Waldorfian take on the evolution debate
First of all, for those reading this whose first reaction is " what the hell is Waldorf?" it is a schooling philosophy. The first school was founded in the 1920's by Austrian Rudolf Steiner at the behest of the CEO of the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette company (hence the name Waldorf) to serve as an educational facility for workers at his company. Steiner founded it on the philosophy that the whole child needed to be developed at every point of the education. The school works around an integration of art and science that is seldom seen in education anywhere. The basic structure is a k-8 system with a tightly knit homeroom class and a teacher that stays with you those 8 years (after eighth grade, this ends.) The days structure is a morning lesson that changes in monthly blocks (a system which some colleges use) with track classes taught by various other teachers in the afternoon. The children make their own textbooks from the subject matter that the teacher presents. As the children get older, these "morning lesson books grow in complexity until they are often artistic portfolios of essays and what the child learned during the block. The idea behind this structure is to enforce an environment where "children relate what they learn to their own experience, they are interested and engaged and what they learn becomes their own. Waldorf schools are designed to foster this kind of learning." (http://www.awsna.org/education.html) You can read more about it at Wikipedia or in a Google search for Waldorf.
It is the Waldorfian take on the teaching of sacred myth and science that I want to discuss here. In the lower grades, the sacred mythology of the world's major cultures is taught periodically in the morning lesson. For example, second graders might hear the stories of the Christian saints while third graders would be hearing the stories of the old testament. These stories, in turn, are each taught without a word to their truth or falsity, and given to the child directly on face value, with the emphasis on the fact that for the people who created these myths, the were ultimate Truth. When each story comes, in the moment that it is being taught, that is the truth-for that moment. It is the same way with religious practice. Children are invited to celebrate various holidays from all of the major religions. While studying the old testament, often the third grade class will have a sader, or build a sukkah. It is common to light advent candles in the classroom, and I have fond memories of my class' Kwanza celebration. Again, these rituals are presented on face value with the added explanation that they are truth and all-important to those who practice them. The teachers never say, this is the right path, but they teach respect. Having gone through this system, I can accurately say what a child’s reaction to these stories and religious ceremonies are. Because young children (i.e. in the younger grades, below fourth) do not have full critical processes, are not naturally developing them yet, and for the most part have no interest in developing them yet, they pass over these stories with a sensation of "Wow. What a good story." I can remember making no judgment as to the truth or falsity of any of these stories, but can remember understanding what the story was trying to say. For a second grader, that is enough. There is plenty of time later when the child is older to develop critical thinking skills.
As the child graduates to the fourth and fifth grades, more critical thinking naturally begins to set in, and science classes start. Early Waldorf science classes revolve around the importance of observation. They understand that learning science is not being indoctrinated to a collection of facts but the process of mastering a method, specifically, the scientific one. The principal components of the scientific method are clear observation and analysis. Waldorf classes start with observation, so, early on, conclusions take a secondary role. Fourth fifth and sixth graders will perform experiments in the classroom and make all of the observations they can. I have a distinct memory of going onto a darkened stage and the teacher lighting a candle. He told us to make all the observations we could and write them down. The class sat in a big circle, and noticed every thing they could about the candle. It is amazing how many pages of stuff you can come up with just observing a candle. You should try it sometime, really LOOKING at something. It will teach you why a picture is worth a thousand words.
At the same time, religion is still taught. The stories become more complicated, and while students still learn the stories, they also learn the history of the people. In the Ancient Roman block, students learn not only factual history, but also the roman classic legends. It is given alongside science, because it is accepted that the two both have value, and that the student can learn something from both.
As the student reaches seventh and eighth grade, annaylisis and conclusion take a more vital role in the study of science. Instead of just observing, the student is asked to make conclusions based on their observations from the experiment, as well as swallow the prepackaged dictates of the scientific establishment. Religion studies become more analytical, and are taught from a context of the history of the people who practiced the religion. Still, though, there was no dictate of ultimate truth. Science isn't right, religion isn’t wrong.
