I would consider Richard Dawkins and Neil deGrasse Tyson to display the ego-maximization of Scientism. Their epistemological trespassing is pretty gratuitous. What is holding Scientism back is the other part of our culture that is anti-intellectual and already regards Science as the direct opposite of Religion, and is therefore an enemy.
Totally agree! Dunno if you noticed but I took a little swipe at Neil deGrasse Tyson in the section about Sagan :)
If I had to come up with a single motivation for writing, it would be to build a bridge between science and religion. I think it's the most important contemporary intellectual issue, with huge implications for all the more practical issues (climate change, political fragmentation, AI risk, poverty, etc)
Thanks for the article! There is a good book on the religious roots of modern science by David F. Noble - The Religion of Technology. It argues that modern science is not so secular as it wants to be seen.
Max, great read! I read this the other day, but I wanted to come back and put thoughts on this:
I agree with your analysis of the word ego and how it is viewed narcissistically. It shouldn’t be viewed negatively, as we have been doing for a while. It simply is a part of who we are, and it’s helped us see the world (it can be “tainted” or “programmed”) but that’s just the nature of it’s journey.
Also, love the fact that we can also “change” our ego as well. It is not fixed. Its simply “somewhat a program that we develop as we experience “reality” (our journey).
I wholeheardted agree with your overall point on “religion as a an ego modulator” and I have been thinking on writing a paper on how religion can negatively impact your ego/program. From a psychological perspective, religion can actually be damaging to anyone as it may at times conflict with your ego.
I’ve been through all three of the case studies (Religion, Eastern Studies, Science) and, yes they are tainted, but they do contain a wealth of information. I think the one thing that really ties them together is esoteric philosophy. I think Carl Jung’s idea of the super-ego is what we should all try to be. Instead of lowering the ego, we should rather be raising the ego to the level of “The Self” (Nietzsche “Superman”).
Looking forward to more work and here are some links I’ve wrote on ego and the esoteric if interested:
If you believe that God is Father, what does that mean? Some evangelical Christians think of God as "daddy", (my interpretation:) like he comes home from work being ruler of the universe and spends time with his children. God can be close and familiar, rather than transcendent and awe-inspiring, and this closeness and familiarity with a loved person (notably in everyday life, an evangelical thing) can be religious/spiritual by contrast with things like psychedelic/mystic experiences. What the best close and familiar relationships do is render the people involved statusless, or maybe even "sizeless", neither big nor small ego-wise, in some sense.
Mar 13, 2023·edited Mar 13, 2023Liked by Max Goodbird
If you want an easy to understand manual on how to most effectively employ this ego modulation read Neville Goddards „Feeling is the secret“ this ties in very well with your recent post on active dreaming as stronger than meditation and psychedelics for psychological function. Maybe LoA is a good candidate for minus the nonsense :)
Could it be argued that leading any sufficiently large group of people is an ego maximizer? Whether you are a priest or a senior manager in Tesla, I think there’s a co-efficient between the number of people you have control over and the size of your ego. Possibly as some kind of psychological protection mechanism - when you take risks on behalf of a large number of others in the chance that you fail accepting the burden of that responsibility psychologically must be quite a challenge to deal with.
What makes religion different is the quality of the power. Elon Musk has power over thousands and thousands of people, but it's very conditional--they can quit anytime. So Elon is a little crazy, but not out of his mind.
Compare that to a cult leader who has the unconditional devotion of a few dozen people--they lose it completely, start to believe in their own divinity, etc. Hence, "absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Isn’t that the thing they say about cults though as well - you can quit anytime, but you can’t really. People always imploring cult members to just leave, step out but they can’t due to coercive control and inter personal relationships. In the GDR if you were lucky you could still go on holiday but you had to leave your children in East Germany as collateral just incase you tried to flee. With the company example, you can quit - if you can find another job - or have the means to move, some people can’t though, so in some ways a company does have coercive control over people it’s just in a legal contract rather than a social contract.
