Our reading assignment this week, "The Moral of Story", was particularly interesting to me personally. I am constantly thinking about religion and spirituality in my own personal life, so to see it spun into the fabric of storytelling was fascinating. Furthermore, that religion is but a way for communities to be bonded in beliefs, and even more- morality, is a very obvious and interesting concept. Gottschall states that, "for a society to function properly, people have to believe in justice. They have to believe that there are rewards for doing right, and punishments for doing wrong."(135) It has been apparent through past chapters that fiction reinforces behaviors, possibly even allowing those who partake in it to be more prepared to handle social situations. It would make sense that one who regularly reads their designated holy books would have a greater grasp on morality and life. However, I can't stop thinking about a sentence in the chapter- do humans really just, "invent gods to give order and meaning to existence?"(120) Is religion just a confabulation because there is so much unknown? In the previous chapter we discussed how the mind doesn't like to leave voids, instead- fills in gaps so we don't leave things unexplained. Obviously religion, and its stories, perpetuate empathy and morality. So is morality and empathy an evolutionary necessity or by-product? *This could be an interesting research topic encompassing both biology and human communication.
Through the use of story- morality is continued and reinforced, and further strengthened and engrained into humanity as a culture. Biologically speaking, when practicing morality and empathy, what endorphins or hormones are being released- and do these chemicals preserve a species? When discussed together we have a chicken or egg concept. Does morality and empathy perpetuate our species, or is it a by product of being a "group" species.
Gottschall, Jonathan. The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. Print.
Anna that's a cool research topic. As I did the reading I thought about vampire bats. They're interesting because of food sharing. Like humans, bat don't last very long with out food. So if a bat doesn't find any food (competition), another, successful feeding bat will regurgitate some of its food so that the starving bat can eat. Being that cutting open people to measure the hormone levels in various parts of their bodies is unethical, vampire bats could serve as candidate participants.
ReplyDeletesee http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocal_food_sharing
Those are interesting questions to address. I didn't think of religion as a confabulation. I thought of empathy and morality more as rhetoric, which is the process of persuasion in sociology. For example, preachers and bishops and reverends and whoever else is conduction a religious meeting, are constantly telling stories about how faith in the religion has triumphed over evil.
ReplyDeleteJared's comment led me to do some research into vampire bats and I was intrigued by their decision to help another bat in need. It would be interesting to see if they could be tested and related to humans and their desire to give empathy.
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