My Good, your Bad?

Why do we feel the need to invoke exterior help to accomplish something we can (only) do ourselves? Why does faith necessarily come into it?

We are predicting creatures.

We don't just get an urge, and then lunge to satisfy it (unless we're standing right next to the refrigerator).We consider the various possibilities, evaluate them for possible benefits and costs, and once we've narrowed them down, we scheme to attain our goals. The problem we're immediately confronted with is that we can never plan for all eventualities. Not only are we not prescient, even if we were, we couldn't store all the ramifications on the hard-drives of our brains.

That's the scary part. Not knowing.

And we've got a multitude of ways of dealing with the unknown, the imponderables. The all-time most popular way is of course the invention of the all powerful, omniscient Being who oversees everything and guarantees that things will go according to whatever we consider to be the "good" rules governing the universe (which bear an uncanny resemblance to what we feel is good for ourselves.)

(I am not remotely qualified to expound on any of this. But who's to stop me? At the end are a couple of leads to explore if you feel so inclined.)

In a nutshell, we evolve, as human "systems" through interaction with our surroundings (environment, other people) and we "construct" our selves along with our external "reality" as we go along (which in turn affects reality, which affects us etc..). We do it with reference to what is necessary for the perpetuation of the system that we embody. Not necessarily or exclusively for our physical survival, but according to ever changing and shifting criteria from which we generate and update our sets of rules: I'll call that Me/Good as in what I feel is good for me, and Other/Bad as in "this isn't conducive to the purpose of perpetuating my self" (I have a theory that the more "evolved" we become, the more flexible we can be about the distinction between the two.)

Obviously we wish for all that is Me/Good to prevail, and try to maintain Other/Bad to a minimum and/or at an acceptable distance. But the world is mostly "other", beyond our control, outside our scope. That is what leads us to the next logical step: to posit a Being that is on our side, a just and benevolent father who will do for us what we can't. (and the Good that Being guarantees is - coincidentally - the same as Me/Good).

The problem is that there are as many different versions of Good as there are of Me, and I don't see - short of massive cloning of Me (me, really, because I like me the best) - how it can ever be otherwise? The most we can do is to find common ground, and that has its limits. Any effort to globally "unify" our conceptions of what is Good (from any perspective, scientific, religious or philosophical) is bound to fail. We are products of our cultures as much of our genes. There will always be diverging points of view, not to mention continuous change.

Better to develop more secure foundations upon which to anchor a greater sense of self-reliance instead of deferring to a Being to insure our Goods, the definition of which we can never agree upon and about which there will always be conflict. After all, isn't insecurity – the fear about what tomorrow will or will not bring - the real fuel behind all extremism? Isn't fundamentalism/literalism – the strict adherence to a set of rules and the rituals we perform to uphold them – akin to magical thinking as a way to ward off all that we fear might happen?


For more information re: the Me/Good - Bad/Other theory of auto-poïesis, and in terms of evolution/social interaction:
Auto-poïesis, see: Varela & Maturana, G.A. Kelly, G. Bateson, N. Luhmann
On constructivism, radical or otherwise, see E. von Glasserfeld, P. Watzlawick

Reconciliation

There's this interesting video on http://bloggingheads.tv/ where Philosopher Joshua Cohen and economist Glenn Loury discuss the essence of Christianity. The philosopher tackles the question from an ethical pov, and the economist, from the personal necessity aspect of religion. In one segment Loury refers to "A Raisin in the Sun" to highlight the fact that it is through belief in God that one finds the courage to confront adverse conditions. Of course.

Among the responses to the vlog, one person declared being against the idea of calling into question anyone's belief system, and I agree that there is absolutely no value in trying to invalidate anyone's faith. The problem as I see it is that to not believe in God is a belief system in itself. It takes determination to maintain such a stance in our day and age. And I think I am not alone in feeling that our freedom not to believe is increasingly threatened.

When you see all the democratic candidates falling over each other to prove how more devout than the others he or she is, it's hard not to fear for the future. Whatever happened, I wonder, to the separation between Church and State? Where I live now - in France - religion has long been a very private matter, because like taste, there is no accounting for it.

