Good Morning
I have been thinking about how the way a culture views things may have something to say about its spiritual practices...for example, are collectivist societies different qualitatively from more individualistic societies? In the West we tend to more of an individualistic viewpoint--and maybe that contributes to our infighting in Christianity and even in other Western-adopted spiritual viewpoints? Is Buddhism more amendable to a collectivist worldview? These are the questions I have been pondering - complicating this is that Jesus did exhort us to love our neighbor, and the Bible is full of references to God loving the whole world/all nations, etc., and the apostles tell us to strive to live at peace with all mankind...this sounds collectivistic, sort of like Buddhism's practice of loving kindness for all living things, etc...or, consider Hinduism and how there exists a harmony amongst ALL things...maybe this collectivist/individualist dimension explains some of the key disparities among our religious practices?
I have been thinking about how the way a culture views things may have something to say about its spiritual practices...for example, are collectivist societies different qualitatively from more individualistic societies? In the West we tend to more of an individualistic viewpoint--and maybe that contributes to our infighting in Christianity and even in other Western-adopted spiritual viewpoints? Is Buddhism more amendable to a collectivist worldview? These are the questions I have been pondering - complicating this is that Jesus did exhort us to love our neighbor, and the Bible is full of references to God loving the whole world/all nations, etc., and the apostles tell us to strive to live at peace with all mankind...this sounds collectivistic, sort of like Buddhism's practice of loving kindness for all living things, etc...or, consider Hinduism and how there exists a harmony amongst ALL things...maybe this collectivist/individualist dimension explains some of the key disparities among our religious practices?
Comments
I think the question of how social animals compare to more solitary ones gives us a lot of clues about the nature of socialization. It seems clear from the E.O. Wilson's study of ants that in rich environments dense in resources highly organized societies tend to outperform less organized ones. But in marginal environments individuals are less specialized and there is less interdependence.
The lesson is, I think, that social organization is a functional response to environmental factors. And my belief is that game theory will show that any society will have its insiders and its peripheral members.
Because humans are, by nature, empathetic individuals we tend to share joys and sorrows with each other. It is this empathetic power that binds us together into societies. And, I think, we can feel empathy for other beings in the world, even when those beings are not so sentient as humans. I would be willing to speculate that it was this very empathetic sensibility that made the domestication of animals possible.
Societies of the far east have been farming for several millennia longer than societies of Europe. And it therefore makes sense that social customs and practices there are superior to those in the west at managing cohesion in groups. It would make sense that eastern religious practices reflect these practices and cultural memes.
Long story short, I think there might actually be a good evolutionary argument for why eastern religions tend to view all of creation more collectively than western religions do. And there might be good reason for our religious and cultural practices to change in a way that adopts some of their ideas as we find ourselves living in an ever more specialized and interdependent world.
I agree! I enjoy connecting with nature and animals every chance I get! It always calms me considerably!