A Necessary Myth: The Essential Aspect of Any "Prosperous" Economic or Political System

[Unity+]

Sorry if I couldn't make a good title for the speculation, but that is all I had.

 

NOTE: Religion is not, in this paper, associated with the metaphysical aspects. It is only related to its effect in a group. Also, prosperous has many definitions, but in this case has the definition of stability in relation to goals and agendas of a society. The definition in relation to the idea may change to better suit the idea.

 

Also, this idea is still in progress. Later on, the idea may not work out in the end. however I have been thinking about the idea and thought I might post it here to get peer review. I never planned to even have the paper read by others because I have no experience in political science, but thought the idea might explore somethings. Of course, I might be wrong.

 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-fGMkrVm6liedfQRXkLYkFlB_40qwBni_zXdOG0x_mk/edit?usp=sharing

 

 

Summary of idea: Religion is a necessary "myth" in order for a political system or economic system to be prosperous. This is due to its panoptic elements in a society(the works of Michel Foucault go into greater detail on the more complex Panopticon) set by religion. This can be seen in real life experiences of history and experimentation that has been done. Examples are the United States democratic capitalist system and a Buddhist society that has successfully adopted the Communist system, but with an instilled religion. An experiment done with Rhesus monkeys shows how the physical model of the Panopticon, developed by Jeremy Bentham, has had an effect on implementing the idea of "sin" into Rhesus monkeys. Any system has the possibility of being prosperous, whether it is Capitalism or Communism, if a religion is implemented within the people in order to implement the Panopticon ideals within that society.

 

This draft is incomplete. It is all that I have written so far.

 

EDIT: I have left the Buddhist community example nameless because I remember watching a documentary on a Buddhist society(can't remember where) in one of my classes that showed a "prosperous" community that lived on the ideals of Communism. If anyone could give a reference to this society, I would be glad. I wonder why I don't keep my lecture notes for certain classes.

 

References:

 

Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon letters: http://cartome.org/panopticon2.htm

 

Michel Foucault's book: <removed by mod - until copyright question is answered>

 

NOTE2: Some of the papers I have cited in the paper are from my college library. I don't know if they are accessible anywhere else. If you need a quote from the sources, I can happily provide them.

 

NOTE3: The equations in the paper are more in-theory than actual logical equations. They are a template as to what the equations might look like.

 

NOTE4: The human function is something to describe human error, as in case examples with the Black-Scholes model and how it failed to account for the human element, or error. When a group used it as a way to discover its implications, it began failing to a certain point. There is another documentary that talks about this:

 

 

The documentary later talks about how it failed because of worldly events(the human element/error).

Edited December 30, 2014 by imatfaal
Removal of link with potential copyright problems

[hoola]

It seems any governmental organizational structure operated by human beings will express the inability of people to integrate the three minds, reptilian, emotional, intellectual. The incessant conflict between the 3 causes any system to be problematic, and seems most evident in the compartmentalization of group dynamics, which express most clearly those internal conflicts of jealously guarded domains. These limitations seem inevitable as they are hardwired by the machinery of evolution and offered our species an avenue of survival in the part of the animal world we evolved through...

Edited December 29, 2014 by hoola

[Unity+]

three minds, reptilian, emotional, human

What?

 

 

These limitations seem inevitable as they are hardwired by the machinery of evolution and offered our species an avenue of survival in the part of the animal world we evolved in

I think I talk about the dynamics within the draft(I might have not since I don't tend to put all my thoughts down on it). I have been trying to solve this part, but I think an example of a system being sustainable with both the "religious" aspect and the system is the Buddhist society I referred to. The only destructive force that broke it was the implementation of a Capitalist system within it that changed the dynamics of the system. A majority of the destruction comes with the injection of new systems within a currently existing and stable system.

 

EDIT: I still don't see the relevancy of what you brought up earlier in your post.

 

EDIT2: I think the term 'hedging' could be applied to the idea. Dynamic hedging is involved in the development of the Black-Sholes formula.

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black%E2%80%93Scholes_model

 

I think the Black-Scholes Formula could give insight into an actual equation to give a more precise model of the idea.

 

EDIT3: I think you brought up a good point with the evolution of a species. I think Price's equation can give insight into the dynamics of a combination of systems

 

 

I don't know how the equations can be combined to make an overall equation for the idea, but they might give insight into one.

