Where did the moral dimension of institutional religion go? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/did-affluence-spur-the-rise-of-modern-religions/ The author, BRET STETKA, suggests: “Within the span of two centuries, in three separate regions of Eurasia, spiritual movements emerged that would give rise to the world's major moral religions, those preaching some combination of compassion, humility and asceticism. Scholars often attribute the rise of these moral religions—Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Christianity included—to population growth, seeing morality as a necessary social stabilizer in increasingly large and volatile human communities.”
If this were a true cause-and-effect, we should be on the brink of an amazing new wave of thought and faith. But we’re not. Yet.
So Stetka continues: “Yet findings from a recent study published in Current Biology point to a different factor: rising affluence.” Then why is our kleptocracy, our cacatocracy, so morally filthy?
“Across cultures moral religions abruptly emerged when members of a population could reliably source 20,000 calories of energy a day, including food (for humans and livestock), fuel and raw materials.
“This number appears to correspond with a certain peace of mind,” says lead author Nicolas Baumard, a research scientist at École Normale Supérieure in Paris. “Having a roof over your head, not feeling like the world is full of predators and enemies, knowing that you'll have enough to eat tomorrow.”
But critics argue that this is backwards: it is morality that gets people up off the sidewalk and out of the dumpsters. You don’t have to be rich to be Confucian. Yet this interpretation privileges institutional religion over the present popular and individual “spirituality” which appears to have an appeal that escapes bullying morality. It may be helpful to look at the history of institutions.
THE BEGINNINGS OF MORAL RELIGION
These five major movements mark the beginning of humanity's turn toward religions that emphasize personal morality and asceticism, according to a new study. —Victoria Stern
One historian notes that the Protestant reformation which has been mainstreamed in America for centuries was a response to widespread and oppressive political corruption that came in part from collusion between church and state, which is why the US is so obdurate about the separation. But Protestants have not paid attention to the same collusions between business and government, with the result that much of our physical and moral infrastructure is for sale: the new version of “indulgences.” Morality depends upon one's income, not one's church.
George Lakoff has been explaining the difference between conservative and progressive governmental politics in terms of “framing,” meaning our basic assumptions about life. “Framing” and “re-framing” have been useful concepts in counselling for quite a while, the idea being that troubles come from seeing the world from a point of view that has been exhausted so that it’s no longer helpful. Things are expected that can’t happen because they aren’t true anymore. A shift to a new point of view can make new possibilities come to light.
Lakoff proposes that the frame of a "nation as a family" surrenders two derived moral options, both expecting the father to lead the family. If the frame for that father is that he is a strong man who makes rules and enforces them with punishment, which he can do because of hierarchies that put him in charge, the prospect of tyranny is not unreal. But if the same father as strong man is nurturant and protective, then his work will be organizing for the greater good of the whole, presumably democracy. This is a good thought exercise, but in terms of morality, it is not enough.
There is another typology of moral strategies that is less personal. 1) Morality based on rules — particularly written laws — is a dependable but rather inflexible kind of pattern. The Ten Commandments are an example. 2) Principle-based morality is more like the New Testament ideas of the Golden Rule, and remain operant and useful when specific rules fail. 3) Recently there has been thought about what is called “situation ethics” which applies principles to practical and immediate conditions, though that’s not easy. For instance, technology has raised all kinds of knotty problems about human reproduction, the prevention of conception, and the status of the conceptus: does a blastula in a petri dish have a right to life? And what are the moral guides when reproduction is separated from sexual behavior? What is the best outcome in the end?
The earliest moral guide and the one that cuts the deepest in terms of values is simply survival. One must survive to exist. The most instinctive frame is life as we know it, what we have woven into ourselves as “life-style” or “standard of living” is not nearly basic enough, but it is painful to look survival in the eye, the simple fact of being alive temporarily. Failure of the morality of survival means death. Death as suicide and genocide are vivid for us in this media-driven world. We have more power to inflict death on other people than ever before, as well as the power to plunge the whole planet into darkness. We are continuously ending the survival of ecosystems.
Because we have accepted the “frame” of wealth as the insurer of survival, and wealth as being more important than votes or a voice, we must often accept control and secrecy in order to achieve the goal of wealth. It is the refusal of wealth in order to resist control and secrecy that are at the heart of morality’s asceticism. And yet all institutions continue to try to build up wealth in the interest of their own survival.
When a large proportion of the population commits suicide or at least the living death of drug addiction, that is immoral, NOT personally but socially. When the government denies help to those who can’t manage housing, food, water, education by themselves — or constricts the means of survival to the point of triggering life-risking protest — that is immoral. In a father-frame, the source of this immorality is a rule-ridden father who restricts the wealth of survival only to his family by whatever means necessary, including violence that can kill others.
Feminists will say that if families were mother-run, life would have more protection. That may be. But I want to go to a different family frame which is that of the brothers. Instead of fatherhood, brotherhood. At the heart of survival the primary unit in a time of overpopulation might be the two buddies, not sexually bonded (that’s a means rather than an end, it is the bonding that helps survival), but collaborating in a dialogue that supports progressive thought. (I guess women can be “brothers” if they can step away from gender-assigned competition which often comes from the economy when only men can provide the wealth necessary for survival.)
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