Holding on to identity
Some ideologies also enforce this total identification by demanding mental submission, such as religions. Someone will identify himself as a "Christian" or an "Islamite". However, this identification is not the result of incomplete integration of a personal or rational proposition, but the result of epistemic error. Religions obtain this identification by positing a god which encompasses everything and an infallible doctrine of salvation. Cults enforce this identification in an even more forceful way. In most religions and cults, the individual must divert his healthy egoist drive for the higher goal of pursuing the interests of the organization and the worshipped agent. Pursuing the good of "the leader", "the sect", "God", or "the community", reflects the same process of absorption.
Cults promise salvation. Instead of boredom - noble and sweeping goals. Instead of existential anxiety - structure and certainty. Instead of alienation - community. Instead of impotence - solidarity directed by all-knowing leaders.
"Miracle, Mystery and Authority: The Triangle of Cult Indoctrination", Dr. John Hochman
Cultural identity, memetic identity, physical identity... none of these things define who we are. They are all secondary or transient parts of us. Our body regenerates every seven years, so how can there be something that is really the "I" ? We feel we are a self, and that there is something within us that is the "I", a kind of homunculus, or a soul. Some unenlightened people of ages past thought so. But this sense of self is an illusion. There is no self to be found in the brain or the body by science.
Rational inquiry by science and philosophy helps us understand ourselves, why we believe and act the way we do. Those who deny the corporeality of the mind are committed to complete obscurity as regards to human behaviour, especially their own. Without this knowledge, we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes. The illusion of "community" is one such mistake. As long as we refuse to consider ourselves material, psychological beings, we will keep holding on to the notion that we are not individuals making free choices, but an inevitable part of a "community" serving a higher cause.
What is your opinion on the subject ? If you have issues you'd like to see featured here, email me. Don't hesitate to post on the message board - go back to the main page and scroll below the articles list, or if no thread on the subject is
Latest Articles