Sometimes a maladaptive gene can be good in some environments, bad in another.
Example: Sickle Cell Anemia, normally terrible, in some settings, sub-sahara Africa, can protect against malaria.
No such thing as a bad gene. Only a bad gene-environment interaction.
Among Ashkenazim Jews, Tay-Sachs disease may protect against TB. Case studies during WWII Eastern Europe.
Cystic Fibrosis full-blown, disastrous. Partial, protected against cholera.
Full-blown version, bad. Partial version, protective.
Schizophrenia
in the 1970s, Keddy, 1 Denmark study in Denmark, interviewed every family of every adoptee. Schizotypol, a mild version loose associations social withdrawal, solitary occupation
metamagical thinking, science fiction, fantasy, new age, telepathy, UFO's, concrete interpretation of religiosity
1930s anthropology half-crazy, shaman, witch doctor
hearing voices at the wrong time at the right time
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western society is equally irrational
“religion is organized schizophrenia”
Erwin Ackerknecht: “Our culture is unique in outlawing irrationality.”
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Gallup Poll of Americans
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social motivation for good works rituals
Beecher: religion is daily bread
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obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)
an anxiety disorder
example: tray of rice crispy treat
There's no insight.
It's not: “Help, there's something wrong with me. I need to wash my hands six hours a day.”
It's: “Help, there's something wrong with me. I can never get clean.”
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religious leaders have sometimes been:
orthodox Brahmin
orthodox Judaism:
often magic numbers are so because they are easy to remember
numbers are more important than the content (everyone knows there are 10 commandments, but how many people can recite them all)
numerology
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rituals built around
same for religion and OCD
per Freud:
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15th century, St Ignatius Loyola
scrupulosity = someone who is going through religious ritual for its own sake, not thinking about the content
in the talmud = cannot do it from memory, not by rote
in Islam = saying a prayer without thinking about the content, the prayers don't count
the ritual becomes more important than the content
a trait that is destructive in OCD, done in the right context becomes protective
assume a universal dread the point of ritual is not to make the dread go away but to share it and foster the community
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Kafka: the hunger artist, a performance artist who starves himself. there really were people who did this in the middle ages.
in modern times we think of a religious leader as someone who
but some of the time, a religious leader
people can make a living performing rituals
16th century, Martin Luther, augustine monk, paralyzed by OCD, also had asshole father
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who created these rituals? OCD sufferers?
OCD sufferer:
OCD has 1 to 10% in the population
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religious people:
spirituality vs religion
?
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correlates between patterns of behavior that we can explain and patterns of religious belief
superstitious behavior in pigeons. experimentally giving random rewards of food. The pigeon has a need to attribute. The pigeon assumes whatever he just did resulted in the food appearing.
why do we have a societal need for shamans? because we are trying to explain he unexplainable.
see cause and effect that may not be there
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take rats, and damage their hippocampus
with hippocampal damage, you have more trouble making causal sequential links
rats with more hippocampal damage are more vulnerable to superstitious conditioning
difficulty telling the difference between causally related events, and events that have no connection
individual differences in number of hippocampal neurons, amount of enzymes, amount of myelin, means some people are more likely to be superstitious than others.
(Note that this implies religiosity is a kind of brain disorder.)
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epilepsy
epilectic seizures differ depending on the brain part where they originate
Temporal lobe epilepsy. This particular form of epilepsy originates in the temporal lobe. The temporal lobe contains the hippocampus, the amygdala, a big limbic area.
30 years ago, neurologist Geshwin at Harvard, described the Temporal Lobe Personality statistically correlated with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, but not absolutely.
Temporal Lobe Personality
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what I'm NOT saying
It is fascinating that the same traits can be life-destroying in one setting. And in a religious setting be sanctioned, valued, rewarded. And there can be an underlying biology to this. And what do we do with this?