Two Unsatisfactory Solutions to the Problem of Suffering

The people who personally know me know that I have spent years (decades!) studying religions — sociologically, anthropologically, philosophically, historically, etc. — and so I often get asked what religion is; that is, what is the meaning and purpose of religion? I start off with a terse definition: Religion is Institutionalized Superstition. Of course, that often raises more questions than answers in people’s minds, so I then give them a Venn diagram I created to unpack the concept of institutionalized superstition (if I have a way to give them the diagram, which, in this case, I do not, so I’ll simply describe the diagram).

Imagine three circles, each intersecting one another and all three intersecting at one region in the middle. Each circle represents Ignorance, Anxiety and Conformity, respectively. Ignorance, of course, is simply a lack of understanding or knowledge. Ignorance of unimportant matters is itself unimportant, but ignorance of important matters is, obviously, of much importance. For instance, being ignorant about the annual rainfall of Lima, Peru is probably not that important. But being ignorant about the biological cause of polio is relatively much, much more important. One bit of ignorance is not likely to affect you, but ignorance of the other could be deadly. Anxiety is the fear and frustration we feel toward dangers and threats to our well-being. We feel anxiety not only by being in unpleasant situations but also from the anticipation of an impending unpleasantness. Where ignorance and anxiety intersect (going back to our Venn diagram) that’s where superstition resides in the human psyche. We don’t understand something, and our lack of understanding makes us fear it; therefore, we develop habits with the hope that they will alleviate our ignorance and anxiety. We find some solace in the belief that what we’re doing somehow seems to control the seemingly uncontrollable, regardless of whether it actually works or not. That’s where the “superstition” part of Institutionalized Superstition comes from.

The third circle of Conformity comes from the simple fact that homo sapiens is a social animal. We feel compelled by our social nature to act and believe in mutual accord, and even to mutually agree to not do or believe things. For instance, there are experiments where a person simply walks onto a busy sidewalk and looks up. Everyone around that person then looks up. Why? Because that person looked up, so everyone else instinctively looked up (this example is a case where we have evolved to look for common dangers and to act as alarms and lookouts for each other). Where conformity intersects with ignorance (again, on the diagram) is where we find Gullibility (if gullibility sounds too pejorative then think Credulousness). Gullibility is our assumption that our ignorance is alleviated if we conform to a common knowledge or a common understanding. The typical everyday example of this is gossip, rumor, urban legend, old wives tales and other types of “they say…” information. “They say” that you shouldn’t swim thirty minutes after eating. Is it actually unsafe to swim right after eating? No, it’s perfectly fine to swim right after eating. That’s an example of incorrect information becoming common knowledge because we simply take everything we hear as fact, because “they say” it’s so. Where Conformity intersects with Anxiety (on the diagram), we find Mass Hysteria. A more appropriate term for Mass Hysteria might be the concept of a Moral Panic. There’s something that is causing many people to all at once become fearful and uncomfortable. A contemporary example of this Mass Hysteria is the fear of vaccinations. One parent hears from another parent that they heard that “they say” that vaccinations cause autism. Do vaccinations really cause autism? No, they don’t. But the combination of Anxiety and Conformity in the human psyche makes such fear spread through a society like a forest fire. This combination of Gullibility and Mass Hysteria makes up the institutionalizing part of “Institutionalized Superstition”.

Now, let’s end on the final goal: the center of the diagram, where all three circles intersect and all three intersections — Superstition, Gullibility and Mass Hysteria — intersect. That’s where we find Religion. “Religion” is what happens when anxiety combines with ignorance to create superstition, and conformity combines with ignorance and anxiety to create gullibility and mass hysteria, respectively (further combining to create institutionalization), and all three — superstition, gullibility and mass hysteria — combining to create religion.

Now, I bring all this up as a primer for what I’m about to say next. There are two ways to think about suffering: suffering is something that is inflicted on you, or it is something that you experience as a reaction to your environment. In the first sense of suffering, suffering is essentially reified. It has become a thing that is created and bestowed on a creature with a purposeful intent, like a sweater or a birthday card. In the second sense of suffering, suffering is merely a word for an abstract state of being. It has no real, metaphysical existence apart from the internal and external physical processes behind the experience. In other words, “suffering” is not a “thing” itself. It’s only a word for a particular relationship, i.e. between the suffering creature and the immediate cause of the suffering. This is an important distinction to consider when thinking about religion’s role in a society. As an Institutionalized Superstition, the primary purpose of Religion (capital R) is to reify “suffering” (as in the first sense) so as to manage the unmanageable, to control the uncontrollable, and, thus, to understand the incomprehensible, to not fear the troubling, to find comfort in the communal. Religion gives you that.

But for those who understand suffering in the second sense, i.e. as just a catch-all word for those experiences that our mind and body is telling us to avoid and end, then Religion isn’t enough. We need real, practical solutions to end suffering. We want to educate the ignorant. We want to reassure the anxious. We want to question mindless conformity. We want to replace Religion with the opposites of superstition, gullibility, and mass hysteria — science, skepticism, and diversity of opinion. That’s the true path to ending suffering. Not religion.