Humanism means mastering the instinct
The goal of
mastering the instinct is to achieve that human behaviour could allow the
best control of the proper human qualities, that is, those qualities
being the most different than those of other hominids.
As we are descendents of thousands and thousands of hunter-gatherers
generations, the instincts coded in our genes are not, as a whole, the
best fittest ones for a complete cooperative human life.
In order to produce the necessary trust to implement this cooperative
ideal, social evolution had lead to cultural changes to promote
cooperative instincts and to repress non-cooperative instincts,
basically, the agressive ones -those producing mistrust- being the
cooperative instincts the antiagressive ones, those making possible the
affectionate links to individuals. This would be a basic rationale.
Cultural changes are based on logical behavioral determinants activated
at a social or individual level. Among those cultural determinants, the
most notable along the historical process have been the religious ones.
A religión is, essentially, a particular symbol
system of psychological determinants that developes a social ideology
and acts in the emotional life of individuals with the goal of
establishing behaviours of trust and cooperation.
As operating on emotional reactions, religión is not a rational
mechanism. But it is a rational process as far as it stems from a
correct observation of the emotional nature of human behavior.
The last religion would be that one creating patterns of full trustful
behavior allowing the surge of a completely cooperative culture. That
is, the rational fitness of human emotional traits to the mutual
interests for an universe of individuals.
This last religión, obviously, has not come along yet.
martes, 7 de mayo de 2013
"Religion is not about God"
“Religion is not about God” is a book of Loyal Rue, historian of the religions, of 2004, but he is not, of course, the most notable writer concerned about informing that, against some usual opinions, the religious fact is not necessarily related to speculations about supernatural phenomena. Among other things, Loyal Rue describes religion as something “about manipulating our brains so that we might think, feel, and act in ways that are good for us, both individually and collectively".
But long before we had already the classic Emile Durkheim, author of “Elementary ways of religious life” (1911), where it is stated that “there are big religions where there is no idea about gods and spirits, where, at least, that does not make more than a dark and secondary role. That is the case of Buddhism”
For Auguste Comte, religion is just a social activity, based in the “organizing of rites, rules and ceremonies, with the target of taking mankind to a state of perfect unity”
Some years after Durkehim and Comte having published their books, it came along new non-supernaturalists religious phenomena, this leading to more modern anthropologists like Clifford Geertz to write about “political religions like communism and fascism”. Definition of religion by Clifford Geertz does not require, therefore, of the supernatural fact: "System of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic".
We find more examples of this non-theist conception of the religión in the case of Cavalli-Sforza writing that “Buddah, Jesus, Mohammed, Marx are noted among the greaters founders of religions” or, in the case of Marvin Harris, pointing at the non-supernaturalist ideology of confucionism as “political religion”.
Finally, wikipedia itself defines religión as "organized collection of belief systems, cultural systems, and world views that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values”. The “spirituality” does not mean the “divine”, but the search for "the sacred," where "the sacred" is broadly defined as that which is set apart from the ordinary and worthy of veneration.
The author on history of religions, Karen Armstrong, in her book “The Great Transformation” of 2006, tells us that religión is “compromising to follow an ethical life”, and that "benevolence is showing the path to transcendence". She enlightens us about the origin of religion in the Antique times: “religion was doing things changing us deeply”.
Unfortunately, there are still many dictionaries defining religión as “compound of beliefs or dogma about divinity”.
This misinterpretation about what was the most significant and powerful feature of human cultural evolution is an example more about how, in XXI century, there are still deep changes in the conventional view of human nature to achieve.
Nobody can deny the fundamental role of the religious phenomenon in the advance of cultures in the sense of making posible the change of human behavior. Religion is not just ideology (if doctrinally expressed) or esthetic background of a mythical story (in the case of the most primitive religions), but it supposes above all the practice of particular psychological strategies to modify each individual in the way they would act according to the wanted social formula reaching us thanks to symbolic messages.