When the student graduates from grade school, it is time to develop full blown critical thinking. From then on, the student studies science from a rather unique perspective: the perspective of the scientists who discovered the theory. In 9th grade, my class duplicated Galileo’s experiments of dropping objects and from the measurements did a statistical analysis to derive the acceleration of gravity. We spent 3 weeks doing this and in the process learned how to run a good experiment, gather data, analyze the data statistically, and make conclusions. We also learned basic Newtonian mechanics, learned about acceleration from a mathematical perspective, and as a golden cookie, derived the famous number for the acceleration of Earth's gravity. We got 15.99 ft/sec^2. The actual number is 16.08 ft/sec^2. Religion is taught as it would be in any high school, from an analytical perspective.
Ultimately, I graduated from there with an excellent sense of both the world of science and the world of religion. I didn't have to have little stickers on my book that told me that evolution was a theory, I knew that everything is a theory, whether the theory said it was that Jesus created us, or whether we were by a cause and effect process known as evolution. I could look at and scrutinize both, and then decide for myself. Because the greatest asset of Waldorf education is the understanding that one, truth cannot be taught, it must be found. Two, that perception of truth changes with the ages, and the best way to make sense of it all is to non-judgmentally expose yourself to ALL of it in the proper time and order and THEN decide. All that I have to say to the evolution/creation debate is this:
By the grace of god, may the fittest theory win.
It is the Waldorfian take on the teaching of sacred myth and science that I want to discuss here. In the lower grades, the sacred mythology of the world's major cultures is taught periodically in the morning lesson. For example, second graders might hear the stories of the Christian saints while third graders would be hearing the stories of the old testament. These stories, in turn, are each taught without a word to their truth or falsity, and given to the child directly on face value, with the emphasis on the fact that for the people who created these myths, the were ultimate Truth. When each story comes, in the moment that it is being taught, that is the truth-for that moment. It is the same way with religious practice. Children are invited to celebrate various holidays from all of the major religions. While studying the old testament, often the third grade class will have a sader, or build a sukkah. It is common to light advent candles in the classroom, and I have fond memories of my class' Kwanza celebration. Again, these rituals are presented on face value with the added explanation that they are truth and all-important to those who practice them. The teachers never say, this is the right path, but they teach respect. Having gone through this system, I can accurately say what a child’s reaction to these stories and religious ceremonies are. Because young children (i.e. in the younger grades, below fourth) do not have full critical processes, are not naturally developing them yet, and for the most part have no interest in developing them yet, they pass over these stories with a sensation of "Wow. What a good story." I can remember making no judgment as to the truth or falsity of any of these stories, but can remember understanding what the story was trying to say. For a second grader, that is enough. There is plenty of time later when the child is older to develop critical thinking skills.
As the child graduates to the fourth and fifth grades, more critical thinking naturally begins to set in, and science classes start. Early Waldorf science classes revolve around the importance of observation. They understand that learning science is not being indoctrinated to a collection of facts but the process of mastering a method, specifically, the scientific one. The principal components of the scientific method are clear observation and analysis. Waldorf classes start with observation, so, early on, conclusions take a secondary role. Fourth fifth and sixth graders will perform experiments in the classroom and make all of the observations they can. I have a distinct memory of going onto a darkened stage and the teacher lighting a candle. He told us to make all the observations we could and write them down. The class sat in a big circle, and noticed every thing they could about the candle. It is amazing how many pages of stuff you can come up with just observing a candle. You should try it sometime, really LOOKING at something. It will teach you why a picture is worth a thousand words.
At the same time, religion is still taught. The stories become more complicated, and while students still learn the stories, they also learn the history of the people. In the Ancient Roman block, students learn not only factual history, but also the roman classic legends. It is given alongside science, because it is accepted that the two both have value, and that the student can learn something from both.
As the student reaches seventh and eighth grade, annaylisis and conclusion take a more vital role in the study of science. Instead of just observing, the student is asked to make conclusions based on their observations from the experiment, as well as swallow the prepackaged dictates of the scientific establishment. Religion studies become more analytical, and are taught from a context of the history of the people who practiced the religion. Still, though, there was no dictate of ultimate truth. Science isn't right, religion isn’t wrong.
When the student graduates from grade school, it is time to develop full blown critical thinking. From then on, the student studies science from a rather unique perspective: the perspective of the scientists who discovered the theory. In 9th grade, my class duplicated Galileo’s experiments of dropping objects and from the measurements did a statistical analysis to derive the acceleration of gravity. We spent 3 weeks doing this and in the process learned how to run a good experiment, gather data, analyze the data statistically, and make conclusions. We also learned basic Newtonian mechanics, learned about acceleration from a mathematical perspective, and as a golden cookie, derived the famous number for the acceleration of Earth's gravity. We got 15.99 ft/sec^2. The actual number is 16.08 ft/sec^2. Religion is taught as it would be in any high school, from an analytical perspective.
