faith, hope and power in 2010
this is a little delayed as this link is from a few weeks ago, but if you, like me, often wonder WTF can be done about the state of the world and maybe sometimes get overwhelmed and depressed about things way beyond our control (or are they?), i highly recommend reading this:
http://social-creature.com/how-to-stand-in-the-face-of-powerlessness-for-a-new-generation
excerpt:
We humans have such a deep need to feel like we’ve got any sense of agency in our lives, we’ll gladly trick ourselves into perceiving we’re in control — or at the very least, that control over chaos is attainable — even when it’s not true. This proclivity is a large part of why God exists — or rather, why we believe he does. In a2007 New York Times article exploring possible answers from evolutionary biology as to how we have come to believe in God, Robin Marantz Henig wrote:
Our brains are primed for [belief in the supernatural], ready to presume the presence of agents even when such presence confounds logic. “The most central concepts in religions are related to agents,” Justin Barrett, a psychologist, wrote in his 2004 summary of the byproduct theory, “Why Would Anyone Believe in God?” Religious agents are often supernatural, he wrote, “people with superpowers, statues that can answer requests or disembodied minds that can act on us and the world.”
We automatically, and often unconsciously, look for an explanation of why things happen to us,” Barrett wrote, “and ‘stuff just happens’ is no explanation. Gods, by virtue of their strange physical properties and their mysterious superpowers, make fine candidates for causes of many of these unusual events.” The ancient Greeks believed thunder was the sound of Zeus’s thunderbolt. Similarly, a contemporary woman whose cancer treatment works despite 10-to-1 odds might look for a story to explain her survival. It fits better with her causal-reasoning tool for her recovery to be a miracle, or a reward for prayer, than for it to be just a lucky roll of the dice.
As an alternative to these external supernatural forces it’s become increasingly popular to reclaim a sense of power in the face of chaos or tragedy by elevating control of our inner selves to this transcendent status of godliness. In Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined AmericaBarbara Ehrenreich recounts, in a chapter titled, “Smile or Die: The Bright Side of Cancer,” how getting diagnosed with breast cancer led to her first introduction with the cult of “positive thinking.” The “Pink Ribbon Culture,” she writes, is defined by a mantra of “positive thinking” that is so extreme, at times it paints cancer as a “gift, deserving of the most heartfelt gratitude:”
it goes on to discuss the cultural exhaustion/overwhelm/paralysis over the BP oil spill. WHAT CAN WE DO? oh wait – have you stopped thinking about that already? maybe that’s part of the problem.
related previous post: postmillennial hope (2/24/10)
related obnoxious internet meme: affirmations of a little girl
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have you stopped thinking about that already? maybe that’s part of the problem.
Yowch. That feels a little disdainful. Even USA Today still has BP on the cover most days. I’m not especially active in conservation causes, but even I’M still thinking about it most days.
I don’t know — you may want to give your readers a little more credit than that.
i base that observation on the amount of web traffic my own community has been giving this issue in the past 2 weeks. yes, the MSM is still covering it. i’m sure most people are still aware that it’s ongoing, but most of my google RSS feed/Twitter/Facebook/email groups have stopped sharing news/ideas about 1. the oil spill itself 2. how to change oil-dependent culture so that we don’t need offshore oil rigs anymore so that this never happens again.