Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
If it was good for our mother If it was good for our mother
If it was good for our mother
it's good enough for me Gimme that Old Time Religion
Gimme that Old Time Religion
Gimme that Old Time Religion
it's good enough for me
Gimme that Old Time Religion
Gimme that Old Time Religion
Gimme that Old Time Religion
it's good enough for me
another psychological mechanism that sets a sets us up for religion is a concept
the anthropologists call
the golden age syndrome
this mechanism refers to the idea that the past was so much better
which is something especially prevalent in older people
this phenomenon actually has a very simple explanation
the brain is set up the process negative information faster than positive
this ensures that one has a better chance of escaping or overcoming the
negative
in the wild this is essential to survival
as a side effect however the immediate bad is very prevalent in our minds
on top of this our brains are designed to better store good memories and purge
the bad
if we remember the bad over the good depression and suicide rates would be a
heck of a lot higher
as a side effect in our minds the past was always better
following this logic trail it's natural for humans to imagine that there was a
point of a perfect world long before and the world is gradually getting worse
until at one point they will be utterly destroyed
this natural mental process is most likely the reason
why Apocalypticism
became so popular
and several cultures have an end of the world myth
this is especially inherent because elders will think that things were so
much better in childhood in teach their children that it was
on top of that they will pass down stories of their great ancestors orally
and
because stories where their were only form of entertainment
each shaman would tend to add something to the story to make it more interesting
until over a few generations the new story and person
would be unrecognizable from the real person
from these people would assume that anything older must be better or holy as
it appears that the people before us
were genius
and we today too dumb to understand because we have lost knowledge
many people take this view toward our founding fathers and the constitution
as a creationist i was told that it was a good probability the because adam had
walked with god
that would have had access to all sorts of various knowledge including
metalworking agriculture in astronomy
when some people fell away
from god they lost some of this knowledge and they move backwards
becoming more primitive
and becoming stone tools users or cave men
they explain our evolutionary ancestral links as dieterally deformed humans who
fell from God and ignored or lost the knowledge that adam had passed down
much of this knowledge was lost in the flooded
and it was thought that some people
were way more advanced pre flood than post flood
anecdotal evidence they used
is of a fossil found that they believed to be a spark plug
but it was a
it's been lost since the fifties of course
This Atlantean style system of myth is linked directly to the golden age
syndrome
atlantis to the apocalypse
wonderful
to destruction
the poorly invoke the second law of Thermodynamic
actually the reason why these skills were mentioned at the beginning the
bible was because literacy did not exist in modern palestine
until the bronze age about
thousand bc
which people who had passed on oral tradition
would have no idea that their ancestors had once been stone tool using
hunter-gatherers
this blind faith in old text is part of our wiring
which is why faith in the bible is so easy for some people
the ancient romans allowed freedom of religion to anyone
with an ancient religion for this reason
as christian religion was new it was persecuted for going against the old
stories also only capture the good or important part of history giving the
illusion the past was so much better
in this day and age television in books have continued to generate disillusioned
fantasy
as books in television are stories about ideals and rarely about actual reality
Penn and Teller did a *** episode on the good old days
and or people who really believe that leave it to bever was the norm in the
fifties
however in those days violence, drug and alcohol abuse, racism
and misogyny
were much more rampant
post-traumatic stress disorder was considered just being a man
which caused domestic violence to be considered fairly normal
more children are graduating college and getting degrees than ever before
the religious right blames turning away from god, eliminating prayer in school
and legalizing of abortions and women getting out of the homes as a reason for
all of us no longer being the cleaver family
when the cleavers never existed
crime rates have actually decreased by twenty percent in twenty years this may
no longer be true in a recession
however
the news coverage of violence has increased by six hundred percent in the
US giving it the appearance that things have gotten much worse
as a matter of fact morality has been evolving at an exponential rate if you
look at the past
the majority of this is
based upon the new ways to transfer information
if you compare hitler to Gengus Khan or even King david
the brutality hitler used
only seems worse because of the technology
hitler was hardly the Fringe for his time as racism, eugenics, ethnic
cleansing
were touted by many in the US and practice in many states
many black and native american women
in the early nineteen hundreds were systematically sterilized to ensure they
would not out breed the white race
however because of information and the freedom of speech racism, sexism, even
homophobia are considered deplorable by a number of people
raising exponentially
richard dawkins compared it to moore's law we're technologies capacity
will begin to increase exponentially
as the technology prior acts as scaffolding
making it possible for the next phase of technology to be bigger and better
the same is true about morality and ethics
one generation increases their morality and self-awareness and their children
build upon it tossing away their parents old believes viewing them as barbaric
my stepdad who died a few years ago at the age of seventy two
maybe both cringe and laugh when he used the phrase colored people
which is a much better phrase they use to use before his children made them
aware of the negative effects of racism
people who wish for a time in the past really would be even less content in the
past
my music collection and ability to learn new things is rediculously more than
that of people
just ten years ago
i do not have to fear that my future children will die of some easily
cured childhood disease
base improve medicine vaccinations
unfortunately the golden age syndrome also blind people of the fact that
vaccines are what give them the ability to have a choice and vaccinating today
i'm also allowed access to air conditioning clean running water and
water to drink
history is smelly as getting a warm bath around then was usually done very
rarely as work needed a pour up a bath was rarely considered more important
than avoiding famine
being aware of the way our brains are programed is important for us in
overcoming concepts like golden age syndrome
being skeptical the past is
only a construct and a tool
but it will give you a much healthier view of yourself and the world