Management - 3 tools or approaches that contributes to decision making Essay

Management - 3 tools or approaches that contributes to decision making [sap5] - Essay Example Measures to be implemented are those that draw immense support. In systems 1 and 2, the main features are observed when perceived from objectives-led and problem-oriented planning approaches (Moore & Lowenstein, 2004). The objective of joint-versus-separate decision making solves the problem of people failing to move from suboptimal System 1 thinking to improved System 2 thinking. The system is chosen and considered among multiple options concurrently rather than conceding or declining alternatives separately. The objective approach cites a promising stream of research that evaluates how System 2 thinking can be weighted to lower System 1 errors. It demonstrates that analogical reasoning can be applied in reducing bounds on people’s consciousness like impulsivity and anxiety about relative outcomes. It is possible that the study on joint-against-separate decision making highlights the reality that our initial impulses lean more on emotions than logic (Moore & Lowenstein, 2004). For instance, additional suggestive results in passing exams include the findings that willpower to succeed is weakened when students are placed under severe cognitive burden and when they are insufficient knowledge in their study areas. Students will most likely make less impulsive, but suboptimal decisions during schools years while further making choices in advance of their consequences. Another scenario is where school management adopt unilateral decisions that suggest that change in the decision’ s context that promotes coolheaded System 2 thinking. This has the capability of reducing common biases from arising. I believe that when people get busier on their schedules, their minds get committed irrespective of time constraints faced, thus relying on System 1 thinking. Managers of corporate companies implore System 1 thinking, where superior decision making is a recipe for improving efficiency without sacrificing brand quality. The problem and

Police officers Essay Example for Free

Police officers Essay Have you ever been in a situation where you find yourself stuck between facing consequences for things you haven’t done and giving in to someone who seems to be on a power trip and is taking advantage of their superiority over you? Whether it be a manager taking advantage of his power in the work place or a police man or woman doing unnecessary and over the top things to you. Abuse of power seems to be a common thing in some police officers every day life and this is not okay. It is very apparent what a police officers job is and that is to protect and serve the community and make sure that real criminals are being served justice, however; some may come across police officers that use the fact that they have badges and weapons to their advantage in order to basically become a bully instead of a hero. Of course not all police officers are corrupt, most are actually doing their job and are concerned with the safety of all people and not just their own but those few that are corrupt need to be stopped and be punished for their police brutality and/or abuse of power. So the question is, are police men and women being evaluated thoroughly enough so as not to hire corrupt officers? Are police officers being punished and or brought to justice because of their wrong doings? In this paper I will bring some cases of police brutality and or abuse of police powers to your attention as well as if and how police are being punished because of their illegal or down right cruel behavior. Becoming a police officer is far from an easy task as it should be, but why is it that after so much questioning and tests of integrity and moral values citizens are becoming more and more victimized by police officers? In my opinion police officers are not being as extensively tested for a corrupt mind set as we are led to believe they are. Possible police officers are asked questions on a polygraph test that mostly tie in with the questions asked in the application process so as to get details and obviously the truth out of anything remotely suspicious on the application. These questions mostly having to do with drug use or theft and anything that may prove an officer to be dishonest about questions already asked prior to the polygraph. These questions however rarely have to do with how officers view a citizens race, religion, gender, levels of class, etc. For example, a police officer is not asked in a polygraph test if he does not like Muslim people or if he is disgusted by gay individuals.

Ribbon :: English Literature Essays

Ribbon There once was a ribbon. Her name was Ribbon, as plain as the decorative object that she was. Ribbon was very vain and liked to get up every morning from her place in the sewing basket full of odds and ends. Every morning, she would look into the small pink hand mirror that would be lying beside her in the sewing basket. She would see the cutest, most beautiful face in the whole world every morning and was delighted. Then Ribbon would reluctantly stop admiring herself and would begin to get ready for the day ahead of her. Ribbon was a blend of deep blue and light purple. She had sparkly pink edges and felt like China’s best silk when she twirled across your hand. Ribbon usually would be in good spirits everyday, but there was somebody she loathed. Her name was Scissors and liked to tease Ribbon about her extravagant looks. Scissors would say, â€Å"Ribbon, you should start being like me. I am everyone’s role model. I can take care of myself with these strong, but fashionable, blades†¦unlike your limp, weak material. Also my eyes are so big I can see everything!† â€Å"Yeah, but too bad you can’t see that I look better than you even if I can’t protect myself you oversized piece of scrap metal!†, Ribbon would snap back. Ribbon would get so angry, she would turn a bright red all over and start arguing or crying. That day, this sort of feud happened between the two again and the whole sewing basket complained of the racket. Oddball the ragged string would come out of his little pile of odds and ends to yell back at Ribbon and Scissors to â€Å"shut up.† Oddball complained, â€Å"I’m working on deciphering a code in this map I found the other day. Stop bothering me, or u two will regret it.† Then Ribbon became curious, stopped babbling, and asked, â€Å"What map? Is it the one that the kids found yesterday? Is your map the one that the kids put into our sewing basket and forgot about it?† â€Å"One and the same. The location of the buried treasure is very far, but a few days by boat should get us there. Unfortunately, I’m too old to go on these types of expeditions. Forget it then.† said, Oddball. â€Å"Treasure? Real buried treasure? With pirate gold and jewels the size of frying pans?

