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To make sense of a complicated world and our place in it, humans need
to construct meaning. We need to know what is expected of us, how to
behave and how to function among other people. Otherwise, our sense of
self is at risk.
But our protective systems of belief cannot work without the support of
others. Regardless of "what religious or belief system you accept, if
you have a set of philosophical beliefs that you hold strongly, and you
have others who support you in those beliefs, there's less likelihood
you'll be unhappy. It's a pretty dramatic effect," said Matthew
Brashears, a Cornell assistant professor of sociology and author of a
new study published in the journal Social Networks that identifies
factors that protect us from unhappiness as well as anomia, the
individual experience of anomie -- to be at loose ends.
Brashears, a social network analyst, tested Peter Berger's theories
about religion and plausibility structures by analyzing General Social
Survey data collected by the National Opinion Research Center. He found
that belief paired with support from like-minded others has an effect
where belief and support separately do not. "It doesn't look like just
having friends, in and of itself, has much of a protective impact," he
said. "You also need reinforcement. It's difficult to be an outsider."
| Brashears explained that our worldview is backed up by a set of
beliefs, deriving from formal religious affiliation to secular
humanism, that justify what is good or bad and provide a sense of
security. These belief systems are tested during catastrophes.
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"Every now and then something happens that challenges your
perception of the world and rocks you to the core," said Brashears.
"The Haiti earthquake is a disaster that strikes out of nowhere for no
apparent reason. It can create a sense of being lost and adrift, and it
challenges the way that you've been legitimating your life and the way
you've been living."
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Confronting such a crisis with like-minded people who support your
beliefs "helps you get past the challenge without losing hold of your
understanding of the world as a whole," Brashears said. "If you don't
have that network, it's hard not to lose your grip on your
justification for why you should do one thing and not another, or why
the world is meaningful. And if you lose that grip, it's easy to find
the world to be a very threatening place, because you don't know what
you're supposed to do." |
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Because humans are intelligent, social creatures, and the world is
unpredictable and chaotic, we protect ourselves with belief. "We're
pattern-making organisms," Brashears said. "We have to create a way of
understanding the world in order to act properly in regard to it. We
create these understandings of how things work collectively."
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But agreed-upon norms are arbitrary and vary by culture.
They require justification from religious or philosophical reasoning.
And although we need belief systems to understand the world, Brashears
said, "It doesn't mean we are wired to be religious in the sense of a
supernatural or metaphysical religion. It does mean we're wired to be
religious in the sociological sense.
"We create meanings with our fellow humans, then we
cling to those meanings. It's very easy to say this study shows that
religion is good. Well, sort of. It shows that something like religion
that's supported socially can be a good thing for us." |
He added that the study is "an important validation of
a fundamental claim of sociology: We're group creatures, we create
social worlds and we need those social worlds to be reinforced to be
comfortable. And when those social worlds collapse, we have a difficult
time with it."
written by George Lowery, gpl5@cornell.edu
Source: Matthew Brashears, Cornell University
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