Ultimately, I graduated from there with an excellent sense of both the world of science and the world of religion. I didn't have to have little stickers on my book that told me that evolution was a theory, I knew that everything is a theory, whether the theory said it was that Jesus created us, or whether we were by a cause and effect process known as evolution. I could look at and scrutinize both, and then decide for myself. Because the greatest asset of Waldorf education is the understanding that one, truth cannot be taught, it must be found. Two, that perception of truth changes with the ages, and the best way to make sense of it all is to non-judgmentally expose yourself to ALL of it in the proper time and order and THEN decide. All that I have to say to the evolution/creation debate is this:
By the grace of god, may the fittest theory win.
posted by Abraham at 8:08 PM
3 Comments:
Well for someone who was inside a system and thus might find it hard to see "the forest for the trees" you seem to have seen the reasons and methods of your education very clearly.
You also seem to understand the scientific essense of the "Intellegent Creation" debate. That if "Intellegent Creation" is tought as a scientific theory then it stands or falls on the evidence. Fundimentalists fundimentally do not accept that science can help find any fundimental truth. For them Intellegent Design is not a theory, it is Revealed Truth.
What the fundimentalists fear to understand is that the same structure of reasoning that allowed the finding of the ideas that allow an engineer to design the jet they fly in, also leads the biologist to decide the the theory of evolution is very likely true. It is a twisted net of interlocked observations from geology, gross anatomy, paleontology, cellular anatomy, and biochemistry that leads to the conclusion.
They fear not that God would not exist but that the scientist will eliminate their own egotistical impression of their own personal importance in Gods Eye.
As another former student of the same system, I can say the same.
However, I would not call this as much a promotion of waldorf education as much as the idea in general that everything should be treated with an open mind, no matter what the educational system.
It boggles my mind why people can't come to this solution. Far too often, someone just has to be right about what they believe in, and force it on others.
Hi Aaron,
I decided to respond to your line of reasoning. While i have a bunch of these observations, at some point i just had to cut it off - getting so long. Lets see what you do with these.
Norm Dyer
***
As a brain theorist, i make the following statement (surprising to many). The human brain has no means of distinguishing between fact and fiction. The brain merely tries to minimize dissonance between many patterns presented to it and by it. By patterns i infer memories, both conscious and unconscious. By fiction i mean the use of stories, perspectives, fantasy, parables, rules, commandments, taboos, quests, nirvanas and holy grails that are fabricated in language, art, movement, ritual, tradition, ceremony, shammanship, comedy, drama, cinema and story telling. By fact i mean physical reality, signals received without human interpretation or attribution of meaning or value. (often referred to as “raw data”). I conditionally allow for the extensions of fact by methodical, careful, reproducible, verifiable, provable, peer reviewed and public reviewed, consistent and coherent accretions of reliable knowledge by those members of humanity for whom truth is more important than other social and psychological considerations. But even such stringent extensions as these usually contain omissions and errors. Even careful direct observations of nature can be recorded with error. While even the best collections of facts fall short of perfect truth, it gets progressively worse (more errors) for those who employ less and less rigor in their means for accumulating knowledge. The good news is, genuine knowledge gets progressively better every year, and new things are discovered, and groups of facts are reconciled with each other to a more complete more precise set of truths.
To place all of this on a spectrum, what could be the opposite of knowledge? Would it be chaos? Lies? Chaos, Silence and total ignorance all lie at the zero point, because they contain no information. Lies (untruths, false claims) move one into negative territory. At the extreme negative end would be an elaborate system of complex knowledge that has all the richness of reality and truth, but leads one to the wrong conclusions, to failed predictions, and works to produce grinding destructivity for all who employ and embrace it. Such systems almost always generate distrust, strong concepts of heresy and traitors, hatreds, zeal, murderousness, superiority complexes, and a reliance of power to sustain their status and vanquish their competition.
