The problem with Feminist language

I feel that the biggest problem holding back a more effective discussion about gender equality is a problem of language.  What is alienating about the feminist movement is the use of somewhat exclusionary language.  I think in order to reach a broader spectrum of people, language must be carefully used when hashing out the important issues.

When driving any kind of revolution forward, I think it’s natural to create an ingroup.  This ingroup will automatically empathize with its own members.  This causes a kind of doublespeak in some internal dialogues.  Out of convenience, these movements will create their own words to describe certain concepts.   Like any kind of political party, nationality or ideology, it’s members know more about the “real” issues than outsiders.  Projecting an image of ignorance and incredulity on the outsiders of the movement.  

I’ve been a part of many of these ingroups which create their own mini-languages to explain the paradigm they’re attempting to overthrow.  Its very easy to sink into a closed off intellectual bubble, where only those who are inside can understand what you are talking about.  This becomes problematic when you attempt to relay these concepts to outsiders.  This is especially problematic if your bubble is intent on overturning the current system and replacing with their own way.  

It can be most easily seen in religious movements.  its very hard for religious to address the outside world if they’re so enveloped in the language of their tradition.  Words and phrases like “redemption”, “fear of God’ and “sinner” probably have a much different meaning to those who hear them outside of their religious contexts.  This can only alienate and confuse those well-intentioned outsiders.

This unfortunately, I feel is true about the feminist movement.  Any kind of group with an “ism” at the end of their name is going to encounter alienation problems.  While the ideas behind the movement are by and large good, they present an unpleasant and alien image to the outside.  The feminist movement is appealing to those who are already alienated from the male-dominated culture.  It’s language is appealing to those who have found alienation and emptiness in gender identities.  But it’s true intention is to change the culture.  It’s not going to be attractive to those still fully connected to the gender system who in fact need feminism the most.  

The first language problem I think stops most people is the use of the word “Feminism”.  “ism” is a sure sign of a political ideology.  The root, “feminine” denotes the inclusion of the female sex as the biggest component.  The word by itself is exclusionary to anything masculine.  If someone sympathizes with feminism as a man, they often must caveat their identity with “male-feminist”.  I believe that the true ideals of “feminism” would not need anyone to declare their gender identity.  

I think the word “feminism” is creating a problem that is counterproductive to it’s own cause.  Because of its name, it’s creating an ingroup of people, simply based on a single sex or a gender. Naturally It will gather together people who are alienated and angry at the gendered system we live in.  

Its a stereotype and an oversimplification of feminists that they are “angry at men”.  For the most part, I agree that its just a stereotype.  But even the most offensive stereotypes have their origins in some kind of small truth. To illustrate this point, I would compare this to people calling atheists “angry at God”.  While the atheist would say that they don’t even believe in God’s existence.  The theist may not properly comprehend the very idea of a godless world.  They can’t truly understand the mentality of an atheist.  So, to them it looks as if the atheist is behaving like a rebellious teenager against a parent.

When someone says “Feminists are just angry and hate men.”  That person is probably well situated deep inside the gendered system.  To an outsider, all they see is a group of upset women.  Since this person takes the notion of “men and women” for granted, who else can feminists be possibly angry at?  They are like the theist who doesn’t understand the mindset of a person without a belief in God.  The outsider to feminism doesn’t understand that the whole dichotomous gender system is what is being targeted, not men.  They can’t understand a world without gender as a personal identity.  Gender is such an important part of their world, its very hard to see these issues without it.  The word “feminist” enforces that mentality with its inherent dichotomy of feminine versus masculine.        

Are there feminists who do actually just hate men? Sure, I wouldn’t bet against it.  But they’re no different than those men who hate women.  I would say that these people have legitimate complaints about their gender and its relationship to the “opposite”.  But this negative energy is just missdirected.  Without recognizing the real source of their issues.     

       

I should expand this to all kinds of movements that are attempting to change gender and sexuality in our culture.  I truly believe these groups are trying to change the world for the better.  But the way they’re presented to the world is often in an unfavorable light.  Its often because of the language used.    

