Social Matter

Until the last few centuries, religion, and particularly shared religion, was seen as critical to the maintenance of civilized society. Bringing up the mystical element that pervades religion tends to turn off the ability of secular readers to think about it, so this short essay will stick towards the strictly secular benefits of religion.

The first advantage of most religions is that they are easy to understand and based in symbolism and ritual. This makes them accessible to people who are not literate, or who are literate but only in the basic sense of the term. All religions provide some sort of moral code for people to adhere to that don’t require the comprehension of complicated legal or philosophical theories. Because most people have trouble understanding abstractions, the clear shared rule-set for acceptable behavior, trained into people through repetition, music, ritual, art, and storytelling increases the chance that they will actually abide by those rules.

This, in turn, makes it easier for sovereigns to write laws that they can expect will be reinforced by the culture at large. Other cultural works can be built around references to the religion that lies at its core. The plays of Shakespeare, for example, although not straight out from the Bible, are suffused with Christian and pagan themes. What we consider high Western culture is composed of a mesh of references woven together through time, reinforcing the connections, influences, alliances, wars,  and other changes that have occurred over thousands of years.

Art that is not continuous with this tradition tends to confuse and disconnect the people who experience it, discouraging the cooperation that otherwise can be facilitated by a common cultural framework that can be referenced. It doesn’t help people understand who they are, what the expectations of society are, what rules they need to follow, and what responsibilities they have to carry.

Without a common religion, when people meet together, the distance between their minds if heightened. Because there is so much diversity in human moral codes, when you’re unfamiliar with the religion and cultural background of someone else, it takes more time and effort to bridge the gap. It’s not a controversial point to state that people with different religions have different attitudes towards work, romance, and communication. The less that is shared on that, the more time and resources that need to be dedicated towards bridging that gap, if it can even be bridged.

Absolute cultural uniformity is neither possible nor desirable, but it is cultural polarity that creates unique advantages for different cultures. We know that Italian leather shoes are some of the best in the world. English tailors from Savile Row sew the best suits. The French tend to make better wines. Spaniards know how to enjoy life better than most of us. Silicon Valley tends to be at the forefront of developments in software.

Religious difference, not forced blending, tends to accentuate those differences and promote the development of those polar specialties. A high degree of trust within those cultures also encourages the development of specialized arts and sciences, which requires a predictable, stable society that is moving towards a common goal. The political forces of democracy, forced secularization, and egalitarianism actively impede this process of development. It is also not really possible to synthetically force this process, either, as it’s the result of a complicated culture that develops over centuries within a particular place among a particular people.

When different groups are forced together, they try to shave off the distinct parts of their own cultures, to make it possible to cooperate with the foreigners among them. This prevents the establishment of distinct identities, and the lack of distinct identity prevents the development of specialization. For various reasons, the developed world has decided to take a queue from the diversity policies of Tito for the last several centuries. Tito’s boldest hopes for a unified Yugoslavia did not work out.

There is no sane reason for us to continue down the path that Tito explored to its mediocre and violent end.