So, being raised catholic, you understand the 'oppressive reality' and need to escape?
Do you really think, or feel though, that you "follow" a prescribed religion ... or that it's just a 'life-style choice'? I guess it's all in the interpretation, or definition of 'religion', but to me, All religions have cultish, controlling characteristics.
I was raised a Catholic, but I came along just after the more fanatical aspects had significantly declined at the schools I attended, and my parents were causal Catholics, so I never felt oppressed by the Catholic church. I just thought is was silly.
Not sure what prescribed means there, but no, I don't 'follow' any religion (except my own - and I don't mean I follow my own nose). I travel through them and hang around the ones I like while avoiding the bits that are tacky.
But I don't see much difference between religious cultures and any other type of culture - every profession, country and strata of society I have passed through and observed all have the same prescriptive thought and behavioural pressures.
I see religion as simply another form of social group - human beings always seek to define themselves in group identities, and thus become antagonistic to another group identity, as well as to their own members who deviate from the conforming parameters. It's in the nature of humanity.
Religion however has an extra element - it seeks a transcendent goal. Not all of course, and many have that as a very minimal element. It is hard to see popular Judaism, Christianity and Islam as having much transcendence - they are very focused on the mundane world. Popular Taoism is focused on the mundane world via the ancestors. All of these have very good social and community qualities, but I'm personally not interested in that.
People who wear their group identity like a straight jacket, are just indulging in narrow-mindedness, be they religious or doctors or professors or nationalists or whatever. That's just part of the landscape of life.
Religion gives people meaning and a landscape beyond the physical, but unfortunately it often comes at a cost which is for me too onerous. While offering a profound freedom on one hand, they steal it away with the other.
By life-style I suppose I would agree - I adopt many emotional, physical and mental religious items because I enjoy them, and those I choose have given me great gifts of insight and pleasure. But as I said - I am only a traveller.
I told the Joey's the other day, that I'm a nominal Hindu - they never asked what I mean by that.
