You might consider this a sequel to a past question I’ve had, except instead of teaching them how to be artists, it’s teaching them how to be devout in whatever you follow. For the sake of respecting technicalities, the loosest definition of religion/ideology/politics will be used here, which is incidentally a definition where they have historically overlapped.

I have relatives who have mental challenges, and this question is inspired by my wonder all the time as someone who has lived much of his life in a very zealous religious community who has observed local missionaries (everyone is a missionary in this small town) try to get creative trying to teach the gospel to people who couldn’t comprehend how an airplane works. Some of them have taken notes from psychologists and used toys inspired by the psychologists’ usage of Mr. Potato Head toys to diagnose autism (not sure if they still do that), others have simplified the gospel into some extremely simplified analogies, made to fit the language model inside these individuals’ minds, which both almost makes it resemble a cargo cult at times as the method used often has them using, for example, objects and their lack of object permanence as an allegory for prophets. So on and so forth. It’s both fascinating and terrifying, but it begs my question when it comes to interspecies communication which is an interesting topic.

Suppose you absolutely had to do this, either for some consequentialist social reason or maybe for an experiment to see if adherence would be possible. What method would you perform?

  • Vanth@reddthat.com
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    24 days ago

    Why are dolphins part of this? It’s possible to talk about teaching or evangelizing to people with learning disabilities without comparing them to dolphins.

    • CraigOhMyEggo@lemmy.mlOP
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      20 days ago

      I have no issue with either one, and neither am I comparing them just because one was the inspiration for the other. It’s an overlooked science trope and I wanted to see what people would realistically do in such a scenario.

  • Didros@beehaw.org
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    24 days ago

    I mean, I don’t believe in boarders, nor do dolphins.

    I don’t believe in currency, nor do dolphins.

    I don’t think there is much I believe in at a baseline that is antithetical to nature in such a way that this would be challenging for me.

    But I also don’t think it would be difficult to convert them to religion. They are just collections of stories mostly. Stories are good ya know?

    • Didros@beehaw.org
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      24 days ago

      Whoa. Read the whole question. And a little yikes on that one.

      There was a man, Mr. Bliss (changed from Blitz after ww2) who invented a written language that did not require root in established language, and was largely pictographic in nature. He got very upset that schools used it as a baseline to teach developly challenged people their native language. He wanted them to just use his language. Maybe look up that story?