Edited December 29, 2014 by Unity+

[hoola]

doesn't matter which religion or lack thereof is dominant...or capitalist or socialist in structures.....we are still functionally the same animal and will work against our own best interests, by action or inaction...it is easy to blame capitalism as that deflects the attention from our (species-wide) internal inconsistencies...the reason capatilsm is dominant is that it "fails well"....any society that dominates can easily subvert another society that has a productive system. That still seems group dynamics writ large...

[Unity+]

doesn't matter which religion or lack thereof is dominant...or capitalist or socialist in structures.....we are still functionally the same animal and will work against our own best interests, by action or inaction...it is easy to blame capitalism as that deflects the attention from our (species-wide) internal inconsistencies...the reason capatilsm is dominant is that it "fails well"....any society that dominates can easily subvert another society that has a productive system. That still seems group dynamics writ large...

The idea doesn't state that any system is more successful than another. It states the requirement for a political or economic system to be sustainable in the long run must have a "religion"(and I use this term with some distaste because of its associations) that is implemented within it. The existence of best interest is what drives the system through the use of the Panopticon, whether in reference to Bentham's Panopticon or Foucault's Panopticon.

the reason capatilsm is dominant is that it "fails well"

Is there an article that can back up this statement?

[hoola]

I agree that buddism is the best of the lot of the religions I am aware of.....and capatilism is obviously failing as it is destroying the environment by exploiting the planet more efficiently, hence more quickly, so provides a higher standard of living of excessive populations, until the inevitable "bottom line" is reached. Religion can have a stabilizing influence on any society, and under certain circumstances can slow the dominations of other agressive societies. Buddism helping protect tibet from china is a prime example...

[Unity+]

I agree that buddism is the best of the lot of the religions I am aware of.....and capatilism is obviously failing as it is destroying the environment by exploiting the planet more efficiently, hence more quickly, so provides a higher standard of living of excessive populations, until the inevitable "bottom line" is reached. Religion can have a stabilizing influence on any society, and under certain circumstances can slow the dominations of other agressive societies. Buddism helping protect tibet from china is a prime example...

In this circumstance, no religion is better than another. In fact, the idea doesn't look at any particular religion as being necessary, but the idea of religion. The effects of Capitalism on the external objects is determined by the human society, not the system itself. This is where the religion comes into play.

 

EDIT: Essentially, in the equation that models the idea, the human greed(instinctive greed/survival) is eliminated from the system itself.

Edited December 30, 2014 by Unity+

[hoola]

religion can suppress the human instinct in certain populations for certain periods of time, but (in large part) tends to strengthen personal internal conflicts .....you are right about "certain societies" handling government better than others, but from the perspective of an alien observing earth from a safe distance, those internal conflicts are expressed differently in self-sabotaging actions, but still expressed in all societies, and with a lack of a physiologic analysis of the true cause of human internal discord (on the micro scale), progress will be too slow to really help much in politics (macro scale)..

Edited December 30, 2014 by hoola

[Unity+]

religion can suppress the human instinct in certain populations for certain periods of time, but (in large part) tends to strengthen personal internal conflicts .....you are right about "certain societies" handling government better than others, but from the perspective of an alien observing earth from a safe distance, those internal conflicts are expressed differently in self-sabotage actions or lack therof, but still expressed in all societies, and lack of a physiologic analysis of the true cause of human internal discord (on the micro scale), progress will be too slow to really help much in politics (macro scale)..

I think the idea relies on a definition of sustained. Whether it is viewed as sustainable because of the moral implications of that society is the incorrect view of it. Sustainable, in this sense, means that the society is stable in its form, whether one form of morality is adopted or not.

 

In this idea, religion is not the suppressant, rather it is what cancels out the human element/error in a system.

 

As stated before, humans are naturally greedy. Therefore, that human greed must be canceled out for a stable society to form. This is where the Panopticon is required. As described within the paper as the 'internalized gaze.' This gaze is essentially the central aspect of the religion, or what is being described.

 

EDIT: I think comparisons can be made to show the meaning of the idea.

 

We have two communist societies: the Soviet Union and the Buddhist Communist society. While the Soviet Union relied on a human figure as this essential "gaze," the Buddhist communist society relied on a "metaphysical" gaze formed by the religion within the system. The Soviet Union fell because the human element became the gaze, while the gaze of the Buddhist society canceled out the human element within the system. Therefore, the Buddhist communist society sustained itself until, of course, another system was implemented within it, adding the dynamics of a changing system.

