Why new religions find it difficult to evolve?

I feel, this time, I have a more introspective topic to write about – about the evolution of new religions – continuing with my previous post on “Religions and Institutionalization“.

As usual it started with a ‘controversial’ discussion on religion and God, and as we sifted through topics like Scientology and Tom Cruise an interesting question emerged – why we do not have any new religions emerging recently? This is despite having a much smaller world – interconnected in many ways, including the Internet and its latest social networking platforms, when propagation of messages can go viral!

A quick survey on the Web did not reveal much, (though it revealed interesting religions as in this link) and an extensive search would be required considering this list. Though  many of them are referred as ‘religions’ and some were found as late as in 1980’s they do not seem to have any significant following. But at the same time, we cannot underestimate them, because today’s popular religions also would have started in the same way, but took atleast 3-4 centuries to spread and establish themselves across the world. So, we never know! despite the connected world we live in.

In my analysis, I believe that there are two strong characteristics that are exhibited by today’s popular religions, which will stop or delay the arise of any new religion – one is continuous propagation (and propagation through all new media) by identified leaders – and the other is the embedding of the sense of community among their members, which is done by regular and mandatory gathering of their members in a place for worship. The latter ideal ensures that people don’t get distanced too much from their current religious practice and instills a sense of ‘belonging’ and probably ‘pressure’ on who are not inclined.

Disclaimer: I don’t intend to start a new religion! and I am not an atheist!

Religions and Institutionalization

We had an interesting discussion on “Institutions” in one of my classes where I was explaining about the quality processes that has to be inculcated in an organization, and work towards insitutionalization of the same to reap the benefits. Well this blog is not about it, but about religions.

Religions serve as an excellent example of institutionalization – institutionalization of beliefs on God, and the processes represent the rituals and customs carried out by the followers of that religion.  Now the question: Does institutionalization really benefit here?  My answer: NO.

When we institutionalize the beliefs on god, and evolve them as religions, it becomes one more identity for a person. However the purpose of any religion is to lead its followers to the spiritual path, and largely that requires an individual’s own effort and will.

A religion can provide an identity, impose conditions of behavior, that might lead to the spiritual path, but can’t guarantee it. Also here we are dealing with abstractness and results or effects would not be tangible always to measure. A goodness of a person has to be judged over his/her lifetime giving appropriate weight to their environments and circumstances – well that’s what GOD  would supposedly do in one’s after life, according to many religions.

In quality processes, there is a scope for review and continuous improvement, which can lead to new and different processes over time. However today’s religions does not allow to redefine or re-orient or even re-look at the changing needs and hence constrain you to the same beliefs that were set long ago, often justified by saying that all of the processes (rituals, beliefs, and customs)  followed in a religion relate to “core values” and hence are sacrosanct and there’s only one choice – either you subscribe to it or get left out. 

Disclaimer: I am NOT an atheist.

Emotions and Passion – Part III

This is in continuation of Emotions and Intelligence – Part I and Emotions and Communications – Part II.

Though Passion is treated as a kind of emotion, it is better to understand them in greater detail. Passion can lead to strong positive or negative emotions. I have seen people with passion both succeed and fail in their lives. Of course it all depends on what you are passionate about. However, here I would like to take a generalized and abstract view of passion, to understand them better.

Dictionaries define both emotion and passion as a strong feeling, but one needs to differentiate between instantaneous emotions and passion. A passion is basically an interest on a subject that develops over time and is consciously fed and processed by the higher layers of our mind. A passion usually is a positive thought or action, while instantaneous emotions can be a response to a perceived negative thought or action on those emotions.

To understand this important concept, we need to know about the human cognitive model. The human cognitive model consists of layers that processes the inputs (obtained through perceptions) to produce outputs. The lower layers react emotionally without processing much of the information; in other words they are the instantaneous responses to the events received by the perceptual organs. The higher layers however processes a given input with more information/knowledge and hence give a measured/matured response. The model also implies that the responses elicited from the higher layers take time to give an output.

Instantaneous Emotions such as anger are therefore from the lower layer of the cognition, while passions are from the higher layers. That’s why a negative emotion such as anger or sorrow when not exhibited immediately, would get through the higher layers, and if consciously or sub-consciously fed, will lead to destruction or depression.

A well-developed passion can easily cause strong emotions. Often people end up with strong negative emotions or turn violent when actions or messages of others affect their passions. People, particularly politicians use this as a tool to stoke other’s passions in order to make them commit for a cause or for their own benefit.

This does not mean that one should not have any passion – if that is the case, then life will not only be boring, but also achieving some thing of value would be extremely difficult. Without passion, you just cannot have 100% commitment, and without which you cannot achieve any thing significant enough. Hence one need to be careful and choosy about what they are being passionate about. But that is easily said, as passions are a reflection of one’s personality, environment and influences that he might have undergone in his life.

Emotions and Communications – Part II

This is in continuation of Emotions and Intelligence – Part I. But in this, I would like to focus on the relation of emotions with the important component of our lives – Communication.

The main intent behind a communication is not only to pass on a message, but also to pass on emotions. I believe this applies not only to the human beings, but to all the species in this world. One can pass on almost any sort of emotion to the listener or the other party through a communication. According to me, the coupling of the emotion with communication is effectively utilized by many great political leaders.

Typically, many politicians or political leaders use this initially to stir up one’s emotions, in their communication. Basically, they do this, by whipping up one’s passions – a kind of emotion (more about this later) and most of the time it would be aimed to make your mind feel heavy – meaning – negative emotions, so that they can gear you up to obtain an objective (which may be of their interest!).

