Psychology

Psychology is another huge topic that will be distilled to a few paragraphs that can't possibly do it justice.

Psychology Pages

Related wiki pages about mental stuff.

• Brain
• Consciousness
• God Concept
• Psychedelics
• Cognitive Dissonance
• Motivational Salience
• Placebo Effect
• Happiness and Well-Being
• Delayed Gratification and Temptation

Resolving Core Cognitive Dissonance

Jung identified the search for meaning as a central issue behind many psychological issues.[1]

metaculture offers a novel solution to a key problem faced in the field of psychology. That problem is the cognitive dissonance caused by the differences between our religion and spiritual belief systems and the scientific reality of the universe that we exist in.

As science and technology progresses, more and more of what we learn comes in conflict with scripture literalism. There are a few mental strategies for dealing with this:

1. Ignore all of it and take a deep dive into superficiality and consumerism
2. Adopt the position that science is wrong and literalism is right start a war with reality
3. Adopt the position that science is right and religion is wrong and start a war with your culture and your ancestors
4. Interpret scripture as allegory to find a belief system where both can be true

4 is the choice that would be best for anyone's mental health due to the obvious cognitive dissonance benefits of resolving such a deep conflict that sits at the very core of our souls. However, most people choose 1, 2, or 3 and this is the root cause of a lot of unnecessary mental anguish in modern society that manifests itself in any number of debilitating disorders and general anxiety.

The reason for this is that religion is the system that humans have constructed to create rituals that harness the placebo effect to regulate our emotions. Without the ability to believe and practice these rituals fully, we no longer experience their benefits. And even if we try our hardest to believe, the placebo effect is still diminished due to the mountain of scientific reality that you are forced to ignore or rationalize.

metaculture will provide a framework for a belief system and rituals that will allow modern and future people to harness the power of the placebo effect with full awareness of what they are doing. This will allow rituals and sugar pills to replace many expensive and ineffective medicines that can never treat the issue of fundamental conflict between one's core belief system and reality.

Part of this is the internalized ritual of the god concept, which creates a built-in sense of optimism about the world and positive interpretations of all of life's ups and downs.