Biography of John Fitzgerald Kennedy

John F. Kennedy was the 35th president of the United States (1961-1963). He was the youngest person ever to be elected president. Also, He was the first Roman Catholic president and the first president to be born in the 20the century. He served in World War II on PT boat. He also helped to solve the Cuban Missile Crisis and started Peace of Corps to help 3rd world countries better them selves. Kennedy was assassinated before he completed his third year as president. Therefore, his achievements were limited. He was shot in the head and died within an hour. Kennedy was born on May 29,1917 in Brookline, Massachusetts. He was the second of nine children of Joseph Patrick Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. â€Å"The other children in the family were Joseph, Rosemary, Kathleen, Eunice, Patricia, Robert, Jean, and Edward. â€Å"(Encarta' 95). â€Å"The Kennedys were an active family. With 11 people in the house, someone was always busy. The children took swimming, sailing, and tennis lessons. â€Å"(Potts, Steve – 7). The Kennedy family had long been active in politics. His brothers Robert and Edward Kennedy also entered politics. Kennedy's both grand fathers had been active in politics. His father was a self-made millionaire. He served as first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and as U. S. ambassador to Great Britain during the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Kennedy's family called him jack. He and his older brother Joe were strong rivals. Jack was quiet and often shy, but held his owns in fights with Joe. â€Å"The boys enjoyed playing touch football. â€Å"(The World Book Encyclopedia, 261). His childhood was full of sports, fun and activity. This all ended when he grew up old enough to leave for school. Kennedy attended elementary schools in Brookline and Riverdale. â€Å"In 1930, when he was 13 years old, his father sent him to the Canterbury School in New Milford, Conn. † (The World Book Encyclopedia, 261). One year later, he transferred to Choate Academy in Wallingford, Coon. He graduated from Choate in 1935 at the age of 18. He was promised a trip to London as a graduation gift but he became ill with jaundice and would have to go to the hospital. He spent the rest of the summer trying to recover. He was not entirely well when he started Princeton, several weeks later in the fall of 1935. The jaundice returned and he had to drop out of school. Before the next school year began, he told his father he wanted to go to Harvard. He entered Harvard University in 1936. There he majored in government and international relations. At Harvard, he tried to explain in his senior thesis why Britain had not been ready for war. Kennedy began to send his paper to publishers, and it was accepted on his second try. Wilfrid Funk published it under the title Why England Slept. It became a bestseller. He became a literary sensation. â€Å"In the spring of 1941, both John and Joe, Jr. decided to enroll in the armed service. † (Reevs, Thomas C. , 37)Joe was accepted but John was turned down. He hoped to fight in the WWII but he was rejected by the U. S. Army because of his back trouble and history of illness. He reapplied after five months program of special exercise and was accepted into the Navy as a desk clerk in Washington. He was disgusted and applied for a transfer. Kennedy was sent to Naval Officers Training School at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, in 1941. Later he was sent for additional training at the Motor Torpedo Boat Center at Melville, Rhode Island. In late April 1943, he was put in command of a PT 109 in the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific. Kennedy saw action in the form of night patrols and participated in enemy bombings. â€Å"On August 1, 1943, during a routine night patrol, a Japanese destroyer collided in the darkness with Kennedy's craft and the PT 109 was sunk. † (Falkolf, Lucille – 7). Kennedy heroically swam back and forth rescuing his wounded crew. Two were killed in the crash. The injury once again aggravated his back. Still, Kennedy pushed on swimming from island to island in the South Pacific hoping for a patrol to come by. Kennedy had no idea he had been in the water for eight hours. Finally, an island was spotted that could provided cover from Japanse planes. Kennedy realized that he and the crew must move on. He gathered the crew to move to another island in search of food. Kennedy swam for the next four days along a water route that he knew American ships used. Kennedy was now desperate enough to seek help from natives on a Japanese controlled island. He persuaded the natives to deliver a message written on