Posted by:
schrodingerscat
(
)
Date: February 26, 2021 11:54AM
Adam the Warrior Wrote:
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> The death oaths and other rituals i did not know
> about. I was just like ok this is ridiculous.
I remember thinking the same thing the first time I went to the temple, but then I looked to the right, and there was my dentist standing next to me, pantomiming slitting his throat. And I looked to the left and there was an Aeronautical Engineer pantomiming slitting his stomach and I thought to myself, well, if these respectable people are all doing it, it can't be THAT weird!
And that's the point.
"The truth is common property. You can't distinguish your group by doing things that are rational, and believing things that are true. If you want to set yourself apart from other people, you have to do things that are arbitrary, and believe things that are false. And after having spent their whole lives doing things that are arbitrary and believing things that are false, and being regarded as odd by "outsiders" on that account, the cognitive dissonance pushing children to regard themselves as Xes must be enormous. If they aren't an X, why are they attached to all these arbitrary beliefs and customs? If they aren't an X, why do all the non-Xes call them one?
This form of lie is not without its uses. You can use it to carry a payload of beneficial beliefs, and they will also become part of the child's identity. You can tell the child that in addition to never wearing the color yellow, believing the world was created by a giant rabbit, and always snapping their fingers before eating fish, Xes are also particularly honest and industrious. Then X children will grow up feeling it's part of their identity to be honest and industrious.
This probably accounts for a lot of the spread of modern religions, and explains why their doctrines are a combination of the useful and the bizarre. The bizarre half is what makes the religion stick, and the useful half is the payload." Paul Graham, Lies We Tell Our Kids
http://www.paulgraham.com/lies.html