Came across these words in two differfent podcasts, Collective Effervescence and Absorption
On Straight White American Jesus they used Collective Effervescence to describe the unifying feeling people have in a church where people are swept up in the ecstasy of the moment.
And Absorption I heard on I Was a Teenage Fundamentalist in a discussion about why some people go all in for with the pentacostal features and others don't.
Google Definitions
Absorption is a disposition or personality trait in which a person becomes absorbed in their mental imagery, particularly fantasy.[1] This trait thus correlates highly with a fantasy prone personality. The original research on absorption was by American psychologist Auke Telleg
Collective effervescence (CE) is a sociological concept coined by Émile Durkheim. According to Durkheim, a community or society may at times come together and simultaneously communicate the same thought and participate in the same action.
Showing posts with label Think On These Things. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Think On These Things. Show all posts
4/20/2024
5/16/2022
When Does Life Begin?
"When does life begin?"
Or more precisely, when does HUMAN life begin? THAT is crux of it all, and is a matter of tradition, convention, and opinion. To say that "Science" tells that human life begins at conception is rhetoric not science. That is not how science works, and to claim otherwise is to make it not just a an opinion but a theological opinion.
A zygote may contain DNA but that zygote is patently NOT a human and to declare when a human is “ensouled” is by definition theology since it deals with the soul (not science).
And current views about abortion are “relatively” recent and “conservative” religious thinkers once held other theological views.
St. Augustine declared that abortion is not homicide but was a sin if it was intended to conceal fornication or adultery.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12178868/
Resolution On Abortion, adopted at the SBC (Southern Baptist Convention), June 1971: RESOLVED, That we call upon Southern Baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother
https://www.johnstonsarchive.net/baptist/sbcabres.html
When the Roe decision was handed down, W. A. Criswell, the Southern Baptist Convention’s former president and pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas—also one of the most famous fundamentalists of the 20th century—was pleased: “I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person,” he said, “and it has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed.”
https://politi.co/2JsQoNr
Or more precisely, when does HUMAN life begin? THAT is crux of it all, and is a matter of tradition, convention, and opinion. To say that "Science" tells that human life begins at conception is rhetoric not science. That is not how science works, and to claim otherwise is to make it not just a an opinion but a theological opinion.
A zygote may contain DNA but that zygote is patently NOT a human and to declare when a human is “ensouled” is by definition theology since it deals with the soul (not science).
And current views about abortion are “relatively” recent and “conservative” religious thinkers once held other theological views.
St. Augustine declared that abortion is not homicide but was a sin if it was intended to conceal fornication or adultery.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12178868/
Resolution On Abortion, adopted at the SBC (Southern Baptist Convention), June 1971: RESOLVED, That we call upon Southern Baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother
https://www.johnstonsarchive.net/baptist/sbcabres.html
When the Roe decision was handed down, W. A. Criswell, the Southern Baptist Convention’s former president and pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas—also one of the most famous fundamentalists of the 20th century—was pleased: “I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person,” he said, “and it has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed.”
https://politi.co/2JsQoNr
3/21/2022
Certainty in an UNcertain World
Thinking about why people entertain questionable conspiracy theories yet ignore actual documented and quite bad conspiracies throughout history. And thinking ther is a connection to some leaping from believing unproven (to my mind) conspiracies to wanting to take up arms to the point of violence to others. Below is some of me talking to myself
. . . . .
Conspiracies with ambiguous or tenuous evidence can prompt different paths of thought in response… but if you go “all in” and double down on the belief, it gives a “believers high”. AND the bigger the leap, the more complex the conspiracy, the more tenuous the claim, the better the emotional “high”
To believe in conspiracies there is a psychological Alchemy formula that is different for each person, but to end up with this “believer’s high” a key ingredient in the mental potion is the LACK of absolute proof. Perhaps it is the very act of “connecting the dots” that gives off some endorphin or hormone, but whatever…it requires a physiological response that allows emotions and reasoning to combine and produce the “sacred belief”. Once in place it allows someone to achieve a blissful state and exalt in self righteous confidence.
And once something becomes a “sacred belief” then contrary evidence, or illustrations of illogic actually harden the conspiracy in the mind.
It is this self righteous confidence that pushes away the ever present fact that to live,is to live with uncertainty, to live with ambiguity.
