Why do Intelligent People still Believe in Religion? Part 36: The Social Brain | GinaConspiracy
The social brain Hey folks, Its been quite a while since I made this series, and they abruptly ended The reason being that I'm working very slowly to compile a book from this series, that may be completed in a year
What still needs doing is arranging the video scripts into a way that they fit, and then converting them from blog format to book format, as my blogging style makes for horrible reading, finding the last 1/4th of site sourcing, and writing the last 2 chapters of material The 3/4th of site sourcing I have took nearly 2 months of unemployment to compile, and I've found that after being corrected by the viewers, I've been 95-99% accurate on here Mind you if you hadn't corrected me it would have been more like 80% so I thank you as viewers I sat down to write this section from the chapter “The social ape” which is this section followed by my videos on acceptance and agreement The information was so important, I figured I needed to turn it into a video
Unless I get another inspiration for the book that is so important the the information needs to be free, this will probably be the last in the series unless I have new inspiration after the book is released Thanks for the support and I hope you all have gotten something out of this The social brain The word sheep, is tossed around constantly toward the religious as a derogatory term Many are just shocked that these people don't wake up and think for themselves Many of them almost seem the have a golden age syndrome as if at one point, free thinkers were the majority because the people remembered throughout history were
No one remembers the followers, its the leaders that make up the history books Sadly I hate to burst your bubble, but there never was a golden age of free thinking If anything, now is the beginning of that golden age, with the internet spreading new ideas, and allowing people for the first time to see ideas debated and new thought processes displayed Prior to that the majority was sheep and conformity was good It was the outliers, many times caused by social changes, alternative experiences or psychological disorders that gave them a completely different perspective than their peers, who went off the grid of social norms to create something new and most of the times were not appreciated until after they died
Many times they also had this same golden age syndrome about a time in the past where people thought critically and free, an example was that Darwin would cry because he thought he would never be able to contribute as much to science as his predecessors did Calling people sheep is kind of pointless as there is a much better word for people who go along with the crowd That is word human Humanity is best known for achievements of individuals who are part of the species Homo sapiens but that does not define humans Urban anthropologists have done studies where they would eavesdrop or people's conversations in public places
Their findings were quite surprising It turns out that around 2/3rds of the communication people had was gossip and only 1/3rd was to convey non-social information This leads anthropologists to speculate that human's evolution of speech and reasoning was not because there was pressure to become smarter and more reasoned, they evolved mostly to ensure a person's place in the social order An ape who can stay at the top of the pecking order, or maintain social stability in the hierarchy does fine, until he or she leaves for a bit to get food If something happens while the ape away like a fight occurred, or the someone got special favor by the beta male creating a different political mood, that ape that left is in the dark about the situation
That incident never happened to the ape that left and if that ape is now unaware of the new tribal political system, that ape can make serious faux pas, or get blindsided by new developments causing the ape to lose ranking in the tribe reducing their status and more importantly their chances of passing on genes The ability to pass on all of the news of the tribe both gained you social status, and it ensured that this shared information would be returned to you so you would know all about the inner tribal politics and not get blindsided We even show natural reward pathways when we hear some new juicy gossip about someone, especially involving schadenfreud about someone we dislike The human brain did not evolve to think deep thoughts, study reality and invent new machines, it evolved to gossip and fight for power in the social structure to ensure one's genes would be passed on These wonderful things about humanity were just side effects
This is why it took a million years for some basic stone tools to change, and a certain ice age drought ridden genetic bottleneck group of homo in east Africa happened to take their genes for social dominance and select the ones with traits that could be creative and think ahead and store of for worse times Saying we are animals is one thing but trying to grasp just how animal we still and how it relates to us especially who is much more than an animals is something that's still hard for many of us to grasp Our human frontal cortex is powerful and amazing, but it still has to compete with our mammalian and reptilian emotional brains Which brains are most exercised determines which part will have the most dominance Because of this bottleneck we began slowly evolving with the technology we thought up, but social interactions and belonging were still hard wired into us
An large group going in one direction was better than everyone doing their own thing when it came to war or large projects A divided group was easy pickings, and people fighting each other over what to do made it even easier for the enemy As we loved hearing stories about each other, after evolving creativity we began to enjoy hearing stories about things happening that were magical, which of course in their mind was the same as reality and a great way to explain it Their stories became legends, and their history, science and morality It caused bonding which kept them safe
Over time these stories began to be used to control people as the populations of tribes got larger, and as people were too busy to take the time to question and experiment nearly all of them believed it, because everyone else believed it On occasion that one oddball would come up with an idea that seemed pointless and a waste of time until a generation later they began to realize that the person was really on to something After enough time to study the past we began to idealize and memorialize these weirdos that didn't conform, and making us aspire to be the change we wished to see in the world But even now we are for the most part sheep, no matter how much we like to fight it The feeling of agreement and acceptance still is psychologically healthy for us
Many join alternative lifestyles, religions or political ideologies, and will ridicule the norm along with their fellow like minded people To deny our nature leads to us going to the extreme where we don't follow anyone, nothing gets done and we suffer isolation and inevitably depression just in name of being non-conformist I did this for many years because everyone else was just a stupid sheep who wouldn't wake up and see the truth of reality, they only cared about fun and gossip, what was wrong with them Nothing was wrong with them, they were being the animals they evolved to be I was the strange one and the outlier not allowing any of my animal nature any freedom causing me many psychological stresses
Until now change could only occur when the last generation died even in science Many new ideas involving quantum physics were not even considered until the new generation took over With modern medicine and the potential for life extension, we no longer have this option as the baby boomers are looking to be the most dominate voting population for at least the next 20 years, and even longer if our medicine progresses as much as we hope I've discussed how much CFI and having a community has helped me get over my angry atheism, and many people have commented from atheists saying, well you are just making atheism into a religion because now you have a church You know someone else who wore clothes? Nazis
Why are you using clothes, you are just a nazi One of the driving forces of religion was the community To throw the baby out with the bathwater is a really bad idea If we can replace the community that people will lose if they leave their church then that will increase the chances that a person will take the risk to begin to question Being a follower is a natural state of being human, what you need is a community where questioning is encouraged, and rules of skepticism and awareness of natural biases replace the religion our minds are so naturally predisposed to
Working with our nature, by using mental constructs will allow us both conformity and individuality to better ourselves and our world
Source: Youtube
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