Religion was the original self-help

[Jirh]

The governing laws of a society don't have to be religious or spiritual. It just so happens that they mostly are in stage Blue societies.

In this case, religion is a placeholder for the laws, not the source.

[Leo Gura]

7 minutes ago, Jirh said:

The governing laws of a society don't have to be religious or spiritual. It just so happens that they mostly are in stage Blue societies.

In this case, religion is a placeholder for the laws, not the source.

You are acting like it is arbitrary, but it's not arbitrary. Laws are spiritual because humans are spiritual.

You can have secular laws, but humans are spiritual and demand spiritual things. If you give them secular laws they will not be satisfied and ask for your head on a platter because you ignored their spiritual needs.

Edited 13 hours ago by Leo Gura

[Jirh]

12 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

You are acting like it is arbitrary, but it's not arbitrary. Laws are spiritual because humans are spiritual.

You can have secular laws, but humans are spiritual and demand spiritual things. If you give them secular laws they will not be satisfied and ask for your head on a platter because you ignored their spiritual needs.

Yes, absolutely. Spirituality is necessary and encoded in our brains. No arguments there.

But my point still stands that religion is a placeholder for the laws, not the source.

Then, self-help and religion are both placeholders of personal laws. Not chronically related, but different, almost opposite placeholders.

[Leo Gura]

@Jirh I wouldn't call them placeholders, they are natural stages of development.

[Jirh]

Maybe not placeholders, but more like high-jackers of the stages.

The stage is the underlying human capacity. The need for order, meaning, morality, transcendence, etc...

Religion is a parasitic interpretation of that capacity. It doesn't generate stage Blue. Just like self-help doesn't generate stage Orange.

Edited 13 hours ago by Jirh

[Joseph Maynor]

It depends on how you organize the stages of development.  

[Leo Gura]

20 minutes ago, Jirh said:

Religion is a parasitic

That's a narrow way of looking at it.

Religion was a great innovation in its day. It wasn't just a parasite, it offered unique things that didn't exist previous and had a variety of beneficial impacts on humanity. Of course, it causes harm too. Today it is largely outdated, but again, only for those of us in highly developed parts of the world.

Most people in the world today are still not developed enough to outgrow religion. If people were developed enough to outgrow it, religion would barely exist.

Edited 12 hours ago by Leo Gura

[Basman]

I could never subscribe to a religion myself but I could derive wisedom from it if nothing else. What's interesting about the bible is that you can see a lot of the ideas that have historically run western culture written out in plain text. 

[AION]

Religion is not self help, because self authoring hasn´t come online at SD blue. Self authoring comes online at SD orange for the first time. The function of religion (SD blue) is to create a container for behavior, discipline and a community. Someone has succesfully shifted from red to blue when the person goes from I centric to we centric so somebody who just cares about himself starts caring about the group he belongs to which can be islam-christianity or whatever. The first time self authoring comes online is at SD orange. People before that just don´t care. They are on some other shit.

Edited 2 hours ago by AION

[Leo Gura]

Self-help is not just Orange self-help.

Christianity and Islam teaches many self-help-like lessons. Of course it is not Orange in flavor. Although even Christian prosperty gospel exists for the Orange-minded Christians.

Edited 2 hours ago by Leo Gura

[AION]

There are some religious people who read self help books but those are people who are further in their development and are creeping todays SD orange.