Subserviance. That’s what’s at heart.
Reading up on conflict resolution, people management and assertiveness one finds immediately that the natural state of most people is one of passivity, as opposed to confrontational, hence the problems many people have with being assertive – it’s literally not in our nature. As a whole, the majority of people are by nature passive rather than assertive, else how would human society function if we all asserted ourselves constantly? It could never have evolved in the first place were that to happen, so as a generalisation this is true.
Musing why this arises takes me to what was an epifany in my life, which was the realisation that all human behaviour is simply primate behaviour. Yes, really obvious, almost a stupid thing to say, but all evidence suggests that the vast majority of people – humans – neither realise this nor accept it once they hear it. However that’s a side story, so let me continue.
In a primate group all members require to show subservience to the leader, I think that’s a valid statement which anyone who’s watched David Attenborough won’t find fault with. Younger males challenge the leader for his role but the majority are subserviant, non-challenging, accepting of their role as followers. In order for such a group dynamic to be sustainable, I would argue that the majority then have to be happy in their subservience and this is the key point: most primates in a group are actually happy to be subservient under a leader.
Judaism, Christianity and Islam have always struck me as a projections of childhood subservience to a father figure, with Christianity even making special emphasis on ‘the Father’ thus giving away the underlying psychology in bags full! These religions also incorporates a large element of subservience (‘it is God’s will’ being a prevalent theme in the Middle Eastern trio) and until recently the underlying psychological basis for such delusions hadn’t been something I’d dwelt on.
It’s now clear to me that the happiness of Christians, the Born Again’s especially – not the utterly miserable Free Church of Scotland for whom the word ‘happy’ equates to a darkest state of sin – stems from their return to a passive, subservient position under a primate group alpha male (their imagined God). And such happiness appears genuine, for people ‘under the influence’ have returned to their natural state in a primate group and have accepted total domination (albeit by an imaginary bearded old man dressed in a white robe with an address in the clouds). Logic is irrelevant, it doesn’t matter whether ‘God exists’ or not, for example, that’s not relevant to their feeling of being in harmony with this (projected) alpha male. People in this state of delusion appear to have tapped into a deep sense of wellbeing that stems from our primate group past.
So there we have it, the appeal of the child-religions is simply primate group happiness through subservience to a projected alpha male. Simple really 
When looking up the definition of subservience, I was amused – but not totally unsurprised – to find an ad for “Free Bible Study CD”. Ooh, gimme gimme gimme.
Update – hysteria: Since writing this I’ve encountered the limits of my generalisation on non-assertiveness in the form of a particularly woman at work who uses hysteria to get her wish for the most trivial of things – definately not a passive type. Again, though, I’m reminded of chimps hooting and shrieking and primate behaviour. People are uncomfortable with someone building to hysteria, but why exactly?
I suspect we fear both attack from the individual but also the surrounding group, since hysteria is designed to gain attention from the group, being an advert for ‘I’m in trouble, help me, I’m under attack!‘. Thus the group are expected to rush in and defend the poor hysterical individual from the nasty rational person, thus getting her way.
(In this case, the female primate from another troupe was emotionally upset that a Start Menu icon on a Windows desktop was nominated, by a group of four Windows admins, to have the name ‘Help’ as opposed to ‘Quick Links’. Despite being in the minority, and this being a matter of such complete and utter triviality that it defies comprehension, she nonetheless chose to try hysterical approach to get her way. The monkeys in my team, however, all watch Attenborough and the baboon skulked off to lick her wounds, announcing she was ‘upset’. There there, dear, just accept your subservience and have a banana, it’ll be alright).
Filed under: Delusions on May 27th, 2010
