Interesting how God and Nature are synonymous among many philosophers. Spinoza, for example, famous stated "Deus sive Natura" meaning "God or Nature." I see no need to imply that a supernatural being exists, as that would imply permanance and seperation and be at odds with the continuously unfolding process of nature that we can empirically observe.
[Another decent-seeming, fav-multi-channel, out-of-context repost here, originating from Louise Perry's MMM.] I have several things to say here: I'll again invoke the late Hitchens. While his Anti-theism argument elicited mine, and almost everyone's disagreement, I maintain that his counterfactual in which the harms of organized religions outweighed the social utility, is VERY CLOSE to reality, and informative for the future, to ensure that those social organizational/ritual systems remain benign. Similarly, I think Hitch's moral argument that the US had an obligation to intervene around the world was also NEARLY defensible in its specificity, and he was mistaken regarding CAPABILITY, not regarding DUTY. I was politically activated as an adolescent in opposition to Neoconservatism, however Hitchens walked this line ALMOST perfectly. He was mistaken in his support for certain specific policies, but somewhat amazingly, proceeded to catalog EVERY SINGLE WAY in which those policies he supported were being poorly implemented, over a period of time. I consider the two great inheritors of the Christopher Hitchens legacy, to be Douglas Murray in the area of culture, and Michael Weiss in the area of policy. Now, SHOULD the US be the police of whole world? Frankly, yes, unless you're a moral relativist (and fail to apply the moral arbiter of human health) there are lots of 'crime infested neighborhoods'. However, CAN the US police the whole world? HW Bush might have said, 'it's possible we could just barely pull it off,' however the answer ultimately seems to have been: not rly, and especially not at this juncture. Arriving at the nub of my thesis: Women, and men as well, should not necessarily suppress their moral reflexes, when faced with the overly harsh realities of the world. But the correct response is not to pull everyone in the water, onto the lifeboat of a Western society, and thereby sink the lifeboat. The correct response is to GET IN THE WATER. (I recently recommended a movie called Machine Gun Preacher someplace, in a similar context). If I'm not mistaken, Michael Levin was brought to Massachusetts from the Soviet Union, by a Jewish missionary group. He's probably our next Einstein, in biophysics. Maajid Nawaz wouldn't be back here, helping to save our society, if not for Amnesty International (pre-woke). Yeonmi Park wouldn't have survived, and be helping to rescue escapees plus doing other important work, if not for a Christian missionary group. Whether it's preserving the lives of our next geniuses and heroes, or protecting and providing medical support to as many innocents as possible, let's replace "woke" with "moved and inspired," let's turn our 'sinners' into 'saints'. The now-underway era of deglobalization will increasingly result in mass famine, and self-contained local/regional conflicts, as global supply chains break down. It will not be practically possible for Western nations to intervene, nor for that matter to avoid inflicting collateral damage in certain instances (despite our best efforts) nor disrupting certain supply chains for the sake of everyone's best interests. For the most part, the ability of yesteryear's internationally funded and supported relief and protection organizations to meaningfully intervene around the world, is significantly reduced. 'Religion' should not be some 'us against them' mobilizing tool, or some larping ritual, or some childish magical, metaphysical set of notions. Therefore, it rly doesn't even need to be 'religion,' it should be possible today for a civil society movement, to fill a similar role, if ppl would stop navelgazing, and allow themselves to be appropriately moved and directed, by the real need that exists in the world. It's one kind of service to society, to do what Louise is doing for example, educating the next generation through New Media, seeking knowledge, and raising a healthy family. And yet, perhaps when their children are more grown up, it will be incumbent on as many adults in the West as possible, to go to seriously dangerous places around the world, and try to help save as many innocent lives as they can, via privately funded, sort of startup charitable groups (perhaps even with the assistance of protective, small Western militia groups in some cases, but that's a tenuous prospect). Ppl in the discourse have been pointing out, perhaps rather nervously at times, that certain populations for example in Sub-Saharan Africa, have been growing much faster than others, which are shrinking. But this is entirely the wrong perspective, the anxiety impulse should not be activated, the empathy impulse should be activated. What, are they going to invade Western countries with far superior militaries? No. And, what do you think is going happen to places like this with far larger populations than they can support, when the international market breaks down and whatever food resources they imported are no longer available, and whatever local resource sustained their economy is no longer internationally bought and sold? The obvious answer, is that they're ALL GOING TO DIE, current terrifying projections indicate that a BILLION ppl will die for these reasons, perhaps over 10-20 yrs or less, that's "BILLION" with a "B". (From the societal perspective, birthing a large population is nothing, sustaining a large population is everything). During previous eras of isolationism, going back a couple centuries, it was the 'providence' of citizens' philanthropic groups, to alleviate the suffering and prevent the loss of as many lives throughout the world as possible. Westerners are experiencing malaise? Feeling the need for some grand mission? Having trouble appropriately directing their moral impulses? School's out kids, welcome to the real world. There will never be any deficit of that kind, for anyone who opens their eyes, and takes a good look. *This message brought to you by Mortality Salience on Tap.
