RELIGIOUS “REALITY”
In the religious approach to “truth,” the priest makes a prediction –“worship my God and your harvest will be good” – and then invents
“sinners” to take the blame if his prediction fails to materialize. In
this way, the possibility of disproof – of personal responsibility for
the priest – is eliminated.
We enter into relationships situated on our predictions of how they're going to
end up. Who but a masochist would continue dating a girl if he
knew for exact she would wreck his heart inside six months? Would
you marry a girl and have youngsters with her in case you knew that she
would divorce you and take you for the whole lot you had?
Of direction now not.
We make predictions about relationships – after which, when these
predictions fail to return real, we invent “sinners” to take the blame.
We embark upon our relationships with the best possible hopes and ambitions
after which, after they crash in flames or peter out into nothing, we begin
mythologizing the motives why.
Compared to medieval priests, we're generally extra refined in our
defences nowadays. We provide quasi-enlightened explanations as to why
our relationships fail, which on the skin seem to contain some aspects
of individual responsibility, however that are rather the identical historic mythologies
dressed up in new psychological garb.
For instance, if my marriage fails when you consider that I work too tough and ignore my
wife and youngsters, I may overtly confess that I worked too tough – but
then, inevitably, self-pitying justifications will creep into my
clarification…
“My spouse left me seeing that I labored most Saturdays and spent two or
three days per week on the road. I absolutely will have to have spent extra time
at house, but then of direction she particularly liked the holidays on the French
Riviera, and the children it sounds as if fairly needed their ski classes, and
she did install that kiln in our basement for her pottery. I must have
put my foot down earlier and compelled her to make a selection, and no longer just
let her desire for more and more stuff preserve driving me back to the
place of work!”
Implicit in this kind of mealy-mouthed “explanation” is the basic premise
that, “My spouse is a greedy materialist who wanted to have her cake and
consume it too. She desired all this first-class stuff, she desired all the repute that
got here with the enormous condo and a first-rate vehicle, however she also desired me to be
dwelling to maintain her as good!”
You commonly hear the equal complaint in the case of intercourse. For instance, a
man may say:
“I’m no longer allowed to have an affair, when you consider that i'm married – yet my spouse
refuses to have sex with me, so I’m wholly caught. She holds a monopoly
veto on our intercourse existence, which she uses constantly – but i am not allowed to
appear outside the wedding for intercourse!”
better halves have an identical complaints about their husbands:
“He says that he desires to aid me around the condominium, but then he does
everything so badly that i'm forced to run around fixing everything up
after him, in order that it seems to be more work than it’s worth!”
Or:
“He perpetually complains that I nag him an excessive amount of, but I wouldn’t have to
repeat myself if he handiest listened to me within the first situation! If he simply took
the rubbish out when I asked him to, I wouldn’t have to hold asking
him!”
Or:
“He thinks that having intercourse will make us close. I hold telling him that i can
best have intercourse with him if I consider shut already. That simply makes him indignant
– after which he expects me to wish to have sex with him for the reason that he’ll get
pouty if I don’t!”