{"id":267677,"date":"2016-09-15T17:55:14","date_gmt":"2016-09-15T17:55:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-climate-religion\/"},"modified":"2016-09-15T17:55:14","modified_gmt":"2016-09-15T17:55:14","slug":"the-climate-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-climate-religion\/","title":{"rendered":"The Climate Religion"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Primordial religions have always been about avoiding the calamities of climate: drought, fire, disease, war\u2026 But religion has also always been more that an individual alleviation of insecurity and guilt. It has been a stabilizing force of society\u2019s dominance hierarchies.<\/p>\n<p>Monarchs have always had symbiotic relations with organized religion, and that is no accident. Rulers gain perceived legitimacy, while the church-maintenance class gains high relative social status and privilege. In recent history, one might even argue that the downfall of the USSR was facilitated by a suppressed church.<\/p>\n<p>Clearly, if a system can combine individual-identity-creating beliefs with the impression that the state is vital in defending those beliefs against outside threats, then one has a powerful entity that is directed and centralized, as long as it can all be maintained. A current example is Israel\u2019s remarkable success (as a strong and influential entity), against the <i>a priori<\/i> odds.<\/p>\n<p>What to do in a secular and multi-cultural empire, to prevent dissolution?<\/p>\n<p>In this regard, the author Michael Crichton, among many who followed<sup><\/sup> , in 2003 made a key observation to the Commonwealth Club:<sup><\/sup><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>I studied anthropology in college, and one of the things I learned was that certain human social structures always reappear. They can\u2019t be eliminated from society. One of those structures is religion. Today it is said we live in a secular society in which many people\u2014the best people, the most&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/2016\/09\/the-climate-religion\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Primordial religions have always been about avoiding the calamities of climate: drought, fire, disease, war\u2026 But religion has also always been more that an individual alleviation of insecurity and guilt. It has been a stabilizing force of society\u2019s dominance hierarchies. Monarchs have always had symbiotic relations with organized religion, and that is no accident. Rulers [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-267677","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267677\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}