... Of Religious Doublethink And Social Myopia.

I sat there flabbergasted! I had inadvertently maneuvered myself into a philosophical corner – what had started as a light, cursory touch on the history of religion was turning into a full dissertation on the known history of religion. I was in a slightly heated, but mild, political discussion with a devout religious person when I made a passing reference to religious myopia. They bristled at the religious myopia and demanded an explanation. I mordaciously asked if they wanted the true historical perspective or the religious inspired bullshit that tries to explain colonization as a divinely inspired act of dissemination. Humongous mistake. If looks could kill … actually, I think they said a quick prayer for my dirty soul. I urged them not to pray for me as that would only annoy me and be a waste of their breath. Out came the swords and we retreated to our respective intellectual corners. That's when I realized how that little snarky comment had just turned my evening into a futile adoxography – you know, that age old debate technique of defending an absurd position. So, I went on the offensive intending to quickly blitz them into submission. Pure folly. I should have known better as that never happens with people of faith.

I started with the emotional tack of the doublethink of religion. The notion of doublethink stems from the idea of reality control in George Orwell's 1984. “It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. 'Reality control,' they called it: in Newspeak, 'doublethink.'” I just applied it to religion. Reality control which is mind control is the basic stock-in-trade of most cult environments. Adherents are cowed into submission by the doublethink of religion. Doublethink coerces followers into non-confront on the negative aspects of a religion. Doublethink uses the positive aspects of a religion to promote and uphold its most negative features. How many times have you heard the exhortation to love the sinner, but to hate the sin. How is that even possible? Faith is used to reinforce the doctrinaire attitudes of a religion's leadership. There is nothing divinely inspired about any human's leadership characteristics – rather dismissive I know, but I'll tackle atheism on a different page. What is extant is just a lot of confirmation bias. Adherents become victims of their own faith and are cowed into silence by the 'groupthink mentality' of religion. To question 'divinely inspired' authority is frowned upon and conformity is heavily promoted. The only way to stop being a victim is to grow a pair, speak out, and leave the group. You are free to leave, however, your departure will mean the loss of your sure ticket to salvation. This is when the doublethink of religion kicks in as followers are victimized into keeping quiet to maintain membership in the group.

It is damn near impossible to persuade a Catholic to leave a Diocese when you underscore instances of predatory, sexual conduct amongst their priesthood. Catholics would rather ignore all the evidence and prefer that all victims shut up about the abuse. The argument is that it is better to handle such matters internally, within the church, for the sake of the unity of the church. The best solution proffered by the Papacy is prayer for both the perpetrators and the victims. In other words, the best approach is to put a lid on it, pretend it never happened. The main and vocal proponents of victims keeping silent are the perpetrators. They can only continue their abuse if no one speaks out. The pedophile priest, the abusive husband, the sociopathic cult leader, they can only operate by maintaining layers of secrecy about their unsavory activities. These abusive leaders remain untouchable as long as their victims keep their mouths shut. There is a point where silence becomes enabling. As Jeff Hawkins (Author of Counterfeit Dreams) outlines in his biography, “The minute their victims open their mouths, the light comes streaming into their sordid little worlds. And the victims aren’t victims any more.” Hawkins poses an interesting question: If exposing abuses within a religion results in the destruction of that religion, then who is the source of that destruction - the person who exposes it, or the person who commits that abuse? That's a nice quandary for another day. However, doublethink which is the art of simultaneously believing dichotomous concepts ideas is not only limited to politics and religion, but is also prevalent in various justice systems.