P.S. Off subject: if anyone is reading this and has the answer to why posting the links, by using the button that's meant to do it automatically, doesn't work? (I've tried with both Explorer and Mozilla to no avail)

Further thoughts

Where does the need to rely on God arise?
Principally in the space created between our wants and the sense we have of our own capacities, what I call efficaciousness.
And it seems to me that an aspect of our present civilisation - relative wealth and an abundance of free time not unlike that which was enjoyed by the ancient Greeks around the time of the birth of philosophy - contributes to our awareness of the gulf that separates the two.
On the one hand we have access to a wealth of ressources and models to emulate, while at the same time the same awareness results in an accrued sense of our own limitations with regard to what we could be obtaining. Of course the materialistic society we live in does nothing to reduce this sense of our inadequacies.
We want, we want, and we want more.
No wonder we feel a greater need than ever to call upon a power that surpasses our own.
Of course this problem has already been examined at length.
Where our well-being in this life-time is concerned, the Stoics, Epicureans and Buddhists, among others, all have had some very insightful things to say about the question.
Basically, limit or get rid of your wants and desires altogether, and you will be free of suffering, content.
My problem with such a viewpoint is that it does not give enough weight to the basic human (or animal) characteristic that is the pleasure drive.
Ancient Greeks and Asians, however, did not have the brain research results we now have at our disposal. And I think it's safe to say that the pleasure seeking drive is an intrinsic part of the animal kingdom's drive to survive. I think there are a number of things we'd have stopped doing long ago - like risk-taking - if there weren't some reward to the process. This, to me, would point to the insufficiency of any system that did not give a wide berth to the drive.
It's important to learn how not to be overwhelmed by your wants.
I am all for living in the moment so as to differentiate between those of our efforts that are conducive, and those that are not. But it is necessary to acknowledge and make room for our wants and needs first, because our well-being cannot consist solely of freedom from suffering, but a sufficient quantity of pleasure that our brains and bodies require..

With the above in mind, I propose the following method as the first step towards achieving the goal of helping myself:

1) Consider what it is I really want: the goal.
2) picture it happening:
a) is it do-able?
b) at what cost?
c) how much well-being does it afford, and how durable is the well-being
3) Reassess and make a decision according to the cost-effectiveness of the goal
4) Set things up accordingly, in order: what do I need to accomplish first, second, etc... At each step of the process check this information to stay on track.

Will this get me to the end of my WIP?

A Spandrel (Look it up)

Have you ever wanted to do something about your life, but every time you try one of the usual formulas, you bang your head against the old "Let go and let..."? CRAP!
A contradiction in terms? Self-help with external assistance?
D.Y.I.
That's what this is about. Getting a grip, through an informal look at why it's so hard to do just that.
This is not about knocking religion. At least not overtly.
But if you wanted to improve things in your life, does it make any sense to hand over the reins to an invisible, intangible entity and just hope you get to where you want to go?
Besides.
Wouldn't He have more important matters to attend to?
Okay. I'll admit it.
I am envious. I wish I could just blindly trust that without taking all of the necessary active steps things in my life - I - would change for the better. It's true. I wish I could believe in God. It is probably a much more restful way to live.

Why am I doing this?
Obviously I am still not satisfied with things as they are.
The problem is that I am continually "sabotaging" my own efforts.
I have highly unlikely goals and very little of the self-esteem and wherewithal necessary to reach them.

At the top of my list is the completion of my W.I.P., a novel begun at least a decade ago. But every time I get a little steam going, I come down with some diversion that casts it in a whole new light and I go back to the drawing board to figure out how to make it better (read: more difficult still). Then I get really depressed and become finger-tied for an indefinite period of time that lasts until I reach the bottom. Though I wallow, I'm always in search of the spark that will pull it all together again.

The problem is the subject of my WiP: Being.

I happen to think that I am not an isolated self in need of repair, and that the cognitive and emotional dissonance I share with a great number of people in this world is at the root of much of the angst that drives people to do irrational things in the name of a Higher Being that is supposed to be in charge of all that we turn away from out of fear, doubt, mostly the sense that we don't know enough (everything) about the problem at hand. Because we're not omniscient and our minds are hard-wired to "seek and ye shall find" ad infinitum.

In other words, I may not be against religion per se, but I do think that to depend on it to right our wrongs is not a reasonable way to lead our lives.