I am not myself religious, but let us consider the possible gulf between behavior and doctrine amongst those who are.

It has long struck me as a kind of mini-puzzle why people feel so much grief for the departed, at least for the departed who are supposed to be headed for heaven (and yes there are supposed to be at least a few).

It is fine to miss those people after they are gone, but it seems that, in addition, their death is considered a tragic event to be mourned, and also if possible to be postponed.  We are crying for them, not just for ourselves.

I do not doubt the sincerity of the religious belief that these people are headed to heaven.  And I do not doubt the sincerity of the grief and mourning for their departure from this world.

So what is going on here?  Why can’t you just be happy for them?

I believe that people often construct a portfolio of moods when faced with stressful situations.  Sometimes they will mix a positive and a negative mood, other times they will mix two different kinds of negative mood (worried about a recession?  Buy a book that heralds a financial crash and hold the talisman close to your chest as pre-emptive mood management exercise.)

So if the death of a loved one is a terrible event, there is a partial assuagement if you also think they are going to heaven.  It makes their death modestly less terrible.  But if you simply celebrated their passing, you would feel disloyal and like a rotten person who cannot recognize true loss.  The point is not that you can make this bundle of feelings consistent, rather it is useful psychologically precisely because it is a portfolio and is not entirely consistent, and also not consistent over time.  As your moods change, and you need an extra dose of either modest cheer or true mourning, you can adjust your blend accordingly.

Others kinds of portfolios end up being constructed.  For instance sometimes you may focus on some other terrible thing, to distract yourself from the first pain that came along, a bit like how you might pinch yourself during a dental session.  You might prefer to have a portfolio with more pain in a way, but some of it being pain you can control.

You can multiply additional examples in these directions.

When people hold views for reasons of mood management (however sincerely), typically they are unable to respond intelligently to questions challenging their beliefs.  Even very smart people will pull b.s. out of the hat and stick with it, moving on rapidly, mentally, to some other topic.  Their response is not really thought through, it is a placeholder for “now I can move on to something else.”  After all, consistency was never the goal in the first place, you might even argue that anti-consistency was what was needed, and what proved to be psychologically stable.

I once asked someone religious about mourning death and the answer I received was something like “Well, the people in New Orleans celebrate death with funerals like parties.”  Now, I am not sure how true that is, but assume it holds.  It still resolutely refuses to address why the queried person might mourn and grieve the death of loved ones, rather than celebrate their ascent to heaven.  Nonetheless it fills in the box “I did say something back to the initial query.”  The person then wanted to simply move on to another topic.

If you challenge smart people on this issue, namely the discrepancy between beliefs and actions, they often will respond with extremely weak counters and dismissals, rather than thinking the issue through.

Once you see this kind of psychological portfolio construction in action, and learn how to identify it, you cannot unsee it.

These days, you see it especially frequently in response to AI and its advances.  People have an odd love-hate relationship with the models, and they adjust their emotional balance as their stress needs may require.  They do not want to give up either the very positive or the very negative side of their visions, because then they would have a non-diversified emotional portfolio, and they would be very vulnerable to disappointment.

You can understand some of the current AI debates by pondering how religious people react to the deaths of their loved ones.  It was never about consistency in the first place.

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