Words like “patriarchy”, “hegemonic masculinity”, “CISgender” “rape-culture”, “male privilege” have a way of unconsciously talking down to those who don’t know their meaning.  How many letters have to be added to the LGBTQ..(?) abbreviation to be politically correct?  Is it offensive to call someone “transvestite?”, “transexual?”, “transgendered?”.  It feels like if I don’t know the correct term, I’m a bigot.  It’s these sorts of concepts only privy to insiders have an alienating effect to those outside.

The word “rape-culture” is one such example of a topic worth addressing that is alienating to those who don’t know what it is.  When I first encountered the concept of rape-culture, it was in a dialogue in a university newspaper. I found the term to be unnecessarily aggressive and shrill.  Whoever was arguing against rape-culture, the writing seemed to be coming from a place of high emotion.  I can totally understand why.  But keep in mind, that kind of passion will be alienating to men who’ve never heard of it.  I was one of those men.  I didn’t know what it was, but the article certainly didn’t win me over.  From then on I associated that term with an air of confrontational feminism, which I had no desire becoming a part of.  As a man, “rape-culture” made me feel guilty by association.  I’m the one of most timid guys you’ll ever meet.  I felt I would never do anything to enable that kind of behaviour.  All it did was make me even more confused than I already was about how to behave around women I was attracted to.  

Keep in mind, I’m not trying to discredit any of the facts about rape culture.  I’m just trying to point out how the concept isn’t the most endearing to those uneducated.  Many men are probably now feeling the same way I used to about “rape-culture”.  

 It wasn’t until I took a sociology of gender course, that I began to really understand these issues.  It took maturing and self examination to see feminism as a good thing.  But it took a process of becoming fluent in feminist language to fully grasp what the intent was.  To be clear, I’m not proposing any kind of alternative to the words we use.  I wouldn’t know where to start.  I’m just trying to illustrate some of the unintended problems that naturally occur in social movements and language.       

"I"-deology, The ego centered proof of existence

I have been thinking a lot lately about how an individual defines oneself.  How much do words, symbols and ideologies form the identity of the individual human being? I talked a little bit about language and words forming identities in a previous blog post.  But now I wish to address cultural and ideological identities more specifically.  Its interesting to see that as I wrote this blog entry, it seemingly turned into some sort of life manifesto by the end.  It may be a little rambling and disorganized, so read on if you dare.

A few months ago I had come to an important intellectual conclusion which could be summed up in a Facebook status update.

“It is very bad idea to build an identity on the ideas of other people”

I had come to this while writing about how important language is and how it can be misused.  One of the worst ways people can misuse language is to use it to define their existence.  Our language is by its very nature, cold and logical.  The language of logic is all about assertions and contradictions.  And so I have the inclining that we get very insecure when our existential bedrock is nothing but abstract logical dictions.  A perfect example of this is fundamentalist religion.

The western forms of religion are essentially absolutist in their interpretations of existence.  They are very logical in regards to interpreting scripture as the final truth of the universe.  Everything else must follow that (holy book x) is true.  Just like in any logic equation, you must have at least one given truth(or faith) to figure anything out.  In scripture based religion, the entire universe then must fit into perfect order because the ultimate truth behind everything is assumed.  Followers of fundamentalist religions will tell you, things which don’t appear to make any sense actually do make sense but we just aren't able to totally understand God's plan.  But rest assured everything is for the best.

I don’t want to seem like I’m picking on religion exclusively.  I want to demolish all forms of ideology. Fundamentalist religion seems to be the most obviously flawed ideological system that sticks out like a sore thumb.  But I believe that all ideological definitions of the self are illusions at their very core.  Political ideologies are also very weak and function with these kinds of faith based belief systems.  They usually begin with an assumption of the nature of humanity.  For example, socialism begins with the belief that humans left to their own devices are naturally bad and therefore need to be controlled.  Libertarianism assumes that humans left to their own devices will behave naturally good and therefore need no government to control them.

