random notes

Maclean’s interview: Lionel Tiger
Anthropologist Lionel Tiger on faith and sexual behaviour, why religion comforts us, and how churches act as ‘serotonin factories’

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religious practice “brainsoothes”—alleviates the sharp edges of the human experience—far more than any other human activity
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Our principal concern was trying to understand why this very strange behavioural syndrome recurs so consistently in so many communities with such regularity, complexity, often ferocity
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If you’ve got a very bad idea in your head—death—which is causing stress, and you can put another idea which is a very good one in its place, then the level of serotonin—which fights depression and anxiety and makes people feel good about themselves and others—begins to build. And you begin an organization to sustain that
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People gather on a Sunday and they’re told that they’re really awful, they are virtually doomed to hell, they’re sinners. However, if they perform this ritual again next week and if they accept its importance in their lives they will be saved, as it were, until next week
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Q: It’s clear how socialization works, and how ritual supports belief, but are you also saying that the nature of religious belief means it long outlasts secular imitations?
A: Yes, those fail—all of them so far. All of the great religions came into being during the transition from hunting-gathering to agriculture and pastoralism—hence “the Lord is my shepherd.” Later alternatives to a religious effort to deal with, to regularize, new crises, new ways of life—Marxism was one which basically failed because it had a very poor theory of human nature—couldn’t equal religious systems. There’s no good music, the buildings are office buildings like Queen’s Park, no answers to ultimate questions. There’s no glory to it. And so religion in the churchy sense has endured. Now the major national distinctions are not about economics but about religion. The Chinese may change that, although I know that they are very interested in finding a moral replacement for Communism. I was invited to a meeting in Beijing two years ago sponsored by the government which wanted to see if there was something else they could teach people in China other than to get rich or that Mao was a great leader. I think they’re still struggling with that.
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Q: You point to chimpanzee studies that show it’s not just humans that crave a decent social order.
A: We were very interested because it’s quite clear that the chimps, when things are quiet after breakfast, sit around and the dominant male, who normally tries to whip people into shape, is very quiet and just sits there and maybe people come up—“people,” forgive me, animals come up and groom him, and the kids play and the females interact with each other. It’s a time of social consolidation—everyone is part of the group.
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... the sect of the assassins used hashish ...
... the Kristians use the will of god ...
... genocide and Kristianity are a many to one relation ...

... kristians preserve the crime that protects their power ...
... the power of forgiving crime and sins in their favor ...
... churches are tax exempt legalized criminal rackets ...
... nothing less and nothing more ...
... and the reason of why they are tax exempt and legalized ...
... is because they promote afterlife after death in holy wars ...
... and the money changers always need wars, holy or not ...
... to them is "business" ...
... for the bankers of themselves and the bankers of god ...

... so they purchase corrupted governments ...
... to keep the holy wars advertisement going ...
... the godsters and the banksters have always a solution ...
... consisting on stealing somebody else's resources ...
... the oily holy wars are getting more profitable ...

... sorry, more interested in the civilization of the bonobo's than the chimp's ...
... chimps and gorillas are retarded ...
... violence is the weapon of the brain challenged ...