Today, by early XXI century, a liberal-democratic culture rules, what means a fairly hopeful achievement. With independence of this culture being the product of a very long evolution of compassionate religions (among them, Christian one was the most influential, but not the first one), the fact is that we can see a future without religion, that is, a future mankind in which individuals will not require to get involved in processes of interiorization of ideological values, being enough to accept the already established values in the mainstream culture no needing to cope with the cognitive resistance of a previous ideology.
Nonetheless, the fact is that liberal-democratic culture today, in spite of its evident advances related to previous cultures, does not accomplish the whole of humanist expectations. It is not reached yet a totally cooperative society, violence and irrational behaviours persist (as supernaturalism, nationalism, private property and family privacy). Violence is still present and considered just as a mere “excess of agresivity”. A similar unsatisfaction made to surge the Marxist political ideologies, which religious character turned to be an expression of its final failure. Anyway, failure of Marxist religion contributed to the improvement of the liberal-democratic culture because made possible to learn more about human nature. The failure of Marxism should have also allowed to get visible the limits for political change.
A new ideological, and not political, formulation, with its side of religious character could lead finally the liberal-democratic intent up to its final humanist consequences (full universal cooperation).
But long before we had already the classic Emile Durkheim, author of “Elementary ways of religious life” (1911), where it is stated that “there are big religions where there is no idea about gods and spirits, where, at least, that does not make more than a dark and secondary role. That is the case of Buddhism”
For Auguste Comte, religion is just a social activity, based in the “organizing of rites, rules and ceremonies, with the target of taking mankind to a state of perfect unity”
Some years after Durkehim and Comte having published their books, it came along new non-supernaturalists religious phenomena, this leading to more modern anthropologists like Clifford Geertz to write about “political religions like communism and fascism”. Definition of religion by Clifford Geertz does not require, therefore, of the supernatural fact: "System of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic".
We find more examples of this non-theist conception of the religión in the case of Cavalli-Sforza writing that “Buddah, Jesus, Mohammed, Marx are noted among the greaters founders of religions” or, in the case of Marvin Harris, pointing at the non-supernaturalist ideology of confucionism as “political religion”.
Finally, wikipedia itself defines religión as "organized collection of belief systems, cultural systems, and world views that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values”. The “spirituality” does not mean the “divine”, but the search for "the sacred," where "the sacred" is broadly defined as that which is set apart from the ordinary and worthy of veneration.
The author on history of religions, Karen Armstrong, in her book “The Great Transformation” of 2006, tells us that religión is “compromising to follow an ethical life”, and that "benevolence is showing the path to transcendence". She enlightens us about the origin of religion in the Antique times: “religion was doing things changing us deeply”.
Unfortunately, there are still many dictionaries defining religión as “compound of beliefs or dogma about divinity”.
This misinterpretation about what was the most significant and powerful feature of human cultural evolution is an example more about how, in XXI century, there are still deep changes in the conventional view of human nature to achieve.
Nobody can deny the fundamental role of the religious phenomenon in the advance of cultures in the sense of making posible the change of human behavior. Religion is not just ideology (if doctrinally expressed) or esthetic background of a mythical story (in the case of the most primitive religions), but it supposes above all the practice of particular psychological strategies to modify each individual in the way they would act according to the wanted social formula reaching us thanks to symbolic messages.
Today, by early XXI century, a liberal-democratic culture rules, what means a fairly hopeful achievement. With independence of this culture being the product of a very long evolution of compassionate religions (among them, Christian one was the most influential, but not the first one), the fact is that we can see a future without religion, that is, a future mankind in which individuals will not require to get involved in processes of interiorization of ideological values, being enough to accept the already established values in the mainstream culture no needing to cope with the cognitive resistance of a previous ideology.
Nonetheless, the fact is that liberal-democratic culture today, in spite of its evident advances related to previous cultures, does not accomplish the whole of humanist expectations. It is not reached yet a totally cooperative society, violence and irrational behaviours persist (as supernaturalism, nationalism, private property and family privacy). Violence is still present and considered just as a mere “excess of agresivity”. A similar unsatisfaction made to surge the Marxist political ideologies, which religious character turned to be an expression of its final failure. Anyway, failure of Marxist religion contributed to the improvement of the liberal-democratic culture because made possible to learn more about human nature. The failure of Marxism should have also allowed to get visible the limits for political change.