I want to show you that you don’t need to prove your own existence.  For some reason, we are very insecure about our own existence if we don’t have anything that appears external to define it.  Here is the most critical flaw of the modern idea of existence.  The idea that the self is something different than the world.  We feel like the “I” is something that sits behind the eyes that makes decisions and controls the body.  Nonetheless “I” is a foreigner in a strange world. For example, look at the various linguistic ways we make this distinction.  When we are born we say we are brought into this world.  When we refer to the human body, we say we “have” a body.  As if the body were something of an object that the “I” can posses.  This is an idea that is so totally ingrained into our language and culture that we take it for granted.  It appears in religious rhetoric as the “soul”.  Even in secular society the idea as the self as something separate from the world, greatly informs the worldview of the modern person.

I think ideologies are phenomena that occur when our ego centered sense of self feels insecure and attempts to prove that it exists

Huh?.  

Before I continue, I want to say that these ideas of the self are heavily influenced by a man named Alan Watts.  I have been listening to a lot of his lectures regarding the nature of consciousness and what the modern conception of the self is.  He was an utterly captivating orator and he has introduced me to whole new ways to think about life.  Its amazing to me that some people’s personalities like Watts’ can be so alive in my mind yet they have been dead for decades.  

The Ego

The idea of the self is what we should be focused on here.  What am I?  What are you?  The harder you look into this question, the more vague the self appears to be.  If you strip away all constructed ideas of identity such as gender, race and culture, the self appears to be nothing more than moment to moment experience.  You are nothing more than the continuation of consciousness of an individual human being.  You are not your past.  You have access to this person’s memories and you assume the responsibilities and consequences of their past actions, but you should not be defined by them.  Even your sense of agency and free will as an individual is illusory.  Your moment to moment thoughts you act upon arise seemingly unintentionally out of thin air.  Every thought originates at very rudimentary levels of neurochemistry.  Did you come up with those thoughts?   How could freewill be an actual concept if there is no intentional control of all the brain and body’s functions?  Are YOU responsible for the beating of your heart?  are YOU digesting the food in your gut?  Do you have the freewill not to feel hungry?  Where do you draw the line between “You” and your desires?

The funny thing is when you try to control something that comes naturally, it gets tripped up.  When you draw a line between “you” and the body’s behaviour it becomes an uncomfortable mess.  Just like a microphone held up to it’s own speaker creates a disturbing feedback sound.  For example, if you constantly think about your breathing, it becomes disordered.  Breathing only works properly if you don’t think about it.  In a social situation, If you are constantly reviewing and second guessing what you want to say, you come off as awkward.  People who stringently monitor and try to consciously control their social interactions with people, present themselves as unnatural.  There is some sort of act going on and they don’t appear to be expressing themselves properly.  If they would just let go of the controls and say what comes naturally, their genuine person shines through better.     

The idea of the ego seems to be an illusion created by a pattern in the stream of consciousness.  We have been constantly reminded since birth, that there is a thinker behind our thoughts.  We are unintentionally taught that there is a separate entity of the self that “Thinks our thoughts” and “feels our feelings”.  When those are perfectly obvious to be absurd statements.  Our language and culture has created a rhythm of thought that creates an image of a separate self.  This image is created by our patterned stream of consciousness that goes something like: Thought thought thought THINKER, thought, thought, THINKER.  We constantly acknowledge the presence of a being that thinks our thoughts.  But I am starting to believe that the default human stream of conscious thought does not require the perceived presence of a thinker to function normally.  Altered forms of consciousness achieved through means such as sleep, practices of meditation or psychoactive substances offer windows into a state of being free of an ego.  It shows that a reality with a self-other dichotomy is not the default state of being.    

We know that any pattern when repeated enough, fades into the background and taken for granted.  This happens in everything we sense.  We don’t feel our clothes on our body we wear all day.  We only notice it when we take our clothes off.  We don’t notice how bad our house smells if we live in it all day. We will notice the smell only if we leave the house for a while and come back.  We only notice a difference when the pattern is interrupted.  So in this way, our fundamental first premise of reality is based on the simple and constantly repeated thought pattern of self and other.         

Hey Scott, what the hell does this philosophical bullshit have to do with ideology?

