Chimeras & Spells

Mikie

Does religion and media encourage harmful delusion?

Another summer in the northern hemisphere, and another string of droughts, wildfires, floods, and record-breaking heat waves. Even here in New England, which has been spared the worst of climate change so far, is seeing more frequent droughts and storms. I'm happy to see the US Congress taking some action on this, however pathetic it is, but I can't help but think: "We're seeing all of this suffering at 1.1 degrees of warming -- so what will 1.5 look like?"

But this isn't about climate change. What interests me is the feeling, almost as if under a spell, that we'll get out of this -- that we're bound to. We always have, we always will. Something will happen -- perhaps a kind of deus ex machina. Someone else, or some invisible force, will take care of things.

I see this in myself, I see it in others. It's almost completely unconscious. I put it out of my mind and go about my day. I'm referring to that voice that says something like, "How can the human species die off? Impossible!" It's the same voice that convinces me that I'll never die either. Surely other people die of accidents, cancer, heart disease -- but not me.

It may be a universal human feature. But the last few generations have truly faced the reality of species extinction. Never before has that been true in human history. Yet this level of threat has been met with a "business as usual" attitude by far too many people. Why?

At least in the last few generations, I think some of it stems from the media -- and here I'm thinking television and movies especially, but perhaps also video games (for those of us who have grown up with them). What do I mean? Only this: in every story, there's nearly always a happy ending, a resolution -- or a continuation of some kind, in the form of a sequel. In the case of video games, you just start again -- you get endless lives. This has an unconscious influence.

This spell is also reinforced by certain beliefs, usually associated with "religions," regarding the afterlife. In the case I'm most familiar with, Christianity, there's a sense that you can be wasteful -- not only because you will live forever in the afterlife, but because God will take care of everything anyhow. "It's in God's hands" is a phrase I'd often hear growing up.

Combine such beliefs and the impact of stories and games, and a picture starts to emerge -- a picture of the cultivation of a particular attitude: of chimeras, of nonchalance regarding responsibility, death, and even the possibility of human extinction. Everything will work out, because it always does. In any case, it's in someone else's hands.

Such attitudes may just annihilate us, in the end.

Reveal

[Footnote: I got the title from a Radiohead lyric.]

180 Proof

"Encourage"? I don't know. Do they challenge – oppose – philosophical suicide? Defijitely not. Here in Absurdistan "religion & (mass) media" are, pardon my french fries, de rigueur. :pray: :joke:

apokrisis

↪Xtrix

Aren’t you conflating two different attitudes?

One is techno-optimism. We are self making gods. Our fate is in our own hands.

The other is old fashioned fatalism. We are the playthings of the gods. It is what it is.

Christianity kind of bridges the two. It claims a personal connection with a singular god and so we can work to achieve an ascent to heaven even if we can’t avoid the trials and tribulations of living a life.

What is really going on is an evolutionary competition between two general ways of human life.

The original fate-bound way of life was the one that was lived within the energy constraints of the daily solar flux. Humans lived off renewables, and so had a religion - and indeed a whole moral economy - adapted to accepting this fact. You couldn’t just magic up unlimited energy or material resources, so social organisation was focused on being the kind of people who flourished within a restricted sense of the world.

Then humans stumbled into the fossil fuel cornucopia having invented science and technology. A new romantic conception of humanity made sense of this. A way of life was developed that could exploit a world made different by its unlimited supply of energy and material. The idea that our fate is in our own - technically adept - hands took firm hold.

We reorganised the whole planet around this new attitude to existence.

The rest is recent history. Right now is the evolutionary reckoning.

The problem is that techno-optimism hasn’t been clearly ruled out yet. Geo-engineering might save us. Fusion energy might save us. Even if the rest of the world burns in hell, we might live in a spot where we are at least the last to fry - and rapid global depopulation is what saves us.

So the problem isn’t “media” in the sense of public misinformation. The problem is much deeper. It is in the mind of the global social organism receiving any message. Our collective identity is predicated on the exponential growth that became a thing with the industrial revolution.

Baden

↪Xtrix

Ideologies in the form of religion, media, politics etc. are society's reproductive organs. And society's primary function is to reproduce itself. So, analagous to biological evolution, any advancements are byproducts of that blind process and there's an inertia there that is not suited to dealing with existential threats. The result is it doesn't matter so much how aware we are as individuals of these threats, what matters is whether they are enough to upset the social reproductive process. If the path of least resistance is to go on pretending to deal with an existential threat then that's the path we'll most likely take right past the point which it's too late to do anything about it. And yes, this manifests in the whole thing becoming a kind of entertainment. The disaster movie and the disastrous headlines psychologically relieve us of the will to act. They do the emotional work for us. We are not going to go out on the street protesting until our crops are dying and we don't have enough to eat because only then social reproduction is really threatened. There's a sense we're under a spell. But we're just scting as social atoms only know how to act.

Mikie

Aren’t you conflating two different attitudes?
One is techno-optimism. We are self making gods. Our fate is in our own hands.
The other is old fashioned fatalism. We are the playthings of the gods. It is what it is. — apokrisis

Yes, that’s close enough to what I mean. I wouldn’t myself use “fatalism,” but I see your point. I like that you mentioned technology— that our science and technological advances will save the day. That’s a big one I didn’t specifically mention.

So the problem isn’t “media” in the sense of public misinformation. The problem is much deeper. It is in the mind of the global social organism receiving any message. Our collective identity is predicated on the exponential growth that became a thing with the industrial revolution. — apokrisis

Hmm. I’m a little unclear as to what you mean here. If you’re saying the real problem is the idea of constant economic growth and expansion, I think that’s a big part of our problem — especially in destroying the environment.

My point in the OP is that we have failed to appropriately react to the unprecedented threats we face, and that one explanation is that of simple hubris — we believe we can’t die. I think religion and media contribute to this hubris.

Mikie

If the path of least resistance is to go on pretending to deal with an existential threat then that's the path we'll most likely take right past the point which it's too late to do anything about it. — Baden

That’s my fear, yes. Dancing off the cliff. I think all the greenwashing and talk about “net zero” falls under the “pretending” label. As does the IRA, really.

The disaster movie and the disastrous headlines psychologically relieve us of the will to act. — Baden

I’m glad someone mentioned disaster movies. Armageddon — the one where Bruce Willis saves the earth from an asteroid — is a good example: heroes or superheroes of some kind will rescue us. It’s magical thinking; scientist as magician/wizard. There was another one — Deep Impact — where another asteroid was going to destroy earth and somehow the protagonist survives by riding up a hill with a motorcycle so that the water didn’t get to him.

This is exactly what I mean. It’s all done with a kind of mock realism, a semi-plausible story, to suck you in. But always with a happy ending. Don’t Look Up is the only one that doesn’t do that. I consider it the Dr. Strangelove of climate change.

We are not going to go out on the street protesting until our crops are dying and we don't have enough to eat because only then social reproduction is really threatened. — Baden

And by that point it’s too late. I feel we’re all noticing these summers are getting awful already— and it affects polling on climate change. But the rate is so slow that at the pace we’re going, by the time there’s real demand for action (when enough people are inconvenienced or killed every summer, or prices on insurance and food becomes too high or water supply gets too low), it’ll already be far too late. I feel it may be too late now, in fact. May have been too late 15 years ago.

apokrisis

Hmm. I’m a little unclear as to what you man here. If you’re saying the real problem is the idea of constant economic growth and expansion, I think that’s a big part of our problem — especially in destroying the environment. — Xtrix

I’m saying the problem is deep rooted as modern identity has been constructed around the “limitless growth” that fossil fuels promised. Our political and social economy is premised on it.

So it is not a matter of confronting folk with the bad news and expecting them to make quite different choices. You are attacking the source of what they think they are. That is why they attack the messenger rather than heed the message.

Thus to fix the problem, it is not just about providing better information. It is about redesigning the very psychology at work in “tackling the threat”.

My point in the OP is that we have failed to appropriately react to the unprecedented threats we face, and that one explanation is that of simple hubris — we believe we can’t die. I think religion and media contribute to this hubris. — Xtrix

Does anyone really fear death given its inevitability and the fact sleep comes for us every night?

As social animals, if we are hardwired for anything, it is to defend against threat to our tribal identity. We are quick and reckless in our willingness to sacrifice ourselves for that.

The impact of exponential growth seemed a issue that any simpleton could understand when I was doing ecology in the 1970s. By about 2000, I had already concluded that folk weren’t going to react.

Changing the world seems easy compared with being asked to change your self - to challenge the unconscious roots of your standard issue modern world identity.

Pie

Does anyone really fear death given its inevitability and the fact sleep comes for us every night?

As social animals, if we are hardwired for anything, it is to defend against threat to our tribal identity. We are quick and reckless in our willingness to sacrifice ourselves for that.

The impact of exponential growth seemed a issue that any simpleton could understand when I was doing ecology in the 1970s. By about 2000, I had already concluded that folk weren’t going to react.

Changing the world seems easy compared with being asked to change your self - to challenge the unconscious roots of your standard issue modern world identity. — apokrisis

:up:

unenlightened

Still blaming illusions, religion, witchcraft, irrationality, for the problems of science and technology? No, it is not the insane who are destroying the world, but the reasonable, pragmatic, scientific, progressives.

Baden

↪unenlightened

Actually, it's our inherent love of a good tune that will ultimately drown us. Can't blame the pipe or the piper for that.

javi2541997

Still blaming illusions, religion, witchcraft, irrationality, for the problems of science and technology? No, it is not the insane who are destroying the world, but the reasonable, pragmatic, scientific, progressives. — unenlightened

:up: :100:

god must be atheist

One is techno-optimism. We are self making gods. Our fate is in our own hands.

The other is old fashioned fatalism. We are the playthings of the gods. It is what it is. — apokrisis

There are other things that play into the picture, other than God and humans: nature, natural forces.

There is no definite determination what causes the global warming. We like to blame ourselves, (but leave me out of that please, I take no blame), for burning too much carbon. True, I shan't argue that, it contributes to global warming. But I am not convinced that that alone is the only contributing factor.

The Earth has gone through many ice ages and warming. Life never died out, although species have.

Human species is adaptive enough to survive, even if not in great numbers.

But the heating/cooling is not up to humans alone, not up to god at all, but due to natural forces as well.

So fatalism is not necessarily religion-driven; it may be driven by forces observable (but not discovered yet) by the tools of scientific atheism.

Baden

I think @apokrisis has nailed this.

But:

Thus to fix the problem, it is not just about providing better information. It is about redesigning the very psychology at work in “tackling the threat”. — apokrisis

Any ideas?

Pantagruel

There is no definite determination what causes the global warming. — god must be atheist

This is misleading. Scientific consensus is measurable and quantifiable through the findings of accredited organizations, national and international. Based upon that accepted standard, consensus is extremely high (97-100%) that global warming is human-caused. Whether we solely caused it isn't really relevant. The earth is a system, what we have done is unbalanced it. If a huge rock is balanced precariously atop a hill, and I push the rock, and the rock rolls down and flattens a house, yes, the mass of the stone and the mass of the earth are what actually crush the house, but if I pushed it then I am even more responsible.

edit: Scientific Consensus on climate change

Agent Smith

Delusions - can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em. We're in a tight spot aren't we? Like this SWA triad I discovered just the other day:

There's stuff

1. We Should do.
2. We Want to do.
3. We Actually do.

When 1 = 2 = 3, we're good.

When 1 $\neq$ 2 $\neq$ 3, we're in trouble.

god must be atheist

Based upon that accepted standard, consensus is extremely high (97-100%) that global warming is human-caused. — Pantagruel

Quote your source, please, otherwise I can't accept this.

apokrisis

But I am not convinced that that alone is the only contributing factor. — god must be atheist

And I’m sure you have studied the science thoroughly, so your opinion counts. :lol:

Since preindustrial times, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 has increased by over 40%, methane has increased by more than 150%, and nitrous oxide has increased by roughly 20%. More than half of the increase in CO2 has occurred since 1970.

https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/climate-change-evidence-causes/basics-of-climate-change/

So in your opinion, what are the natural causes that play so heavily in these climate gas increases. What percentage of the blame must nature take?

Baden

↪apokrisis

↪god must be atheist

For the purposes of this thread not being derailed, we accept the scientific consensus that humans cause global warming and the focus is on a more specific question. If anyone wants to argue otherwise, try the general climate change thread.

god must be atheist

For the purposes of this thread not being derailed, we accept the scientific consensus that humans cause global warming and the focus is on a more specific question. If anyone wants to argue otherwise, try the general climate change thread. — Baden

Okay. The operative words are "for the purposes of this thread." Fine. For the purposes of another thread we'll assume that we are all wrong, and for the purposes of a third thread we'll assume we're all right, even with totally opposing opinions.

I can live with that. Thanks for stopping this, Baden.

Baden

↪god must be atheist

Another way of putting it is that such arguments are off-topic here because climate change is specifically not the subject of the OP.

But this isn't about climate change. — Xtrix

Thanks for cooperating.

apokrisis

Any ideas? — Baden

Just taxing carbon could have done the trick. But politics is too corrupted by industry. We’re fucked I’m afraid.

Although Elon Musk will surely be using his rockets to shower the stratosphere with tin-foil, or some other crazy last ditch geoengineering solution crowdfunded by the credulous.

Baden

↪apokrisis

:lol: :cry:

god must be atheist

↪Xtrix

REgarding the OP: Humans have an undaunting faith in their own survival.

When an army is commanded into front-line battle, and the calculations are that there will be at minimum a 40% casualty rate; and all the soldiers are mercenaries, they each go into battle with the conviction that they will survive, and the guy next to them will die. Okay, this feeling may not be as strong as a conviction, but it is stronger than just hope.

Or take the lotteries. Each person who buys a ticket hopes to win; they don't buy the ticket with the intention of adding to the jackpot of the winner who is not them, but in fact that's what they are doing.

Without this will to survive that comes out as a feeling of invincibility, the species would not face challenges that it otherwise does.

apokrisis

This is exactly what I mean. It’s all done with a kind of mock realism, a semi-plausible story, to suck you in. But always with a happy ending. Don’t Look Up is the only one that doesn’t do that. I consider it the Dr. Strangelove of climate change. — Xtrix

You single out religion and Hollywood as a source of the magical thinking. But consider also the role of high finance. We don’t expect rationality from religious belief or entertainment, yet neoliberalism and financial engineering have been far more directly responsible for keeping the global self-delusion of limitless growth going.

The financialisation of the economy achieves the wonderful thing of enforcing maximum short-termism in regard to consumption patterns, coupled to creating the maximum distance from the debts being incurred in the name of that consumption.

Any advanced civilisation would look at us and wonder why we are so crazy. We have built the expectation of permanent exponential growth into every aspect of our society.

Actually it became a religion in Silicon Valley with the Singularity cult.

Mikie

I’m saying the problem is deep rooted as modern identity has been constructed around the “limitless growth” that fossil fuels promised. Our political and social economy is premised on it. — apokrisis

:up:

Thus to fix the problem, it is not just about providing better information. It is about redesigning the very psychology at work in “tackling the threat”. — apokrisis

Well this is what I would lump in with religion, in a sense. The beliefs and values we internalize — and that become hardened into unconscious dogma — I would say is a major problem, yes. Whether that belief is the view of human beings as creatures with needs to satisfy, or in endless economic growth, or in an afterlife, etc. — the issue really is a psychological one. So capitalism, Christianity, scientism, and so on, all play a role.

Does anyone really fear death given its inevitability and the fact sleep comes for us every night? — apokrisis

I think so, yes. Mostly it’s not thought about at all, but when it is I think it’s a human universal.

Still blaming illusions, religion, witchcraft, irrationality, for the problems of science and technology? No, it is not the insane who are destroying the world, but the reasonable, pragmatic, scientific, progressives. — unenlightened

I’m not exclusively blaming them, but I do highlight religion and media in this thread, as I feel the influence of the combination is generally overlooked— at least by me.

But I’d take issue with your characterization. The problems aren’t exclusively scientific or technological either. Who’s guiding this science and technology? Who packages it and monetizes it? Even the scientists themselves aren’t devoid of beliefs, being humans themselves. I did mention scientism and belief in infinite growth earlier — all those are factors too.

Lastly, I’m not claiming the insane are destroying the world. In fact I don’t really touch on the causes of nuclear weapons or climate change— I simply take it as a given that they are problems, and want to focus (in this thread) on our collective response to these problems. So I would ultimately agree— those who have degraded the world aren’t insane.

Without this will to survive that comes out as a feeling of invincibility, the species would not face challenges that it otherwise does. — god must be atheist

True. But we’re also capable of solving complex problems and revolting at intolerable conditions. If an asteroid was headed towards earth, would we be so cavalier? Probably not.

Again, it could just be how human beings are. But imbibing messages mentioned above has an impact.

Mikie

We don’t expect rationality from religious belief or entertainment, yet neoliberalism and financial engineering have been far more directly responsible for keeping the global self-delusion of limitless growth going. — apokrisis

I agree wholeheartedly. Again, here I would include this as “religion,” using a fairly broad definition. In the OP I mentioned Christianity especially, but only in response to the problem. The problem itself is also caused in large part to religion of the kind you mention: neoliberal doctrine, capitalism writ large, etc.

baker

Actually, it's our inherent love of a good tune that will ultimately drown us. Can't blame the pipe or the piper for that. — Baden

And when the power runs out, we'll just hum.

baker

Changing the world seems easy compared with being asked to change your self - to challenge the unconscious roots of your standard issue modern world identity. — apokrisis

To give up on one's self-confidence?? To give up on one's sense of entitlement?? No, better to die!

fdrake

Thus to fix the problem, it is not just about providing better information. It is about redesigning the very psychology at work in “tackling the threat”. — apokrisis

Just taxing carbon could have done the trick. But politics is too corrupted by industry. We’re fucked I’m afraid. — apokrisis

:up: Successfully taxing carbon would've worked I think. When regulation's actually been enforced, production tends to catch up right? And as you say, regulatory capture's fucked that avenue. I don't think there's a viable political project at this point to "save us" from the climate catastrophe.

Maybe the conditions for such a movement will evolve when climate refugees become sufficiently commonplace in the global economic centres, and the greenery in those lands becomes prohibitively on fire. Basically, we're fucked at least until the fucking starts, then there'll be a period of collective trauma which is an opportunity for us to refashion ourselves.

Unfortunately, brazenly and forcefully sticking to previously established routines is a common response. If the bookies would offer odds on such a thing, and be able to pay out, 'during the middle of the end', I'd bet a chunk on the creation of privately owned but state managed 'climate safe havens' being developed with quite restrictive access. An intensification of the climate risk disparity over the globe.

I don't know if the climate change will prohibit the mass production of food required to keep industrial civilisation running, and it may already be beyond that tipping point. I envision fenced corporate-state communities protected by renewably powered drones as those inside are the last to starve and burn.

Edit: With reference to the OP, yes religion and media causes harmful thought habits, but they aren't a primary driver of the biggest harms. They're symbionts for a bigger systemic clusterfuck host.

apokrisis

Again, here I would include this as “religion,” using a fairly broad definition. In the OP I mentioned Christianity especially, but only in response to the problem. — Xtrix

So the Church of Self-Actualisation and Limitless Growth? :smile:

I’m just not sure what calling it religious buys you in terms of rational analysis here. My own view is founded in biological science and indeed biosemiosis. This is all about an ecosystem acting naturally to maximise its entropic throughput.

We are the mould spore that landed on the Petrie dish of fossil fuels. Explosive growth to exhaust this huge energy store followed.

The Earth had a carefully evolved Gaian balance. A carbon cycle had been built up to recycle the waste products of O2 and CO2. Life had earlier stumbled on another explosive energy pathway in photosynthesis. The over production of oxygen damn near made life extinct.

But then a balance was created where autotrophs used CO2 to make O2, and heterotrophs used O2 to make CO2, and the whole planet settled down to a rhythm of life tuned to the daily solar flux. A biofilm with feedback mechanism stabilised the climate of the Earth.

Humans are in the process of blowing up this balance by burning all the ancient phytoplankton that got accidentally buried in sediment strata as part of the global carbon cycle.

My point is that the big picture of why this is rational - explicable in a natural evolutionary sense - is understood within biological science. Fossil fuel had to be entropified if it was technically possible.

It was just sitting there waiting for a suitable speck of the right organism to land on it.

What this organism thought it was about - its religious beliefs - were quite irrelevant. An enabling fiction.

Homo sap just stood on a steep slithery slope and nature took its course. A mass extinction event will follow and even the Gaian climate regulation cycle might never come back quite right. But in the wider evolutionary view, it is what it is.

Mikie

So the Church of Self-Actualisation and Limitless Growth? :smile: — apokrisis

I like it. Many followers indeed.

I’m just not sure what calling it religious buys you in terms of rational analysis here. — apokrisis

Fair enough. It's my own idiosyncratic usage -- which is why I'm never upset if people don't care for it. I only mentioned it to let you know that I hadn't ignored capitalism or the sense of infinite growth -- I just consider them quasi-religious dogmas. Instead of "God did it," you have "the free market did it" (viz., the efficient market hypothesis).

Fossil fuel had to be entropified if it was technically possible. It was just sitting there waiting for a suitable speck of the right organism to land on it. — apokrisis

Are you arguing that this problem -- namely, global warming -- was inevitable, given the availability of the resources and the appropriate technology?

What this organism thought it was about - its religious beliefs - were quite irrelevant. An enabling fiction. — apokrisis

I like to focus on actions and behavior as much as anyone. But on the other hand, attitudes, beliefs, values, intentions, etc., are nevertheless very important to factor in. Going forward, therefore, I think determining where to direct our energies is vital, and so recognizing beliefs as an issue is important -- because then we can dedicate the appropriate resources to rectifying that problem. In this case, I think it's largely a matter of education.

Chimeras & Spells

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