Reading the following article about an
atheist man who has been granted asylum in the United Kingdom because
of the danger that he would be persecuted for his lack of religious
belief if he returns to his native Afghanistan led to me thinking
about how the cultures of many nations where the people are mostly
poor and the living conditions harsh have developed in a way which is
so socially oppressive :
The first thing we have to take into
account is that the evolution of culture is not linear. There is a
chicken or egg element to it. At the heart of the evolution of destructive symptoms in the human system is always the negative feedback
loop. So we need to look at what drives specific strategies and what
negative effects they have without worrying too much about where it
all started.
I don't know a great deal about the
specifics of Afghani history and culture so I'm going to try to be
very general. What I'm saying could also apply to other countries
with other religions, such as a poor Catholic country in South
America.
Most of the people who live in
Afghanistan are very poor and their living environment is very harsh.
One of the ways we humans have developed to bear our lives of quiet
desperation is to hope for something better after we die. If our life
on this earth is going to be overwhelming one of suffering, then way
not just kill ourselves now? Because maybe this is a test we have to
undergo to get a decent life after death. There is no factual
evidence for such a belief, but it enables people to keep going and
society to keep functioning.
Where there is poverty some people turn
to crime. And the frustration of poverty can lead to political
violence which, in turn, brings retaliatory violence in just one of
many interlinking negative feedback loops.
The more desperation and resentment
there is the more discipline is needed to hold society together.
Religion, as well as holding out hope for something better beyond the
grave, provides a structure of discipline for such a society. Where
there is hope of reward if one obeys society's laws, there is also
fear of punishment if one transgresses them. Many of these laws are
about not compromising the religious coping strategy itself.
One element of this situation about
which I won't go into much detail here, as I've dealt with it more
generally in a number of other articles, is that of sexual
repression. All hierarchical patriarchal societies have a fundamental
fear of the anarchic power of the erotic. This fear preceded
patriarchy and law-based religions, being a major contributory factor
in their development. And the more discipline-based a religion
becomes, generally the more sexually-repressive it becomes. If it is
patriarchal then the emphasis is on denigrating and controlling
female sexuality and homosexuality. There is also a focus on the
difficulty for the male in restraining his sexuality (a struggle
which is emblematic of the patriarchal society's struggle against its
natural urges generally), and thus a tendency for some in such
societies to excuse rape. (It should also be acknowledged that rape
is itself a form of repression of the erotic, a revenge against the
one who, usually unintentionally, disturbs the repressed individual's
precarious equilibrium.)
Why is apostasy – abandonment of the
faith of Islam – considered such a serious crime? Because so many
Islamic people have no faith. What do we mean by "faith"?
Faith is the kind of trust in something which lends confidence and
minimises fear. Faith is not necessarily about believing in something
for which there is no evidence. You may have faith in your ability to
meet a challenge because you have met so many similar challenges in
the past. The fact that you have done so is evidence of a kind, but
this is still faith.
We can assess another person's faith by
observing their behaviour. If someone makes a big song and dance
about a belief this suggests that they are trying to convince
themselves, that they are whistling in the dark.
A lot of religions have rituals. What
are rituals? Sometimes they are ceremonies which provide the context
for a shared and enriching ecstatic or cathartic experience which may
be community-building and/or emotionally healing. But some religious
rituals are more comparable to the rituals engaged in by those who
suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder – strictly adhered to,
often repetitive activities, the performance of which reduces
anxiety.
When, through a negative feedback loop,
a society's religious strategy becomes particularly oppressive –
discipline leads to frustration leads to the need for more discipline
leads to more frustration – it becomes a form of shared obsessive
compulsive disorder.
Obsessive compulsive disorder is a
pathological lack of faith. We may feel that a loved one will die if
we don't obsessively tidy our home. Performing the ritual provides
some temporary relief but only at the cost of increasing the anxiety
when we are not tidying. By contrast, to have faith is to believe
that, as long as we take due care of practicalities, things will turn
out as well as they can. Faith is that which takes the pressure off.
So it can be seen that oppressive
religion of this kind is defensive in its nature. It is both a
response to fear and a generator of fear. It is cultural character
armour. When criticised we tend to feel the need to cling to our
character armour all the more tightly. No-one actually likes living
an armoured existence. It's horrible. But we are only liable to come
out of that armour when we feel reassured that it is safe to do so.
And, in repressive religious societies, the weaker people's faith
becomes, i.e. the more their religion becomes a desperate and
insecure strategy rather than a belief capable of quelling fear and
lending confidence, the more exposed they feel by those who may be
walking around naked of such armouring. Such individuals are a
constant reminder of their own state of sickness. This is why Jesus
was crucified. This is why heretics were tortured to death by the
Inquisition. And this is why this Afghani man is not safe in the home
of his birth.
Who will bring to the people of
Afghanistan the feeling of safety and reassurance which will allow
them to come out of the oppressive religion closet?
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