What I’m trying to say is that the “I”, the “self”, the “me” or the “ego” is an illusion plain and simple.  I’m also trying to say that ideological labels such as: Christian, Atheist, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, American, Canadian, Vegan or Feminist are expressions of the ego trying to define it’s existence.  Since our culture is so insistent on the concept of the ego as the thing that is YOU.  We try to find our true existential identities in ideologies and culture.  We think of ideologies as fundamental truths that exist outside of ourselves.  If I use an ideological label such as “I am a child of God”.  On some level, I am saying “my ego exists”.  “I exist because of a relation to the other”.    

I’m not saying that we should now strive to destroy our current egocentric thought pattern paradigm, but we should just begin to acknowledge this as just one of many possible states of existence.  It’s not the default state of humanity, but just one possible way that we can exist.  This way we can take one step back and look at the definitions of ourselves, once thought to be taken for granted.    

Our conformist behaviour inside our culture are also attempts for ego expression.  The universal goal to be “successful” in our culture is one of these cultural ideals taken for granted.  But success is only a relative term in our culture.  You can only be measurably successful in relation to others.

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I want to make a small example of this with a experience I had.  Not too long ago I encountered a man at a friend’s BBQ in Medicine Hat.  He seemed like a nearly middle age guy, recently married and with a very time demanding oil field job   We got to talking about positives and negatives of the cities we both live in. He remarked that he would like Lethbridge as a city if not for “the certain ethnic group that refuses to work for a living and begs for money. Get a job.”   

What is very interesting to me is to compare his own apparent position in the culture and his attitude toward outsiders. I didn't know the man at all, but we had barely been talking for more than 5 minutes and he already made a very negative racist remark about people who haven’t conformed to the racial majority culture.  You really couldn't find a better example of an expression of insecurity in culture.  From what I gathered from our brief meeting, this guy has really bought into the cultural game. And he takes the game very seriously.  This is why he hates those who do not pursue the same cultural goals as he does.  It shows him a possibility that there are meaningful ways of existence that are different than his own.  Maybe he has spent all the best years of his life trying for a state of illusory happiness without substance. He spent his years trying for what culture has told him what he should want instead of trying for what he truly wants.  

I believe that a culture that is hostile to outsiders shows an insecurity in the cultural ideal.  From my experience growing up in a small town, the cultural ideal in Alberta is to find a high paying job in a booming labour industry like the oilpatch.  You are defined in this culture by how much money you can make and how many big toys you can collect.  The actual work involved in the career is very time consuming and labour intensive.  But ultimately the work done doesn't mean all that much to the person doing it.  So you spent two weeks straight, welding pieces of a big-ass pipeline together, great.  What matters is the amount of money made doing all that work.  You did all that work so you could add another vertical foot to your pickup truck. yeah budday.

Those who decide to opt out from the local culture game are hated because of the insecurity of the culture norms.  Granted, my culture is much more lenient towards outsiders than lets say Saudi Arabia, but you get the picture.   

Your Life

I believe that in order to have a healthy and open understanding of the universe, you can’t be attached to any form of limiting ideology.  Ideologies are only stepping stones to higher understandings of the universe.  Take the good ideas from an ideology and move on.  Use them as intellectual scaffolding on which to build better ideas.  If you find a better idea, discard the old one.  Instead of using ideas to create an identity, use them as a blueprint of reality.  That blueprint can help you move around the social, spiritual, scientific and physical world more easily.  

Neo: “I have these memories from my entire life, but… none of them really happened. What does that mean?”

Trinity: “That the Matrix cannot tell you who you are.”