Although modern scientists often tend to adapt parts of Nietzsche and Heidegger in their work, it seems to me that ultimately, there is no contemporary substitute for scientific empiricism via the hard sciences, specifically amounting to the most complete and defensible account of epistemological knowledge, either now or in the foreseeable future. However (returning to philosophy) it is my contention that regarding both a broad ontological framework, and the subfield of political philosophy in particular, the relevant features of Enlightenment Liberal philosophy, and essentially its heuristic application, have been as reliably vindicated in practice, as per any series of replication studies. My own conception of morality, is that it exists between the (above mentioned) defining political philosophy of liberal society, and the modern scientific empirical prospectus. That is to say: is there a kind of Millian moral utility, that translates from the laws and explicit standards of a functional society, into the more 'informal' implicit guiding principals, of ostensible "moral agents?" While it seems to me that, up to a point the answer is yes, beyond that point I perceive the application of sheer utilitarianism to entail a kind of autism, just as I perceive deontology to generally involve a kind of psychosis, and I think that every sane person ultimately tends to balance virtue ethics and consequentialism, with the latter informing most of our broader policymaking, and the former governing most of our daily interactions. I have just been listening to Nathan Cofnas's channel, and one of his discussed examples seems apropos, to illustrate where the rubber meets the road on personal moral issues in relation to societal concerns. I believe the question posed was: if a high IQ genius with an 'optimal' trait profile (who could be very useful to society) were drowning, and your child were drowning, which would you save if forced to choose? (A typical philosophical framing, although one which seems especially relevant because of updated psychometrics' bearing on issues of social utility). The answer seems fairly obvious for every non-psychopath, but why is it obvious? A fairly conclusive and defensible answer is probably available in our current epoch from scientists, involving variables such as genetic relatedness. However, without departing from philosophy, it is for reasons like this that I increasingly consider myself a Humean. Does it make sense to consider morality, in the context of anything other than what might be characterized as "sentiments and impulses?" I don't think it does. Nevertheless, I think that when organizing social systems, physiological metrics in the most robust possible sense, provide us with the inescapable arbiter for the optimal health parameters of the human organism in a particular ecosystem. On a related note, on Sam Harris's moral landscape, I would argue that prioritization of the highest peak is almost always possible, and almost always denotes relatively similar, general societal features. But, does such parameterization of an overarching societal apparatus, sufficiently track with the so-named 'morality' that most ppl engage in their daily lives? No, and it might be said that the rules of the game, don't dictate the specifics of how every match is played. I understand virtue ethics to entail a kind of downstream descriptive model, of the competing attitudes and impulses that more immediately drive what could be termed "human moral decision-making". (Perhaps virtue ethics necessarily entails greater moment-to-moment self-reflection and analysis than I've represented, but if those capacities were especially manifest at any given moment, then I imagine that the resultant, multivariate longview vantage point, would essentially begin to shade into the 'modality' of consequentialism).
In my experience it seems my sense of morality is largely inmate. Environment plays a lesser role. Even in exploration of machiavellianism and dark triad traits, it's simply goes against my nature to be deceptive, knowing that my inclination towards honesty and kindness puts me at a disadvantage.
Okay Marcus Aurelius, lol. Perhaps morality is innate when it leads to preservation of organism and community, as this tends to enhance our experiences and leads to more ease in daily life.
"Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness - all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil. But for my part I have long perceived the nature of good and its nobility, the nature of evil and its meanness, and also the nature of the culprit himself, who is my brother (not in the physical sense, but as a fellow creature similarly endowed with reason and a share of the divine); therefore none of those things can injure me, for nobody can implicate me in what is degrading. Neither can I be angry with my brother or fall foul of him; for he and I were born to work together, like a man’s two hands, feet or eyelids, or the upper and lower rows of his teeth. To obstruct each other is against Nature’s law - and what is irritation or aversion but a form of obstruction." - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
[This essay-comment/replies seemed like another decent repost for other channels I enjoy, this one originates from the Boyce of Reason. My fav content creators have more fully fleshed out treatments of topics that I might delve into on a Substack anyway, plus already have at least medium-sized audiences, so my droll ramblings probably belong in these comment sections.] I started writing something abt religion similar to things I usually say, and started realizing how cynical and potentially trollish my views on religion actually are. I feel kinda bad, because I rly like this channel, if I were gonna rewrite this and be honest though, I feel like it'll be just as dark as before, and too real. Lol, let's see. I think firstly, um, magic is not real, let's get that out of the way. But more to the point (and on a more terrestrial note) I think religions are almost precisely comparable to big gangs, with everything from the shared rituals, to the dogmatic groupthink, to binding together against outsiders, to the shared insulated and idiosyncratic subculture for cohesion. It must also be pointed out, that although we're dealing here with social phenotype more than genotype (Dawkins's argument might not hold up, but he tried to argue it's both of these via his "extended phenotype" coinage) ethnic similarity tends often, but not always, to be a major factor. (Here's a relatively obvious hypothesis: as long as there's not too much variability in group genotype all at once, shared social phenotype largely contributes to the potential formation of a distinct new genotype, over the course of several generations). So, here's the question: should you join a gang? (Lol). If you're in prison...yeahh, not much choice. If you're a teenager in a dangerous neighborhood, unfortunately oftentimes, not much choice. But in terms of what's going on right now: what if you're in a culturally weakened, atomized Western society, with failing institutions? Should you essentially re-tribalize? Should you 'join a gang?' Ppl debate what kind of social utility religion ultimately has. Basically I'm here to tell you, ppl can dress it up all they like, but essentially this is it. In a weird way, this is not as much of a critique as it may seem to be. I mean, SHOULD ppl join a reliable and (overly) close-knit community group, amidst worsening social disintegration? Honestly, I don't know, increasingly atomized and desperate individuals may well prove to be EVEN MORE dangerous, if that's realistically the only alternative. I know our friendly neighborhood Christians, which probably includes most ppl on this channel, always seem like the most amicable and community-oriented ppl. But then, why can't they just be that way, without doing this whole thing? The initiation rituals, the blood oaths, the shared recitation of a culty creedo, ok maybe not all those things, but lots of them. Ppl get scared, some more easily than others, and this is what happens. Could you just try to join the most benign gang on offer, with the most benign possible outcomes? Maybe, but when the Sharks and Jets start snapping their fingers... . . . An AI robot doth sayeth: "The social phenotype refers to the unique set of social behaviors, traits, and characteristics that an individual exhibits, shaped by the interplay between their genetic makeup, environmental factors, and life experiences. It encompasses various aspects of social behavior, including social cognition, social interaction, and social adaptation". . . . If ppl have spooky metaphysical notions on their own time, ok fine, it's pretty weird but I don't think it's some big social issue. However, the subject here is organized religion. What kind of organized religion do we get, when it hasn't been made so soft, tame and diaphanous, by modernity? Couldn't have said the answer better myself dude, your first paragraph here would pretty much only be a SOMEWHAT exaggerated, medieval version imo, if we were gonna copy/paste it onto religion: "Joining a "gang" does not usually afford the new member the luxury of choice. Affiliation os forced and members are "jumped in" through an Initiation involving ritualistic violence and assault followed by a form of love bombing, thusly cementing bonds within the gang. Hierarchy and status are fundamental to the functioning of the group as a whole. There is no notion of Equality that is entertained nor the concept of freedom. There is rigidity of thought and behavior".
