|
| | 
Conscript Rabbi
 
Last Seen:
Today @ 6:10 AM
Posts: 2,120
Visits: 8,225
|
| Roadkill (7/9/2008)
-Well, I would say that the original purpose of religion was to give a distinct identity to a community/nation, cement the rulers' control, (attempt to)explain the world they inhabited, serve as a form of behavior control, and a makeshift system of law. Clergy were a byproduct that eventually assumed total control.
You might add the purpose to deliver some meaning to life and a symbolic universe and such stuff, mutatis mutandis for the various religions, but then I think you have it generally right.
Also here one might add similar systems that arguably underwent the same development and are not religion. I am thinking for example of the state. Also the system of education and science has this tendency. The purpose is to elevate and inform, but once you have institutions such as schools and universities, you will have officials such as teachers and professors who are imbued with authority by that same system, but may start using it to their own advantage and wield the power that they have for its own sake (or their personal interest or what have you) and not necessarily for the greater good to which the system was put in place.
I think you touch upon a very generic tendency in social systems that you might call deterioration, but somewhat more neutrally can call homeostasis - a system works to keep itself in place. |
--
Hypocrisy is sin's reverence to virtue
-.-.-.-.-.-
↑ Grab this Headline Animator |    |  |
| |
| | 
Day-Saver!
Last Seen:
Today @ 3:44 PM
Posts: 5,299
Visits: 27,197
|
| | |
| |
Conscript Rabbi
Last Seen:
Today @ 6:10 AM
Posts: 2,120
Visits: 8,225
|
| | |
| | 
Designated Norwegian
Last Seen:
Today @ 3:25 PM
Posts: 3,328
Visits: 10,693
|
| | |
| | 
Grognard fantôme
Last Seen:
Today @ 3:18 PM
Posts: 7,248
Visits: 9,619
|
| | |
|
|
