People and Planet

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People and Planet – unprecedented change Blog #5

September 9, 2010

Marie Schickel Rottschaefer

Retired RN BSN & MS (Nursing Education)

Before my digression in blog 4 we were at the point where Rue argues that religious traditions may be seen as schools for educating the emotions.  For me, chapter three is the most complicated chapter of his book.  So I will outline the main headings to orient us.  

What is an emotion?

Emotions are temporary feeling states

Emotions acquire narrative content

Emotions are predispositions to act

Emotions are influenced by culture

Summary and conclusions

This chapter requires significant time and interest to do justice to the effort that the researcher-author has given to his project.  Professor Rue writes for students as well as others and reading chapter three requires classroom effort.  If we were doing a curriculum the details of this chapter would fit substantially and meaningfully into the picture.  But since we are only doing an overview I want to comment briefly on a few highlights.  As a sampler of a worthwhile chapter let’s begin with this claim.  If we are to understand human nature and religion, we must begin with the emotions the author says.

In an extensive chapter he begins by saying that there is no consensus as to their definition and classification even though emotions are considered to be highly complex biological-psychological-social phenomena.  He gives a brief history of theorists’ work in each of these domains.  So for some satisfaction he gives a working formulation derived from this research.  An emotion is a temporary feeling state that acquires narrative content and leads to a predisposition to act.  A major part of this chapter includes the explanation of this formulation for those seriously seeking in-depth knowledge as to how emotions partner with cognition.  But for brevity’s sake appropriate for this blog, I will skip over to some of his summary and conclusions that briefly include thinking and emotion working in tandem.

The central thesis of his book is that religious traditions are primarily about manipulating aspects of our universal human nature for achieving a goal-oriented process of personal wholeness and social coherence, in order to maximize the chances favoring human reproductive fitness.  Giving an account of human nature and showing how various spiritual traditions have manipulated it realizes his thesis.  

In our human nature we have the means for manipulating our nature.   Rue says, “In this part on human nature I have stressed the point that human beings are wholly products of a cosmic evolutionary process, that we, like all other living beings, are star-born, earth-formed, fitness-maximizing creatures endowed by natural selection with a set of species- typical traits for negotiating a livelihood on this planet.”  [For those who want a reminder, natural selection is a process by which organisms pass on advantageous genetic characteristics.]

The uniqueness of Homo sapiens is established because of our special ability to develop symbolic systems for the mediation (support) of behavior.  These adaptive strategies supersede all other species. Rue continues reminding us that this chapter has been focused on the interaction between emotional, cognitive, and symbolic mediation systems.  The emotional systems are the hub because the evolution of how they operate and are influenced by cultural variables provides particular insight into both human nature and religious phenomena.  He summarizes the trajectory of emotional-cognitive mechanisms and the phenomenon of culturally divergent traditions resulting in moralizing about emotions.  [In contrast, it would be interesting to study what other authors’ research suggests in the search for a universal moral standard for our species.]  He concludes by shifting attention from human nature to spiritual traditions.

Conclusion next time.  Marie