Monday, April 26, 2010

Religious Roots of Apocalyptic Thinking

About 3,500 years ago a Persian prophet named Zarathustra asserted that Gods could not be good in some cases and bad in others which was the case, at the time, in most polytheistic mythologies. He said good is good and evil is evil - setting the stage for later beliefs that the earth is a battleground between the forces of good and the forces of evil. This world view, at the risk of being simplistic, allows evil to gain ground at times only to be pushed back by the forces of good. The tension between good and evil is at the heart of apocalyptic thinking. Even if one does not believe in good and evil as a religious doctrine, the underlying concept can also be found in secular thinking. People who believe in balance and harmony see imbalances or dis-harmonies being brought back into balance and harmony as an aspect of the natural order.

Another key religious doctrine is the concept of interventionism. This can best be understood in opposition to a well know opposite doctrine. Deism, a religious view that became popular after the enlightenment, claimed that God created the world and left it to run on its own. Their view can be summed up easily in an example. Let's say you have two clock makers. One made a clock that runs perfectly and requires no further work. The other made a clock that requires constant attention and repair. Who is the better clock maker? Clearly the first one is. The deist view of interventionism is that it is like the second clock maker. Why does God have to intervene all the time? Why couldn't he have just made the world perfect and let it run?

Despite the strengths of that argument, most people are interventionist. They believe that God has a hand in things that go on in the world and that he steps in from time to time to set things right. This notion of the forces of good stepping in to set things right provides much of the religious basis for the apocalyptic view of the world.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Psychological Roots of Apocalyptic Thinking

There are two uniquely human cognitive or psychological characteristics that lead to an apocalyptic view of the world. This will not immediately make sense to the reader. But, I ask your indulgence as I develop the argument. One of these characteristics is our ability to imagine and the other is our moral sense.

Our ability to imagine allow us to, among other things, envision a world different from the one that exists. We can see a world with farms instead of chance discoveries of grain, domesticated herds rather than following wild herds, man made shelters instead of caves. Our ability to imagine allows us to create societies, governments, economies, technologies and so on. Because we can imagine a world other than the one we live in, we sometimes see the imagined world as better and try to bring it about, or wish to have it brought about.

Our moral sense allows us to see beyond our basic needs and consider the needs of others. Others can include other people we know as well as people we don't know and future people. We sometimes even extend our moral sense to animals and nature. Our moral sense allows us to consider a world in which fairness, justice, respect, orderliness, and predictability figure in heavily.

Given our imagination and our moral sense, it is possible for us to envision a world, unlike the world in which we live, where fairness, justice and so on rule. It is also possible to desire to bring such a world about or desire to have it brought about. And it is this desire, I believe, to have a fair and just world, that provides the psychological basis for apocalyptic thinking.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Allowing Possibilties

Another way to increase your mental flexibility and improve your ability to be proactive with new ideas is to take an idea that you may normally reject out of hand and allow the possibility that it may be true - or, at least, that it may have merit. We tend to see life as black and white, and even the shades of gray do not allow for the variety of possibilities that are really out there. Is monarchy better than democracy? Would society be better if everybody was not equal? Should there be a mandatory age at which people are terminated? I choose these examples because they are ideas that most people would not even want to consider.

However, each of these ideas does have merit. And by finding the merit in these ideas, you can see that it is better to consider ideas than to reject them out of hand. I suspect that most people, after considering them, would still reject them. However, consider this: Monarchies can be more efficient than democracies. Regardless, of what we might want to believe, everybody is not equal. And as people age, their maintenance costs increase while their productivity decreases. Might that money not be better spent on younger people?

This exercise is useful to see that even the most offensive of ideas still have some merit. And that raises the question - what other ideas that really do have merit have we simply rejected out of hand?

In the following few posts I am going to consider a question that I alluded to earlier. In our modern secular age, do people still believe in the apocalypse? I am gong to argue that they do. I am going to argue that the children of the enlightenment are not nearly as secular and modern as they like to think that they are and that there is abundant evidence that apocalyptic thinking still dominates our modern world view. Do you think I can convince you? Well, stay tuned.

Monday, April 5, 2010

Being Proactive with New Ideas

The alternative to being reactive to new ideas is to be proactive with them. That is, instead of accepting new ideas when there is absolutely no other choice, embrace them early and consider the possibilities and implications.

There are three primary advantages to being proactive. First, you have more time to adjust to new ideas. That is you can work through the implications and how they will affect you before you actually have to accept them. This advanced preparation is less of a psychological shock. Second, you can, potentially, take advantage of new ideas by thinking them through before hand. And third, you are less likely to become out of touch over time as each new idea by itself is not as threatening as an accumulation of new ideas.

There are, of course, disadvantages to being proactive with new ideas. You don't want to jump on every bandwagon that comes along. Not every new idea survives. In fact, most don't. So, if you are overly proactive to new ideas, it looks like you are just following fads. And, in fact, you may well be.

So, how do you embrace important new ideas and not jump on every bandwagon that comes along? First, you have to evaluate new ideas critically. Look at them intellectually rather than emotionally. Our emotional reactions to new ideas may not be the best assessment as they are, well, new. Emotions are good judgements but tend to work a little better in situations where we have some experience. We need to step back and evaluate new ideas critically rather than just reacting to them. Second, we need to reflect on our successes and failures. Did we accept ideas that didn't work out? Did we fail to accept an idea that did prove its metal? Over time you can get better at this.

Personally, I think being proactive is the best strategy in a dynamic world. And if you are going to be proactive, you have to refine your approach.