Fasting, Religion, Mind Control

By Xah Lee. Date: 2010-08-12

Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar. It is the Islamic month of fasting, in which participating Muslims refrain from eating, drinking and sexual activities from dawn until sunset.[1] Fasting is intended to teach Muslims about patience, humility, and spirituality. It is a time for Muslims to fast for the sake of God and to offer more prayer than usual.

Wonder why religion always has hunger/food (fasting) stuff? It is a form of mind control. Because, food is the essential item for human survival. By controlling food, or tying it to the sect's name, such as prayer before meal, it reinforces your thought process with the sect.

Before eating, you are taught by your religion that this food is given to you by your sect's idol. Practically speaking, that is not reality. The food came from your work. In religious fasting, you are taught to thank the teachings of your sect.

Though, religious fasting also seems to teach you to do a bunch of good deeds, such as helping the poor as in Ramadan cited from Wikipedia. The goodness of these is open to debate in moral philosophy. But taken them as good for granted, you wonder, why didn't any Abrahamic religion teach you to thank the gods of other religion, or your enemies? Wouldn't that, be some form of ultimate good? Say, if you are Islamic, during fasting, you should thank the Christian God. If you are Christian, your prayer before meal can go to Christian haters. Better yet, during your fasting, you should make friends with your enemies. Not abstractly thanking some god, but go to the co-worker who got you fired, and buy him a gift card, go to your abusive step-dad and say thank you for loving my mom, or, say to your underlings that they can leave one hour earlier and still get full pay.

Though, i'll have to say, that fasting certainly is a very effective form of meditation. Self-imposed long durations of hunger makes you think, feel yourself, your presence, in this world, because it essentially deprives your survival. When a animal's survival is deprived, anything goes. For human animals, that means argument, aggression, robbery, insanity, murder. (you can see it when your your job is threatened, or your landlord who is about to kick you out) But when in a safe controlled form, it just makes you think more, on your future strategies, behavior.