Post AkFs5Bw6Ma2e76OaVk by paninid@mastodon.world
(DIR) More posts by paninid@mastodon.world
(DIR) Post #AkFf3A5owkSePhdxJY by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-07-24T09:39:58Z
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Story Concept:A group of psychologists, statisticians and historians decides to develop a "perfect religion" that perfectly meets the natural human receptivity to rituals & stories while imparting a little doctrine as possible. A ritual of religious inoculation. Having the minimal set of traditions & cosmology people using these teachings would be immune to the temptation of fantastical religions and cults.
(DIR) Post #AkFfLK6oRiIugqleBk by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-07-24T09:43:15Z
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I guess the predictable place for such a story to go is they end up creating a cult anyways. Despite best intentions. It really is very eerie how religions and cults contain the same patterns over and over. Even in very different times and places in human history. The charismatic leader, the "thou shall nots" to make the members of the group separate from the world. The promise of a better life. The sacrifices.And the darker elements like child brides and shunning.
(DIR) Post #AkFfaNzgHfZ95Cc8kC by futurebird@sauropods.win
2024-07-24T09:45:57Z
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A "perfect religion" would seek to fulfill whatever it is in the human animal that makes people receptive to these patters of behavior. But prohibit the dark elements, the exploitation, the embrace of ignorance. I almost think such a thing might work. Except I also recognize this is just another attempt to banish ambiguity and really I think it's that inability to live with ambiguity that leads people into cult-like thinking in the first place. So, it would somehow backfire I suspect.
(DIR) Post #AkFfsesmEOFgft67ma by Mcdyer@masto.ai
2024-07-24T09:49:03Z
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@futurebird Throw in a vegetarian potluck and you've got Unitarian Universalism.The thing that I learned from my time with UUs was that rituals without a spiritual cost can seem silly, like playing church.
(DIR) Post #AkFg6MyraQAxCuTzHM by scottmatter@aus.social
2024-07-24T09:51:41Z
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@futurebird Loving this.
(DIR) Post #AkFg9VXeDHGscyFVQm by FeralRobots@mastodon.social
2024-07-24T09:52:12Z
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@futurebird the wild card, I think, is human variation. one could figure out this puzzle for spherical humans in a perfect grid (metallic human atoms?), but still have it devolve in problematic ways, because people are different from one another, and live in different contexts. To make it stick persistently we'd have to prune people & their contexts.
(DIR) Post #AkFlvnPvYUGXjpU0TQ by billiglarper@rollenspiel.social
2024-07-24T10:56:40Z
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@futurebird I don't think going from religion to cult is the most likely development. It might be the one folks with a critical view on religion might gravitate towards. Yet in the European religious landscape, that's not what's happening. There are individuals who might switch from a more liberal faith to a more traditional one. A friend of mine did that, converting from Lutheranism to Catholicism. But that's not the trend. Religions here have become more ecumenical, not more culty.
(DIR) Post #AkFrl7Vr6DssbSY3tI by cstross@wandering.shop
2024-07-24T12:02:12Z
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@futurebird This is a little different, but could be a sequel to "The Snowball Effect" by Katherine Maclean (published in 1952, in print more or less ever since): https://www.gutenberg.org/files/50766/50766-h/50766-h.htm(And I really need to get back to work on my delayed space opera about singularitarianism as a recurring religious pattern in the far future …)
(DIR) Post #AkFs5Bw6Ma2e76OaVk by paninid@mastodon.world
2024-07-24T12:05:58Z
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@futurebird Was this not Theosophy?
(DIR) Post #AkFt0bwYLDgzHPzDSy by llewelly@sauropods.win
2024-07-24T12:16:22Z
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@futurebird late 19th century and early 20th century communists created whole swathes of communist thought that were meant to do exactly this. Unfortunately - I was never an expert in it, and the many different types of communists and splinter communists did these things differently, and I found the resulting mess quite confusing. So I can't summarize or explain it. But they tried.
(DIR) Post #AkG0GGbw7dPnQlkuPI by CynthesisToday@sfba.social
2024-07-24T13:37:33Z
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@futurebird Your preamble here made me think of the irrigation systems described in the field studies section of "Rules, Games, & Common-Pool Resources" by E. Ostrom, et.al.
(DIR) Post #AkG4ruFG7qFOsxLrpA by ohmu@social.seattle.wa.us
2024-07-24T14:29:01Z
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@futurebird This sounds like what Unitarian Universalism already sees as its objective for itself. The reality of the #UU church is far far from it but, well, at least we know that.
(DIR) Post #AkG95xZuvfSH5syHAm by Rycaut@mastodon.social
2024-07-24T15:16:33Z
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@futurebird in many ways professional sports might come close. - rituals galore (for the players, the team, the fans in the stadium, the fans watching elsewhere)- tribal identification (both with “your” team and with fans of that sport more broadly- communal ceremonies and chants (and in many sports singing - maybe not great singing)- histories and tales and artifacts (think centuries of stats, trading cards and increasingly the use of small parts of jerseys etc as relics