Non-religious continue to grow

Originally posted by JS357
I was thrown off by the fact that in BNW, Ford is elevated to the position that Jesus was elevated to in Christianity. There are large and small ways this is exemplified in the book. So religion; or you might say state quasi-religion, is present and vital in BNW, as a means of control.

The US is one of the most religious countries in the world and the domin ...[text shortened]... for services, with a sprinkling of idealists who are tolerated as long as they can be managed.

The difference is that Fordism isn't viewed by its adherents as a 'religion'. They pride themselves on having done away with the old, supernatural religions, while replacing them with the modern, rational management system of Fordism. The fact that this occupies the same position in their lives as the old religions used to is lost upon them.

Traditional customs and religious belief (including Christianity) have been among the main obstacles in the way of consumerism. Socialism was almost entirely a Christian endeavor before Marx took it over and banished god from it. The collapse of traditional belief systems (due to their perceived irrationality) has left a void which has been filled (due to a lack of anything else) by science. But science has not been able to fill that gap. As a consequence faith in technology (which is applied science) has become the secular world's de facto new religion. And the products of that technology have become our new objects of worship. We look to them to save us in much the same way we used to look to Jesus to do the same.

It may be that mass consumerism is the probable (if not the inevitable) outcome in any society that has had science and technology displace traditional belief systems. But the inhabitants, being no more rational themselves (despite all the outward trappings of a rational culture) merely rework these new management systems into new systems of control. And because those systems are now "rational" and "scientific", there exist no grounds upon which to challenge them.

Originally posted by rwingett
The difference is that Fordism isn't viewed by its adherents as a 'religion'. They pride themselves on having done away with the old, supernatural religions, while replacing them with the modern, rational management system of Fordism. The fact that this occupies the same position in their lives as the old religions used to is lost upon them.

Traditional re now "rational" and "scientific", there exist no grounds upon which to challenge them.

That is only one way of lining up the evidence to make an argument.

A more coherent argument, in my opinion, is that first industrialisation and then new liberalism have destroyed social structures and fragmented social lives.

If you want to prioritise the loss of religious belief as a central factor, then surely you have to go back to Luther and the Reformation, by which Europe lost the universal shared values of a single (Catholic) church. It may be that the protestant religions reflected the emergence of capitalism, so that Catholic countries like Spain and what is now Italy ossified while protestant countries like Holland and Britain developed rapidly. But this becomes a chicken and egg type problem. Does religious belief shape society or reflect society? However, it has typically been the case that the dominant religions have been on the side of the wealthy and have, as part of their mission, been used to control the population and secure a degree of compliance. That is why religious diversity was such a threat to the ruling elites everywhere.

Control was always at the heart of the matter. Luther argued that a theologian without grace would fail to interpret scripture correctly, but unleashed the propositiong that grace was sufficient and anyone of faith could interpret the bible for themselves. Ever since letting that genie out of the bottle, the major religions have been trying to restore some authority over people deciding their own opinions without guidance. We know that in the English Civil War for example, everyone on the New Model Army (the Puritan side) was debating religion with great intensity and reaching radical conclusions far beyond what the wealthy and the gentry (like Cromwell) wanted to concede.

I don't agree that traditional beliefs fell apart because of their irrationality since I see no evidence that popular religion was ever primarily rational or reasoned to start with. They fell apart because they lost touch with the growing urban populations and because, under the conditions of the industrial revolution, the lives of the urban population were reduced to near slavery and their opportunities for social life were made marginal.

Hence there was no need for Marx to do away with religion. Religion was already losing its relevance to the people Marx was addressing and becoming exposed in their minds as a tool of control on the part of the wealthy. What Marx did do - and he was by no means a lone voice - was to bring this evident fact to the attention of those philsophers and political theorists who were slow to shift out of conventional, simplistic thinking. You are trying to shoot the messenger in other words.

The same analysis was behind the spread of movements such as the Methodists, who tried to develop alternative religious models that would appeal to the same, alienated population. The weight Wesley gave to singing hymns was just a part of this strategy, since - to repeat - the issue was never rational argument and always emotional appeal and their target audiences were not reading the current best thinking in theological speculation.

In the modern era, Fordism for example was a continuation of the same process of intensifying the alienation of workers from their means of livelihood. The material comforts of consumerism were offered as a hollow reward not because of a scientific theory but because of an economic theory which still argues that people are motivated by money and not by the intrinsic worth of their labour or their produce. People are hypnotized by the consumer culture and are not offered a meaningful role in their own destinies.

The way out of this is not, I think, to re-invent an alternative form of delusion in the form of religions promising a better after-life as a reward for a crap deal in this one. It is instead for people to seize control of their lives away from an elite that exploits them.

Originally posted by finnegan
The way out of this is not, I think, to re-invent an alternative form of delusion in the form of religions promising a better after-life as a reward for a crap deal in this one. It is instead for people to seize control of their lives away from an elite that exploits them.

I will forgo the rest of your post for the moment and concentrate on this paragraph.

You are correct, or course, that "the way out is not to re-invent an alternative form of delusion in the form of religions promising a better after-life as a reward for a crap deal in this one." The obvious objection here is that we could come up with a religion that does not do these things. One could put forward a form of Gaian pantheism, for example, that draws its inspiration from James Lovelock's 'Gaia Hypothesis'. It would be a religion that does not concern itself with an afterlife. A religion that does not lock itself into perpetual conflict with science.