The Matrix, 1999

No one can tell you who you are.  No group of people can tell you who you are.  No amount of old scripture can be the ultimate truth of your universe.  Don’t attach yourself to a culture that wants to turn you into an anonymous consumer.  Don’t give your intellect up to religions that only degrade and dehumanize you.  Don’t wrap yourself in cultural sentimentality because it is comfortable and familiar.  I believe life should be about constantly pursuing new experiences.  I believe it is our mission as apertures of the conscious universe to write what has never been written. To draw what has never been drawn. To invent what has never been conceived of.  Meet new people and form unique relationships with them.  Try not to mold those relationships into pre-determined roles.  Experience new things.  Travel to new and strange places.  Use those experiences to create your own personality. Make that personality unashamedly weird and unique.  Don’t define yourself as a caste that culture has laid down before.  You’re not doing the human enterprise much good by plunking yourself down into the most typically average role .  Don’t take the safe route and buy a mortgage with your perfect green lawn and picket fence like its the 1950s.  Where is the creativity in climbing the corporate ladder to buy the new mercedes and a cookie cutter suburban house?  What kind of interesting story will your life be, if you don’t try to pave a brand new path?  Culture, religion, sentimentality and ideology will only hold you back from the true human experience.

Shedding my ideologies

Its very simple math
Me with kitten=more views

This blog entry is kind of a disclaimer for my previous blog entries and a preview of my next one. This blog was once named “The incoherent ramblings of a Libertarian Atheist”.  Both of these ideological labels I wish to no longer be associated.  I do not wish to identify as a Libertarian any more.  I want to say I am libertarian leaning when I’m asked political questions.  But frankly, I really don’t care about politics anymore.  At least the way politics is force-fed to us by the mainstream media outlets.  When I was passionate about politics, I noticed that I was an unhappy person.  The more I knew about how much nonsense the political world was made of, the more stressed out I became.  I thought I could make a difference by voting in elections and buying into the way political systems worked.  In short, I used to believe it was real.  But that is a discussion for another time.  As a libertarian I’m tired of people assuming I believe certain extreme right-wing dogmas.  So I am disowning myself from the political arena.        

You ruined it for me Rand!

I do not wish to be identified as an atheist anymore.  Only when I am asked, “Do you believe in God?” am I an atheist.  More specifically the Abrahamic, anthropomorphic God.  No other time will “atheist” define me. Because now, “Atheism” comes along with a lot of ideological baggage.  There is a sort of assumption that if you’re an atheist, that you’re also kind of a lefty, and a skeptic to an extreme.  It would be great if Atheism was only the answer to the God debate, but this is unfortunately not the case.

"Atheism Plus" was/is an attempt to make a leftist ideology out of atheism

Now I enter a new chapter of my intellectual life.  This chapter will be defined by nothing other than my attempt to mold ideas of my own.  No doubt my ideas will change over time as I collect and reform better ones from minds much greater than my own.  In fact I want to be a flip-flopper.  I think it shows intellectual honesty.  I want to be as open minded and scientific as I can be, without being constrained by an ideology.  Science only forms rough frameworks of how reality works.  Real science in theory isn’t attached to any theory of the world.  It creates a blueprint that works better than the one that existed before and discards the previous one.  But it is never 100% true.

Religion and ideology however do not act like this.....

To be continued

Now for something totally different

If you are a reader of my blog.  Thank You.  Just one person interested gets me motivated to write more.  If you enjoy the kind of material I cover, you should also check out my friend James' recently started blog.  The difference is, he covers things from a Christian perspective.  Although we differ in our religious worldviews, we tend to share more in common than you may expect an atheist and a Christian to.  

http://eph1-17.blogspot.ca/2013/05/introduction.html

Outsourcing Religion Part 2: Spiritual mysticism without religion

As the mystics of any of the traditions will attest to, the manipulation of the conscious mind can produce effects that would be called mystical experiences.  But these experiences certainly are not exclusive to those who are pious.  Most practices of mysticism involve the manipulation of thought through physical actions and mental concentration in order to achieve blissful states of inner peace.  Most religious practitioners of this kind of mysticism to would attribute these altered states of consciousness to the ethereal realm.  Practices of Buddhist meditation are exercises in achieving states approaching Nirvana.  Sufi dervishes practice rituals of physical asceticism in order to experience closeness to Allah.  The whirling dervishes of the Sufis spin in around in circles attempting to achieve a kind of pre-mature death in order to achieve ecstatic states that they would attribute to a close approximation to God.  Hindu ascetics will starve themselves and disown any worldly possessions and achieve states that we might call “happiness”.