I wonder why it is acceptable for a man to commit the most atrocious and heinous of crimes; only to plead insanity as the impetus for the crime spree. In most cases, well-heeled lawyers will make the case for the criminal's diminished capacity based on alleged instances of physical or sexual abuse in the perpetrator's youth. The insanity plea almost always leads to a lenient sentence – the whole judicial systems tends to be sympathetic to offenders that would have been abused as children. I do not get it – a man spends months planning a massacre, then carries out his plan killing several, injuring dozens; when the perpetrator comes before the courts for an initial arraignment, counselor usually -as expected - enters 'not guilty by reason of insanity' plea. This is a normal opening gambit in capital punishment cases. This procedure effectively changes the tone of a trial as its focus changes from the elephant in the room - which is the heinous crime committed – to the diminished reasoning capacity of the offender because of some alleged physical or sexual abuse from decades prior to the crime. In most cases, the individual would of managed to cope without manifesting their particular insanity. The Colorado shooter was a n intelligent student in a neuroscience doctoral program – that's some heavy brain power capable of some serious intellectual lifting. That he somehow snapped is obvious, what isn't is that he was insane. I mean, this was a cold, calculating individual who had the foresight to not only booby trap his apartment, but left the music playing loudly to entice the police into breaking down his door. There are shrinks that will be willing to testify that he is insane, as many as there will be willing to testify of his sanity. Only time will tell which side prevails, but it is unfathomable that this man is accorded the rights to pursue the 'insanity plea' which will prolong his existence. Although, natural justices stipulates that he has a right to be heard, I wonder how many of the affected families would rather dispense with the whole process and just exact immediate revenge and retribution. I know it is possible to conceive anarchy having some place in our justice systems.

As appealing as that sounds, it quickly fails in real life application. This type of quick retributive justice is rooted in anarchy and usually demands quick action which can lead to unregulated mob justice such as the burning alive at the stake of alleged witches in early 1690s Salem, MA; and more recently in 2013 Papua New Guinea. Other religious based retributive justice systems stipulate the loss of limbs – thieves losing arms or legs – and, at times, demand the loss of an equal number of lives. But as the old saw goes, an eye for an eye makes the world blind. There have been other instances of religious based retributive justice which was based on a fear of the unknown such as the witches who are supposed to possess the dark magic of sorcery. This determination is usually directed at some hapless female at the instigation of some local, male opinion leader – a religious one nonetheless – and based on their ignorant interpretation of some unusual occurrence. Thus, the argument can be made that natural justice, despite its slower acting pace, has the advantage of allowing reason (no matter how far fetched) to prevail. This leads us down the path of victim families accepting the use of the insanity plea. In rare cases, some victim families have been known to become so sympathetic that they even forgive the perpetrators; once they became aware of the root cause of the offender's insanity. In these rare cases, the forgiveness is based on the tenets of some faith in a religious doctrine.

I continue to rail against forgiveness inspired by a religious doctrine. It really is difficult to juxtapose religion and forgiveness without delving into the confusing double think associated with religion. This confusion stems from trying to reconcile one's feelings between condemning the atrocities and condoning the charity undertaken in the name of religion. This doublethink began when religion started consolidating its influence around political power. We are still grappling with this notion of a true separation between politics and spirituality, between church and state. Political control gained the upper hand when religious expansion became a secondary consideration to political colonization. Through the ages, especially during the aptly named Dark Ages, this led to a purging of knowledge from texts considered anathema to prevailing religious interpretations. There have been numerous and seemingly endless wars, always religious at their core, mainly in Europe and throughout the Middle East (Crusades, Colonization, Genocide, Slavery, Apartheid, Racism, Jihad, Zionism.) It is so prevalent that one could point to any place on the world map, and I could name an atrocity committed or being committed in the name of religion.

What I can not fathom is why educated people refuse to acknowledge the evil that religion has done and is doing. These are fairly open minded folks who have been exposed to some basic world history - they have to be aware of all these global events. What is even weirder is the unprecedented decline in former colonizing countries and resurgence in colonized territories of religion. I am amazed by the statistics coming out of Africa and Asia – they are among the largest growth areas for the various iterations of Christianity and Islam. There is a new fascination in the prospects suggested in the new phenomenon of prosperity gospel. It still doesn't compute for me – I mean, you have these fantastically wealthy hucksters pretending to preach salvation by preying on their societies' poorest, and downtrodden. I have come across the late night television shenanigans of the Dollars, the Popoffs, the Hilliards, and the Lambs of this world - and they do offer the possibility of some seductively easy ways of getting out of debt. Theirs is an easier sleight of hand than that of colonization – they also offer the hopeless and poorest in a society unimaginable riches based on only one condition. Faith. That is the only requisite, to believe unquestioningly in the miraculous acquisition of immense wealth, the possibility of driving expensive cars, and even owning those huge mac-mansions on the hill. It is a veritable vision of the possibilities of heaven - the very stuff of paradise as espoused in their religious literature. In the meantime, there are two simple caveats: the adherents and converts must tithe – euphemism for giving either the church or the preacher-man some of their hard earned cash; and, faithfully wait for the pink fairy to deliver on her promise in her own sweet time.