![Wiz Khalifa - Khalifa's Home [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/wnrLCTe0Nz4/mqdefault.jpg)
Great stuff
Interesting how God and Nature are synonymous among many philosophers. Spinoza, for example, famous stated "Deus sive Natura" meaning "God or Nature." I see no need to imply that a supernatural being exists, as that would imply permanance and seperation and be at odds with the continuously unfolding process of nature that we can empirically observe.
[Another decent-seeming, fav-multi-channel, out-of-context repost here, originating from Louise Perry's MMM.]
I have several things to say here:
I'll again invoke the late Hitchens. While his Anti-theism argument elicited mine, and almost everyone's disagreement, I maintain that his counterfactual in which the harms of organized religions outweighed the social utility, is VERY CLOSE to reality, and informative for the future, to ensure that those social organizational/ritual systems remain benign.
Similarly, I think Hitch's moral argument that the US had an obligation to intervene around the world was also NEARLY defensible in its specificity, and he was mistaken regarding CAPABILITY, not regarding DUTY.
I was politically activated as an adolescent in opposition to Neoconservatism, however Hitchens walked this line ALMOST perfectly.
He was mistaken in his support for certain specific policies, but somewhat amazingly, proceeded to catalog EVERY SINGLE WAY in which those policies he supported were being poorly implemented, over a period of time.
I consider the two great inheritors of the Christopher Hitchens legacy, to be Douglas Murray in the area of culture, and Michael Weiss in the area of policy.
Now, SHOULD the US be the police of whole world? Frankly, yes, unless you're a moral relativist (and fail to apply the moral arbiter of human health) there are lots of 'crime infested neighborhoods'.
However, CAN the US police the whole world? HW Bush might have said, 'it's possible we could just barely pull it off,' however the answer ultimately seems to have been: not rly, and especially not at this juncture.
Arriving at the nub of my thesis:
Women, and men as well, should not necessarily suppress their moral reflexes, when faced with the overly harsh realities of the world.
But the correct response is not to pull everyone in the water, onto the lifeboat of a Western society, and thereby sink the lifeboat.
The correct response is to GET IN THE WATER.
(I recently recommended a movie called Machine Gun Preacher someplace, in a similar context).
If I'm not mistaken, Michael Levin was brought to Massachusetts from the Soviet Union, by a Jewish missionary group. He's probably our next Einstein, in biophysics.
Maajid Nawaz wouldn't be back here, helping to save our society, if not for Amnesty International (pre-woke).
Yeonmi Park wouldn't have survived, and be helping to rescue escapees plus doing other important work, if not for a Christian missionary group.
Whether it's preserving the lives of our next geniuses and heroes, or protecting and providing medical support to as many innocents as possible, let's replace "woke" with "moved and inspired," let's turn our 'sinners' into 'saints'.
The now-underway era of deglobalization will increasingly result in mass famine, and self-contained local/regional conflicts, as global supply chains break down. It will not be practically possible for Western nations to intervene, nor for that matter to avoid inflicting collateral damage in certain instances (despite our best efforts) nor disrupting certain supply chains for the sake of everyone's best interests.
For the most part, the ability of yesteryear's internationally funded and supported relief and protection organizations to meaningfully intervene around the world, is significantly reduced.
'Religion' should not be some 'us against them' mobilizing tool, or some larping ritual, or some childish magical, metaphysical set of notions. Therefore, it rly doesn't even need to be 'religion,' it should be possible today for a civil society movement, to fill a similar role, if ppl would stop navelgazing, and allow themselves to be appropriately moved and directed, by the real need that exists in the world.
It's one kind of service to society, to do what Louise is doing for example, educating the next generation through New Media, seeking knowledge, and raising a healthy family.
And yet, perhaps when their children are more grown up, it will be incumbent on as many adults in the West as possible, to go to seriously dangerous places around the world, and try to help save as many innocent lives as they can, via privately funded, sort of startup charitable groups (perhaps even with the assistance of protective, small Western militia groups in some cases, but that's a tenuous prospect).
Ppl in the discourse have been pointing out, perhaps rather nervously at times, that certain populations for example in Sub-Saharan Africa, have been growing much faster than others, which are shrinking.
But this is entirely the wrong perspective, the anxiety impulse should not be activated, the empathy impulse should be activated.
What, are they going to invade Western countries with far superior militaries? No.
And, what do you think is going happen to places like this with far larger populations than they can support, when the international market breaks down and whatever food resources they imported are no longer available, and whatever local resource sustained their economy is no longer internationally bought and sold?