            

Feelings of happiness and ecstasy are attributes of certain periods in our consciousness.  We all have to admit that the thing that we call consciousness is extremely plastic, and can easily change to experience a plethora of alternate realities.  On a daily basis we experience reality in totally different ways which are clearly caused by physical things.   Many of us alter our reality with coffee every morning by making us more alert.  What we consume for our meals have an effect of our mood and how our bodies feel.  Some of us suffer from diseases like Schizophrenia which vastly alter the realities we experience.  Consequently, some of us take pharmaceutical drugs to alter our altered behaviour.  Anti-depressants have a clear effect on the way an individual views the world.  Most of us spend a sizable chunk of the time we are alive in a state called sleep.  It is a state of semi-consciousness where our bodies are at rest but our minds experience something different.  The thing we call “me” drifts in and out of consciousness in a totally hallucinated realm.  Time is often experienced differently as it is very difficult to discern when a dream begins or ends.  Happenings that would seem bizarre in a waking state often seem commonplace in a dream.  Dreams are demonstrably a physical occurrence in the brain, but it doesn't make dreaming any less worthwhile.  Dreams can cause people to have inspirations and epiphanies regarding their physical life.  They can be greatly entertaining and emotionally powerful.  Could this not also be the case with practices of traditional mystical experiences?   The fact that all forms of mysticism are practiced with physical actions shows that these experiences can be achievable without any kind of belief in dogmas or unproven superstitions.  Some can even be experienced without any kind of mental concentration or physical asceticism.  Psychoactive substances such as psilocybin, LSD and DMT have the ability produce incredibly unique experiences comparable to any religious mystical experiences.

Sam Harris is one of the few of the “new atheists” who speak highly of the practices of the eastern religions.  In the book The End of Faith, Harris outlines why concentration of thought on the experience of consciousness, is monumental in achieving truly content states of mind.  He compliments the eastern religions for having the wisdom of these practices.  He suggests the use of these meditative tools for anyone religious or not, wanting to find inner peace and happiness.  He regards mysticism as a rational enterprise but religion is not.

“A kernel of truth lurks at the heart of religion, because spiritual experience, ethical behaviour, and strong communities are essential for human happiness.  And yet our religious traditions are intellectually defunct and politically ruinous. While spiritual experience is clearly a natural propensity of the human mind, we need not believe anything on insufficient evidence to actualize it.”

-Sam Harris-

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Outsourcing Religion Part 1: Sports and Religion

Possibly the most important and essential part of religion is the sense of a community and group commonality it provides.  We are tribal animals by nature, we feel at home and fulfilled when we feel like we are accepted as a part of a group.  Religions have arguably created a sense of community better than any other institution in human history.  But since the emergence of large cities, air travel and mass media, something else is emerging as a form of human community.  The phenomenon of professional sports is a very fascinating institution when studying it as something that resembles religion.  The popularity of professional Sports in the modern world represents a part of primeval human behaviour that also has very striking parallels with religion. 

Not only is it occurring in the modern world but ancient Rome and Greece had spectacles very similar to the modern phenomena.  Rome had its combatant gladiator events(how much similar is that to the popularity of UFC and MMA currently?). In Greece, the Olympics were originally overtly religious competitions between the city states of Greece held in honor of the gods.

If anyone has been a spectator at a pro-sporting event, one will easily recognize the sense of grandeur and awe that it intends to provoke.  A stadium, arena or ballpark filled with thousands of cheering people and intense music and light to excite the senses.  The sense of something important happening is in the air.  This is what is described by famous sociologist Emile Durkheim has collective effervescence.  The perceived form of energy that is felt in large groups of people concentrating on one subject, Durkheim explained, may be an explanation for the emergence of primitive religion.  Of course this phenomenon is not restricted to the realm of pro-sports.  We can easily demonstrate the same effects at rock concerts, music festivals and of course large scale religious events.

