Jeff Russell

Thank you very much for your thoughts!

1) I am also quite wary of instrumentalizing things that shouldn't be treated as instruments, especially when done with full knowledge and intent that that's what you're doing - institutions, people, and so forth. I likely should have included a more explicit disclaimer to that effect here. That being said, we are tool users, and part of our lives here in the material world is making things happen towards goals, and as long as we have goals, we need instruments, and we'll find them wherever we can, so I think it's helpful to sometimes analyze things in that light. Spiritual matters are one of the places, though, where that's most likely to lose sight of what actually matters and become a problem, as you say, so once again, fair point.

2) Agreed on the arbitrariness and contingency of most (all?) institutions, but I would simply add that I don't believe that the arbitrariness or contingency are the whole story. As with evolution, the particular solution to a set of problems we end up with (say, four limbs with five digits each) is arbitrary, but it was arbitrary within bounds - to solve the problems of locomotion and manipulation of our environment, we needed some kind of physical arrangement to handle that. The existence of exoskeletons, tentacles, and so forth is proof that other arbitrary solutions exist within the possible set of solutions, but a possible solution that didn't meet the needs of survival would be outside it. Likewise, various economic and social arrangements can arise and have arisen to deal with various circumstances, but something that works great in a tropical jungle might not work in a cold steppe, and so forth.

3) Fair enough on not being a "step-by-step," but such stories and analysis might help us in coming up with alternatives to try out and ways of evaluating success or lack thereof.

4) Yes, exactly! The practice and doing are the essential part, and assumed within that approach is that you get "outcomes" besides the physically obvious. I think it's reductive and ultimately unhelpful to consider religion purely as an answer to social and physical difficulties (such as the whole "kosher law is a way to avoid food-borne illnesses"), but answering such social and physical difficulties might be part of what makes certain practices stick, in addition to the spiritual outcomes they produce. A tribe that has wonderfully rich relationships with its Gods but starves to death won't be around to pass those practices on, for example.

5) Hmmm, I don't know if egregores would fit into my definition, in part because I still don't understand the term well enough to evaluate. Certainly it seems that some of the things that develop their own egregores (like a nation) would fit my definition, and the fact that it has a more-or-less helpful egregore would likely be part of what makes it work well, but my current understanding is that egregores are more, as you allude to, emergent from underlying mechanisms, rather than standalone, but I could be way off here.

Thanks again for your thoughtful response!
Jeff