The Joy Of Submission

Death really matters to people. Yes, we seem relatively calm and unemotional when the subject of death comes up abstractly, but give us concrete indications that that we might personally die soon and one can elicit far stronger emotions from us.

Status is also very important. And while we similarly seem calm and detached when we discuss the topic abstractly, one can elicit far stronger emotions from us by suggesting that our personal status might soon rise or fall substantially.

Some say that our status emotions are mainly greed toward rising in status, and terror of falling. We all have a deep “lust for power” and most everything we do attempts to gain or preserve power, to dominate as much as possible. Others distinguish dominance and prestige in status, and note that we approve more of the latter than the former, and thus can have positive respectful feelings toward prestigious associates.

But I still think that still underestimates the emotional power here. We often form partnerships of unequal status, wherein the high status partner really treasures, guides, and protects the lower status partner, who is in return deeply grateful and loyal for this treatment, and for the extra respect they get from being so partnered. There is not just a lust for power, but often an even stronger joy of submission.

This may help to explain the otherwise surprisingly powerful emotions associated with religion. Such as elaborated in William James famous book Varieties of Religious Experience. I’ve previously analyzed what are “sacred” things and why they exist, and yes that helps explain some aspects of religion. But religious emotions seem quite strong compared to many other things we treat as sacred, and so it seems we need a further explanation for that.

The main emotional power of religion today might be: the joy of submission. We already have deep ancient capacities for loyalty and gratitude toward higher status partners. Monotheism cranks that up by creating a partner with max dominance and prestige, via max power and admirable features, including wisdom and concern for our well-being. Then it adds that this God is attending to you all the time. And further adds loyalty conditions, which you must pass to actually be partnered, which triggers our ancient human anxieties that God might reject you, and deep joys that showing loyalty and gratitude to God for accepting you. Combine this with the joy of feeling that you can safely be lazy, as someone is protecting you, and this all plausibly explains the deep joys many often feel from religion.

But why do so many so easily believe that this God actually exists? Yes, there is the social proof that many associates so believe, and a strong feeling whereby having an unusually strong emotion of joy re X feels like evidence that X exists. In addition, if the core cognitive habit of the sacred is to see sacred stuff that is actually up close as if we were seeing it from far away, that’s going to interfere with our ability to check if it actually exists. Just like our habit of treating medicine as sacred blocks our ability to notice that it doesn’t actually help us on the margin.

This theory that the strongest religious emotions today are from the joy of submitting to something great and sacred can help explain several correlates of religion. Women are more religious than men plausibly as women to men traditionally had a submissive to dominant relation in romance. And religion has plausibly declined over the last few centuries due to our being status mad, seeing ourselves as all higher status due to being richer. As Jesus said:

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" Luke 18:25

Plausibly a similar joy of submission helps explain the great appeal of monarchy in history, and the incredible amounts spent to make kings look impressive. Also, as we can robustly expect our descendants to vary far more than we do now in most features, we should expect the joy of submission to have a long powerful future, even if we aren’t very sure who will be worshipping whom.