Yeah that makes total sense. The more absolute your power is, the crazier it makes you. If you're the GDR and you can kill people's children in retribution, or if you're a cult leader and people think they'll burn in hell for leaving, you're bound to start feeling like a little demigod.
In industry, I bet you'd find worse bosses in illiquid job markets, and better bosses where there's a healthy amount of turnover.
So this is a really interesting conclusion to try and summarize. Bringing it back to the start, religion acts as an ego Modulator > social hierarchy in large groups has the danger of ego maximization with the power holders > the fungibility of the group inversely correlates with the amount of control and subsequent ego maximization that the ‘power holders’ experience.
Also I guess you could apply this to other situations. If you live in a country with a small population but unique language it’s harder to move to another country. Countries become less fungible and so your executive have more control. If you come from for example and English speaking country it’s easier to move to another English speaking country so your executive follow the above rule and have less control and ego maximization?
It'd be interesting to try and correlate a freedom index with emigration stats, but there's obviously some inverse causation there too--authoritarians make it harder for their people to leave.
As a heathen/pagan/asatru, this doesn't hold up (if you see modulating as making-smaller, anyway). Traditionally, bragging was seen as virtuous by my ancestors. Not to strangers and while abroad (gotta be prudent&pragmatic) but among your own. I think it's even the origin of new years resolutions. We don't have saints, but deities (who do distasteful stuff, if necessary, to reach their ends) and heroes. The only saint-like behavior is found in the heroines of folk (fairy) tales, who might perform feats of self denial in the way of doing much housekeeping, or being quiet and sewing shirts out of stinging nettles, to be rewarded or save her brothers. But that sort of behavior is rewarded with gold or crowns, she is not intended to just keep smiling through hardships forever. Its always temporary, the means to an end.
Christianity is all 'blessed be the (insert undesirable state here)', Buddhists are very away-with-me too, but those are not representative of all religion.
As for scientism... There's been the reproducability crisis that basically lifted the curtain on that. It's not a leap forward IMO, just an appeal to authority. You can lie with 'studies show that'... And statistics almost as easily as with anything else.
My gods serve me more than vice versa. Theyre not meant to do something about my ego, they do serve to help me consider what holds value, what I could do without , and to help me articulate my goals (for sacrifices and rituals). They serve as inspiration. And they are aligned with human nature. From the symbolic colors (black/white/red, the first thing a person sees after they've come forth out of the darkness of the womb), to sacrifices (a childs natural inclination to offer flowers to their mother/goddess;), to figuring out how much power you really have and what you can accomplish (growing up, learning the use of limbs and such). Look mommy, look! Says the child -and every pagan, in their own way, to their ancestors and offspring. Ego is just part of a muuuuuch wider range of things that have a natural place in my religion.
I love your perspective. For me, in my personal opinion, "scientism" reached a real problem point when I witnessed two things: "Trust the science" dogma around Covid-19 rhetoric and NGT going full-on attack mode to defend the idea of transgenderism being somehow settled science. My problem is not exactly with the ideas themselves but with these well-known and highly respected scientists putting themselves in this very priest-like position of authority and their "how dare you question me" attitudes. I love your term "The high priest of science," btw. Very clever. :-)
Entirely too kind on scientism. See the last two years and the believers' cultish belief in Experts™.
Though I guess it's arguable that people turning into ostracizing monsters is more of an outburst of safetyist managerial leftism. In any case, the secular expert is definitely a modern priest, and they definitely have their cultists. Not just in the obnoxious iamverysmart feeling r/atheism types, but just genuine, hideous dogmatism, utter certainty at their priests' truths and complete willingness to severe personal relationships for lack of cult membership and cast the heretics out of society.
I would consider Richard Dawkins and Neil deGrasse Tyson to display the ego-maximization of Scientism. Their epistemological trespassing is pretty gratuitous. What is holding Scientism back is the other part of our culture that is anti-intellectual and already regards Science as the direct opposite of Religion, and is therefore an enemy.
