Being religion a system of symbols, values and psychological strategies in order to keep a particular pattern of ethical behavior into a particular culture, the last religion, whose ideology (doctrinal extension of its symbology) must be, simple and purely, the achievement of a human environment of extreme trust allowing the highest cooperation, should be depicted after the efficient psychological strategies able to reach the wanted goal.
Deep down, this would not be a different thing from the “pure religion” that Ernest Renan wrote about in his book “Life of Jesus” (1863): “a pure cult, a religion without priests and without rites based enterily on the feelings of the heart”. We should understand “feelings of the heart”, in a more prosaic way, as patterns of behaviour emotionally determined.
According to Renan: “Thanks to the claim of giving to Cesar to what to Cesar belongs, it was created something apart from politics, a refuge for the souls in the middle of the power of brute force”.
The goal of this pure religion would be: “the full idealism of the unselfish and virtuous life”, “the full holiness, the whole abstraction from the impurity of the world, freedom”.
Finally: “Jesus founded the religion of the humanity, as Socrates founded philosophy and Aristotle founded science”, “the final religion”.
Seen from the conventional world this erudite belonged to, came to us some curious observations that at that time turned to be scandalous:
“Jesus is an anarchist, because he didn´t accept the civil government”
(Don´t forget that “Jesus”, anyway, is only one among several historical phenomena known today as “compassionate religions”, existing previously to Jesus, and that could even become much more improved beyond “Jesus”)
As a matter of fact, every ideal pretending to create an environment of extreme trust should be considered as anarchism, because inside such a world, obviously, legal coertion, the legal basis of political life, is turned dispensable.
This way, if we have accepted what would be the last religión (the “pure” religion: something alien to politics), and we have accepted that its result would be an anarchist world (with no political scenario… and obviously with no need of religious behaviour anymore, as this being already superseded), what is left to learn would be which would be the psychological strategies conducing to the change of the patterns of behaviour meaning the surge of the ultimate world of extreme trust.
Religious psychological strategies can be of different types:
-Colective adoctrination
-Colective rites
-individual rites (prayer, meditation)
-mythical narration
-arts
-individual uses of adoctrination
Variety of religious uses can be much bigger (in some cases, for example, it is posible to include the use of drugs or physical disciplines as “individualized rites”) as in many religions the uses are very reduced in figures (many anthropologists, for example, consider that chamanic ceremonies are the essence of religious, because it is nearly the only strategy found in most of the gatherer-hunter people, but the most evolutioned religions include a lot of different uses).
Apparently, most evolutioned and modern religions have discarded gradually colective rites and mythical narrations, using instead mechanisms more of a rational type, as colective and individual adoctrination.
Different experiences of XX century make think that the last religion could take the form of a system of individualized uses not very far away from the current behavioral-cognitive therapy. Behavioral-cognitive therapy consists, basically, in analysis and treatment changing maladaptive thinking which leads to changes in affect and in behavior.
In order to reach a behaviour of extreme trust it would be needed to interiorize in a rational way (not very different from the learning of an actor after the “Stanislawski method”)an array of pattern of innocuous and altruist behaviour. If it is achieved that a person assume, in a observable way, in words, gesture and acts, a pattern of behaviour of this kind, we would have created the basis for a communitarian behaviour in that sense. Innocuous and altruist behaviours can be a consequence of the stimulus of antiagressive and superempathic instincts existing in the innate nature of human beings, although some people are more leaned to them than others.
A possible method that would help to create an efficient community of extreme trust would be, first, collecting according to a previous selection a group of persons actually above average endowed with antiagressive and superempathic behavioral traits (the same way that, in order to form a group of bandits it is convenient to select aggressive and psychopathic people), providing to those persons a particular adoctrination (emotional, symbolic, apolitical and rational) and offering to them a individual counseling according to the adoctrination of the cognitive-behavioural kind. It would be assumed that those people would be motivated to tackle such an experience and it is assumed that the motivation would be based on the expectation of getting from it rewarding emotional compensations as a consequence of living inside a community of extreme trust.
Such an experience has been never tried up to date.
Many experiences have been done on group and individual therapy for the correction of some patterns of behaviour that have been qualified as erroneous according to our culture. A very old and very well-known example was the organization of “anonymous alcoholics” (twelve-steps movement), but also would be examples of that the coaching technics of Dale Carnegie´s style and their infinite branching of all kind in the “self help” world.
Nonetheless, psychoanalysis techniques are even earlier and so are too those techniques of military training in which, by using procedures of urgency, thousands of young people are tried to fit for the extreme situation of armed combat. Neither psychoanalysis nor military training are necessarily religious techniques, as they don´t include an ideology or a social cosmovision.
In the religious world has been monasticism (starting historically with budhism, the first big compassionate religión) the most relevant movement trying to adapt the patterns of behaviour to particularities of innocuity and altruism. From monasticism have been originated many religious inventions of control of the behaviour, like the “spiritual exercises”.
Monastic ideal, like that of the pure religión, would not be more than something very similar to the creation of a “community of saints” in which individuals would have definitely controlled their instincts of agressivity and distrust in an according social context. The monastic community means an extreme religious experience, conducive to deep changes in behaviour that, after imitation by seglars, could influence in cultural changes for the whole society, thereby its historical relevance.
Last religión would have to stem from a rational and organized experience in the sense of creating a monastic community of extreme trust bound for reaching the complete human cooperation. This kind of experience could be also labeled as a "High Performance Center for Behavior" o "Community for the Improvement of Behavior". We sould not forget that human technology has focused many efforts, for example, on improving vegetables and cattle varieties, and history of monasticism could be understood as a kind of psychological technology (or craftsmanship) in order to improve human behavior and making possible the coming up of new cognitive creations, being these ones the essential factor of cultural changes. Today we have new intelectual resources to make this a straight search.
But this would be still a religion: requiring an ideology, a symbolic language, a social network, a faith, and an array of emotional rewards to stimulate followers to resist the inevitable handicaps of a totally prosocial, antiagressive and superempathic behavior in the world of today.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario