Boy, the Christmas (secular holiday celebrating the ability of business to sell us tons of shit we don't need) season has ended. I must admit, it was a good one! The Wife and I did not exchange gifts. The kids, however, pretty much wiped out amazon and e-bay. The wife went a little bat-shit crazy on spending, but it was enjoyable. My daughter received a sewing machine. She has put a stitch into every single piece of material we couldn't hide from her. She is NOTHING like her mother. MY great wife wouldn't be caught dead sewing. MY son received a Zune. I spent much of my day downloading a DVD-to-Zune ripper program, and then ripping his favorite movies and transferring them to his Zune. I must admit, its pretty cool. They received many more gifts, but these are the ones they focused on.
As for me... my mother had a medical emergency last week. She recently had a radical hysterectomy. She was in the first week of recovery and began to have significant chest pain. She headed to the hospital (St. Mark's of SLC... Very good staff). They diagnosed her with a pulmonary embolism. Life threatening stuff. My sister called me at work and gave me the news. She was a mess. I was doing a training, and initially, gave it little thought or emotion. As the day progressed, and I had a chance to ponder what was happening, I became more and more useless at work. Eventually my wife granted me permission to leave work, and drive to SLC to see her. I didn't need her permission, just her push.
When I arrived at the hospital, she was surrounded by my siblings. She looked awful. I have never really pondered what my response would be to my parents deaths. Turns out... I am rather okay with it. I don't want them to rush to it, but death doesn't scare/frighten/bother me much (this includes my own death). She was released just 4 days later (earlier than expected). She is now home and doing well.
It is now easy to realize the life, at times, hands us what it hands us. Some things it is just more helpful to accept, than to fight with irrational wishes. My sister, knowing that I am an Atheist, asked me to "pray" for my mother. My brain stopped dead in its tracks. I was frozen on the phone. After a pregnant pause (one in which I began to weigh giving her a verbal barrage of personal insults, or hanging up as possible responses) I said that I would send her my most fervent positive wishes. Instead of wishing I did a more healthy thing, and just accepted that whatever was going to happen was well out of my control.
Is prayer (if no God exists) just self-soothing behavior? In a behavioral model it would seem that prayer is superstitious behavior maintained by an adventitious schedule of intermittent reinforcement. It pays off speciously every now and then, and people fallaciously attribute the hits and forget the misses of prayer. In my world it is people talking to themselves. I am always interested in what people say in prayers. It awe's me at times that people are not embarrassed by this behavior.
Speaking of superstition... my nephew (wife's brothers son) got some pretty cool toys at G-pa's and G-Ma's on Christmas eve. One toy was a hobby-horse-turned-Bull. He said, "Jesus gave the bull his horns." We all chuckled at his innocent remark. He then attributed another feature/toy to Santa's handiwork. I hope that relationship continues. If he sees Santa and Jesus as two -of-a-kind, then once he figures out the myth of one, perhaps, he will begin to think of Jesus in that same light. There is hope, albeit scant hope (his parents are blindly faithful and conditioning him hard). So much for free-agency eh? Control the variables of upbringing and you control the child's behavior. Contradictions abound with religious beliefs. Its too bad that religion is really a matter of where you happened to be born. In Utah you are likely LDS. In India... Hindu... In Asia... Muslim or Buddhist. Thank heavens I wasn't born in the south.
Have a happy New Year! 2007... Could be a good one.
Hap
10 comments:
I think children know that Santa is a myth. Maybe their "belief" in Santa is more of a socially coerced concession to adults than an actual faith, which might explain why so many children are afraid when they see Santa in the flesh; it transforms a harmless myth into reality and thus denies what they "really" believe to be true (or maybe it's scary because they never dreamed someone would take the fantasy so far as to don a red suit). Maybe deep down children don't want to believe in myths, and adults have to do their damnedest (through toys, movies, books, tv, stories, etc.) to pound the beliefs into them. Maybe by making a particular myth "real" you suddenly deny other possibilities for play and limit self-autonomy. Maybe, maybe, maybe....
Okay, I'm getting carried away. My point is this: adults, at a certain stage, give permission and in fact encourage a child to give up on their belief in Santa but that doesn't happen with Jesus. And if the real motivation for believing in a myth is to please your parents, then the logical parallels between a myth-revealed and a myth-still-adhered-to are insignificant. If Mom and Dad, whom you depend on for survival, are telling you Jesus is real, then you'll believe he's real--no matter how illogical, because the logical thing to do is to act in your own best interests. And it's not enough just to say you believe when you don't, because that creates an internal conflict. The best and most logical thing to do is to mirror mom and dad's beliefs at the expense of self-realization.
How's that for a Behaviorist explanation?
Hey, it was good talking with you over the break. Hopefully, it won't be very long before I get out there again.
"And it's not enough just to say you believe when you don't, because that creates an internal conflict."
I like this statement, the problem is that the conflict is not resolved thorough coercion, it is, in fact, enhanced by it. You and I are perfect examples that refute your statement. We were raised with the Santa, Jesus myths. Eventually we both gave up the first myth through curiosity and tancity at forcing our parents to admit the truth to us. However, has your mom or dad ever denied god? Mine niether. Yet, both of us have, through simple reasoning and a decent education, been able to shuffle off the myths of our parents (no matter how well intended thier conditioning may have been). But it was only through counter-conditioning (exposure to other controlling conditions) that allowed us to reject our parents myth. But the initial act of being told "santa exists" and then having parents admit that they "lied", is relevant . Any resonable child would then ask, "if they lied to me about santa, what about other things I can't see, hear, smell, taste touch. It introduces "doubt." That truth comes not from authority, but from examination and questioning. Parents still control much of our beliefs, but the hold need not be predistined, just predisposed.
A wiley uncle may just plant a few seeds of doubt every now and again with some well-timed questions *wink and nudge here for effect*
Best wishes, my wonderful freind. You are turning into a very insightful behaviorist. Now, if I could only learn elocution from you I may improve myself. But that takes a bit of innate talent that I just don't have.
HH
That's true: the conflict isn't resolved by coercion. But it is deflected, I think. I'm just saying that the Santa/Jesus juxtoposition is a pretty easy one to dismiss, especially if your security and sustenance might be at stake. But you're right; it might just plant a seed, a seed unlikely to flower until adulthood and relative independence (when Mom and Dad are replaced by bosses and politicians--i.e. systemic providers), but a seed nonetheless. So yeah, that's something to feel good about; "the control need not be predestined"--but being positive isn't my specialty, as I'm sure you know.
Later man. Have a good weekend!
I find your acceptance of death refreshing, an acceptance I don't possess myself. Also, overall, I think the connections you make between religious belief and Santa interesting. Personally I'd love a community model where one can believe in Santa till 8 or 9 and then believe in God until 35 or so and then expected to generally move to another phase of self-growth.
I do, however, think you oversimplify prayer. Not that I think you personally should feel a certain way about prayer, just that you might allow for others to gain "true" benefits from prayer whether there really is a God or not and whether the individual believes in God or not.
I don't believe in a personal God nor in some universe controlling force but I do *believe* in what the best of God stands for--hope, confidence, humility, etc. Personally I want to strive for eclecticism and pragmatism. Recently, I've gained peace by pondering the utter finality of our existence, but also I was moved by the utter silence and ritual of vespers at a local Catholic monastery and calmed by a family prayer we had after learning of a death in our neighborhood.
Religion can bring out the worst in us but it also brings out the sublime, the transcendent. It matters not to me if it's "real"--that's beside the point. NONE of us experiences complete reality anyways. To me it's religion as artistic expression (and, while I admit there are unique dangers to religious artistic expression, and this is for you Shane, art can also be dogmatic and hurtful.)
sorry for the deleted comments--it kept posting my comments from a blogger acount I use for my classes and I do not want to link my personal and teacher blogs.
"...just that you might allow for others to gain "true" benefits from prayer whether there really is a God or not and whether the individual believes in God or not."
I agree with you here. There is some evidence, although scant, that prayer has emotional benefit. If I pray to a rock and recieve some type of "placebo" emotional relief then more power to me.
I don't understand your desire for Santa and Jesus myths though. Would life or the HOlidays be any less meaningful and magical without them? In my case, they are not. So why teach the lie and then admit the deception, when there is joy and peace without it?
Your state of art becoming dogmatic rings true for me. And I am interested in what Shane will have to say about it.
Best Wishes,
HH
I am so sick of the new Blogger.
I'm not sure whether my post went through or not. If it didn't, I'll try'n summarize later. Too busy and too lazy to re-write the whole thing.
I think my pop-up blocker prevented the post from showing up.
Okay, here's a summary of the previous post that got lost:
First, I agree that "art (and I assume you (Ron) mean so-called high art) can also be dogmatic and hurtful". No question about it (although dogmatic and hurtful don't necessarily have to go together). I think "The Story of O" is one of numerous examples. But I'm not sure about the alleged "true benefits" of prayer. The problem with prayer, in my eyes, is that it requires an appeal to a "higher power". To me, the "sublime and transcendent" that might be achieved is no more than an egoistic wish-fulfillment. In other words, the person in prayer is looking to affirm the ego--to obtain the security the ego demands--rather than erase it. On the other hand, the primary impetus of artistic expression, I contend (but can't prove), is for a reverse kind of transcendence--a transcendence of egoism and of dominant culture and a means of creating a more authentic space in which to connect to others.
And I agree with you (Trav) about the need to eliminate the Santa/Jesus fairy-tales. Like you said, the world is plenty mysterious without having to make stuff up. (And is there a better emblem of egoistic-fulfillment than Santa Clause?)
Sure, "none of us experience reality these days", but clinging to a comforting mythology can't be leading us in the right direction, can it?
Sure, "none of us experience reality these days", but clinging to a comforting mythology can't be leading us in the right direction, can it?-- and here is where you and I completely agree, but I am just not sure where we overlap with COunterintuitive here??
HH
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