Ideas and world views gained prior to puberty strongly favor the transference of cultural information from the prior generation. This makes good sense from several perspectives. Children are completely dependent upon their parents and survival is enhanced by children who immediately obey their parent’s commands. “Get off that train track immediately!!” Or, “Let me tell you about the time when i was a kid.” Children’s stories often have an element of danger to children in them, usually with some notion about what to do in response, or how to avoid it in the first place. But elders have increasingly employed such ready access to the minds of infants to instill cultural identity as well. Think of it as a “rider”. The child has a biological need to enhance his survival skills, but the adult delivered a “mixed product”. In so doing, the adult creats an agent of the culture in the child. A carrier, and perhaps an advocate. The child of course has no way of knowing which is fact and which is propaganda. And thus the betrayal begins.
After puberty, the individual much more strongly lives in real time (not historic time, or fantasy time). The language and culture gained during childhood years becomes the basis for one’s world view, for navigation and progress in all subsequent years. Because the childhood teachings are foundational, they usually take precedence over messages received later through experiences. The foundations frame all questions. They provide or don’t provide a “place to put” new ideas. (Blind spots occur when there is no place to assimilate an idea to. Then the idea is very quickly lost and forgotten, and just as important, cannot be transmitted to another individual.) This is true in the sense that one must know how to read english (or other “native” language) as a prerequisite to choosing which book to read at the local library. Childhood indoctrination, in the same way, completely predisposes adult understanding of how the world works, what one can “read” about reality, and what one is blind to.
If the childhood teaching has been a mythological one, the brain spends the rest of its life trying to rationalize every impinging reality to fit into that mythology. In this “reconciliation process” it is the new which must fit the old, not vice versa. This is a surprising statement, because it seemingly runs contrary to the very idea of “education” which supposedly will get one to a higher place, by improving one’s knowledge, replacing childish notions with mature ones. But as adult reality arrives in its daily dose, it must be assimilated with what all was there in the brain prior. It is both economically inefficient and physiologically impossible to adjust all prior to the one new fact of the day. Rather the present expereience must assimilate with the prior. This creates a tremendous challenge for pedagogy, which presumes to move people “out” of childhood, “into” adulthood. It just doesn’t happen that way. Unless the childhood fundamentals were true to reality, the student is crippled when trying to make sense of it later in college. Some students succeed, others drop out. World view has a lot to do with that.
There are many renditions of this process.
One who receives a dogma (dogmum??) as a child, and for whatever reason experiences no lasting memories of solo curiosity about nature, nor competing alternative worldviews, will most likely grow up to be “a true believer”. The highly socialized and supervised individual in such an indoctrinal culture may become incapable of conceiving that the belief system of his indoctrination may not be true. For to do so is equivalent to declaring that one’s entire brain is full of insanity, and most ego’s won’t even allow such a thought. There are exceptions, but they are small in number.
One who receives a dogmatic view of the world, but is also spends enough alone time to discover means of interacting with nature directly, without that dogma, may grow an alternative worldview concerning truth. These two may play out as a conflict that must be reconciled, or as a peaceful coexistence of two views, each appropriate to their domain. In the case of conflict, persistence toward a solution will lead the adult to discover the programming of childhood, and gradually become deprogrammed (self directed, through education, or via therapy). Those not encountering mythological views in their childhood, may or may not pick them up later; may or may not develop some particular talent for veracity, science, law, engineering, mercantilism or diplomacy, to name a few in which mythologies are usually a detriment.
One who receives dogma in childhood, but also receives other dogmas, and at some point begins to compare them, and wonder why there are different views, may grow up to question the role of dogmas in society. They may choose an alternate “better” dogma, or prefer to remain unattached to any, remaining as one who compares but does not commit. They may discover so many discrepancies and flaws so as to eventually reject all dogmas. If so, they may feel empty, or they may feel cured and healed from the trauma of excising one’s world view. The difference is probably due to the comfort or pain one felt as a result of being a member of a group of people who upheld that dogma.
The human mind can associate any two things it is capable of perceiving. You can be introduced to some totally new phenomenon in the universe. Then be given its name. You will quickly associate this name with this phenomenon, completely arbitrarily. Similarly, any dogma can be associated with absolutely anything: chocolate milk, a pretty girl, approving nods, a certificate on the wall, nightmares, bad luck, fictional characters, status, a sense of security; ad infinitum. By these means children are enculturated: associating the dogma of choice with some pleasant experience (white floating young angels with glowing halos); and by associating the competing views and people with something fearful or painful (screaming demons. Fire-y hell).
