Actual Meaning: "Religion is the Opium of the Masses"?
Opium was the ibuprofen of the time
Did you know that in Marx’s day before they had ibuprofen, people used opium to treat their ills?
When Marx was talking about the self-justifying effects of historical religion, he was talking about how system justifying beliefs “actually reduce anxiety, guilt, dissonance, discomfort, and uncertainty.”
Transcript
The palliative function: why believing in inequality feels better
7:19
We do find that um giving people the opportunity to justify the system uh leads them to report uh more positive affect and less negative uh affect and to feel better uh and more satisfied with their own situation and the status quo in general. And so the general idea here is somewhat reminiscent of um Karl Marx’s often understood notion that religious ideology is the opiate of the masses. That is like ibuprofen. Uh it plaates and paliates. A lot of people don’t realize that when he when he wrote that people used opium to when they were sick and tired and things like this and had headaches. Um so they didn’t have ibuprofen so they used opium and that that’s sort of what he was saying. And he found that system justifying beliefs actually reduce anxiety, guilt, dissonance, discomfort, and uncertainty. Because if you think the system is fair, you don’t have to carry the psychological weight of your own disadvantage. You don’t have to be angry, you don’t have to fight. So you can just get on with things, which is absolutely diabolical news, isn’t it? Because essentially the psychological medicine for inequality is believing that society is fair. It turns out gaslighting yourself works. The fact is in the short term believing the system is fair makes you happier than knowing it isn’t. And in some ways it reminds me of this. You know like if you go to a chicken shop and there’s on the logo there’s always a chicken looking absolutely delighted outside. Hey, come in. Eat me. I I used to think that that’s that’s so perverse. Like I don’t want to be reminded of a chicken when I’m going in to eat chicken wings. But I suppose if I do want to be reminded, I want to think that the chicken’s absolutely loving it. Eat me. Eat me. But it turns out the chicken is right. The chicken is right to be happy. Can’t do anything else. May as well be happy. Because it’s not that people are fooled, but it’s that believing in the system, the current system where you’re getting railed in the short term genuinely feels better than not believing in it.
9:30
QUESTIONS:
Have you ever thought you would be happier if you adopted an uncritical posture in which you believe the system is generally fair?
Why is drug use so common in society? Is their a correlation between systemic injustice and drug use?
Do you consciously resist advertising that features unrealistically happy people (or animals or do you prefer to “go with the flow.”