This is such a disingenuous strategy that I am almost always tempted into jumping on the preacher-man bandwagon. This prosperity gospel is such an easy way of self-enrichment, until one is confronted by its effects on the true believers. I, once, had to intervene in the affairs of an economically distressed family. Their fight centered on how to spend the few extra dollars on hand. The husband was opting to pay off their utilities while the wife would rather they tithed. She was adamant that this was god's money and their failure to remit it to the church was contributing to their misfortunes. It sounds implausible to even consider not paying one's bills as a pro-survival action - this world is just not wired that way. You would have a better chance of hitting the jackpot in a lottery than having your bills magically paid off. In the lottery you, at least, have that one in several hundred million chances of hitting the big one; whereas, in the tithe matrix, you have zero chance of your bills being magically expunged. Which are the better odds? I'm going with the lottery chances – as there is that one chance which is better than none at all.

The same arguments can be made for the genesis of the more radical forms of Islam. The mullahs and other clerics exert more direct influence than political leaders on most muslim societies. In Iran, the Ayatollah (similar in stature to the catholic pope) is a more powerful presence than the rest of all the political leadership. The clerics are able to influence adherents into suicide missions by convincing these usually hapless, and poor males that their ultimate sacrifice (suicide) is in defense of their faith; besides there is that little matter of 72 virgins at their disposal in the next lifetime. Sex is such a powerful motivational tool. Even some orthodox Jews are enforcing the agnathic kinship of their faith by refusing women the right to congregate and pray at the wailing wall. The orthodox Jewish women were met with unmitigated violence when they tried to march on the infamous monument in Jerusalem. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world - in Myanmar - some of the usually placid Buddhist monks have been rioting and attacking muslims in the central and western parts of the country. I will concede that the violence in Lashio began May 28 after Ne Win splashed gasoline on a woman and set her on fire. The woman was seriously burnt, and is currently hospitalized. The Buddhist monks took revenge by burning several Muslim shops, one of the city's main mosques, an Islamic orphanage and a movie theater. One person, a Muslim, died. Is it just me or is there a verifiable trend in there. I see the continued oppression of women based on religious faith. Faith is a powerful motivator, as psychologists and religious leaders will attest. However, common sense is not so common as this article proves.

Doublethink is also affecting the very basic core of human communication. There is an increasingly overarching reliance on technology which, initially, was meant to save time by increasing efficiency. However, this same technology increasingly either takes the saved time along with it, or makes the saved time less present, intimate, or rich. Most interaction amongst humans is now conducted via binary code (text, email, social media) that it is becoming extremely rare to actually engage another person in direct conversation. It has become easier to text than actually speak to another. Social decorum is dying a slow, unnatural death as it moves from our mouths to our fingers. You only need to spend a few minutes (if you are brave enough) perusing the comments and message boards on any major news sites – there is unfiltered vitriol, undisguised racism, unadulterated hatred; simply because posters are anonymous and can type whatever nonsense they feel like from behind their screens. I will leave technology alone since it was simply a final attempt to mundify my mind from the extended debate with them folks of faith. The rest is mere confabulation. I am still flabbergasted that I put me through that exercise. C'est la vie - OK, here's a few thoughts:

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence. John Adams (Oct 30, 1735 - Jul 04, 1826) 2^nd American President, Statesman, Diplomat.

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere. Voltaire (Nov 21, 1694 - May 30, 1778) Philosopher, Author.

It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brush fires of freedom in the minds of men. Samuel Adams (Sept 16, 1722 - Oct 02, 1803) American statesman, political philosopher.

To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards out of men. Abraham Lincoln (Feb 12, 1809 - Apr 15, 1865) 16th President of the United States.

Go light some brush fires!

Have fun always!!