Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

I think what religion and politics have in common is that they become part of people's identity, and people can never have a fruitful argument about something that's part of their identity. By definition they're partisan.

(NOTE: I'm not rigorously defining the word "governance" in this response, I can expand on my meaning further if people are interested)

Paul Graham is on to something in this essay. I think, however, that Carl Jung pinpointed the exact mechanism with far more accuracy.

Politics and Religion (for many people) in Jung's system of thought are often vehicles of "transferance", or, the transferring of one's spiritual principle or governance principle to a receiver (a priest, or politician, or guru) because people's psyche's are largely unconscious and rarely question or examine their own identity (consciousness, although Jung has a much deeper definition of identity). People "transfer" to the closest external match for that which their unsconscious wishes to have integrated.

Paul's statement about it being a part of their identity is inaccurate because it's actually the opposite. If the person in question were not transferring their spiritual principle it would actually be an integrated peice of their identity and consciousness. There would no longer be an imperative to defend the vehicle that carries such an important peice of their "self". As people integrate more of their transfers and projections they have less and less need to justify their existence because that existence is self-contained rather than fragmented.

Understanding that the spiritual and governance principles within the psyche are actually subjective and not objective experiences is a sign of someone that has truly identified those components. I say "truly identified" not because truth is defined by an authority or natural principle but because the person has identified the truth of it in relationship to their own non-physical (mental/psychological) experience.

I think it is quite a bit of a stretch to call something a foundational human issue when there is no consensus agreement as to what the words involved even mean, even among members of the same sect. If you could define the term 'God' in a meaningful way which all humans agreed upon, then we could maybe start to discuss whether belief in God were a foundational human issue. As it stands currently, the phrase 'God exists' is nothing but a shibboleth.

It could be found more closely in Zhuangzi or even Lizi. These guys were living in a time when many have been killed for their ideas, and many had strong beliefs. Their solution for survival was to be an empty vase, a useless tool.

A good example is the tree: a straight trunk is the sure path to death for a pine tree, while if you are twisted in a way that makes you useless you survive much longer.

There is also this empty boat story. If a big vessel sees a small boat in her way the captain will shout at the small boat, but let the small boat be empty and the captain will just move around.

Daoism is all about being this empty boat. And it is it's limits: society also need people with strong belief and ready to die for them.

Just take slavery; it is a moral belief and duty to be against slavery. Even if by some rational reasoning slavery was proven a better solution than freedom, we would still have to stand against it, and some have died for this moral belief.

So I think I cannot fully agree here.

Edit: Or to be more precise, there is a limit to the reduction of one's identity. Maybe this limit is just that common identity we all share: humanity.