the back of a coconut shell to allied forces. â€Å"The coconut fell into the hands of allied scouts and a patrol was sent. â€Å"(Encarta' 95) Kennedy and his crew were finally rescued. â€Å"For his courage, endurance, and excellent leadership, Kennedy received the U. S. Navy and Marine Corps medal, awarded for heroism not involving conflict with the enemy. â€Å"(Encarta' 95). John soon contracted malaria. He became ill. Then, he returned to the United States for medical. During recovery, Kennedy knew that his brother Joe, Jr. had been killed in action. Kennedy put his feelings onto paper and a second book was published for the family and close friends. † (Reevs, Thomas C. , 11). He called it â€Å"As We Remember Joe. † Kennedy's father had assumed that Joe, Jr. would go into politics. Both of his grandfathers had been active in politics. Now, Kennedy was the oldest Kennedy of his generation. His first chance in politics came when Congressman James Curley from the 11th District of Massachusetts decided to retire. It was his first Congressional seat by a margin of more than two to one. He was placed on the front page of the New York Times and in Time Magazine. He was often mistaken in Congress as a Senate page or an elevator operator. Later he ran against nine other candidates. He won the primary with 42 percent of the votes. He served three terms in the House of Representatives, during the Democratic Administrations of President harry S. Truman. He supported legislation that would serve the interests of his constituents. He also joined with Republicans in criticizing the Truman administration's handling of China. Kennedy easily won reelection to Congress in 1948 and 1950. â€Å"In 1952 he decided to run against incumbent Republican Senator henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. Because Kennedy was little know outside his congressional district. † (Encarta' 95). He began his campaign two years before the election and met thousands of people throughout Massachusetts. The entire Kennedy family took part in the campaign. Kennedy defeated Lodge by 70, 000 votes. Kennedy married Jacqueline Lee Bouvier on September 12, 1953, at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Newport, Rhode Island. He had three children. One daughter and two sons. Kennedy's youngest son died in less than 48 hours after his birth. Kennedy underwent a spinal-disk operation in less than a year after his marriage. Soon after that, a second back operation was performed. He wrote â€Å"Profiles in Courage† during this time. A book of essays on American politicians who risked their careers fighting for just but unpopular causes. It was published in 1956. This book received the Pulitzer Prize in 1957. Many people had known little about Kennedy came to admire him because of the success of â€Å"Profiles in Courage. † In 1957, Kennedy became a member of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and he later won a place on the Senate Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor Management Field. His brother Robert served as chief counsel in the same Committee. In 1958, he spent many of his weekends campaigning for reelection in Massachusetts. â€Å"His Margin of victory, 874, 000 votes, was the largest ever recorded in a Massachusetts senatorial contest. † (Encarta' 95). Kennedy now began speaking out on foreign affairs. He was a severe critic of France's refusal to make concessions to its colony, Algeria. He advocated Algerian independence. Kennedy wanted the 1960 Democratic presidential nomination. He began working for it and faced several major obstacles. Many party leaders considered him too young and too inexperienced for the presidency. Many also doubted that a Roman Catholic could win a national election in a country that was mostly Protestant. Kennedy won most of the larger states in the northeastern United States. â€Å"The election drew a record 69 million voters to the polls, but Kennedy won by only 113, 000 votes. â€Å"(Encarta' 95). He won49. 7 percent of the popular vote, and Nixon won 49. 