Is being 'spiritual' enough?

This just became available online today.  Pretty excited about it.  It was a fun study to work on and it got placed in a really good journal.  Always nice to move on from projects...

If you are in need of some self-flagellation, let me know and I can send you the article.  (There was a page break on the abstract, so the screen shot wouldn't get it all...)

Re-integrative medial interactions

The dream of reason did not take power into account.     - Paul Starr

Something I have been thinking a lot about lately (besides the fact that we are about to have a kid) in working on the dissertation is the place that power and authority plays in our interactions with other people.  We all have what Peter Berger call 'typification schemes' that allow us to quickly process, make sense of, and project our experiences of reality.  We get used to understanding certain actions of others as meaning something always - hugs show affection, yelling communicates heightened emotions, etc.  We use these cognitive tools to make sense of everything we experience and 'assign' meaning to it; we make sense of it.  We then assume that other people generally assign the same meaning to shared experiences, and on this basis are we able to have generally predictable interactions with other people. 

Sometimes, however, we are unable to make sense of some experiences.  When this happens we seek the help of someone we think can help.  This is what a physician is, essentially - a professional whose job it is to make sense of the experiences of others and ameliorate those experiences, assuming they are adverse ("so what do I have doc...").  Another dude, Talcott Parsons, once wrote about how illness is essentially the result of any given person shifting their self-perception to that of an 'ill' person.  This makes sense if you think about it - two people could both have a cold, and one asserts that they are 'fine' and goes to work while the other asserts that they are 'sick' and stays home from work.  One has shifted their identity while the other did not. 

Parsons asserted that one of the jobs of a physician is to re-integrate 'ill' people back into society as 'normal' people. 

What happens when a patient does not listen to their doctor though?  For example, someone may have trouble breathing but refuse the advise of their physician to stop smoking.  Starr, the dude who said the quote at the start, would say this is an instance where the physician has not successfully asserted their authority over the patient.  He thinks that one of the jobs of the doctor is to asses the nature of reality, which in this instance is the patient's experiences and needs.  The physician needs to interpret those experiences and the needs of the patient and literally create the conditions under which the patient thinks their advice is appropriate. 

This is where the interaction between a patient and a physician gets interesting though.  What if the patient is religious and makes sense of their world and experiences through a lens tinted by an engaged God?  The patient has a 'broken' identity when they are ill, and they are in need of being brought back to a state of 'normalcy'.  This requires that their physician successfully interprets and assigns meaning to their reality, but very often in a medical setting this meaning invoked by the physician does not include religious beliefs.  So we have a professional whose job it is to bring a state of normalcy back to a religious patient, but that 'normalcy' and meaning introduced by the physician is devoid of religious beliefs and meaning. 

Is it really possible for a religious person to be 're-integrated' with who they are in a setting that implicitly rejects religion?  Often this just leaves a bit more work for the patient to do on their own time, but recent changes in medical practice have gravitated more towards understanding patients in a wider sense than just a broken machine that needs to be oiled.  This is likely a good thing, but just as before, the interpretive work of the physician is a big challenge.  Cheers to you doctors who fully dive into the work you do.  Short cuts are easier, but they don't always get you to the same place or even where you wanted to go. 

Professional socialization, status and service

I thought about making this more than one post, but figured few might read this anyways so length probably doesn't matter, ha.  Also thought it was about time a post like this gets put up.  Cheers. 

I think that one of the biggest challenges in life is figuring out how we can pull ourselves out of our own insular daily lives that have very little, if any, impact on those outside of our direct circles of interaction.  How do we make our 'mark'?  This problem (maybe) is more challenging with professions that require a lot of training that is then repaid with more money and prestige   Like de Botton says, we will always struggle with status anxiety, and those with more status both have more to gain (a bigger continuum) and more to lose (higher ledge from which to fall).

One way to avoid the preoccupation with status attainment is to pair life with service - to intentionally and regularly expand our circle of interaction to include those different than ourselves and in need of something.  I used to (may still... jury is out) think that some professions have a much easier time solving this status/service issue than others.  Physicians are an easy example.  The work that they do is directly tied to serving other people.  Academics are also an easy example for the opposite reason - there is almost no connection at all between the work we do and serving other people, typically.  So the solution to insular status anxiety for academics makes it much harder to bridge passions, training and knowledge with helping others.  It almost forces academics to bifurcate their lives into profession and service which does not really fix the problem of connecting with other people because how can one connect with others when they are in that very attempt disconnecting with their self?

But it occurred to me over this past week as I have been thinking through part of the dissertation that this may be overly simplistic.  All professions have beliefs and values that are socialized into the professionals to different degrees.  For physicians, one of the strongest beliefs/values in that socialization process is that of valuing scientific thought and processes which naturally is linked with detaching people from the diseases and health problems that they have.  This detachment is at odds, in a sense, to empathetic and compassionate care for the person coming to see the physician.  It also tends to be at odds with the religious beliefs of the physician because the one puts compassion and empathy at the front and the other devalues and at times even ignores compassion because machines and science have no need for empathy -  even getting in the way at times.