 Instead of the sporting events being held in honor of the gods, they are now held in honor of nationality.  Pro sports events held in Canada and the US begin with the national anthems of one or both of the nations.  The modern incarnation of the Olympics is now a nationalistic and political event.  The annual sporting events such as The Superbowl, World Series or even Wrestlemania are treated similarly to religious holidays.  The Superbowl is an American television occasion to get together with friends and family and imbibe on American culture.  Those who attend the events in person could be considered to be on a pilgrimage.  Wouldn’t every football fan like to attend at least one Superbowl?  Much like every Muslim would like to participate in the Hajj to Mecca at least once.

As someone who follows NHL hockey closely, I have noticed many familiar religious behaviors in the teams I cheer for.  The Calgary Flames are my favorite team. I am quite interested in the way they alter their uniforms and logos over the years.  They were originally formed in the mid-1970s as the red, gold and white coloured Atlanta Flames and kept the same team colours and name of the team when the franchise was moved to Calgary.  The team found success in the late 80s by winning the sacred trophy, the Stanley Cup.  As the 1990’s progressed, the team began altering its look slightly by adding black as one of the official colours and changing the look of the uniforms.   But they have not found much success since the late 80s.  A very interesting thing to notice about the latest trend in their uniforms is the feeling of nostalgia.  They are now moving to a look that represents the classic image of their glory years of the 80s.  A very similar thing is occurring in a good number of other NHL teams. 

 Not only is this a hockey phenomenon but a trend in many pro sports.  The Toronto Blue Jays have changed their uniforms to resemble the look of when the team used to win championships and make the post season. 

I feel this seems to parallel religion because in many traditions, there is a feeling of wanting to return to the glory days of the past.  In many forms of Christianity, there is a yearning for kingdom of heaven to return to earth.  Jews wait for the return of Zion and the reconstruction of Solomon’s Temple.  Many Islamist organizations would like to resurrect a political caliphate resembling the great caliphates of the past. 

Pro-sport also has its saintly figures, demigods and hero worship.  Couldn’t Jackie Robinson be considered baseball’s Martin Luther?  Could Don Cherry be hockey’s Pat Robertson?  Doesn’t O.J Simpson resemble football’s Osama Bin Laden?  The uniform numbers of revered players are “retired” by teams and even leagues.  The retired numbers of heroes and championships years hang in the stadiums much like saints adorn the stained glass windows of cathedrals.  Flags of Islamic countries wear the favored colour green of the prophet Muhammad similarly as the citizens of Rider Nation, Saskatchewan.  Jesus fish sit on bumpers of cars, where Miami Dolphins stickers sit on others.  Crosses hang from necks of some, while Manchester United scarves wrap others.  Yamakahs sit on the heads of many New Yorkers, while Yankees caps cover others.                                      

Sports can function as a better outlet for our tribal selves than religion can for a variety of reasons.  The first reason is that allegiance to sports teams are chosen more arbitrarily than religions.  People choose their favorite teams for a variety of seemingly petty reasons like the uniforms or logos.  At the moment, the NHL team I currently follow is the Pittsburgh Penguins.  Not for any other reason than my favorite player, Jarome Iginla is currently playing for them.  Because of the arbitrarily chosen nature of some teams, there is less of a reason to invest an overly amount of money or emotion into something that I can’t afford to at the time being.  Unlike religion, Sports can unite a city in an extremely short amount of time.  A few weeks of a playoff run and the entire city is in a friendly, celebratory mood.  Being nicer to the people who live together in an area is extremely important for the health of the community.  No matter someone’s social status, people unite around sports teams with an equal sense of community.  Even fans of rival teams will acknowledge the shared commonality for the love of the sport.  For example if a Flames fan and an Oilers fan met each other in Europe, they would have much more in common to be friendly about than differences to dislike each other.   Different religions can isolate people in a foreign community and it is very hard to change religions just to fit in to the community.        

    

I think sports are perfect combination of physical activity as an expression of animal nature and team spirit as an expression of the tribalism of our ancestors.  We no longer have to be physically fit to survive but we still need to practice physical fitness to relieve stress and be happier people.  Games like sports also allow us to fulfill reward centers in our brain when we achieve goals and objectives that are artificially set up.  If life is a game, then the goals and objectives are extremely difficult to discern and are very convoluted.  We cannot tell if the big decisions in our life were the correct ones for quite some time or even ever.  Games simplify objectives to a point where we can tell if our decisions were the correct ones in a much shorter time.  Just by watching a sport, we can bask in the reflected glory of the achievements of the players of our favorite teams achieving easy to understand objectives.  