6 percent. Kennedy received 303 electoral votes to Nixon's 219. Kennedy was inaugurated on January 20, 1961. In his inaugural address he emphasized America's revolutionary heritage. â€Å"The same†¦ beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe,† Kennedy said. â€Å"Let the word go forth from this time and place to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans-born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage-and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed and to which we are committed today at home and around the world. (Encarta' 95) The words of his address were, â€Å"Ask not what your country can do for you- ask what you can do for your country. â€Å"(The World Book Encyclopedia, 268). â€Å"During Kennedy's first year in office, the Congress of the United States passed a major housing bill, a law increasing the minimum wage, and a bill granting federal aid to the country's economically depressed areas. â€Å"(Schlesinger, Arthur Meier-17). Kennedy also oversaw a bill creating the Peace Corps. After his initial success with Congress, Kennedy found it increasingly difficult to get his programs enacted into law. Although the Democrats held a majority in both legislative houses, Southern Democrats joined with conservative Republicans to stop legislation they dislike. With one bill, however, Congress dedicated more than $1 billion to finance sending a man to the moon. The major American legal and moral conflict during Kennedy's three years in office was in the area of civil rights for black citizens. Although â€Å"Kennedy was in no way responsible for the growth of the civil rights movement, he attempted to aid the cause by enforcing existing laws. He also asked Congress to pass a civil rights bill that would guarantee blacks the rights to vote, to attend public school, to have equal access to jobs, and to have access to public accommodations. â€Å"(Schlesinger, Arthur Meier-59). â€Å"In the late 1950s and early 1960s the government of Cuba under fidel Castro became increasingly hostile to the United States. When Castro began to proclaim his belief in Communism, many Cubans fled to the United States. † (Encarta' 95). In 1961 a secret project begun during the previous administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower culminated. Under the training of the Central Intelligence Agency, more than 1000 Cuban exiles invaded Cuba at a place called the Bahia de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs). â€Å"In Cuba both the bay of pigs occurred, in which U. S. supported rebels revolted in a poorly laid out plan of events that fell out beneath them, and the Cuban Missile Crisis in which the Soviet Republic were building missile silos in Cuba, 100 miles away from Florida. â€Å"(Encarta' 95). The Space Race was in full force with both Russia and the U. S. in competition to reach the moon during this time. The Cuban Missile Crisis was the world's largest approach to nuclear war. In 1960 Khrushchev decided to supply Cuba with nuclear missiles that would put the eastern United States within range of nuclear missile attack. In 1962 U. S. spy planes flying over Cuba spotted the first missile. Kennedy demanded that the USSR remove the weapons. United troops prepared to invade Cuba, but after a few tense days Khrushchev promised not to invade Cuba. The United States signed a limited nuclear test ban treaty with Britain and the USSR, outlawing nuclear explosions in the atmosphere or underwater, but allowing them underground. â€Å"John F. Kennedy was shot to death by an assassin on Nov. 2. 1963, as he rode through the streets of Dallas, Texas. † (The World Book Encyclopedia, 266). Two shots were fired in rapid succession. One bullet passed through the president's neck and struck Governor Connally in the back. The other bullet struck the president in the head. His car sped to Parkland Hospital but doctors couldn't save his life. He was pronounced dead at 1:00 p. m. Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated him. Oswald was charged with the murder and arrested that afternoon. Two days after, Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby shot Oswald while being moved from the city to the county jail. Millions of television viewers saw Ruby kill Oswald, who was under police guard. On November 24, the body of President Kennedy was carried on a horse-drawn carriage from the White House to the Rotunda of the Capitol. Thousands of people filed past the coffin of the president. The state funeral of President Kennedy was watched on television by millions around the World. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Kennedy was the first President to be born in the twentieth century and was very much a man of his time. He was restless, seeking, with a thirst of knowledge, and he had a feeling of deep commitment, not only to the people of the United States, but to the people of the world. Many of the causes he fought for exist today because of what he did for the rights of minorities, the poor, the very old and the very young. He never took anything for granted and worked for everything he owned. Perhaps Kennedy summed up his life best in his own inaugural speech: â€Å"Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country. â€Å"(The World Book Encyclopedia, 268). He was a very loved and respected president and will truly be missed.