Barring the maintenance of some belief system which stigmatizes mass consumerism, technological societies will inevitably collapse into it, as we see happening in throughout the western world. And those technological systems are busy forcing all competing systems to conform to their standards. The only holdouts left are due either to their extreme isolation, or the maintenance of belief systems which are inherently opposed to it. The examples we see are the Amish/Hutterite communities, Quakers, Buddhists, etc. While there are many secular people also decrying consumerism, they have had nothing to offer in its place.

What is needed in order to stave off environmental devastation through the overconsumption of mass consumerism is the creation of a new belief system. A new religion that holds the earth, or the universe, itself as being sacred. A Gaian pantheism that provides a moral framework for the appropriate use of technology. Barring that, you'll end up with Brave New World.

Originally posted by rwingett
I will forgo the rest of your post for the moment and concentrate on this paragraph.

You are correct, or course, that "the way out is not to re-invent an alternative form of delusion in the form of religions promising a better after-life as a reward for a crap deal in this one." The obvious objection here is that we could come up with a religion that do k for the appropriate use of technology. Barring that, you'll end up with Brave New World.

Interesting but I disagree.

What you describe as "technological societies" I would describe as capitalist ones. You blame the technology as though it were intrinsically malevalent. However, I suggest it is the economic system that drives consumerism, including the mass marketing which induces consumer wants where there is no authentic underlying need to be met, and the financial system which pushes out into the economy unaffordable and unsustainable levels of credit. Wages in the developed world economies have not increased in real terms since the Seventies. We have been paid instead in fool's gold. Profit has increased, productivity has increased, wealth has been increasingly concentrated in fewer hands. Corporate power is out of control. The medical market is being crushed by the interests of drug companies using a perverted pseudo science as its front, the food market perverted by the big producers (e.g. pumping us with corn syrup as sugar in nearly every form of food, inducing epidemics of obesity and related illnesses without being held to account).

I do not need to convince the world that neo liberal economic models are deluded and built on ideological sand. The collapse of the world's financial system has already proved that. Politics is not yet catching up on that unavoidable fact but it will get there because it cannot be avoided.

Nor do I need to convince the world that the present environmental balance is unsustainable. There are scientists in every country who are already collaborating on this task.

I do not have to invent new political institutions to manage change. We have the UN. Its greatest present weakness is its dependence on the US and its neo liberal allies. The greatest thing that has to change is American politics therefore.

Americans will have to come in time to understand that social problems are not due to the separate individual moral failings of its immense and diverse population, but due to the poverty of social policies and institutions supportive of an informed democracy. Especially they will have to understand that their politics has been taken over by corporate interests and the very wealthy, acting selfishly and using fascist methods to eliminate and silence informed critics.

By the same token I do not agree that you need to promote any new religion. The ones you have do enough damage already. What you do need to do is escape the delusion that individual effort, merit and morality is going to be transformed after some distant millenium and start acting collectively around social needs and social priorities. It's time to stop blaming the people for the system that is oppressing them and instead for the truth to set them free. Not hard work. Not individual enlightenment. Not moral renewal. Not more crimes and more jails.

We do not need anything new. We just need what is to hand.

Originally posted by finnegan
Interesting but I disagree.

What you describe as "technological societies" I would describe as capitalist ones. You blame the technology as though it were intrinsically malevalent. However, I suggest it is the economic system that drives consumerism, including the mass marketing which induces consumer wants where there is no authentic underlying need to more crimes and more jails.

We do not need anything new. We just need what is to hand.

As if it would be that easy. I hate to break it to you Fin, but there are actually bad people out there. I know that for a fact, having some in my family. There is no way they could live outside the penal code system.

There are those with lower intelligence not possessing the feedback we adults have to not smash someone in the face for imagined slights and they end up in jail.

That kind of thing will not go away no matter how free you make your society.

The kind of enlightened society you envision would work fine if everyone had IQ's of 200 and got the brain training over by the time they were 10...

Of course that would be OUR IQ 200. For them, their IQ would be 100.

Originally posted by sonhouse
As if it would be that easy. I hate to break it to you Fin, but there are actually bad people out there. I know that for a fact, having some in my family. There is no way they could live outside the penal code system.

There are those with lower intelligence not possessing the feedback we adults have to not smash someone in the face for imagined slights a ...[text shortened]... he time they were 10...

Of course that would be OUR IQ 200. For them, their IQ would be 100.

Nonsense. I do not assume anything that is not real, including a normal distribution of any variable quality you wish, such as intelligence.

I never said we do not need a penal code system I said we do not need more and that jails are not the answer. How many Americans (how many Black Americans) do you envisage keeping in jail as the price of your current model of freedom? How many executions will be required?

You want less crime? Look at the countries with less inequality for your answer.

You want fewer abortions? Copy Holland and you would have the lowest in the developed world instead of nearly the highest.

People can act immorally regardless of IQ or anything else including wealth. When they do that is a problem of course. But when you ask what factors lead more people or fewer people to do so then you cannot deal in personal morality any more and have to look at social policies. The most consistently important of these is inequality.

By the way, what kind of society will have everyone conform to the values of any religion? We have lots of religions to choose from. Why are they not working out as planned? Why do they not achieve what it says on the tin? An IQ of 200 would be a minimum requirement to follow the prescriptions debated on this forum with any accuracy, which is indicated by the consistent failure of contributors to present any consistent argument whatever in support of their diverse dogmas.