So, like the academic struggling to connect their skills and passions with service to others, the physician in serving others struggles to connect two different socializations, two different modes of thinking and feeling, that contribute to how they think and feel - professional detachment and religious compassion.  Some feel the tension more than others.  Some ignore the tension and bifurcate their lives.  Others uncritically (I don't mean this in a negative sense) accept both professional and religious socializations as they are and the tension never comes to the surface - similar to Gould's non-overlapping magisteria.  

I think that many people struggle with some of this stuff when they think about what they want to do and accomplish in life.  How can my life make a difference?  How can I help people best?  Pretty much any profession has processes of socialization in place and these will also relate to these struggles in different ways.  At what point will one's religious beliefs overpower their professional socialization (if we can think of them in those terms)?  How can they happily work with one another?  Should they?

Daddy loves you

Here is another post about notes in the bathroom at a Baptist university. It says "daddy loves you," which I think may be in reference to God but is both weird and unclear.

Erroneous and Skewed

We like categories.  Boxes.  Organization.  I get that and it is clearly necessary for social interactions to work because it lays a bedrock of working assumptions upon which a non-dysfunctional society is based. But it is also very hard to avoid dismissing things you do not like by automatically (miss)categorizing.  I have always tried to avoid labeling people/thoughts/ideas quickly without really thinking about the content.  Doesn't always work, but I try.

This is even more true now, I would like to think.  Since people have read about some research I have done, many avoid really thinking about the content of the research or the content of their own assumptions of how things work by quickly putting a 'yes' or 'no' label on both me and the work.  Me and the research have been put in every camp possible it seems.  An article I wrote for Christianity Today came out recently and I really started to think more about this after those comments.  There are probably a few things going on.  Many quickly react to the title and don't even read the article it seems.  Other read it but what they already think literally drives what they read, and read some of what is written in literally opposite of what is written.  This could be a clarity issue on my part, but still.  There are some really good comments, too, but they are less fun to post.  Here are a few comment-morsels for you:

• [this is a partial - the person goes on and on, but I have no idea why this is talked about - maybe they think I am a universalist?]  Jesus' parable of the wheat and the tares entirely contradicts the universalism of the liberals. So does his injunction not to throw pearls before swine, and his description of the Pharisees as 'offspring of vipers', in other words genetically cursed, and his parable of the 'wicked tenants' or 'wicked husbandmen', describing those who were attempting to usurp the kingdom.- the Edomites, descendants of Esau, described as a people God hates (Malachi 1:2,3), who had been converted to become 'Jews' in about 120BC.
• [I like this one, ha]  Wait wait wait... So you're upset that the author uses statistics to form conclusions? What else would you suggest? And nothing is "proven" in science. What the author is doing is using the facts to support her argument, explaining what they INDICATE. Your discernment is clearly hindered. Might I suggest some Bible reading to boost it? :)
• What an erroneous conclusion from what sounds like a skewed poll.
• [maybe my favorit one]  What a load of baloney. Liberalism is simply encouraging the Government to wrongly assume the role of the church. Keep Jesus out of your socialism.
• [again a partial, but even I am not sure what political viewpoint would be 'evident' and I wrote the thing]  Besides the likely problems inherent in the poll and thus the interpretation that others have pointed out, the political orientation of the author is evident. His criticism of Beck is misplaced, for instance....

despair and blissful ignorance

When I tell people that I am studying sociology and focusing on the sociology of religion, inevitably there are questions.  I usually need to explain to people that no, I am not going to be a pastor when I am done.  Other times, somehow the word 'religion' is like a mental block that doesn't allow people to think beyond 'theology,' which ironically is something that we very, very rarely consider.  Either way, the conversation usually doesn't stop there.

This makes for interesting bar/happy hour discussions.  (This isn't really a new thing for me at bars - ask Sara)  Not too long ago we were at the bar with the residents and someone asked me and so we got on the conversation of religion.  Seeing as how I like to talk about this stuff, and also seeing as how I have been on an existentialism kick for a bit now, we somehow arrived at Kierkegaard.  Ok, I arrive at Kierkegaard.  I was talking about his ideas of despair and defining commitments as a way out of the dark, and one of them, trying to take the blank look off his face - i need to figure out how to stop causing that - says, "well, ignorance is bliss."  To him, the best line of action is to do all that he can to avoid arriving at the inevitable realization that life apart from a Kierkegaardian defining commitment is submersed in despair.