Freud’s View on Religion

Freud maintained interests in the subjects of God and religion throughout his long career. Freud considered the practice of religion and religious rites to be some sort of neurological obsession. Taking the concept from Feuerbach, he also saw religious ideology as a projection of infantile wishes. If religion was a kind of neurosis, it is marked by an unhealthy dissociation between oneself and reality. If religion was a continuation of the childish tendency to project one’s imagination unto reality, it is marked by an abnormal association between one’s fantasies and the objective world. Either way, religion is a sickness that needs to be cured. Freud gave the clearest expression of his views on religion in his book The Future of an Illusion. In order to explore Freud's conception of religion, we must first clarify certain points. When Freud speaks of religion, he is usually talking about the traditional, fear-based, authoritarian, organized religion. There are other kinds of religion too. For instance, when William James talks about religion in his Varieties of Religious Experience and when Freud talks about religion in his The Future of an Illusion they are referring to wholly different approaches to God. James is talking about mystical experiences, while Freud is indeed talking about infantile beliefs. Unlike James' profound investigations into sublime spiritual matters, Freud's observations are more or less commonsensical. Freud's theories of origins of religion are sometimes criticized for being unscientific speculations, but really there is not much of a need for scientific corroboration of Freud's views because they are just commonsensical. When one looks objectively at the various religions and religious beliefs in our world, one is bound to reach to conclusions somewhat similar to those of Freud. Freud may have couched his observations in a more scholarly language, but essentially what he is saying is very simple and easily relatable. When he says religious rites are manifestations of obsessive neurosis, he simply means religions are mostly ridiculously lunatic affairs. And when Freud says religions are infantile projections, he means they are simply childish nonsense. It is difficult to come to any other conclusion when we look at the whole phenomenon of organized religion from a rational perspective. Freud mostly has Judeo-Christian tradition in mind when he condemns religion. Though Freud’s observations could be broadly applicable to many other world religions of the past and the present, they would make most direct sense when we keep the Jewish and Christian religions in mind. Freud’s main proposition is that religion is a projection of human longings and desires. But desires and longings for what? — for security of course. The Future of an Illusion and its sequel Civilization and its Discontents are Freud’s reflections on the origins and nature of civilization. Freud talks about religion in the context of civilization. Before the advent of civilization, man lived in wilderness. In our modern times, surrounded by the innumerable comforts of science and technology, i. e. , civilization, we may not be able to properly appreciate the fact, but situations of life posed constant threat and continual hardship for wandering groups of early humans, and this was how we lived for literally hundreds of thousands of years. Civilization is relatively a very recent manifestation. Religion in its rudimentary forms most likely predates civilization by tens of thousands of years. Freud constantly ties up religion with civilization since they essentially serve the same function – provide security against fearsome, elemental forces of nature. â€Å"The principal task of civilization, its actual raison d’etre, is to defend us against nature,† says Freud, and nobody would dispute this assertion. Now, the principal task of religion too is the same, though it approaches this issue of security from a different angle. And while civilization provides real security, religion provides only imaginary one, nothing more than an illusory feeling. Outside the setting of civilization, the basic question before an individual human being as he tried to live his life and cope with his surroundings was: how to survive, how to â€Å"defend himself against the superior powers of nature, of Fate†¦? The first step toward security is what Freud calls, humanization of nature: A great deal is already gained with the first step: the humanization of nature. Impersonal forces and destinies cannot be approached; they remain eternally remote. But if the elements have passions that rage as they do in our own souls, if death itself is not something spontaneous but the violent act of an evil Will, if everywhere in nature there are Beings around us of a kind that we know in our own society, then we ca n breathe freely, can feel at home in the uncanny†¦ This was how the first very primitive religions began, long before the advent of civilization. Say, if civilization began roughly 5 – 6000 years ago, and agriculture began some 10 – 12000 years ago, there is evidence for religious rites to have taken place as far back as 80,000 years or in fact much earlier, going back to the dim beginnings of the species Homo sapiens. Religion was therefore the first effort of man to establish a rapport with nature. The intention was wholly a noble one — to connect with the greater existence — but human minds were understandably extremely primitive so long ago in time, their lifestyle was totally brutish, there was no language either, and so instead of a poetic or philosophical reverence for Nature, men could only develop a routine of arbitrary, superstitious rituals in an effort to appease nature. Knowledge of our evolutionary beginnings was not well-developed in Freud’s time, nevertheless his speculations were based on the intrinsic logic of things and so some of them were neatly corroborated by scientific discoveries that were made much later. Superstitious religious beliefs did not really make man secure, but they at least provided an illusory sense of confidence: We are still defenceless, perhaps, but we are no longer helplessly paralysed; we can at least react. Perhaps, indeed, we are not even defenceless. We can apply the same methods against these violent supermen outside that we employ in our own society; we can try to adjure them, to appease them, to bribe them, and, by so influencing them, we may rob them of a part of their power. Freud says, â€Å"life and the universe must be robbed of their terrors. This was the big project man was on. However, there was no way man could achieve this at a time when he could not even build a primitive shelter for himself and had to live inside the caves. Even in the modern times, with such fantastic advances in science, we are still far from achieving this. The