In many ways religion is a game.  It turns life into a much easier to understand place.  The decisions religious people make are much more guided by a framework of laid out objectives.  Knowing what the game designer intended for you, makes the game of life much easier to understand and makes the rewards much more immediately tangible.  The Ten Commandments are a perfect example of a religion laying out the rules of the game to follow.  Follow these simple rules and you will beat the game.  The reward for beating the game being, you get to live in Heaven after you die.  If you fail at following the rules of the game, you lose and go to Hell.  In Buddhism, the objective of the game is to end your suffering, level up and become a Buddha.  But if you don’t beat the game before you die, don’t worry.  You have an infinite amount of lives to try again.

If I look at religion as a kind of game, my atheist quest to outsource religion is starting to shape into how I can successfully achieve goals and objectives in this very complicated life, without having to simplify life into the easier and simpler game of religion.  So what are those goals and objectives?  American Psychologist Abraham Maslow outlined a list of human needs in a hierarchical system of five levels.  The lowest level of needs are the most immediate and most vital to physical survival such as water, food and air.  These needs are where the objectives are clear and rewards are most immediate.  The highest levels of needs are where the objectives are most uncertain and the rewards are undefined and much less immediate.  According to this theory, an individual cannot begin to pursue the next level of needs until all the needs of the current level are being met.  As we live in a very wealthy and complex time in human history, we live at a higher level of our needs being met.  I don’t live in a place where my basic survival needs are much of a concern of mine.  The goals and objectives in my life are uncertain and not as clear as a man living 200,000 years ago, where the game of life had very simple objectives and immediate rewards.  My needs and those of my peers have to do with satisfying the faculties of love, belonging, self-esteem, self-actualization and creativity.  These objectives are extremely complicated and are satisficed differently for every individual.  

           

Many people become overly absorbed into the smaller games in life.  There are countless situations where people get stuck in addictive patterns such as online video games, gambling, sex, drugs, alcohol, eating and body building.  All of these can be considered examples of games with easy to define goals and immediate rewards.  As society gets more and more complex, people can get lost easier on the struggle for life fulfillment.  People get stuck in smaller life games because they may be unsure and insecure of their goals for the more difficult and complex life games. 

A possible explanation for religious fundamentalism is the objectives of the larger game of life for people in those circumstances are very uncertain.  Religious fundamentalism gives frustrated, uncertain and insecure people a simple set of rules to follow in life.  Take the religious violence that is currently being expressed through Islam for example.  These people are living in situations where war and ideology is compromising their ability to fulfill many of their needs.  The strict religious rules of Islamism, is a way to simplify the goals and rewards of their lives.  If the end goal is to reach paradise, and the Quran can be used to justify being a martyr for the faith, suicide bombing could be the answer for the naïve and destitute.   

The religiosity of prisons could also be a very interesting case study.  The future for inmates spending extended periods of their lives in prisons is incredibly dreary.  They know what the potential for a good life outside the walls are, but they know they would never be able to achieve it.  They live in a relatively simple framework of life already in a penitentiary, what better way than religion to simplify the game of life?
   

Secular society has also developed other ways of creating life simplifying games.  Capitalism and “The American Dream” is another example of how goals in life can be simplified.  If we can quantify who is winning at the game of life with a number, it makes the objectives much simpler.  Bill Gates is a successful player at the game of life and a poor person is a loser.  The success of an American life is measured by how much wealth it creates for the economy.   

Even in pro sports, games can be taken more seriously than they should be.  Football hooliganism was a serious problem in England in the 1980s.  The consequences of a failing British economy during that time led to young men feeling frustrated and unfulfilled.  These young male fans began to live vicariously through their Football club and violence between rival fans was a common occurrence before, during and after matches.  The 2011 Stanley Cup riot in Vancouver is also an unfortunate consequence of the combination of large crowds, disappointment and drunken young men.