Yesterday morning I was being a slacker and not doing homework, so I watched Top Gun, which was on some cable station or another. I really dislike Tom Cruise so I had never seen this flick, but I had heard that it offered a great object lesson in memetics.Maverick (Cruise's character) is a hot-shot young pilot, but he is very cocky and takes too many risks to show off his skills. Eventually, through no real fault of his own, his best friend and co-pilot dies on a training mission.
Iceman (Val Kilmer) is the rival pilot, equally as talented, but he flies within the rules of the Navy pilots training program, one of which is to never leave your wingman. Iceman eventually wins the Top Gun competition among the pilots in training. Maverick eventually submits to the military structure and saves Iceman in a real life firefight.
Maverick represents an ego-centered memetic stage of development, while Iceman represents a more authoritarian memetic stage. The film demonstrates through (melodrama and bad acting) that the power-drive of the ego needs some strong containment within authority structures to allow it to reach its potential.
By now, you may be wondering what this has to do with the benefits of religion.
Over the weekend, a video made the rounds online of a pastor up in Tempe (just outside of Phoenix) saying he hates Barack Obama and wished him dead. This same man and some of his congregation had shown up at Obama's speech a little more than a week ago armed with assault rifles and handguns.
Here is the video:
This video has resulted in a lot of despair about the role of mythic religion in our culture. You can read some of the discussion the video generated at my friend Stuart's Facebook page.
Many people feel that mythic religion has outlived its usefulness, or that it is no longer an appropriate developmental response to a complex world. This is not wrong, but it is only a partial truth. In fact, the mythic worldview is losing its power, and that is partially why those infected with a more malignant version of this developmental meme are reacting with fear-based violence.
However, not all religion is bad, and not all religion is malignant. As is the case with the military structure portrayed in Top Gun, mythic religion offers a structure to contain the power-drive of the raw ego. But mythic religion is only one form of religion (and here we are talking specifically about Christianity, not Islam, Judaism, or other religions). There are many rational, egalitarian, and even some integral stage Christians. It is not Christianity that is the problem.
The problem, rather, is that some of the people who adhere to a fundamentalist religious dogma also adhere to a very rigid and hateful form of ethnocentrism. The result is a profound fear of the other, and the other is anyone who does not share their specific values and beliefs about the world.
In the example of this clown up in Tempe, the other is Obama - because he is liberal, because he holds some postmodern relativist values (a woman's right to choose what happens to her body), and quite possibly because he is black. The Phoenix metro area is already well-known nationally for its fear/hate of all people who are not them, as Sheriff Joe Arpio demonstrates on a regular basis.
When religion in this country isn't infected with this ethnocentric hatred, it performs valuable roles in society. It has been inner city churches that have done the most to help those involved in the tribal and ego-based power drive of gang culture grow out of that. Even Malcolm X, although his faith was Islam, found containment for his power-drives in the authoritarian structure of religion.
In the same way that sports teams or the military provide that rule-bound structure to contain the raging egos of young men, so does mythic religion. When well-meaning but misguided liberals worked to disempower inner city churches in the sixties and seventies, it was the the neighborhoods that suffered for the lack of religious authority.
And none of this even touches the benefits that religion has for its believers. Churches provide community, comfort, and certainty. While we may not share their values or beliefs, most of these believers are good citizens. The few hateful people should cause us to condemn the whole religion.
It's strange that I find myself, an atheist, defending religion so often against other atheists. This is not the first time, and it likely won't be the last that I make these arguments, so I guess it part of what this blog is about - an integral approach.
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