selflessness.
Is there good in other men? Of course, but that good derives from the individuality of each man and whatever love each has for life, reason and the best possible. Such a good recognizes the rights of individuals to self-create and produce their own well-being for their own sake; there is no right to be thrown into the abyss of commonality, but there is a right for the individual to be elevated upon the pedestal that recognizes true purity, the pure thought of the individual mind engaged in an effort to find truth and meaning without guilt, sacrifice and fear.
[1] Name withheld by request.
To receive the full manuscript go to
We accept Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Diners Club and Discover Card.
| Roberto Diego |