After roughly mapping my academic trajectory - a mixture of philosophy and social science in a drive to understand what was, in retrospect, an anthropology of thinking/psychology of learning/ sociology of knowledge - I needed a dissertation topic. My fascination with religion, on one hand comes from a Marxist ("The abolition of religion as the illusory the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions" [1844]) and Nietzschean critique of power that indicted religion as a master morality that enslaved the masses to a blind slave morality. Both of which placed religion as a constraint to a secular egalitarian socialist democracy. Religious fanaticism as a social movement - tied to certain social and political positions - and how individuals developed that zealous fervor were something that demanded to be understood in further depth in order to progress. I won't lie: Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, the moral majority movement, and 'Jesus Camp' (2006) all freak me out - the rhetoric sounds all too familiar. I'd even put Jim Jones in with this group if he didn't have a socialist bent and pressed his followers to drink some sacred kool-aid. Righteous religious indignation can be a scary thing and Christianity has been a force tied up with several abhorrent enterprises throughout history (while all religions have had their violent histories, none have played as big a part in the development of present systemic and structural injustices and inequalities as Christianity - a strong claim, I know, but one that I am willing to defend).
On the other hand, after reading more evolutionary anthropology and psychology, neuroscience, as well as taking lessons from history of religions' remarkable resilience in the face of violence and active efforts for its eradication, it seemed apparent that religion and the concept of 'god' was not going away anytime soon. If secularism was going to happen, if at all, it was going to take much longer than scholars anticipated; if Marx is correct, we will see glimpses when the social order exhausts itself... At any rate, I had to revise my position. If religion is here to stay, the polemics of abandonment no longer has merit. Instead, as we see today, the polemic creates a greater gap; resistance grows stronger and identity intensifies. Arguably, this is the case with white supremacists around the world. If Roof and Breivik are any indications, we are witnessing this same kind of intensification (I exclude Islamic extremists because there is another set of factors, in addition to this polemic, that further drives this movement dating back to, I would argue, at least the 80s U.S. foreign policy and in some ways as far back as WWII). So one of the pressing issues is, albeit romantic, how do we reconcile different religions - rather than belittle, condescend, and inflame - in a pluralist society? (*interestingly enough, Michael Walzer just wrote a book on this very issue)
After debating with myself, the decision was to focus on the topic of 'belief.' In order to understand how religion permeates through individual and society, we needed to understand 'belief' better. This brings me back to my earlier pursuits in understanding the self and what I mentioned above as an anthropology of thinking/psychology of learning/sociology of knowledge. My fascination with religion was a fascination with understanding how religious and poltical ideologies are transmitted and become embodied knowledge - by extension, this delves into the embodiment of moral persuasions, ethics, and implicit biases.
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