Have "humans have always needed something in which to believe"?

[mia]

John Rapley’s Twilight of the Money Gods takes readers on a fascinating journey through the history of economic thought.

...Rapley’s argument rests upon two pillars. The first is the story of economics and its history is usually told from an Enlightenment narrative, in which science faces a heroic battle against ignorance and ultimately replaces religion in giving people codes by which to live.

His version is the functionalist argument that humans have always needed something in which to believe. Accordingly, as the economies of western Europe grew more rapidly over centuries, they posed questions that the old religions, which justified static, stratified societies, now found themselves unable to answer.

But the economists seemingly could, providing guidance on how to reach the promised land of material abundance and endless contentment. This "enlightenment" allowed humans to feel they had more control over their lives. As a result, they ascribed to economists the powers they had previously left to the gods. Economists then helped people to seemingly build a heaven on Earth, a cornucopia of consumption, new inventions and new delights — until it all went horribly bust in the recession of 2008, since when most people have witnessed their living standards decline. In response, the priests retreated to their cloisters, bickering among themselves, leaving humanity to seek new creeds to light paths to the future.

Yet while it is easy enough to preach the need for a new humility among economists, and for its purpose to become one of ethics rather than technocratic management, it is much more difficult to find an answer to his fundamental question: if we have lost our faith in economics as a religion that works for everyone and not just politically connected elites, in what should we now believe?

[trotsky]

1. It's more like we have always needed to explain things.

Whether that explanation is true or not, our brain has a need to slap some kind of causal mechanism on patterns that we observe.

[guillaumeb]

2. Economics is the study of how economies function.

But economists are often preaching a particular ideology, such as supply side economics, and they carefully choose which facts to present and which facts to ignore when making their case.