In earlier generations this would probably seem like an odd conclusion juxtaposed the possibility of realizing one is stuck in despair, but for our generation this is old hat for some reason.  Why is this, I wonder, that we prefer to survive though life with a veneer of optimism instead of tearing off the veneer and looking into the face of actually living life?  In the past social research consistently showed that going to college could be detrimental to one's belief in the existence of God.  People would go to school and be exposed to lots of different view-points and ideas and realize that their own may not be the only one, nor the best one.  It can be tantalizing (or paralyzing?) to live in a box and then have the door opened and see a myriad of options.  It is like living in the corner store and then going to a super Walmart.

This is not really the case anymore.  The secularizing effect that college used to have on students is nearly absent today.  One of the reasons for why this is the case is that students today are literally no longer interested in questions of ultimate purpose and existence to the extent that it makes a difference personally.  This is interesting to me.  Why are we more content to live in despair than otherwise if given the option?  More than that, what does optimism really mean if we prefer ignorance?  What are we optimistic for in that case?

Do I prefer my box in disregard for world as it is?

the gods must be crazy

Since I have probably hit my serious post quota for a bit, I figured I would quickly post an interesting social fact (or anomaly?). In some work that I am doing right now I was reading through some unpublished findings from a prof that I am working with. One weird thing stuck out in a model using a national random sample... people who have 'no religion' are .045 times more likely than Evangelicals to believe in an authoritative God and .501 times more likely to believe in a critical God.

I just saw it today and so haven't really had the chance to think about it too much just yet, but it seems really odd that someone who has 'no religion' first off actually believes in some form of a God, and second off that this God is relatively engaged with the world. A god cannot really be too authoritative or critical if they are not engaged and active - odd for a non-religious person. This doesn't necessarily hint at a causal relationship, but it is interesting that there is any relationship to start with.

There ya go. Even those with 'no religion' often really do have religious beliefs of some sort.

Alright, so after this post I will stop with the sociology (most kind of likely that is). I got to thinking that the last post about bundled beliefs and values may not have made a ton of sense to everyone. Then I got to thinking more about how everyone loves a good graph. That could just be me because I like to get my nerd on from time to time, but who knows.

Below is a graph that kind of helps to illustrate how political view points and religious views mix. The graph show conservative, moderate, and liberal political views as they are impacted by increasingly literal interpretations of the Bible. These lines are predicting increasingly levels of people thinking that one must do religious good deeds (as discussed in the last post, grouping 'have faith in God' with 'serve in the military'). So, as one has more literal views of the Bible, they are also more likely to think that one must do these 'religious' good deeds in order to be considered a good person.

The biggest change is really for the conservatives as they get more literal interpretations of the Bible. While both the moderates and the liberals do not change in how many religious good deeds they think a person needs to do as they see the Bible more literally, the conservatives have a large increase in how many religious good deeds they think a person must do.

That totally got longer than I intended it to. My bad.

From A Step Beyond

all bundled up

As people we do weird things. Many of the beliefs and values that we have are not necessarily logical or coherent as a 'bundle.' The US may not do this more than other places, but there are some funny combinations that we have in the US that are not typically found in other countries. One of the more prominent causes of this is the religious nature of our country. Here, likely because of a high rate of religiosity, non-religious things are linked and bundled in people's minds with religion.

Some of the more interesting combinations will come out of a mix of religion and politics. In the US they are very closely tied, where as in other places, such as Canada, even the religious politicians are forced to not only be quite about their faith but at times work counter to what they would prefer to do in order to keep the job. Here, a candidate must publicly show that they are religious or they loose legitimacy. They are nearly required to say "God bless America" at the end of their speeches.

It doesn't end with just the politicians and their use of religion to get elected or get things done (or religion's use of them?). You see it in individuals as well. For a final project I was just looking at a set of questions asking people what they think one must do in order to be a good person. There were 7 questions in that section ranging from 'actively seek social and economic justice,' to 'have faith in God,' and on to 'serve in the military' and 'consume fewer goods.' I did a factor analysis in order to see which of these things most typically 'go together.' This shows us which of these things people will typically associate as being in the same category - like all things that have to do with God and all things that have to do with society, or something like that.

The result is mostly predictable, with one minor exception. In with the more 'religious' responses for what a person must do in order to be a good person was also 'serve in the military.' Because of the fusion of (conservative?) politics and religion here in the US, a high rate of people conceptually think of serving in the military as being in the same category as having faith in God. The funny thing is that it isn't just a minor association either - the alpha score (tells us how strongly the group is related to each other) is .73 (.5 to .6 is usually considered fairly good on a 0 to 1 range).

Anyways, we bundle things together cognitively as the result of the groups and people that we communicate with and are exposed to. The identity of who we are is often largely the result of who we hang out with, what we read, what church we go to, what news channel we watch and so on. While postmodernism as a philosophical construct may not be very clear or interesting, as a social reality it is very interesting. We constantly are engaging in creating our world and reality socially. What does religion and serving in the military have to do with one another? Nothing besides the fact that we have agreed they are related. The reality is in the agreement/common mental association.