There is another trick commonly used, and that is usurpation and plagiarism of other people’s goods. In many instances over the history of religions, their flaws and falsities have been exposed by thoughtful people. The response of the religion was two-fold: to kill the critic, and to patch the leak. this is done by copying another’s ways and claim them as one’s own. Done on a very selective basis, such moves can serve to elevate the creditability of the mythology without opening additional doors to challenging it. Examples of this include christian views towards slavery and ecology. The bible clearly condones slavery and is ignorant of ecology. But at various times in history, christian organizations have claimed that they were in the forefront of the anti-slavery movement (they weren’t – scottish philosophers started it, and at any one point in time up until the 60’s, there were more christians for slavery than against it). For a milenium, christians have claimed manifest destiny and dominion over all the beasts, and other such anti-ecological stances. But now it is common for churches to preach that christians have “Always” been ecologists, ever since the garden of eden.
The human mind is presented with puzzles to solve on a daily basis. Reading the newspapers: What are they up to now? How will this play out? How will the other guy respond? Which bits of news address specific threats to me, and which are benign? Are there any new opportunities for me today (jobs, stack market, business deals)? If one’s world view is fictional, then the challenge is to reconcile incoming facts with the fiction. If the human mind was perfectly rational, this would become burdensome and often impossible, such that fictional views could never have taken hold in the first place, and the history of humanity would have been quite different.
But luckily for the dogmatists, the mind is not at all rational. That’s why it takes 20 years of training to produce a highly objective thinker. Impartiality is an unnatural act!! High levels of logical coherence are maintained at great societal cost, education, state regulation, job training, oversight, reviews and records by superiors and peers, and underlings. Even with all of that, almost no one acts objective and unbiased all the time. What the brain is really wired for is satiation – to satisfy all needs, both real and imagined. When we say we had a “good day” we are usually referring to a success in meeting the bosses expectations, without unusual pain in so doing. We do not mean that the day was perfectly objective and unbiased. Social approval plays a huge role in human behavior, in personality, in values, in choices, in emotional feelings. Seeking pleasure and avoiding pain may be true to its own logic, but they by no means assure that all other thoughts will be objective. Emotions distort and compete against the much weaker objective reason. People lie to avoid punishment. The cheat to get ahead. People want their ego’s stroked with lies about how great they are. The dogmatist can exploit these traits easily, but cannot stand up to those individuals who have achieved that high state of careful thinking we call “reason”.
The human mind has an almost infinite ability to rationalize anything. People rationalize absolutely anything: wading in feces up to their nostrils (to get to the girl); murdering their own grandmother (for her wealth); pushing the button to nuke all life on earth (to answer god’s calling); that space aliens want us to lie down on white sheets and drink cyanide (to deliver us from this earthly doom); that mickey mouse owns the universe and made the moon of green cheese. Hilter’s Youth reminds us that children can be programmed to uniformly believe anything that they are taught (love , hate, murder, absolute motionlessness, cooperation, betrayal, gross lies and fiction presented as fact, the ruin of humanity in the name of a “godlike leader”.
It is critical for anyone sincere in their efforts to clean out falsehoods to first pursue epistemology, and come to know the many ways of knowing, testing, verifying, comparing, criticizing, detecting bias, detecting falsehoods, detecting fraudulent intents, detecting incoherence, detecting maliciousness, and predicting correctly the disastrous consequences of betraying the children with lies.
Indoctrination, by definition, injects a library of patterns into the mix of brain patterns (we might call these patterns memories, but they are dynamic, not static). Those specialists who do the indoctrinating prefer to do so prior to the onset of puberty, because knowledge and experience are treated differently by a child than by a teenager or adult. During childhood, the foundations of language, and “laws of nature” which form the framework, the very basis of our consciousness, are just being laid down.
The brain has no innate knowledge of this sort from which to start. This “blank slate” (tabula rasa) makes each of us exceedingly vulnerable to whatever our parents and teachers cause us to “learn”. (There are valid claims that this tabula rasa notion does not apply to many instincts and neural functions hardwired into our nervous system, but here i address only enculturation, not instincts.) Such teachings can be relevant, irrelevant, practical, fantastical. Fantasy is not dangerous if it is irrelevant. What harm can come of saying that the moon is made of green cheese if one will never go there? But fantastical teachings are increasingly harmful if relevant and urgent. If one is always and only taught about the tiger looming in the overhead trees, a child will never save himself from the rattlesnake low along the trail.