To be sure, there ARE conspiracies. Some with big government, or big corporations, or even biases of cultural worldviews. BUT conspiracies with clear, documented, evidence, don’t give the same “high”. So Iran/Contra, tobacco companies and cancer, oil companies and climate change, may be noted, then ignored. Those conspiracies are in a sense accepted and relegated to the mundane while JFK conspiracies,ludicrous voting claims, all with dots just waiting to be connected IF you only take off your blinders…THAT requires making a commitment, declaration of sorts, and this commitment gives back many times over with the emotional alchemy of turning ambiguity into certainty.
Interestingly it is the act of committing oneself to a belief in a vague theory wholeheartedly that makes the belief “real”. To believe you simply have to believe, THAT is where the fun is. Proof is not fun, connecting the dots IS.
# # # #
On the violence of it all…to return to the psychological, once you have the confidence in the conspiracy THEN the next level of commitment is to hate some other. So once the leap to connecting questionable dots is done, then comes the audacity of HATE, and the more audacious, the more hate, the better the "high". To fuse self righteous certainty of a disovered injustice and blame it on somebody else takes another audacious commitment. To be self righteously confident of the injustice, AND to have that "other" as the cause of the injustice… Then all that is left is action. Sweet, sweet, self righteous action
Final thoughts.
I suggest that we live in an uncertain world, most knowledge is an illusion*, life is complicated, ambiguous, even contradictory. And almost everybody seems to have a different opinion on what the rules should be. And no one wants to submit to somebody else’s view.
So, how then do we live in a world with people who don’t believe what we believe and may actively hate us for some imagined injustice.
What then is to be done?
For me the starting point is Compassion for all things, including people. And that takes recognition from the start, I, like the world, am flawed…I want to be compassionate but fail so often.
But you have to start somewhere so I start with that.
* the illusion of knowledge is a post for another day
. . . . .
Conspiracies with ambiguous or tenuous evidence can prompt different paths of thought in response… but if you go “all in” and double down on the belief, it gives a “believers high”. AND the bigger the leap, the more complex the conspiracy, the more tenuous the claim, the better the emotional “high”
To believe in conspiracies there is a psychological Alchemy formula that is different for each person, but to end up with this “believer’s high” a key ingredient in the mental potion is the LACK of absolute proof. Perhaps it is the very act of “connecting the dots” that gives off some endorphin or hormone, but whatever…it requires a physiological response that allows emotions and reasoning to combine and produce the “sacred belief”. Once in place it allows someone to achieve a blissful state and exalt in self righteous confidence.
And once something becomes a “sacred belief” then contrary evidence, or illustrations of illogic actually harden the conspiracy in the mind.
It is this self righteous confidence that pushes away the ever present fact that to live,is to live with uncertainty, to live with ambiguity.
To be sure, there ARE conspiracies. Some with big government, or big corporations, or even biases of cultural worldviews. BUT conspiracies with clear, documented, evidence, don’t give the same “high”. So Iran/Contra, tobacco companies and cancer, oil companies and climate change, may be noted, then ignored. Those conspiracies are in a sense accepted and relegated to the mundane while JFK conspiracies,ludicrous voting claims, all with dots just waiting to be connected IF you only take off your blinders…THAT requires making a commitment, declaration of sorts, and this commitment gives back many times over with the emotional alchemy of turning ambiguity into certainty.
Interestingly it is the act of committing oneself to a belief in a vague theory wholeheartedly that makes the belief “real”. To believe you simply have to believe, THAT is where the fun is. Proof is not fun, connecting the dots IS.
# # # #
On the violence of it all…to return to the psychological, once you have the confidence in the conspiracy THEN the next level of commitment is to hate some other. So once the leap to connecting questionable dots is done, then comes the audacity of HATE, and the more audacious, the more hate, the better the "high". To fuse self righteous certainty of a disovered injustice and blame it on somebody else takes another audacious commitment. To be self righteously confident of the injustice, AND to have that "other" as the cause of the injustice… Then all that is left is action. Sweet, sweet, self righteous action
Final thoughts.
I suggest that we live in an uncertain world, most knowledge is an illusion*, life is complicated, ambiguous, even contradictory. And almost everybody seems to have a different opinion on what the rules should be. And no one wants to submit to somebody else’s view.
So, how then do we live in a world with people who don’t believe what we believe and may actively hate us for some imagined injustice.
What then is to be done?
For me the starting point is Compassion for all things, including people. And that takes recognition from the start, I, like the world, am flawed…I want to be compassionate but fail so often.
But you have to start somewhere so I start with that.
* the illusion of knowledge is a post for another day
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