A new ideological, and not political, formulation, with its side of religious character could lead finally the liberal-democratic intent up to its final humanist consequences (full universal cooperation).
viernes, 22 de marzo de 2013
Antiagressivity and superempathy
Human agressivity is the biggest hindering to full cooperation. Without it, rational mind logically expressed by means of the language would be more than enough to organize the productive effort of human beings, thereby any economical target would be reachable: limits of technological capacity are beyond imagination even at short term; as an example of it, struggle for survival (housing and food), that occupies the near totality of the vital effort of non-human animals, today, with the current technology, would occupy just 1 % of the human beings effort, and probably much less with a future technology. The fact that today we need just a minimal effort to secure our physical survival at the same time that they continue existing millions of people still living in the absolute scarcity is an evidence of the still existing irrational factors hindering human cooperation and that the main goal of science today should be to eradicate these factors. However, in the present historical period, human agressivity and irrational cultural behaviors are not considered problems to solve: they are just assumed as a given social background.
Agressivity means a pattern of instinctual behaviors originated from evaluating other people as a straight threat against each one´s vital interests and therefore to make him any kind of suffrance. After these agressive behavior (or exaggeratedly defensive ones) every kind of risky activities plus every kind of preventive security controls in which vital interests of every one intend to prevail through fighting and cheating. War and criminality are the most notable social deployment of agressivity, but these are only extreme cases patterned according the social conventions of each time. As an example, to beat someone´s wife is not considered criminality in many cultures, the same way that looking at someone in an insulting way or denying financial help are not criminality in our liberal-democratic culture either, in spite of not existing any doubt that acting so we are harming others on purpose.
About agressivity, we know that it provides pleasure to those executing it, which is logical in the case of an instinctual impulse. That´s why that, in order to control it, several methods in order to alleviate it in an inoffensive way are looked for; things like competitive sport and violent spectacles. Of course, necessity of agressivity of each individual depends on the particular psychological traits corresponding to each personal case (temperament).
In general terms, most of scholars and scientists consider that agressivity can not be totally controled, and even less probably being erradicated, and they name “violence” only to a “excessive demonstration of agressivity”. Which would be the limit of that “excess” could be given only by the cultural convention of the social period, no one being able to learn what could be the future limit to the social acceptance of violence.
We know less about “antiagressivity”. In behavioral psychology are named this way those patterns of behavior appeasing the violent instincts. Antiagressive patterns of behavior are consolation, compassion and showing of empathy by means of the language (verbal and non-verbal) and acting (for example: economic help or sexual comfort). In extreme cases, it is possible to get antiagressivity by means of several pharmachological products (drugs).
Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen writes about “super-empathy” in case of meassurable attitudes of behaviour characterized by antiagressevity and affection. Empathy could be defined as “our capacity to identify what other person thinks or feels and responds fore those thoughts and feelings with an adequate emotion”. Super-empathy would be an extreme demonstration that we could describe as proper of someone feeling pleasure from other people´s pleasure, the same way that the aggressive one gets pleasure from other people´s suffrance.
Behavior of antiagressivity and superempathy are as real as those of agressivity, and all of them are instictual the same way. The book of Steven Pinker “The better angels of our nature” informs us about the cultural changes occurred in the historical period, showing how the most notable demonstrations of social violence (wars and criminality) are lessening as particular cultural changes are taking place. These cultural changes use to be related to cultural demonstrations of empathy, as art (it is very interesting the case of passion for reading novels from XVIII century on) or political concepts as welfare, human rights or democracy.
As the words “antiagressivity” and “superempathy” are fairly new, that makes think that they are not very well studied phenomena in spite of their practical value seeming inmense as long as it is possible to keep developing knowledge about the future control of violence and agressivity, whose limits seem also impossible to calculate. Societies with less agressivity (less wars and criminality) are those, of course, technologically advanced at the most and those with a higher level of cooperation.