It gets much worse. If a mythology defines one’s neighbor as the enemy, as possessed by the devil, as one christian view says of muslims, then the child is programmed with fear and hatred of people never met and never having harmed him. This culminates in a distinctly antisocial behavior that eventually forces the muslims to act (rationally) to protect themselves from such maniacs. If two sides are programmed via indoctrination to regard each other as the enemy or as devils, then they will engage in war at every opportunity with no possible reconciliation, ever, even over a millenium. This is the dirty business of indoctrination. Indoctrination patterns, when delivered over the childhood years, gain “equal standing” with all other patterns gained by experience and language during those years. The child is not capable of distinguishing between a mythological claim and a scientific claim at those ages. (An exception would be if the child were taught a reliable “test” to distinguish between the two, and faithfully performed this test with each new “message”. But i don’t know of a single case where this was done.) We all often pick up the assumption that we can tell the difference. But when put to the test, no two people can agree – they cannot draw the line between fact and fiction at the same place. Therefore, our assumptions are unreliable, and are worthless in the social sense. More revealing is where and how we came to pick up this assumption. It was just another taught pattern that fit into the needs of one particular worldview, and it tended to draw the line so that itself was “in” and its competitors were “out”.
Here is the catch. If you set a child off with a mythological world view, which is sufficiently coincident to reality; then it is easy to make associations between the two. But as fiction must, by definition, be sufficiently incompatible with some other aspects of reality, say the laws of nature; then that child is confronted with, and pursues, a puzzle. Like solving a crossword puzzle, each small “match” is a success, and gives joy. “See, the holy scripture was right when it said there will come a great flood.!” Each associative match continues to build an ever larger structure on the same faulty foundation. This may justifiably be called “building a monster”, as the child becomes a supporter and proponent of his own delusions, building them ever richer and more complex, having given generous credit to the “matches” and merely postponed the voluminous failed matches for another day. Over time he builds a library of rationalizations which bridge between his fiction and a limited real world. Limited because such people cannot afford to avail themselves to such experiments as would disprove their fictional worldview. They must build elaborate protections against that ever happening. This requires considerable energy. Doing so with the passion of the ego just serves to fortify the false knowledge structure and entrench it even further.
Such frequent intimate interaction reads as “relationship building” to the mind, while it reads as “criminal activity” to the unbiased observer. All enduring fictional worldviews have developed elaborate defense mechanisms against truth seeking individuals prying into their falsities. Like the wizard of oz saying to Dorothy: “Don’t look behind that curtain at the silly old man”, they exempt themselves from scrutiny. They must invent elaborate supernatural phenomena to “Explain away” their inconsistencies. They postpone having to deliver on their promises until you’re dead, so you cannot come back and request a refund or file a consumer’s report for fraudulent business practices.
Mythologies distract the human spirit away from quality of life. The people most conscientious of quality of life are the scandinavian countries. They are the least religious and they focus almost all of their resources towards very healthy garden-like living. The most religious places have created hell on earth, they are charged with hatred, tribal competition, and their agenda has nothing to do with quality of life, but rather to defend competing fictions and their afterlives, perfectly willing to commit suicide, to start wars, to kill thousands of innocent people, and in the process reduce their own lives to ruins. Setting one’s agenda is the big issue of one’s life. And religions typically set that agenda for you, quite willing to sacrifice your life for their cause of dominating real estate, or for acquiring control of the minds of yet other converts and unborn. There are more subtle effects upon quality of life. The yeshivas emphasize winning the argument, and discount the consequences. (the chalk board is erased, tomorrow is a new day.) For graduates who become trial lawyers winning is everything – and by that process the richest criminals have won their release, and the world is made a worse place. Various religious teachings are more than willing to sacrifice the society for the sake of upholding their dogma.