One should not assume that communication happens only through speech. There are a variety of ways through which humans can communicate – movies, books, and other subtle means such as painting, sculptures, gestures and so on. In fact, I believe that the number of ways in which a human being can communicate with his fellow beings is what that differentiates him from other species on this earth.

Most of us like stories and would like to watch movies or read books. What makes us interested in them is their ability to put us through various emotions, easily and effortlessly, though the other things such as the lessons from the story are just a take away. And, of course there is a lot of variety in movies and books – to cater to the various emotional needs of an individual, such as humour, horror, drama etc…

However there is a difference in hearing stories and watching movies, as in the former, our mind has to do the visualizations and hence needs to be creative, at the same time possess the knowledge for doing so, thereby imposing some cognitive load and simulating our thought processes (A bad thing for effective emotional communication!), while in the latter case of watching movies, the visualization with the emotions are spoon-fed to us and we directly immerse in those emotions. Hence, movies are more powerful, in the sense, that they can ignite even a lazy mind, and/or a mind that might not possess the required knowledge to create the visualization on its own!.

People often speak of gender, when it comes to emotions and communications. The difference I feel that lies in the emotions between a man and woman, is that women may get entangled in emotions and act and react with those emotions in many number of instances than men – I feel the count is what makes the difference. However, this may not be applicable to every man and woman on this earth!.

Update: Emotions and Passion – Part III 

The Biggest Abstractions

Abstractions are the models of either real or notional entities. Abstractions, many claim that it leads to simplicity. Though all of us may not like all of the abstractions that we may encounter, in our lives, generally speaking, we as a human society have always cherished the abstractions. If you do not believe this check the list below. Abstractions though helped us to overcome complications had also limited our thoughts, behaviors and actions. Assume that if one abstraction has been accepted by everybody – which is a model of something, then we are limited by the preciseness of the model, and for that sake everyone knows that a model is a model and not the exact entity itself. Well, now let’s start with the biggest abstractions that we generally encounter.

The first biggest abstraction is God – who has created this Universe in the first place. Though this may be arguable for some, the next biggest abstraction is – Time – which has been accepted by everybody!. Humans have modeled a clock, a calendar to model this important phenomenon!. I also consider time to be the real taskmaster that drives all of us. The next biggest abstraction, that I could think of is Numbers, that lead to Arithmetic, and of course the entire subject of Mathematics. Adding to this, without experiments, even Science, is only of abstractions. The entire concept of Money and Finance is also an abstraction, which had been evolved out of the abstraction of Numbers!. So, we live in a world embedded with multiple layers of abstractions!.

Ofcourse the list can go on and on, with simple abstractions to complex abstractions built on multiple layers, but I would like to stop here, and wonder about the most basic and elementary abstractions, which may throw some insights and spark new thoughts, and after all the world will call you as an ‘intellect’, if you work with higher and higher layers of abstractions!

Intelligence Defined!

Intelligence can be defined as realization; like the realization of:

Learning is different from reading
Listening is different from hearing
Observing is different from seeing
Thinking is different from dreaming
Talking is different from speaking
Relaxing is different from sleeping
Acting is different from reacting
Narrating is different from telling

(This has to be read from the AI Perspective!)

Theory of Relativity in Real Life

Last month, I was helping a friend and two friends of him, to find a single BHK (Bed room, Hall and Kitchen) house in the costlier area of BTM Layout in Bangalore. We took the help of the brokers / middlemen to help us to find out a house in that area within our budget of around 6K per month.

The broker took us to a house that was spacious enough (around 300+ Sq.ft) to be called as a single BHK house. The rent was acceptable around Rs. 5500/- per month and all of us liked it. But then we came to know that it would take another 3-4 days to get the possession of the house, and my friends were so desperate that they required a house immediately.

The broker took us to another house, that was just ready and available for immediate occupation. It was quite smaller (around 200+ Sq.ft) than the previous one, but the rent was around Rs.5000/- per month. Two of three friends were not satisfied with the house and said that they wanted to check some other house.

The broker again took us to another house, that was also available for immediate occupation but was really and relatively smaller (around 100+ Sq.ft!!! In fact, one has to see it to believe that it is 1 BHK house ) and the rent was around Rs. 5700/- per month.

Left with these options, now my friends, immediately wanted to take the second house for rent (around 200+ Sq.ft and a rent of Rs.5000/-) and did it immediately!. This explained me the theory of relativity in real life!, because, if the third house shown by the broker was not relatively smaller and/or costlier, there is no chance, that they would have picked up the second house. Perhaps that broker too would have had an understanding of this psychology!!

Reasoning behind a Superstition

A few days ago, I was having lunch at one of the tables in our office canteen. A colleague who was sitting in the other table asked me for the salt box (We usually have a pepper box and a salt box at each of the tables in our canteen, and the salt box was not there in my colleague’s table.) I took the salt box from my table and gave it to him. He refused to get it in his hand; instead he asked to place it in the table. He said that it’s a custom or rather a belief, not to handover salt to some one as it will lead to a fight!.

I just placed the salt in his table and was thinking about the reasoning behind the superstition. Though it’s the first time I was hearing such a superstition, I was just wondering about what would be the reasoning behind it, and here’s what I have guessed about.

It’s a well known fact that a high Sodium or salt intake would increase the blood pressure and if you suffer from high blood pressure, you are bound to get irritated at the drop of a hat and that might end up in fight!.

Adding to the fact that this colleague was from Andhra Pradesh, where the food usually is very spicy and salty, when compared with the cusines from rest of India, adding more salt, would increase the Blood pressure and therefore would increase the probabilty of picking up a fight!

So, that should be the reasoning; but people circumvent in their own ways, as my colleague asked me to place it in the table instead of giving it in his hand.