Throughout this series of writings on “The Need to Believe” the common thread has been that people generally hold an unquenchable and unattainable requirement or “need” to believe in something in order to provide themselves with a feeling of security, a feeling of power, a feeling of specialness, and one that I have not yet mentioned but nonetheless is every bit as present and evident is that all of these “needs” are based on their need to feel that they have some measure of control over their environment and their destinies.
As I was writing yesterday I discussed how different examples showed that some people convinced themselves that they could decipher and therefore determine exactly when the end of the world or the Messiah would occur. This “special knowledge” gave them so much power and confidence that they disposed of all their worldly possessions because they “knew” that life as they knew would end on a particular time and place so they liquidated all encumbrances. To them they had found the elusive control over their destinies – or so they thought – in the form of a mass delusion (and one which continues today in some circles). I alluded to the Seventh Day Adventist movement in this example but by no means is it limited to Christian sects. If we remember not too many years ago a cult of sizable numbers arose which believed that an alien civilization was about to arrive via a spaceship which tagged along with the Hale-Bopp comet which would take away “the faithful” by ascension - after all followers had committed suicide and a host of other acts of penitence (such as self castration) – to a higher plane of life on a far away alien world. This movement too had a sense of being special and deserving of being delivered to a higher plane, belief that they were in possession of “special knowledge” which gave them control over their destiny, it also had rituals which were intended to prove their faithfulness (ie. worthiness). The only difference in basis is that they replaced God and Christ with aliens as their deity. No more, no less.
Other examples are how someone devoted their lives to the care of animals and invented a religious underpinning for so doing. The need being gratified was that she needed to find something to serve as an act of penance to get on the good side of God for the purpose of securing a place on his good side. The need being a means of controlling one’s destiny through ingratiating oneself to the deity. Primitive cultures perform the same service by placing offerings to their animist deities in the form of food, sacrifices, or other things that their culture considers valuable.
Variants of this principle are the commonly reported cases of people whose lives were wrecked by alcoholism, gambling, womanizing, criminality, or any excessive behavior which is disruptive to their lives and those around them, then turn things around to a positive and constructive course, and they give credit to God through a religious conversion of one sort or another. Of course what matters most in the final analysis is that they were able to repair their lives and become productive citizens again. But I want to examine this “need” to find an external explanation for the cure. The reason why they got into the self destructive situation in the first place was because they lacked self control and nor were there any external means of controlling them until their behavior reached a point where the criminal justice system placed them in a controlled environment or they reached the so-called rock bottom which is one step above death. Being as these individuals lacked a means of self control, they had to find an external force that did and it was God. They do not recognize it but what actually happened was that they on one level admitted this shortcoming and that they will never have a means of self control, so they found what they term as a “higher power” to account for the radical change. I dispute that it is never in actuality due to a higher power as such but due to the innate ability for humans to manipulate and convince themselves of anything and thus accomplish amazing feats such as these. It was and is due to nothing more than an attitudinal shift under the deep realization that they have destroyed everything of importance around them, but they continue to lack the self control and confidence to do it themselves so they invent a “supernatural” cause to explain it. And by so doing, they gain the feeling that someone else is controlling their excesses for them which in turn excuses themselves for their own weaknesses. This affords them a vehicle for self forgiveness but it also is a crutch to lean on and very often this crutch weakens and breaks. I believe and assert that the underlying reason why so many “fall off the wagon” so to speak is because they never fully take responsibility for their own shortcomings because they have this excuse to fall back upon whenever they weaken. I maintain that the missing piece to recovery is that far too many rely on crutches and what are actually forms of delusion (even if they are positive ones they are still delusions) and never develop the inner strength and fortitude to do it themselves and take credit for it which is a great reward in itself.
The whole premise of this examination today is simply to further expand upon the lengths and measure that man will go to in order to placate their deities (or superstitions) which they feel somehow give them a control over their environment. Yet there are many others who do it without retreating into such behaviors and never descend into self destruction. These people I believe are a minority and manage to stay on course because they are self aware and know their limitations and never venture beyond that into a place where they would get into trouble. Speaking only for myself I ascribe it to stubbornness and a natural obstinacy and my ability to remain focused on a goal. I have a level of concentration that others have noted (especially a former boss who marveled at this quality in me) to the point of “being able to tune out a train wreck” as I like to say. I have to admit that it was not totally natural and instinctive as I came to a realization at one point that the greatest quality I had was my brain and that I had to use it to my best advantage of I was to survive many desperate situations. I trained myself to that end and I am still here to talk about it. I overcame many difficult situations without resorting to invoking or enlisting the aid of higher powers. I did it myself and developed the tools that were necessary. There are others who have done the same, but they/we are in the minority.