Jonathan Haidt: Religion, evolution, and the ecstasy of self-transcendence

http://www.ted.com Psychologist Jonathan Haidt asks a simple, but difficult question: why do we search for self-transcendence? Why do we attempt to lose ourselves? In a tour through the science of evolution by group selection, he proposes a provocative answer.

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[apocalypse359]

Technically, if you think about it, if you become a part of a larger group, you are still experiencing self-interest. You're joining a group because the people inside of that group have a common self-interest. That's all.

[jazzx251]

I'm amazed he didn't touch on sports fanaticism.

For me - fervently rooting for your team in a group and fervently rooting for Jesus or Allah bring about the same emotional impact.

[Andrew Paladino]

Summary: He takes "The Selfish Gene" and packs a bunch of soft emotional/Hollywood appeal onto it, and creatively expands on it, distorting the facts that Dawkins brought to light in the first place sans frills.

[m042g]

I'm curious if you are aware of history of canonical gospels? A fact is that they offer very distorted message about teaching of Jesus. His teching was simple: become fully present, realize your true nature (sons of god), not being attached to what is subject of change,...you can actually describe it in many ways, but Jesus was special because he was able to lead people to this realization and this takes more then words.

[m042g]

I don't think that you can call this transcendence, it was crowd behaviour - which is basically motivated by selfish or self-preserving interest, it's simply not very good survival strategy to go against a crowd :-) There is always a fear which drives this kind of behaviour, illusionary fear of something different. In self-transcendent behaviour there is no fear.

[m042g]

Self-transcendence is not about losing self, it's about transcending self, you are still conscious about your self, but you see it in a bigger context, as just a role in a game, life forms are born, struggle to survive then die, it's natural. To be in a state of self-transcendence means to see your self playing a role and being able to accept what is natural.

[DavidtheDuke]

Most people have no idea what spiritual even means.

[Rupnath Chattopadhyay]

He covers it in his book

[Steve Todd]

Shame for all those millions of people who died before god chose to let them know he existed. I guess it was all explained to them when they reached hell that they were just unlucky that they happened to live and die in places where god's omnipresence took so long to get there from the small group of people he chose to tell in the deserts of Palestine.