Pragmatists Guide to Crafting Religion Review - Chapter 3A digressions

[multi-voice-cast audio available at the bottom

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Orthodox Speciation

In biology, speciation can occur through geographic isolation (one part of the species gets stuck on an island) or behavioral isolation (the mating dance of one branch of the species changes slightly).

The Collinses claim that a successful ultra-hard culture will prevent bleed by making their members so cringe to outsiders that outsiders won’t associate with them, which is like behavioral isolation for cultures. Fair enough.

when a group of individuals from an extremely hard culture migrates to a new region, little differences in how they practice their cultivar begin to evolve through random cultural mutation. Usually, these differences would not distinguish the cultivar, but in the case of a hard culture, they can quickly produce changes akin to behavioral isolation.

So very hard cultures should be spawning off a lot of new offshoots. Combining this with their idea that “Hard cultures are almost always centered around young religious traditions” (I believe this is later said to be because all cultures tend to become corrupted and weak/soft/easy over time) gives a fascinating conjecture:

For this reason, you will almost always see a flurry of Orthodox Speciation in the first few generations of every major religious movement. Often, these new offshoots die out, like the Gnostic Christians. Occasionally, the splits remain permanent, as with the Sunni-Shia divide. This is why you almost always see much faster speciation early in a religious movement's history as opposed to later

I think Emo Phillips would approve.

We’re again given a teaser as to the Index that will be revealed later. The section ends with this mysterious line.

The Index was designed to prevent this—to allow hard-culture-like factions to become different without losing the ability to interact and reintegrate.

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Cultural Ecosystems

Some cultures adopt specialized roles within the broader landscape and only die when their ecological niches disappear. Shaker culture, for example, specialized in running orphanages.

This idea of many different cultures working together within a society comes up many times in this book. It is a beautiful idea, and I love it. And honestly, I think it’s true. We are not all interchangeable. We’re diverse and, like a D&D party, we need a wide variety of classes/cultures to specialize in all the challenges the DM/world throws at us. Many specialized parts working together accomplish so much more, and in a far more aesthetically pleasing way!

Our own culture/religion will never be able to run an entire society, nor should that ever be the goal. We’re here to create a fulfilling existence for ourselves and people like us. Specializing in what we’re good at and slotting into the rest of the greater social order to help make a growing, harmonious humanity is the ideal. And should be the ideal for every culture/religion, IMO.

a single culture is unlikely to produce the broad range of skills a thriving society needs: A culture that enables effective, inner-city lawyers to feel content with their lifestyles won’t simultaneously be optimized around imparting deep satisfaction to rural farmers.

That’s less fun than my D&D example, but a lot more concrete. Much like different cultures, the world needs both. :)

A couple more examples:

The extent to which cultural specialization produces adherents who thrive in specific fields can persistently be seen in long-tail distributions. Consider how Catholic trust in systems and bureaucracies correlates with heavy Catholic representation in the United States Supreme Court […] Consider also how the Jewish predilection for academic systems correlates with Jewish luminaries being represented among Nobel prize winners

And finally, they set a very ambitious goal for themselves!

Our goal with this book is to, for the first time, intentionally design an opt-in, diverse, multiphase ecosystem that can govern the interaction of multiple specialized cultures, which will serve society through their diversity of viewpoints, skill sets, and talents.

That’s gonna be hard, but one of the best things about humans is that we can do hard things! Not every time, but plenty enough. I hope this works, I am rooting for them, and it sounds like this sort of thing would be very valuable for whatever I’m trying to do here, too.

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A Note on Generalities

It is impossible to contrast how Jewish and Catholic cultures affect their adherents on a macro scale without making generalities about Jews and Catholics—and people often find any generalization offensive.
When we say something like: “Some Jewish cultivars specialize in urban, communal living and the production of highly trained professionals,” we do not mean that all Jews living within that faction of Jewish culture live that way. Rather, we are trying to highlight how a cultivar produces specific outcomes at a rate higher than other contemporary cultures.

As a rationalist I, of course, am already giving them the benefit of high-decoupling charity. But out of respect for their hesitancy to be misinterpreted, I’m reproducing their disclaimer about generalities here (albeit highly abridged).

Ironically, the risk to us from making these kinds of generalizations does not come from the cultures we are generalizing, as most are hard cultures, and very few hard cultures care about generalizations. Hard cultures are typically quite aware that they produce differential outcomes and are distinct from the rest of society—that’s kind of the point.

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If We Descended From Monkeys, Why Are There Still Catholics?

In the extended attack on soft cultures, the Collinses have to contend with the fact that the modern Catholic church is a pretty darn soft culture and yet has been around for a long time without collapsing. Their explanation is pretty cool. It’s due to their nourishing of various religious sub-orders.

[It] cultivates small-but-strict religious orders and slots individuals sharpened within them into senior roles within its central bureaucracy. […]the Church must constantly allow new ones to be created, as any order that becomes sufficiently old, large, and wealthy will begin to face the same problems all soft cultures do

They throw some negative affect on this cool adaptation though.

This practice is analogous to taking stem cells from a fetus and re-injecting them into an aging individual’s spine

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Appealing amenities to ensure high birth rates and reduce bleed

Some things cultural groups/religions often do for folks:
(in italics rather than block quotes because I did a lot of abridging)

Relationship Catalysts: systematized dating markets or simply assign partners
Relationship Norms: especially helpful to those who like to live life on default settings (and would therefore find negotiating every point of a social contract to be uniquely stressful).
Status Mechanisms: clear paths for advancement
Social Safety Net: [sometimes including] free food, medical services, and even child care.
Psychological Support and Self-Narrative Writing
Protection from Danger: shield adherents from major hazards, such as alcohol and gambling
Unique Reputations: specialized social functions or reputations that offer advantages in job markets
Unique Specializations

Aella has written before about how there are no norms for poly relationships, and how comparatively easy mono folks have it by having an entire script and social model laid out. I’d love to have a complete Poly Relationship Norms culture.

I note they didn’t include several things that many religions provide:
-Art and aesthetics, both as an experience and as an outlet for such energies
-Transcendent or psychedelic experience, both as guides for proper use and integration, and as direct providers
-Spiritual connection to vaster things
-Conflict resolution, primarily between members

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Snapewives?

80% of this post is above the paywall. Beneath the break is a fascinating but short bit about the phenomenon of Snapewives and the relation to ancient pagan practices, and then a couple small miscellaneous pulls.