Monotheistic tools for the modern family

The Golden Rule is a tough thing to teach little kids.  Raising kids is a very daunting task and they need a set of “training wheels” to learn morality.  These training wheels use the pain and pleasure limbic centers of their brain that all mammals have.  The training wheels are slowly introduced as a set of thoughts to the aspiring new mind.  Baby steps.

Naturally, each baby step cannot be true in the most stringent sense.  It’s a bootstrapping process that uses what the kiddo knows and “pushes the envelope” to the next level.  Grandparents pass down these baby steps to their kids who introduce it to their kids.  So the story goes.

But these baby steps become codified and written down and acquire a life of their own.  They become a religion.   Now, given their origin, what would be the nature of the baby steps?  Perhaps at the core is the mammalian parent-child relationship; it practically the only thing a kid understands.  So it’s not surprising to see a mature religion develop along the same.  There is a god separate from us that is not unlike a parent.

I’d say that most of the Abrahamic religions persist so strongly because they are so useful to bringing kids into society.  They are easy to introduce and understand and then believe.  That is advantageous, but there is a down side.  A religion that piggy-backs on the parent-child relationship is going to bind tightly to the culture of the parent.  Perhaps this binding is why some believers can be so overzealous: because the religion attaches to their love for their parents and is difficult to distinguish by the believer.  I doubt most parents think about this when using the set of training wheels their parents used on them.

Starting out as a new parent, it is almost impossible to not reach for the training wheels they know all about.  99.99% of their attention is about the family as it should be!  But what about the childless, who don’t need training wheels for kids?  With the internet and other forms of hyperconnectivity, perhaps the same process of training wheels for the neocortex is developing and will eventually become so debugged as to acquire its own life.  How would this religion compare to a monotheistic religion?

 

 

 

Just a twinkle in an eye

Before the prom, ca. 1961-2

It’s fun to think what my parents were before I was.  Here they are, with my aunt and uncle in their carefree days.  How beautiful!  That mid-September, just before the Cuban missile crisis, my dad was to go off to GMI, and with the hit “Sherry” by  Frankie Valli and the 4 Seasons playing, the irresistable force met the immovable object.  How the times have changed.