Second Hand Convictions
In religion and politics, people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination.—Mark Twain
Tags: beliefs, Mark Twain, politics, religion
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Kullervo
said,
February 28, 2008 @ 3:07 pm
True!
mel
said,
February 28, 2008 @ 4:49 pm
Yes, and any topic that an authority figure cares enough about to impose upon the minds of children and child-like followers. You know — things like culture and language and superstitions and fashions and etc.
But of course, religion seems to be the most detached from actual human experience and thus the need to be highly organized and controlling. Political parties wish they had such awesome dynamics — instead they have to court religion for such.
Kullervo
said,
February 28, 2008 @ 7:04 pm
Hmm. I don’t know if things like culture, fashion, and language are imposed as directly by authority figures as you’re implying.
mel
said,
February 28, 2008 @ 8:26 pm
Lots of forms of authority out there but let’s just use parents as an example for culture and language — you could also use group authority such as communities and etc. Are these not direct enough?
But if this is the only issue you take with what I wrote then I can live with it.
Kullervo
said,
February 29, 2008 @ 5:16 am
Certainly culture (and I take an expansive view of culture, including language, religion, politics, tradition, superstititon, just about everything else) is imparted from previous generations or from the social context. I mean, nobody spontaneously invents culture every generation–that’s kind of the point of culture. And I kind of think that if we expand Twain’s observation this far, then we’re talking about something else. Still something useful, because it’s worth realizing that a lot (most) of our assumptions are really just basd on how we’ve been raised to think.
But I think religion and politics in specific are unique. Maybe because we live in a more-or-less plural culture where different religions and political alignments are considered reasonable choices, which means that the fairly unthinking transmission (usually parent>child) of religion and politics looks more obvious–because plenty of other people in the same wider culture don;t have the same religion or political alignment.
mel
said,
February 29, 2008 @ 10:25 am
“nobody spontaneously invents culture”
Agreed, and so long as we don’t limit the the definition of authority to spontaneity then I think we’re largely of the same mind.
As for the uniqueness of religion and politics vis a vis culture and etc … well, I think it’s just a matter of how you scope. I think you’ve expressed the same and I agree that some scoping is more obvious than others for most people.
Do we still disagree here?
Personally I think Twain is stating something so extraordinarily obvious about human nature that to limit it to the scope of religion and politics is somewhat deceitful. My gripe with religion is not with its followers but that it takes this human nature and applies stifling controls in order to maintain a high degree of uniform credulity and dependency.
People will always believe much without much evidence but it takes religion to get a bunch of people to consistently believe the same things, generation after generation, without evidence and often in the face of common sense.
Kullervo
said,
February 29, 2008 @ 11:36 am
People will always believe much without much evidence but it takes religion to get a bunch of people to consistently believe the same things, generation after generation, without evidence and often in the face of common sense.
Well, I don’t think religion is the lone culprit here. Especially since religion is so ebedded in culture and intertwined with folklore, superstition, and cultural norms that you can blame religion for everything or blame religion for nothing. In any case, I think you can wind up playing mad definitional and rhetorical classification games.
But in general, I think you and I are in agreement as to this blog post, and I am willing to breathe a sigh of relief and move on.
Jonathan Blake
said,
February 29, 2008 @ 11:51 am
Religion in this context often raises this second-hand knowledge to a virtue rather than a regrettably necessary expedient. We count faith based on the words of prophets as a positive personality trait (as long as they’re the right sort of prophets).
mel
said,
February 29, 2008 @ 12:35 pm
Jonathan, we are ever so on the same thought thread. Thanks.
Kullervo, first let’s just put our ongoing conversation into context … we’ve really only had one post where we had significant fall-out in our differences. Prior to that, I’ve post on your blog (though admittedly, it’s been a while) largely in support of your ideas. It’s really not all that unusual and worthy of sighing.
Sincerely, your partner in madness.
Kullervo
said,
February 29, 2008 @ 6:47 pm
Mel, well I’m just being the quirky way that I am.
Jonathan, you raise an interesting point.