It is more complex than this. I was born into this life and have escaped.
Dogma is creating tribalism in religion. There are relatively few people that are fully committed to the dogma. The main issue that makes religion such a persistent institution is the mutually exclusive social support network, aka the tribe. Giving up one’s social support network is evolutionarily harmful behavior. Dogma and tribalism are structured around dichotomous logic; the oversimplification of us versus them.
When anyone opposes such a person or group directly, in practice it only helps to reinforce their biases and strengths their resolve. Likewise, logic from outsiders is rejected blindly. The logic, and in truth, all human learning to the point of understanding only comes from within a person. Anyone can memorize information, but an abstract fundamental understanding is not part of rote memorization. These may be correlated in some instances, but are not causal in association. Thus why you may have done well in many aspects of schooling that you have no memory of years later.
The only ways you can attack the dogma and tribalism is through stimulation of the individual’s curiosity. Any stimulation of curiosity leads to self growth, and through this self growth the person will eventually question their own dogma naturally. Most of the most toxic religions hate higher education. They believe it to be the sinful culture at these institutions that leads their little believer children astray. They have no ability to grasp how higher learning stimulates the growth needed to question one’s dogmas.
Lastly, if the complex task of stimulating curiosity is too much trouble, the other facet of reinforcement is the network of social support. If you are unwilling to openly and tangibly support members of a foreign tribe on their path of self growth, you are actually part of the fundamental problem that is building their fortress higher and causing potential escalation of conflict.
This is the messy reality of the situation with religion, dogma, and tribalism.
WELL stated! I have an interesting, I think, hypothesis about conservatives, religious people and education. I’d value your take. And we must keep in mind that, in America anyway, education was lauded until sometime 20-odd years ago.
They see their children getting educated, and they’re not liking the results.
One problem is that the world has changed by leaps and bounds never seen in human history, leaps and bounds we didn’t evolve to handle. Now their kids are coming home and telling them they’re wrong about so many things. I was trying to tell my mother she was killing the yard. “Where did you learn all this smarty pants?” “In the horticulture classes you sent me to college for.” She killed damned near everything but the sorry looking grass.
You send your kid off to college and he comes back a different person. The horror! I would expect and hope for that, but for some they only see their child leaving the tribe. As you said, that’s been dangerous in our past.
Another problem is that educated people tend towards the left side of the political spectrum, tend towards losing their religion. This has to be explained. What? Are you calling us stupid?! They have to explain this to themselves. The only way out is to say the colleges are indoctrinating our youth.
I first saw this when Rush Limbaugh was attacking “ivory tower libruls”. Before that I had not noticed education in the crosshairs, not on the national stage. “Education is not the issue per se, it’s the liberals who have taken over and are brainwashing our children.” Pat answer, ain’t it?
The other issues are as you stated, no need to reiterate what you so very well wrote. Shit. Wrote all that and I think all I did was put your words in a poorer format.
It is more complex than this. I was born into this life and have escaped.
Dogma is creating tribalism in religion. There are relatively few people that are fully committed to the dogma. The main issue that makes religion such a persistent institution is the mutually exclusive social support network, aka the tribe. Giving up one’s social support network is evolutionarily harmful behavior. Dogma and tribalism are structured around dichotomous logic; the oversimplification of us versus them.
When anyone opposes such a person or group directly, in practice it only helps to reinforce their biases and strengths their resolve. Likewise, logic from outsiders is rejected blindly. The logic, and in truth, all human learning to the point of understanding only comes from within a person. Anyone can memorize information, but an abstract fundamental understanding is not part of rote memorization. These may be correlated in some instances, but are not causal in association. Thus why you may have done well in many aspects of schooling that you have no memory of years later.
The only ways you can attack the dogma and tribalism is through stimulation of the individual’s curiosity. Any stimulation of curiosity leads to self growth, and through this self growth the person will eventually question their own dogma naturally. Most of the most toxic religions hate higher education. They believe it to be the sinful culture at these institutions that leads their little believer children astray. They have no ability to grasp how higher learning stimulates the growth needed to question one’s dogmas.
Lastly, if the complex task of stimulating curiosity is too much trouble, the other facet of reinforcement is the network of social support. If you are unwilling to openly and tangibly support members of a foreign tribe on their path of self growth, you are actually part of the fundamental problem that is building their fortress higher and causing potential escalation of conflict.
This is the messy reality of the situation with religion, dogma, and tribalism.
WELL stated! I have an interesting, I think, hypothesis about conservatives, religious people and education. I’d value your take. And we must keep in mind that, in America anyway, education was lauded until sometime 20-odd years ago.
They see their children getting educated, and they’re not liking the results.
One problem is that the world has changed by leaps and bounds never seen in human history, leaps and bounds we didn’t evolve to handle. Now their kids are coming home and telling them they’re wrong about so many things. I was trying to tell my mother she was killing the yard. “Where did you learn all this smarty pants?” “In the horticulture classes you sent me to college for.” She killed damned near everything but the sorry looking grass.
You send your kid off to college and he comes back a different person. The horror! I would expect and hope for that, but for some they only see their child leaving the tribe. As you said, that’s been dangerous in our past.
Another problem is that educated people tend towards the left side of the political spectrum, tend towards losing their religion. This has to be explained. What? Are you calling us stupid?! They have to explain this to themselves. The only way out is to say the colleges are indoctrinating our youth.
I first saw this when Rush Limbaugh was attacking “ivory tower libruls”. Before that I had not noticed education in the crosshairs, not on the national stage. “Education is not the issue per se, it’s the liberals who have taken over and are brainwashing our children.” Pat answer, ain’t it?
The other issues are as you stated, no need to reiterate what you so very well wrote. Shit. Wrote all that and I think all I did was put your words in a poorer format.