primitive man could only project beings with whom he could relate unto the abstract Nature, and achieve some kind of co nsolation through such an effort. This was not an altogether futile effort; besides consolation, it could also have led to other practical benefits. A replacement like this of natural science by psychology not only provides immediate relief, but also points the way to a further mastering of the situation. † From these very primitive beginnings, religions too went on evolving along with man’s growing awareness of his world. Freud continues with his logically derived conception of the evolution of religion. Freud has nothing against the way primitive religions evolved, because obviously human kind was in its childhood for all that time. Therefore it was only natural. What Freud is against are the present-day monotheistic religions of the world. Monotheism first evolved after a few thousands of years of civilization. Freud’s birth religion, Judaism, was one of the pioneers of monotheism. Although the monotheistic religion was a tremendous leap of abstraction over the primitive pantheistic religions, it was still an evolution of the primitive religions. Religion in whatever form, including the deeper spiritual and mystic modes, is a search for security, as is civilization. Whereas civilization has a valid basis, religion continued to be a purely imaginary enterprise. Civilization is a reflection of intelligence, maturity and capability of man, whereas religion is its exact opposite, although civilization and religion have been going together for so long. With monotheism, religion attained a kind of maturity, but unfortunately all the deep childishness still remained with it, being only thinly concealed. Freud remarks the following about the evolution of religion: And thus a store of ideas is created, born from man’s need to make his helplessness tolerable and built up from the material of memories of the helplessness of his own childhood and the childhood of the human race. This store of childish ideas continued to serve as a basis for the supposedly monotheistic religions too. Religion turned out to be an essentially childish pursuit. The parallels between religious tendencies and child psychology run deep. A very young child lives in a space where reality and dream/imagination constantly merge. In other words, he is not capable of clearly distinguishing between reality and imagination. For him, fairies in the stories he read could be as real as his friends at school. Freudian psychoanalysis traces all the mental complexes of an adult person to his childhood. This is the essential modality of psychoanalysis. The tendency of people to believe in religious doctrines is thus traced back by Freud to the tendency of children to confuse between reality and imagination. One needs this tendency or faculty first to indulge in any kind of mythmaking which is at the core of all religions, whether monotheistic or pantheistic — this capacity to take one’s own and collective mental projections for reality. Once this is in place, a person can go on projecting whatever suits him. A human child is so utterly helpless if he had to live on his own in this enormously complex world, unlike juvenile animals which come more or less ‘prepackaged’. The child’s overwhelming need is security. This security is provided by his parents. The child realizes his total dependence on the parents; consequently, the attachment to the father-figure or the mother-figure has gone very deep in the collective psyche of humanity. Security is very deeply associated with the father figure, especially in Western cultures and the ancient civilizations they evolved from. And although the child grows up into a man, and becomes much more capable and stronger in fending for himself, he still remains weak and helpless in face of many situations of life. The search for security continues, and the need for greater security is ever present. A benevolent and compassionate God watching over human affairs from his heaven – if he existed – would have been the ultimate protection for humans. But even if he does not exist, and no one has ever seen him, it need not present much of a problem because humans possess the faculty of confusing reality with imagination, and can easily make their own gods as well their own God. This faculty was particularly pronounced in people who lived in the early stages of civilization – which corresponded to the intermediate stages of evolution of religion. These men belonging to the ancient cultures of the world created thousands of gods and elaborate mythological stories featuring them — all of them being nothing more than products of their fertile but childish imagination. In the subsequent ages, men became more mature, their rational faculties developed, and they sought to make meaning of their world in a more focused manner, instead of just seeking security and comfort. This development was helped by the fact that enough of security and comfort were present already, therefore a higher need to make sense of his world developed in man. Religious cults continued to emerge and evolve; they were not simply arbitrary mythological stories anymore but contained more coherent narratives that answered philosophical questions and provided a framework of meaning to human existence. These latter day religions were apparently much more sophisticated than most of the primitive religions, nevertheless they were still highly childish and nonsensical. Science is a legitimate way of seeking comfort and security, and philosophy is a legitimate way of seeking meaning of human existence, but religion is a pseudo way of seeking all these three. Religion is like a drug that can provide a false sense of happiness and elation without in any way actually leading to greater happiness and joy. That was way why Freud was so much opposed to the existence of religions, they essentially belonged to a childish, outmoded phase of human evolution, even the apparently more sophisticated ones. Religions are nothing but an illusion. They provide comfort, solace, security, meaning and significance to human life — but they only seem to do so, in reality they only provide fake substitutes for all these. An illusion means an appearance without substance, and it is a very apt word to describe religions. There is nothing wrong in seeking greater meaning and security in our lives, in fact this search is what makes us human, this is a healthy need of human existence. But there is a much more prevalent neurotic version of this need which is easily satisfied by mere appearances and falsities, and which is easily catered for by the religions of the world. Religions are an outcome of neurosis, they are a disease of the human mind, and Freud genuinely hoped that religions could be cured by the spread of psychoanalysis some day in the future.