In 1993, the Dalai Lama said, “Each religion has its own philosophy and there are similarities as well as differences among the various traditions. What is important is what is suitable for a particular person. We should look at the underlying purpose of religion… All religions make the betterment of humanity their primary concern. When we view the different religions as essentially instruments to develop a good heart—love and respect for others, a true sense of community—we can appreciate what they have in common. . . . Everyone feels that his or her form of religious practice is the best. I myself feel that Buddhism is best for me. But this does not mean that Buddhism is best for everyone else.”
This idea, that the primary purpose of religion is to meet social, psychological and emotional needs, is offensive to many people, including me. However, I take seriously the idea that the social impacts of religion are important enough to pursue, even if it requires putting other purposes aside for the moment. How seriously do you take this idea?
The RAND Corporation is known as our nation’s original think tank. On May 14, 1948, RAND (a contraction of the term “research and development”) separated from the Douglass Aircraft Company of Santa Monica, California, to become an independent non-profit devoted to solving our nation’s most complicated problems. This organization has since made significant contributions to the development of our space program, military strategy, computer technology, the internet, international policy, analytic methodology and the field of economics. To date, twenty-four RAND researchers have been awarded Nobel prizes covering all areas but medicine and literature.
By 2006 only about 17% of RAND assets was devoted to specifically military projects; 19% was devoted to advancing the field of policy analysis; 18% to the study of other nations/cultures; 14% to civil justice; 9% to health; 6% to education; 2% to business and the remaining 15% divided among diverse other causes. The expertise of the 1,600 people employed by RAND were divided roughly equally among the social sciences, behavioral sciences, medicine/life sciences, physical sciences, mathematics, economics, politics, law/business and policy making.
The “capabilities framework” grew out of RAND’s efforts to apply diverse expertise to politically charged decision-problems. For each problem, RAND examines the potential to apply technology, manpower, education, industry, financial capital, management systems, research, legislation, and so forth. RAND asks experts in each area to assess current capabilities and calculate what capabilities would be required to achieve various goals.
For example, in 2006, RAND’s most publicized studies included “What will it take to secure our world from terrorism?”, “What will it take to recover from Hurricane Katrina?”, “What will it take to keep the U.S. air force fueled?”, “What will it take to provide healthcare in the U.S.?”, “What will it take to keep U.S. troops in Iraq supplied?”, “What will it take to restore the balance of birth and aging in Europe?” and “What will it take to maintain economic development in Asia?”
Technological capabilities include knowledge of such things as how to make a helicopter and all of its parts.
Manpower capabilities include groups of capable workers as required, for example, to repair the damage of a hurricane.
Educational capabilities include schools (curricula, books, qualified teachers, etc) or other educational systems as required, for example, to achieve certain averages on standardized tests.
Industrial capabilities include machines and plants as required, for example, to produce a million cars a year.
Financial capabilities include liquid assets as required, for example, to shift the interest rate by a certain percentage.
Management capabilities include leadership and/or collaboration systems as required, for example, to coordinate 200,000 workers building and maintaining a national telephone system.
To the list of kinds of capabilities, we might add Religious capabilities. These would be capabilities generally developed and maintained though religious work (professional and/or volunteer):
- The ability to discover and neutralize biases and addictions
- Humility in choice of belief (i.e. capacity for intellectual collaboration)
- Humility in building unity (i.e. capacity for peace-making)
- Interest in relinquishing individual identity (i.e. capacity to form stable families)
- Interest in helping others feel purpose in life (i.e. robustness against mental frailty)
- Interest in giving/receiving (i.e. robustness against class diversity)
- Interest in “deeper” communication (i.e. robustness against cultural diversity)
- Ability to respect and detect respect (i.e. robustness against power diversity)
- Ability to love and detect love (i.e. robustness against religious diversity)
- Ability to trust and detect trust (i.e. robustness against judgment)
- etc.
Although teachers might like to develop many of these capabilities in their students, the processes required to do so are more accurately labeled “religious” than “educational”. Whereas educational methods apply equally to the education of artificial intelligences, religious methods are specifically tailored to frailties and powers unique to human beings.
A lack in any of the capabilities listed above can have significant impact on any community, be it a religious organization, a nation, or a company. Such a lack can cause crime/terrorism, economic crisis (including with healthcare and social security), birth-rate crisis, mental health crisis and retarded progress. A careful examination of these capabilities will show that human frailty makes human societies dependent upon some form of religion to deliver these capabilities and, thus, to protect national and corporate interests. To assess religious capabilities and plan for their development would be an important component of the kind of work done by RAND.
Such assessment could also benefit religious workers. Without appreciation for the important capabilities promoted through religious work, we tend to suppose the only measure of success for religious work is the number of people converted from one doctrine to another. In so doing, we under-appreciate the accomplishments of religious workers in other faiths as well as the progress made by religious workers in our own. Religious organizations who actually have many fundamental goals in common find themselves in competition.
It is no surprise that religious expertise is missing at think-tanks like RAND and in corporate decision-making. Corporations seek to hire experts engaged in every other kind of scholarship, from engineering to art to law, but do not seek to hire theologians. As long as theologians are perceived as trying to shifting people from one faith to another, to hire a theologian would put a corporation at risk of offending some of its customers or employees.
That is a pity, because religious scholarship is not without value. Corporations may attempt to access its value by hiring non-theologian employees who listen to sermons or read books by religious scholars. That's like attempting to access the value of medical scholarship through non-doctor employees who read books by doctors. Religious professional should develop a reputation for trying to strengthen all faiths; then perhaps nations and corporations could access religious scholarship more effectively, and develop their religious capabilities as intelligently as they develop other capabilities.
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