Throughout history throughout society people have engaged in a sort of hero worship, a cult of personality, where they viewed their leaders as gods. In ancient Egypt rulers were seen as embodied gods. In The Roman Empire its leaders were practically worshipped. Then arrived christianity. People started focusing their feelings of hero worship upon Jesus. For a period of time people recognized catholic leaders as ambassadors of Jesus and so people worshipped Jesus through these leaders and thus catholic leaders were a part of a cult of personality due to being representatives of Jesus. The monarchs of Europe were subservient to the pope. Then came the protestant reformation where people decided they could have a personal relationship with God and they did not need a pope to worship God. The development of modern democracy was pioneered in The USA and modern democracy is the result of the protestant reformation. People focused their feelings of hero worship exclusively on Jesus and as a result they rejected any sort of political cult of personality where a strong political leader played a messianic role as being the savior of the nation. What I find interesting is that Barack Obama is the first American political leader who people have displayed feelings of hero worship for. He is a cult of personality. It is possible that the cult of personality surrounding Obama is the result of the mocking of christianity people have engaged in... people have lost their faith in Jesus and so they replace their hero worship of Jesus with a hero worship of a political leader such as Obama.
So I propose that within the brain their are a different mental centers that focus ones energy on certain things. And social institutions in the world are a product of those mental centers. Each type of institution is the product of a mental center. So if an institution is attacked then people will naturally replace that institution with something else of a similar nature. If society destroys a persons faith in Jesus that person will find something else to have a cult of personality with. If people in an area stop believing in christianity then for the most part they will adopt other superstitions(a minority will remain hard materialists). I am not saying whether or not people should believe in superstitions.
An example of new superstitions replacing old ones is the development of things like string theory.
I am not suggesting that all institutions are good. In some cases institutions should be replaced with things that are preferable. And I am also not saying that the weakening of the Jesus cult means that all people will replace that with a political cult of personality. Some people are devotees of hindu gods/goddesses and some people are big fans of athletes or scientists.
So the humans seem to have a certain amount of energy they focus on certain things and if they stop focusing it on certain things it seems they focus it on replacement things. And I am not suggesting that christianity is the only alternative to political cults of personality. It does seem though that it took almost 2000 years of christian influence for people to replace a political cult of personality with a cult of personality based on purely Jesus. The catholic church was a cult of personality but it was the beginnings of the decline of a political based cult of personality and the political based cult of personality did not fully decline until protestantism became a strong force.
This post is not pro-christian and this post is not anti-christian. And this post is not praising political cults of personality and this post is not criticizing political cults of personality.
Edited by lines (02/15/09 08:04 PM)
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