X-Message-Number: 20571
From: "Steve Harris" <>
References: <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #20562: Crowding out Islam in Children's brains
Date: Sun, 8 Dec 2002 15:07:55 -0700

Message #20562
From: "Mark Plus" <"mailto:">
Subject: Crowding out Islam in children's brains
Date: Sat, 07 Dec 2002 09:45:29 -0800

Islam, like every other religion, is always one generation away from
extinction. That's why Muslims invest a lot of resources into brainwashing
children, getting them to memorize the whole Koran -- in Arabic! -- even if
the children don't speak Arabic as their native language.

This suggests a strategy for a kind of memetic prophylaxis. Children
naturally absorb all sorts of cultural constructs from their environment,
even ones against their parents' wishes. Just look at all the American &
British youngsters who've read something like a thousand pages of Harry
Potter novels, who know everything there is to know about this fictional
character & his adventures, and who display an authentic, spontaneous
enthusiasm for this intellectual exercise, often to their parents'
exasperation & bafflement. Indeed, these kids seem to be more excited
learning about Harry Potter than learning about their parents' religious
beliefs, if any. If "Potterism" were being promoted as a new divine
revelation, its spread would probably be threatening the established
religions in Western countries in a few years. Certainly children would
rather read the novels than some religious scripture. Of course, Harry
Potter isn't being presented as an alternative messiah or prophet, but
somehow the right combination of factors have come together to create this
intriguing religion-like phenomenon in a society where religious literacy is
otherwise in decline.

So how about this, as a long-term strategy for fighting radical Islam:
Taking the lead from the Harry Potter craze, let's get some
[neuroscientists, anthropologists], evolutionary psychologists & other
plausible experts on human behavior  together to engineer an infectious,
self-perpetuating mythological construct to introduce into Muslim societies
through their popular culture so that it occupies enough of their children's
time & energies to interfere with learning about Islam. If the new myth
promotes some pro-social messages compatible with Secular Humanist ideals
about the good life, so much the better.

Mark Plus



COMMENT from Steve Harris

In your dreams, Mark.

This gets us into the difference between religion and magic. Religion doesn'
t have a very good definition, and there are even (supposedly) some
non-theistic religions. However, nearly every religion (metaphysical world
view) incorporates to a greater or lesser degree the idea of MAGIC, which is
basically that the universe is controllable directly by ritual or
incantation, in much the same way it is by application of technology. IOW,
if you say the proper spell or do the proper thing, then you have some Power
which is (for all intents and purposes) mechanistic.

God doesn't necessarily have to enter into this magic, and if you don't
think so, take a look at Buddhists with their prayer wheels and ritual
gold-foil Buddha-statue-plating. There serve the same purpose as
rosary-saying and candle burning for Roman Catholics. Even where god is more
directly involved, as in Christianity where salvation is supposedly by god's
grace rather than by man's works, ceremonial magic creeps in by way of
certain promises which god makes in nearly every Christian sect, and which
god is supposedly bound by. "Hocus pocus" is from the RC Latin Eucharist
(transubstantiation ceremony) for changing bread into the body of Christ:
Hoc est corpus meum = this is my (god's) body. Whether the priest does the
magic here or god does, is beside the point if it can always and reliably
and automatically be invoked by the same Latin phrase, ala Potter. In the
same way, if you keep certain laws and perform certain rituals (those and
Hail Marys and acts of contrition again) under the auspices of Authority,
your passage to Heaven is guaranteed. It's the same in Mormon Temple
rituals. In many another religion, performance of certain rituals (for other
examples see either Voodoo or Wicca) causes mechanistic results in Earthly
life as well. Scapulars and St. Christopher medals are not as popular in
Roman Catholicism as formerly, but they are still seen as ways of achieving
earthly protection.

Now, Harry Potter is popular, but he's a fantasy, like James Bond.
Basically, he's a power-fantasy for powerless-feeling children and
adolescents. Suppose you could utter a straightforward Latin command and
wave your magic wand, and the adults would be foiled in their ability to
physical make you do what they want?  That would be nice. Children want to
read about that-- surprise. But Harry isn't the biggest children's fantasy
in the U.S.-- not by far.  As Vernor Vinge predicted more than 25 years ago
("True Names," which in 1976 came long before cyberpunk), the virtual world
inside a computer is one in which spells and commands and incantations
change the face of "reality" in a very "magical" way. And indeed, sales of
computer play stations and games to play on them last year outstripped not
just kid-profits from Harry Potter, but from all other movies and books for
kids COMBINED. And this seems to be a permanent change.