Most mythologies do very serious damage to ethics. Because they rely upon claims of “revealed knowledge” (which is fiction under a different cover), supernatural powers (that have so much power to render human powers trivial and inconsequential), hierarchical structures (theocracies are absolute totalitarians), loyalty and obedience as “goods”, commandments, divine intervention, sacrifice for favors, blood letting, and perpetually defined enemies – are only some of the reasons religion displaces and denies ethics in any coherent and effective form.
Ethics is simply the acknowledgement that if any human action shall impact any other human or living thing, then the responsible perspective would seek to understand fully all interested parties, and the consequences, short term and long term, of that action. Furthermore, knowing this, the ethical person would seek to minimize all destructive outcomes and maximize all beneficial outcomes (for all, all of life, all of time). Ethics only works if real knowledge is possible (some mythologies say everything is an illusion, then prediction and goodness are both nonsense), if we are all equals (no one and no god has the power to interfere with our good intentions, nor with the laws of nature, nor to hold a gun to our head to force us to do things harmful or against one’s own best interests). Ethics requires the absence of obedience and loyalties, as each will trump ethics every time. The ethical person is not obedient to a law which harms others, nor is loyal to one’s own family when a family member has committed a crime, nor will defend one’s tribe when a neighboring tribe is shown to be in the right. An ethical person has no time to defend the “honor” of the name of a fictional character. (“Thou shall not take the name of thy god in vain”) The ethical person quickly comes to know that the universe is thousands of times richer, complex and saner than the sociopathic characters that populate the holy scriptures. An ethical person understands that democracy is merely the flip side perspective of the ethically free individual – as both are built on the equality of individuals free from any intervening powers – that individuals will educate themselves so as to cooperate and compliment each other in their variety, and work to improve the quality of life for all. Ethics flowers amongst those who dispense with delusion, focus on real possibilities, work towards real knowledge, and choose well among the options so as to lead a significant life improving the world as opportunities can be found and developed.
There is yet another, often overlooked, cost to dogma and mythological views. Remember i talked about the human quest for satiation – the satisfying of needs. By providing children with pseudo realities, indeed, by force feeding them to the children, there is little chance that there will be any hunger left for the real world. The tremendous mysteries of the cosmos are neglected. There is no time left in the week. There is no energy left to muster passion for such things. By indoctrination, a child’s passion for real learning and understanding is stolen from him. Talk to any successful thinker who has made a genuine contribution to mankind, and you will most likely find someone who has no time for pseudo-truths. Albert Einstein said “for organized religion i have no use.” Johann Sebastian Bach said, “how could i write good music if i wasted my time with those silly children’s stories the church is peddling?” Aaron Copeland said, “I had to get away from all things religious before i could clear my mind and do something good with my life.” Carl Sagan spent the last decade of his life trying to find a way to save children of the world from the poison of religion. If you take the time to look, you will find that great inventors, researchers, scientists, and diplomats are all well distanced from the dogmas of religion. It is worth noting that the most non-religious group on earth is that of biologists. Those that know what life is, those that have pondered life all of their days, know with the highest certainty, that religion is not life, it is death. It is a social disease that cripples and perverts the healthy individual. And they cannot ethically allow themselves to be party to such a wrongful process.
By these many mechanisms, indoctrination perverts a healthy human mind into delusional views. Once accomplished, it is most often incurably so, a terminal disease. Step by step, every aspect of reality is distorted by the very process of learning which tries so sincerely to reconcile experience to its tightly held fiction - its psuedo-knowledge. Pounding a tender new round peg into tough old square socket results in the peg becoming square, and tattered at the edges where the pounding took place. This is a severe distortion of what was a fine innocent child with a healthy curiosity about the world and about life.
Tragically, the individual so infected cannot know it is a disease. He must cling to the statement that has been drilled into him. “We are the chosen ones.” or “ours is the one true god” or “allah is great”.
Well, this is a great problem. Could it be that i am accusing a majority of being delusional? How can one know what is delusional, if it is so easy to fall into? Is it my delusion, that everyone else is delusional? Once you understand that the brain is an associative processor, seeking pattern matches (recognition) and modification to better match pre-existing patterns (assimilation), then you know clearly your vulnerabilities. Once you know that a majority of people received dogma in their youth, then there are several steps to take. You know to compare all dogmas, to define and compare non-dogmatic knowledge, and begin sorting things out. You appreciate the value of careful and verifiable statements, of coherency, of the unity of truth that dogmas simply cannot ascertain for themselves. As it is much easy to be critical of others, start there. But be sure to come full circle and judge your own beliefs by the complete list of criteria that allowed you to find fault with others.