Totally agree! Dunno if you noticed but I took a little swipe at Neil deGrasse Tyson in the section about Sagan :)
If I had to come up with a single motivation for writing, it would be to build a bridge between science and religion. I think it's the most important contemporary intellectual issue, with huge implications for all the more practical issues (climate change, political fragmentation, AI risk, poverty, etc)
Thanks for the article! There is a good book on the religious roots of modern science by David F. Noble - The Religion of Technology. It argues that modern science is not so secular as it wants to be seen.
This looks great--thanks for the recommendation!
I'd say you were exactly right, and Carl Sagan himself warned about science/scientism becoming a religion and just how damaging that is to democracy.
Max, great read! I read this the other day, but I wanted to come back and put thoughts on this:
I agree with your analysis of the word ego and how it is viewed narcissistically. It shouldn’t be viewed negatively, as we have been doing for a while. It simply is a part of who we are, and it’s helped us see the world (it can be “tainted” or “programmed”) but that’s just the nature of it’s journey.
Also, love the fact that we can also “change” our ego as well. It is not fixed. Its simply “somewhat a program that we develop as we experience “reality” (our journey).
I wholeheardted agree with your overall point on “religion as a an ego modulator” and I have been thinking on writing a paper on how religion can negatively impact your ego/program. From a psychological perspective, religion can actually be damaging to anyone as it may at times conflict with your ego.
I’ve been through all three of the case studies (Religion, Eastern Studies, Science) and, yes they are tainted, but they do contain a wealth of information. I think the one thing that really ties them together is esoteric philosophy. I think Carl Jung’s idea of the super-ego is what we should all try to be. Instead of lowering the ego, we should rather be raising the ego to the level of “The Self” (Nietzsche “Superman”).
Looking forward to more work and here are some links I’ve wrote on ego and the esoteric if interested:
https://unorthodoxy.substack.com/p/why-esoteric-philosophy-is-vital
https://unorthodoxy.substack.com/p/know-thy-enemy-and-you-will-know
Ego-modulation variant:
If you believe that God is Father, what does that mean? Some evangelical Christians think of God as "daddy", (my interpretation:) like he comes home from work being ruler of the universe and spends time with his children. God can be close and familiar, rather than transcendent and awe-inspiring, and this closeness and familiarity with a loved person (notably in everyday life, an evangelical thing) can be religious/spiritual by contrast with things like psychedelic/mystic experiences. What the best close and familiar relationships do is render the people involved statusless, or maybe even "sizeless", neither big nor small ego-wise, in some sense.
If you want an easy to understand manual on how to most effectively employ this ego modulation read Neville Goddards „Feeling is the secret“ this ties in very well with your recent post on active dreaming as stronger than meditation and psychedelics for psychological function. Maybe LoA is a good candidate for minus the nonsense :)
Could it be argued that leading any sufficiently large group of people is an ego maximizer? Whether you are a priest or a senior manager in Tesla, I think there’s a co-efficient between the number of people you have control over and the size of your ego. Possibly as some kind of psychological protection mechanism - when you take risks on behalf of a large number of others in the chance that you fail accepting the burden of that responsibility psychologically must be quite a challenge to deal with.
Yes absolutely. Power corrupts!
What makes religion different is the quality of the power. Elon Musk has power over thousands and thousands of people, but it's very conditional--they can quit anytime. So Elon is a little crazy, but not out of his mind.
Compare that to a cult leader who has the unconditional devotion of a few dozen people--they lose it completely, start to believe in their own divinity, etc. Hence, "absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Isn’t that the thing they say about cults though as well - you can quit anytime, but you can’t really. People always imploring cult members to just leave, step out but they can’t due to coercive control and inter personal relationships. In the GDR if you were lucky you could still go on holiday but you had to leave your children in East Germany as collateral just incase you tried to flee. With the company example, you can quit - if you can find another job - or have the means to move, some people can’t though, so in some ways a company does have coercive control over people it’s just in a legal contract rather than a social contract.