Karen Armstrong described a trend of cultural evolution by means of the development of the so-called “compassionate religions” appearing with the urban expansión two thousands and five hundred years ago. The first religion totally compassionate would have been Buddhism, adapted in the helenistic philosophy by stoicism that, at the same time, would influence decisively in Christianity. It is still discussed if the advance in antiagressive behavior and in cultural antiagressive conceptions are related with the gradual developmente of the ideas of the compassionate religions (and particularly with the Christian religions, as this is the religión of the nations that finally have worldwide culturally prevailed).
Agressivity means a pattern of instinctual behaviors originated from evaluating other people as a straight threat against each one´s vital interests and therefore to make him any kind of suffrance. After these agressive behavior (or exaggeratedly defensive ones) every kind of risky activities plus every kind of preventive security controls in which vital interests of every one intend to prevail through fighting and cheating. War and criminality are the most notable social deployment of agressivity, but these are only extreme cases patterned according the social conventions of each time. As an example, to beat someone´s wife is not considered criminality in many cultures, the same way that looking at someone in an insulting way or denying financial help are not criminality in our liberal-democratic culture either, in spite of not existing any doubt that acting so we are harming others on purpose.
About agressivity, we know that it provides pleasure to those executing it, which is logical in the case of an instinctual impulse. That´s why that, in order to control it, several methods in order to alleviate it in an inoffensive way are looked for; things like competitive sport and violent spectacles. Of course, necessity of agressivity of each individual depends on the particular psychological traits corresponding to each personal case (temperament).
In general terms, most of scholars and scientists consider that agressivity can not be totally controled, and even less probably being erradicated, and they name “violence” only to a “excessive demonstration of agressivity”. Which would be the limit of that “excess” could be given only by the cultural convention of the social period, no one being able to learn what could be the future limit to the social acceptance of violence.
We know less about “antiagressivity”. In behavioral psychology are named this way those patterns of behavior appeasing the violent instincts. Antiagressive patterns of behavior are consolation, compassion and showing of empathy by means of the language (verbal and non-verbal) and acting (for example: economic help or sexual comfort). In extreme cases, it is possible to get antiagressivity by means of several pharmachological products (drugs).
Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen writes about “super-empathy” in case of meassurable attitudes of behaviour characterized by antiagressevity and affection. Empathy could be defined as “our capacity to identify what other person thinks or feels and responds fore those thoughts and feelings with an adequate emotion”. Super-empathy would be an extreme demonstration that we could describe as proper of someone feeling pleasure from other people´s pleasure, the same way that the aggressive one gets pleasure from other people´s suffrance.
Behavior of antiagressivity and superempathy are as real as those of agressivity, and all of them are instictual the same way. The book of Steven Pinker “The better angels of our nature” informs us about the cultural changes occurred in the historical period, showing how the most notable demonstrations of social violence (wars and criminality) are lessening as particular cultural changes are taking place. These cultural changes use to be related to cultural demonstrations of empathy, as art (it is very interesting the case of passion for reading novels from XVIII century on) or political concepts as welfare, human rights or democracy.
As the words “antiagressivity” and “superempathy” are fairly new, that makes think that they are not very well studied phenomena in spite of their practical value seeming inmense as long as it is possible to keep developing knowledge about the future control of violence and agressivity, whose limits seem also impossible to calculate. Societies with less agressivity (less wars and criminality) are those, of course, technologically advanced at the most and those with a higher level of cooperation.
Karen Armstrong described a trend of cultural evolution by means of the development of the so-called “compassionate religions” appearing with the urban expansión two thousands and five hundred years ago. The first religion totally compassionate would have been Buddhism, adapted in the helenistic philosophy by stoicism that, at the same time, would influence decisively in Christianity. It is still discussed if the advance in antiagressive behavior and in cultural antiagressive conceptions are related with the gradual developmente of the ideas of the compassionate religions (and particularly with the Christian religions, as this is the religión of the nations that finally have worldwide culturally prevailed).
jueves, 28 de febrero de 2013
Behaviorism, anarchism and pure religion
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.
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.
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