I find it all upside down. The human existence with connection to all life on earth, earth's environment, explains human behavior, with our feelings guiding us to make best choices. Usually the right choices our ancestors made.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean, so I may be off course here, but here it goes...these psychiatrists were all trying to create a therapeutic regime to help people with their neuroses. Freud thought that these neuroses could be explained by some trauma in connection with sexuality. Adler saw an answer in an examination of power relationships. Frankel's model, logotherapy, is based on the principle that a search for meaning is embodied, innate, if you will, in the human psyche, and that a therapeutic regime can be built on helping people to find meaning in their pain and suffering. I always think of his theory when I see parents who have lost children to violence, for example, or adults who were abused as children, who start organizations, or make speeches, or raise money for those who are similarly afflicted. There's a related principle at work in Catholic teaching, which encourages people to embrace their suffering as Christ did, and to view it as penance for the fallen world. These behaviors don't make up for the suffering, or reverse what has happened, but it allows people to make peace with it. Frankel himself isn't making any pronouncements on whether God exists or whether man created him out of his own need. In that interview he was merely responding to a question about how religion would fit into his philosophy of the human psyche.
I have an interesting example/observation:
2 million years (or more) as hunter-gatherers, and equal food sharing among the group tradition, can explain our strong dislike of inequality, with interesting aversion to income inequality in recent times. We still want to share equally, even though the poorest these days ( in developed countries) are much better off than ordinary people 200 years ago, not mentioning hunter-gatherers way back. Even though the poorest today don't even need to chip in (paying income tax) they still want to share the spoils equally. Amazing phenomenon, and if I'm right, we should find equality gene controlling certain emotions soon.
I do agree that in hunter-gatherer bands there seems to be an emphasis on group ownership of resources, and I can see how that would have helped the group to survive. Perhaps agriculture, which allowed for the accumulation of surplus, led to a desire to claim certain things for oneself. Or, perhaps, survival now also depended on encouraging and rewarding innovation, and imagination, and more than ordinary effort.
As for the more modern era, any such schemes, in my opinion, fall prey immediately to the selfishness and laziness which also characterize human behavior. Since we're talking about this in relation to religion, I'm reminded of the experiments of the early Christian church with communal living. It didn't last very long. They soon were attracting layabouts who came for handouts, while others worked to bring in resources. This also brings to mind some witty saying I once heard about the Soviet Union, (which I'm sure wasn't at all funny to the people living under that system) where supposedly people said "We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us."
And if I'm to ridiculous with this example we can always fall back on better defined basic feelings: hunger, sex, love, compassion, etc, etc in control of our destiny.
Here, I think you're in line with what these psychiatrists were trying to explain. Like you, I don't think one drive explains all human beings. Well, perhaps you could say that human beings try to find meaning through sex, and love, and material possessions that bring pleasure and a sense of power. I think most people in the modern western world could be said to be driven by a desire for money, fame, and the pleasure and sense of power those things bring to them.
I would agree if all of us could find same meaning or same god. Logically it would mean that we are on good track of understanding. I can understand it better thinking about religion being a survival force. This way with exactly same meaning for every spiritual person, it helps them survive/live, regardless of your spiritual format/religion. And if it does that regardless of format it validates itself as a positive force.
Yes, the human "spirit" needs to be lit and nourished.
I think we're in agreement here. The need for meaning may be universal, and it helps people survive, and more than survive, it may help them thrive, and I think this has been the case since we developed a "human" consciousness. Depending on the culture or ethnic group, there are varying degrees of emphasis on an ultimate source of meaning, and even when it is present, it will take different forms. For example, I don't find as much evidence of this need for ultimate meaning even philosophically, or for spirituality or "mysticism" in the East Asian cultures, despite the professed belief at least in the past in Buddhism. On the other hand, the greater Near East has spawned three of the great religions of the world, all of which have a large "spiritual" or "mystical" component if you will. India, or South Asia, if you prefer, is the source of two more, Hinduism and Buddhism. In these latter two religions, the connection of human suffering to religion is even more explicit than in the more western religions. The goal is to be released from the wheel of existence, and the suffering which that entails. (The Buddha's revelations came after he first saw human suffering, from which his parents had previously shielded him.) Judaism is more ambivalent, but Christianity derives its meaning from the resurrection, and that in Christ death is defeated. Existence isn't seen as something from which to be rescued; rather, for those who follow the reasoning of people like Teilhard de Chardin, the Christian is called upon to transform human existence and perhaps nature itself.
You can pull me on your side once you can identify the sense (in human body) for sensing supernatural. So far we can only wonder why God hid it so well.
As you know we are almost identical people with almost identical DNA. Why should we think, feel or experience the world in much different way?
Or why he only revealed it to certain people. And, it's not my side, exactly, it's just a very elementary and cursory explanation of the things I learned in all those years of daily theology classes (my high school theology teacher gave me an appreciation of the Christian existentialists, if nothing else), and then in comparative religion and philosophy at university. I make no claims for myself.
Yes, we are all far more alike than we are different. We are all human. And yet, my husband is totally tone deaf, while my son can hear an extremely complicated piece of classical music and sit down and play it almost mistake free. One never listens to music, and the other finds it an enriching and even essential part of life. It's unfair, but life is unfair. Or take something like the grief process, which all human beings experience. I read a study once where it said that it takes about a year to get over a major loss. If you haven't turned the corner by them you probably never will. For those who feel the immediacy of the grief for years, is it neurosis, or might it be that such people experience more of an "imprint" from other people, or secrete more of certain hormones either while loving or when the loved one is lost? Now, is that a blessing, or a curse? Either way, might the person who can't come to grips with the loss seek help in religious belief?
These are all really big questions, and I have no real answers, but I do think about them, and enjoy discussing them.
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