User:Ssstephen/Reading/Lecture about biological underpinnings of religiosity

https://youtu.be/4WwAQqWUkpI?si=UmaN4SONkCNvzJm7

Metamagical thinking more common with schizotypal people, the people who were most likely the shamans for most of human history.

We impose this totally arbitrary useless destructive structure, at a time when everything else feels like you're walking on quicksand. We all do this as some sort of adaptation to periods of anxiety

very mathematical qualities to it and it's never quite right and you've gotta do it all over again... one of the really interesting insights into what ocd is about is that this is an anxiety disorder, it is a pathological attempt to impose structure, to impose predictability, to impose control, in a world where everything is pathologically provoking of a sense of dis-ease and uncertainty and anxiety.

Fixed action patterns and rituals, like a dog walking in a circle before it sleeps, are milder versions of the same genetic tendencies towards ocd.

1=animism 2=dualism 3=christianity 4=empirical rationalism 5=pentagram? pentecostal? something pent up for sure

Our number system is based on not just tens but also threes: a thousand, a million, a billion. Is this a Christian influence?

Some of the times what a religious leader is about is someone who's excellent at performing rituals

Kafkaesque for sure but it's the Hunger Artist.

truly involved ritualistic religious belief is often at the cost of doing anything else

This seems like a bit of an exaggeration but it has a cost for sure

the more I wash the dirtier I get

Martin Luther

Would you expect to see differences in the incidences of depression depending on religiosity? And boy do you see that with a vengeance. One of the healthiest things you can do with your life is to be religious, and to be highly religious: it is a very strong protector against major depression, religious belief extends your life expectancy...

But does it come from social religiosity or personal spirituality?

Art as a superstition: just because it was affective that one time or sometimes, you assume there is a causal link. What does our art deal with? Things we still don't understand. We've gotten a bit better at understanding our emotions and the materialist world we exist in, so recently we've doubled down on political and social art. Individual identity and community dynamics. Things and occurrences that are magical to us, that we don't understand the causes for. Digital art, sci fi. Disorder and social disruption. The environment as we are starting to understand it and interact with it in a new way. So we build superstitions and experiment with rituals.

Lying awake, mark salzman

what are we to make of who we are if even in one case somebody had arrived at that point because of just a storm of neurotransmitter abnormalities rather than the journey that all of us associate with helping to define who we are? 

Maybe rewatch this one next: https://youtu.be/_njf8jwEGRo?si=ys-xzGO4qVXud5xk