The obvious answer, is that they're ALL GOING TO DIE, current terrifying projections indicate that a BILLION ppl will die for these reasons, perhaps over 10-20 yrs or less, that's "BILLION" with a "B".
(From the societal perspective, birthing a large population is nothing, sustaining a large population is everything).
During previous eras of isolationism, going back a couple centuries, it was the 'providence' of citizens' philanthropic groups, to alleviate the suffering and prevent the loss of as many lives throughout the world as possible.
Westerners are experiencing malaise? Feeling the need for some grand mission? Having trouble appropriately directing their moral impulses?
School's out kids, welcome to the real world. There will never be any deficit of that kind, for anyone who opens their eyes, and takes a good look.
*This message brought to you by Mortality Salience on Tap.
Although modern scientists often tend to adapt parts of Nietzsche and Heidegger in their work, it seems to me that ultimately, there is no contemporary substitute for scientific empiricism via the hard sciences, specifically amounting to the most complete and defensible account of epistemological knowledge, either now or in the foreseeable future.
However (returning to philosophy) it is my contention that regarding both a broad ontological framework, and the subfield of political philosophy in particular, the relevant features of Enlightenment Liberal philosophy, and essentially its heuristic application, have been as reliably vindicated in practice, as per any series of replication studies.
My own conception of morality, is that it exists between the (above mentioned) defining political philosophy of liberal society, and the modern scientific empirical prospectus.
That is to say: is there a kind of Millian moral utility, that translates from the laws and explicit standards of a functional society, into the more 'informal' implicit guiding principals, of ostensible "moral agents?"
While it seems to me that, up to a point the answer is yes, beyond that point I perceive the application of sheer utilitarianism to entail a kind of autism, just as I perceive deontology to generally involve a kind of psychosis, and I think that every sane person ultimately tends to balance virtue ethics and consequentialism, with the latter informing most of our broader policymaking, and the former governing most of our daily interactions.
I have just been listening to Nathan Cofnas's channel, and one of his discussed examples seems apropos, to illustrate where the rubber meets the road on personal moral issues in relation to societal concerns.
I believe the question posed was: if a high IQ genius with an 'optimal' trait profile (who could be very useful to society) were drowning, and your child were drowning, which would you save if forced to choose?
(A typical philosophical framing, although one which seems especially relevant because of updated psychometrics' bearing on issues of social utility).
The answer seems fairly obvious for every non-psychopath, but why is it obvious?
A fairly conclusive and defensible answer is probably available in our current epoch from scientists, involving variables such as genetic relatedness.
However, without departing from philosophy, it is for reasons like this that I increasingly consider myself a Humean.
Does it make sense to consider morality, in the context of anything other than what might be characterized as "sentiments and impulses?"
I don't think it does. Nevertheless, I think that when organizing social systems, physiological metrics in the most robust possible sense, provide us with the inescapable arbiter for the optimal health parameters of the human organism in a particular ecosystem. On a related note, on Sam Harris's moral landscape, I would argue that prioritization of the highest peak is almost always possible, and almost always denotes relatively similar, general societal features.
But, does such parameterization of an overarching societal apparatus, sufficiently track with the so-named 'morality' that most ppl engage in their daily lives? No, and it might be said that the rules of the game, don't dictate the specifics of how every match is played.
I understand virtue ethics to entail a kind of downstream descriptive model, of the competing attitudes and impulses that more immediately drive what could be termed "human moral decision-making".
(Perhaps virtue ethics necessarily entails greater moment-to-moment self-reflection and analysis than I've represented, but if those capacities were especially manifest at any given moment, then I imagine that the resultant, multivariate longview vantage point, would essentially begin to shade into the 'modality' of consequentialism).
@3:41 -Turkey also has the largest # of atheists in the Muslim world too just fyi
In my experience it seems my sense of morality is largely inmate. Environment plays a lesser role. Even in exploration of machiavellianism and dark triad traits, it's simply goes against my nature to be deceptive, knowing that my inclination towards honesty and kindness puts me at a disadvantage.
Okay Marcus Aurelius, lol. Perhaps morality is innate when it leads to preservation of organism and community, as this tends to enhance our experiences and leads to more ease in daily life.
"Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness - all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil. But for my part I have long perceived the nature of good and its nobility, the nature of evil and its meanness, and also the nature of the culprit himself, who is my brother (not in the physical sense, but as a fellow creature similarly endowed with reason and a share of the divine); therefore none of those things can injure me, for nobody can implicate me in what is degrading. Neither can I be angry with my brother or fall foul of him; for he and I were born to work together, like a man’s two hands, feet or eyelids, or the upper and lower rows of his teeth. To obstruct each other is against Nature’s law - and what is irritation or aversion but a form of obstruction."
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
[This essay-comment/replies seemed like another decent repost for other channels I enjoy, this one originates from the Boyce of Reason. My fav content creators have more fully fleshed out treatments of topics that I might delve into on a Substack anyway, plus already have at least medium-sized audiences, so my droll ramblings probably belong in these comment sections.]
I started writing something abt religion similar to things I usually say, and started realizing how cynical and potentially trollish my views on religion actually are. I feel kinda bad, because I rly like this channel, if I were gonna rewrite this and be honest though, I feel like it'll be just as dark as before, and too real. Lol, let's see.
I think firstly, um, magic is not real, let's get that out of the way.
But more to the point (and on a more terrestrial note) I think religions are almost precisely comparable to big gangs, with everything from the shared rituals, to the dogmatic groupthink, to binding together against outsiders, to the shared insulated and idiosyncratic subculture for cohesion.
It must also be pointed out, that although we're dealing here with social phenotype more than genotype (Dawkins's argument might not hold up, but he tried to argue it's both of these via his "extended phenotype" coinage) ethnic similarity tends often, but not always, to be a major factor. (Here's a relatively obvious hypothesis: as long as there's not too much variability in group genotype all at once, shared social phenotype largely contributes to the potential formation of a distinct new genotype, over the course of several generations).
So, here's the question: should you join a gang? (Lol).
If you're in prison...yeahh, not much choice. If you're a teenager in a dangerous neighborhood, unfortunately oftentimes, not much choice.
But in terms of what's going on right now: what if you're in a culturally weakened, atomized Western society, with failing institutions? Should you essentially re-tribalize? Should you 'join a gang?'
Ppl debate what kind of social utility religion ultimately has. Basically I'm here to tell you, ppl can dress it up all they like, but essentially this is it.
In a weird way, this is not as much of a critique as it may seem to be. I mean, SHOULD ppl join a reliable and (overly) close-knit community group, amidst worsening social disintegration?
Honestly, I don't know, increasingly atomized and desperate individuals may well prove to be EVEN MORE dangerous, if that's realistically the only alternative.
I know our friendly neighborhood Christians, which probably includes most ppl on this channel, always seem like the most amicable and community-oriented ppl.
But then, why can't they just be that way, without doing this whole thing? The initiation rituals, the blood oaths, the shared recitation of a culty creedo, ok maybe not all those things, but lots of them.
Ppl get scared, some more easily than others, and this is what happens.
Could you just try to join the most benign gang on offer, with the most benign possible outcomes?
Maybe, but when the Sharks and Jets start snapping their fingers...
. . .
An AI robot doth sayeth:
"The social phenotype refers to the unique set of social behaviors, traits, and characteristics that an individual exhibits, shaped by the interplay between their genetic makeup, environmental factors, and life experiences. It encompasses various aspects of social behavior, including social cognition, social interaction, and social adaptation".
. . .
If ppl have spooky metaphysical notions on their own time, ok fine, it's pretty weird but I don't think it's some big social issue.
However, the subject here is organized religion.
What kind of organized religion do we get, when it hasn't been made so soft, tame and diaphanous, by modernity?
Couldn't have said the answer better myself dude, your first paragraph here would pretty much only be a SOMEWHAT exaggerated, medieval version imo, if we were gonna copy/paste it onto religion:
"Joining a "gang" does not usually afford the new member the luxury of choice. Affiliation os forced and members are "jumped in" through an Initiation involving ritualistic violence and assault followed by a form of love bombing, thusly cementing bonds within the gang. Hierarchy and status are fundamental to the functioning of the group as a whole. There is no notion of Equality that is entertained nor the concept of freedom. There is rigidity of thought and behavior".