 

EDIT2: The same circumstance occurs within the Black-Scholes Formula, where the idea was to try to cancel out the risk variable. When the risk variable is removed from the equation, the equation succeeds in its purpose.

Edited December 30, 2014 by Unity+

[hoola]

I certainly agree that human greed must be suppressed, but religion is not up to the task (globally), due to the contrarian aspects of human dynamics. Nothing will "cancel out" the problem until a fundamental knowledge of how the human mind works is known and used as another tool to resolve problems. The best we can hope for without this information is a slowing of the rates of destruction that all societies contribute to, by action and even more importantly, inaction to respond on issues easily dealt with...Here is an example.....why does anyone shop at walmart? that is one very obvious way people have been tricked into working against their own best interests, and easily avoided....propaganda is the rule, and the internal conflict that we all have is easily exploited by communications majors who specialize in advertizing, both in and out of government. A further example is the lack of enviornmental actions, which I consider the worst example of unresolved internal conflict. Consider foreign policy of the US...destabilizing large regions of the planet for no good long term reason ....our survival is at stake here, not just tweaking our ignorant society into being slightly less objectionable, and that is all religion is capable of, regardless of how well meaning and humane it is...

Edited December 30, 2014 by hoola

[Unity+]

I certainly agree that human greed must be suppressed, but religion is not up to the task (globally), due to the contrarian aspects of human dynamics. Nothing will "cancel out" the problem until a fundamental knowledge of how the human mind works is known and used as another tool to resolve problems. The best we can hope for without this information is a slowing of the rates of destruction that all societies contribute to, by action and even more importantly, inaction to respond on issues easily dealt with...Here is an example.....why does anyone shop at walmart? that is one very obvious way people have been tricked into working against their own best interests, and easily avoided....propaganda is the rule, and the internal conflict that we all have is easily exploited by communications majors who specialize in advertizing, both in and out of government. A further example is the lack of enviornmental actions, which I consider the worst example of unresolved internal conflict. Consider foreign policy of the US...destabilizing large regions of the planet for no good long term reason ....our survival is at stake here, not just tweaking our ignorant society into being slightly less objectionable, and that is all religion is capable of, regardless of how well meaning and humane it is...

I described earlier that the effects that the system have on the external aspects are not related to the idea, but merely to the inner workings of the system(at least I think I did. If not, then consider this an addition).

 

 

 

our survival is at stake here, not just tweaking our ignorant society into being slightly less objectionable, and that is all religion is capable of, regardless of how well meaning and humane it is...

This is why I don't like using the term religion, because it has no association with the idea of ignorance in this context. Here is the definition of religion:

 

 

 

A religion is an organized collection of beliefs, cultural systems, and world views that relate humanity to an order of existence.

This is the essential definition I am referring to. For example, there could be a religion that adopts logic as the fundamental course of humanity while sustaining the idea of a world without a greater existence.

Edited December 30, 2014 by Unity+

[hoola]

A big stumbling block is simply not knowing why the universe exists....how can we as self-aware beings be expected to form a logical system of collective behavior under such conditions as these? A resolution of the "why anything" question seems almost easier for physicists to figure out, than our own evolutionarily contrived miasma...I think the human race should be re-named from homo sapiens to homo awarens.....we certainly are not wise, although I realize the obvious semantic issue when we were named incorrectly from an inproper translation from the latin of "aware"

Edited December 30, 2014 by hoola

[iNow]

Replace the term religion with the term ritual and/or the the term priority. The economics and even the psychology is easy here. It's the politics that are hard (and politics are involved any time more than one person is included in the calculation.

Edited December 30, 2014 by iNow

[Unity+]

Replace the term religion with the term ritual and/or the the term priority.

I can see the relation between priority or ritual, but how would those include the belief systems involved? Evolutionarly speaking, priority and ritual are the essential aspects in the concept of religion, but summing it up with those terms, I don't see how that would work. I could replace the term with ideology, but with the definition:

 

 

 

a system of ideas and ideals, especially one that forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy.

It doesn't describe the panoptic element involved.

 

EDIT: Either I find a new word to sum up the concept or make one up, and doing the latter is not favorable in my opinion.