Humans are susceptible to the "magic lie" naturally, and if you don't
believe it, look at any primitive culture. Indeed, go to a bowling alley and
watch people shimmy with their bodies in an attempt to change the Newtonian
path of the ball once it's already in motion. Go to Las Vegas, where the
entire gigantic city is an expensive and garish tribute to people's
irrational beliefs in magical ideas and their own specialness, rather than
statistics and dull reality. And so on.

Mark misses the point of fundamentalist Islam, and indeed fundamentalist
religions of all kinds, which is a feeling of controlling magic and power
against your rivals and enemies, because you're special, and special to god,
because you have the correct beliefs. Sure, kids aren't interested in their
parents religion if it is some dry Presbyterian stuff which promises not
very much right away, and certainly little in the present that can't be
gotten by straightforward grinding work. But if kids are given rituals and
promises of great power for little work (pray this way and Billy or Mary
will notice you at school) they get interested. Fundamentalist Islam does
that. It tells powerless kids and adults in poor countries that they can
stand up to anybody on Earth if they just pray 5 times a day and do certain
other things. Lose your fear of death and submit to god, they are told, and
you can bring down the tallest buildings in the most powerful country, and
there's nothing the infidels can do to stop you, no matter how good their
technology is. Their own technology can even be turned against them, if god
himself is on your side and not theirs. There's a certain real magic and
power in fearlessness, and every fundamentalist Muslim knows that in the
core of his or her being. It's a magic wand that can trump spy satellites
and stealth aircraft. Which is good, because learning how to build the high
tech stuff is very hard, and costs a lot.

Now, what, pray tell, is the West going to replace these ideas with?  Las
Vegas and the Lotto? Sony PlayStation 2s and connected VR games? Nice
thought (and something very like this last is actually happening in South
Korea), but economically we're a long way from there in Egypt, Afghanistan,
Iraq, Iran or Libya. I'm not even sure this is a very good idea in the West,
though we're stuck with it now by virtue of the computer revolution. Look
what VR is replacing: In the U.S. after WWII there was a period of about 20
years in which Popular Mechanics seemed to play the role of Harry Potter's
Hogwart's school, and kids learned to make their own radios, IR night
viewing equipment, explosives, and learned to handle firearms as a way of
learning to control and extend power into the world. Those days seem to be
gone. You can't even tinker with your own car any more, because under the
hood is a mass of computerized spaghetti. We're left with computer games,
and I think the poorer for it. VR is going to do for real world mechanical
competence what TV did for real world social interaction and networking:
cause real pathology.

You can pay psych specialist to construct memes all you like, Mark, but if
you can't promise a lot of power for a little work, you're going to lose out
to meme-complexes that do. Religious leaders ARE specialists in this. They
know what works. They've been evolving ideas for many millennia, and what we
have now is what HAS worked on the human psyche. We live in a world in
which, even in the West, the boundary of what constitutes well-paid and
satisfying work (that which confers real power and status in the world) is
receding behind more and more years of difficult specialist tech education
every day. Education that won't even fit into a larger and larger fraction
of ordinary minds, as time goes by. In such a world, the draw of easy ways
to get around this hard fact, will become ever and ever more acute. Both in
the Muslim world and here in the West.

Harry Potter is a way of forgetting how hard it is. So is Islam. It is
manifestly NOT true that every religion is one generation away from
extinction. The reason is because the primitive superstition-prone brains of
humans remain susceptible to magical thinking, even if it's not taught in
childhood. The alternative, after all, is hard work with no guarantees,
having to admit you're nobody very special (life's a bitch), and then
(finally after all that) you die and your conscious ends. Religions, which
promise and end to this state, are computer viruses for the mind: they can
sit inert in a book for centuries, just waiting for somebody to pick up the
book, become infected, and start spreading the same variety of "easy magical
power" mind-disease once again. A good magical religion is like smallpox
with an infinite fomite survival time. And no vaccine known for the average
mind, except prior infection with something nearly as bad.

SBH

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