Yeah that makes total sense. The more absolute your power is, the crazier it makes you. If you're the GDR and you can kill people's children in retribution, or if you're a cult leader and people think they'll burn in hell for leaving, you're bound to start feeling like a little demigod.
In industry, I bet you'd find worse bosses in illiquid job markets, and better bosses where there's a healthy amount of turnover.
So this is a really interesting conclusion to try and summarize. Bringing it back to the start, religion acts as an ego Modulator > social hierarchy in large groups has the danger of ego maximization with the power holders > the fungibility of the group inversely correlates with the amount of control and subsequent ego maximization that the ‘power holders’ experience.
Also I guess you could apply this to other situations. If you live in a country with a small population but unique language it’s harder to move to another country. Countries become less fungible and so your executive have more control. If you come from for example and English speaking country it’s easier to move to another English speaking country so your executive follow the above rule and have less control and ego maximization?
That would make a ton of sense!
It'd be interesting to try and correlate a freedom index with emigration stats, but there's obviously some inverse causation there too--authoritarians make it harder for their people to leave.
As a heathen/pagan/asatru, this doesn't hold up (if you see modulating as making-smaller, anyway). Traditionally, bragging was seen as virtuous by my ancestors. Not to strangers and while abroad (gotta be prudent&pragmatic) but among your own. I think it's even the origin of new years resolutions. We don't have saints, but deities (who do distasteful stuff, if necessary, to reach their ends) and heroes. The only saint-like behavior is found in the heroines of folk (fairy) tales, who might perform feats of self denial in the way of doing much housekeeping, or being quiet and sewing shirts out of stinging nettles, to be rewarded or save her brothers. But that sort of behavior is rewarded with gold or crowns, she is not intended to just keep smiling through hardships forever. Its always temporary, the means to an end.
Christianity is all 'blessed be the (insert undesirable state here)', Buddhists are very away-with-me too, but those are not representative of all religion.
As for scientism... There's been the reproducability crisis that basically lifted the curtain on that. It's not a leap forward IMO, just an appeal to authority. You can lie with 'studies show that'... And statistics almost as easily as with anything else.
My gods serve me more than vice versa. Theyre not meant to do something about my ego, they do serve to help me consider what holds value, what I could do without , and to help me articulate my goals (for sacrifices and rituals). They serve as inspiration. And they are aligned with human nature. From the symbolic colors (black/white/red, the first thing a person sees after they've come forth out of the darkness of the womb), to sacrifices (a childs natural inclination to offer flowers to their mother/goddess;), to figuring out how much power you really have and what you can accomplish (growing up, learning the use of limbs and such). Look mommy, look! Says the child -and every pagan, in their own way, to their ancestors and offspring. Ego is just part of a muuuuuch wider range of things that have a natural place in my religion.
I love your perspective. For me, in my personal opinion, "scientism" reached a real problem point when I witnessed two things: "Trust the science" dogma around Covid-19 rhetoric and NGT going full-on attack mode to defend the idea of transgenderism being somehow settled science. My problem is not exactly with the ideas themselves but with these well-known and highly respected scientists putting themselves in this very priest-like position of authority and their "how dare you question me" attitudes. I love your term "The high priest of science," btw. Very clever. :-)
Entirely too kind on scientism. See the last two years and the believers' cultish belief in Experts™.
Though I guess it's arguable that people turning into ostracizing monsters is more of an outburst of safetyist managerial leftism. In any case, the secular expert is definitely a modern priest, and they definitely have their cultists. Not just in the obnoxious iamverysmart feeling r/atheism types, but just genuine, hideous dogmatism, utter certainty at their priests' truths and complete willingness to severe personal relationships for lack of cult membership and cast the heretics out of society.
An Islamic perspective/definition of ego. I am not objective while posting this but it could increase your perspective too while I reading this post http://www.erisale.com/index.jsp?locale=en#content.en.201.557.
This is great!
For anyone else looking for context: these appear to be the writings of Said Nursî: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Said_Nurs%C3%AE