Edited December 30, 2014 by Unity+

[iNow]

Try to recall that religion borrowed from an existing propensity toward ritual, priority, and ideology, not the other way around. animals have long understood their deeper connection to nature and the cosmos. It's only through rigid belief systems and patterns of faith that confusion has been introduced,

 

We are here to exist, to be kind, and to reinforce love both within ourselves and among our community. The rest is either supporting of those pursuits or largely without relevance and to be discarded.

[Unity+]

Try to recall that religion borrowed from an existing propensity toward ritual, priority, and ideology, not the other way around. animals have long understood their deeper connection to nature and the cosmos. It's only through rigid belief systems and patterns of faith that confusion has been introduced,

 

We are here to exist, to be kind, and to reinforce love both within ourselves and among our community. The rest is either supporting of those pursuits or largely without relevance and to be discarded.

But wouldn't those beliefs have to be instilled in some fashion such as a Panopticon? Human greed, an instinctive element for survival, plays a big role in human interaction. In order to prevent this from destabilizing a system, that element has to be canceled out in the system.

 

 

On a more primitive level of the concept, an experiment was done with four Rhesus monkeys involving their interaction with an object when in different environments. The test involved both having the monkeys being isolated with an object and then being with another Rhesus monkeys with the object. The punishing act involved using blasts of air on the monkeys. Whenever an isolated monkey began manipulating the object, an air blast was used and the monkey would be punished. When a “naive” monkey was put in the same room as the punished monkey, the two monkeys’ interactions would be observed. The test was repeated to determine possible error. After the experimentation was done, the data showed that “the manipulation tendency of a subject was affected by the presence of a second subject.” This type of system is described in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, where physical punishment is what implements the ‘internalized gaze’ of control. Foucault's modification of the system involves something similar, but instead of using physical punishment as the catalyst into an “ordered” society, social pressures are used, described as the ‘internalized gaze.

Citation: Stephenson, G.R. ―Cultural Acquisition of a Specific Learned Response Among Rhesus Monkeys. In D. Starek, R. Schneider, and H.J. Kuhn (eds.), Progress in Primatology, Stuttgart: Fischer, 1967, pp. 283

 

 

Try to recall that religion borrowed from an existing propensity toward ritual, priority, and ideology, not the other way around.

Then what term would best describe these elements?

Edited December 30, 2014 by Unity+

[iNow]

But wouldn't those beliefs have to be instilled in some fashion such as a Panopticon? Human greed, an instinctive element for survival, plays a big role in human interaction. In order to prevent this from destabilizing a system, that element has to be canceled out in the system.

 

You will never "cancel" human greed. It is evolutionarily embedded into who we are. Those that sought more had more when scarcity killed those around us.

 

No. The point is to remind ourselves that our greed is best satisfied when the good of those around us is included and embedded within the calculation of the good we seek for ourselves. The idea is that altruism is itself a selfish act, and that is why it is to be pursued. The good of the many outweighs the good of the few... Or the good of the one.

 

We have not survived as a culture because we are fiercely individualistic. We have survived because we are a social species that has recognized the importance of shared success and strength in numbers, because we have helped each other more frequently than we have helped ourselves at the expense of those around us.

Edited December 30, 2014 by iNow

[Unity+]

You will never "cancel" human greed. It is evolutionarily embedded into who we are. Those that sought more had more when scarcity killed those around us.

On a theoretical level, the Panopticon would cancel out the greed because though the greed exists, the system would use that greed as a way to form bonds between the individual and the system.

 

 

 

No. The point is to remind ourselves that our greed is best satisfied when the good of those around us is included and embedded within the calculation of the good we seek for ourselves. The idea is that altruism is itself a selfish act, and that is why it is to be pursued. The good of the many outweighs the good of the few... Or the good of the one.

This relates to the Panopticon idea.

 

 

 

We have not survived as a culture because we are fiercely individualistic. We have survived because we are a social species that has recognized the importance of shared success and strength in numbers, because we have helped each other more frequently than we have helped ourselves at the expense of those around us.

Of course, which relates to the idea of the Panopticon. The adopted system has both accounted for the greed in each individual as well as the social aspect of the society. This is where the "religion" comes in.

 

EDIT: It is better to not say "cancel" because it doesn't really cancel out in reality, but it cancels out the instability(hedging), as hedging does in an economic system(the essential aspect of the Black-Scholes Model).

Edited December 30, 2014 by Unity+