Add to your list by looking at other people’s lists, their criteria of judging various world views. You see the convergence of truth and the divergence of fiction. (There are over 2200 religions in the world today, no 2 agreeing, and each claiming it has the truth and the creator on its side. There are hundreds of political ideologies as well.) There is only one fabric of truth, of which science is a subset. There are many specialties, but no one of them claims that any other one of them is mutually exclusive to their own. Mathematicians don’t go burn down chemistry buildings, or write papers disproving the existence of chemistry. Truth is a continuous fabric with no chasms. It maintains a healthy level of doubt, which allows it to improve, grow and correct its mistakes tremendously every year. The only heretics are those who pass fiction as fact. (unfortunately, there are millions of these; evidently because there is profit in lying.) Because no dogma is needed to sustain it, it has much more energy available for constructive purposes. It doesn’t require sworn allegiance, nor confirmation, bar mitzvahs, communion, ramadan, masses, sermons, holy scriptures, hero worship, coerced monetary contributions, rituals, restricted diets as a tribal identifier, special caps and scarves, nor special protection for certain names and words. Truth is open, not closed. Anyone that tells you there is a sacred text is telling you that his belief is closed – it cannot be edited, corrected, improved, or added to. This closed-mindedness is simply enforced ignorance. And to the extent it leads to incorrect conclusions, it is dangerous and antisocial.
A world view is no small thing. It is the deep grammar of all our knowledge; the “rules” by which we construct thoughts, decisions, and motivations. Change the rules, and you change the person. As a result, changing the rules is almost impossible; a bit like trying to change the foundation after the house is built.
For this reason, culture is not only crucial, it is everything. The enculturation of the child will determine the sanity of that society. The only reason culture is not so glaring a root cause of many of america’s problems is that we have such a variety of cultures, and such a variance within each culture. To the extent that charismatic leaders can “tighten up” a culture to a much higher standard of uniformity (which is the major objective of dogma) we would see increasingly psychotic behavior on a social scale. A whole society insane is likely to do a lot of damage. Insanity in this case is simply the degree to which fiction distorts one’s perceptions of reality. A healthy culture is one that is true to its reality, teaches its children how the world works to the extent that they can navigate safely through it, avoid unnecessary destruction and conflict, and contribute to the improvements in the quality of life for all.
The bottom line is persons not indoctrinated are the ones most likely to value life for its own sake, not as some sacrificial means to some mythological end. They are more likely to teach, to build, to invent, to cure, to cooperate, to be tolerant of variety and to embrace variety, to travel to other cultures, to solve problems, to avoid and resolve conflicts, to shun destructivity and criminality, to value people over things and power, to support a high quality of life for all people, to uphold truth over lies propaganda and belief systems, to seek to be productive and significant rather than lazy and parasitic, to seek equality and democracy rather than theocracy and totalitarianism. To seek equal opportunity and a fair distribution of resources rather than a free-for-all that rewards the most vicious, lawless and sociopathic to gain control of massive resources at the expense of forcing and keeping millions in poverty. To seek to harness knowledge and policy for the responsible stewardship of the earth, all of its resources, for all of time; not to rape the earth as fast as possible so as to maximize short term profits, even at the cost of the deaths and illnesses of millions. To study what peace really is, what a garden really is, what a high quality of life for all really is. What a healthy ecosystem really is. And through that wisdom to make choices and influence others to make choices so as to bring out the best in people, and to bring about the most favorable outcomes.
To summarize: There is a great cost to all individuals that have received indoctrination. Their mind has been crippled in its natural ability to see truth in a straightforward way. And it has been perverted to see non-truths as though they were truths. Curiosity, doubt and meticulousness have been quenched. Loyalty, obedience and evocation have been elevated. It sets up “walls” that prevent intellectual and ethical growth. It sets up lenses that grossly distort ones vision of reality. It divides humanity into over 2000 incompatible irreconcilable cults. Of course there is a great cost to all the others who have not received indoctrination. They must navigate amongst those bent on lies, hatred, and destruction.
Those that can shed their delusions while young can go on to achieve great things. Those that do not are doomed to spend half their life trying to solve silly little puzzles that do no one any good.
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