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What am I?

You sound like a human. You’re also WEIRD. Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic. As a UMC white male in america, I was more immune to any kind of power trips, so I was free to dabble in religion and not be abused by it, so I don’t have the same emotional reactions to religion that a lot of atheists have. The ability to move freely in and out of cultures, cross borders and challenge authority is not something most humans in history have been able to do. As a Midwesterner, I see it every day, so I had to have scholars explained to me that I’m weird. I’ve done sweat lodges, but I’ll probably never fully understand the experience of tribal community that such a ritual is part of. I come into those experiences as an independent actor and even if changed somewhat, the experience kind of wears off.

I can see the value of the rituals and as yet I can see their limits. No one has convinced me that I should shed my since of self and devote myself to repeating rituals full time. From my perspective, it seems like the upgrade to humanity would be to recognize that power but keep it regulated, not in a government sense, but in the sense that we don’t think of it as abuse to lie to children about Santa Claus. We regulate it socially.

What we don’t know is, will that break the spell? One person recognizing they were lied to and walking out of church doesn’t bring down the organization. But what if everyone started treating church as more of a spectacle, like a good movie that you experience and get some insight from, but then walk back in to the light knowing that it was fiction. Would the positive benefits of the communal experience be lost? Given the negatives, I think it’s worth finding out.