[HN Gopher] As religious faith has declined, ideological intensi...
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As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen
Author : ali92hm
Score : 145 points
Date : 2021-06-11 13:40 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| wturner wrote:
| I wish we had a world where the discernment between science,
| axiom and ideology was a real thing ironed into the public muscle
| memory as much as ideology itself. Idealism.
| rogerkirkness wrote:
| Teleological thinking centers in our brain atrophy but remain
| active even if you denounce religion.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| Teleological thinking does not have to be supernatural, as
| long as you replace the idea of a "will" driving things
| towards a final state, with the idea of attractors and stable
| versus unstable states. You can't really deny telos and also
| believe in evolution as a system that fits species to their
| environments.
| bobthechef wrote:
| Right, telos is not purely a matter of will, which is a
| special case. Telos is about the ordering of a thing toward
| an end. You can't explain efficiently causality without
| recourse to telos. The fact that the same causes
| consistently lead to the same effects is a testament to the
| telos of the things involved.
|
| Unfortunately, most opponents of telos don't really
| understand what it really means. They seem to hold to a
| mechanistic/Paleyian view of the world and assume the telos
| can therefore only be something in some mind external to
| the universe that directs things according to its purposes
| but that things themselves lack any intrinsic teleological
| character. But this is not correct.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| It seems to be the materialist/reductionist perspective,
| which is based on 19th century science (despite being
| totally outmoded since the early 20th century and the
| discovery of emergent properties in physics and biology
| alike).
|
| I sincerely think that it's the thing holding us back the
| most in the 21st century.
| lisper wrote:
| Evolution fits species to their environments in exactly the
| same sense (though not quite by the same mechanism) that
| gravity fits puddles to theirs.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| That's also a teleological approach (looking at the final
| state of the interaction of rain, terrain and gravity) -
| I used evolution as an example because its the first
| thing that came to mind.
| wyager wrote:
| The "science" most people believe (more accurately called
| scientism) is an aspect of the state secular religion.
| remarkEon wrote:
| It's interesting seeing this point, which has been around the
| internet for at least a decade now, start to get printed in
| what are otherwise mainstream publications these days. I
| don't know that I buy it, but I certainly understand and see
| the merit of the argument.
| zxzax wrote:
| I don't really buy it, it seems to suggest that scientific
| discoveries are not questioned and changed constantly, when
| they absolutely are. It's not accurate to always refer to
| them as "beliefs."
| remarkEon wrote:
| I mean, I agree with you, it's not accurate to refer to
| "science" as "[a set of] beliefs" but that's sort of
| besides the point. The point others are making is that
| "believe the science" is not the mantra of a society that
| actually "does science" but one that "Practices The
| Science^(tm)".
| varjag wrote:
| I think it expresses doubt in ability of a layperson to
| make a rational judgement on merits of a particular
| scientific research or process rather than on science
| itself.
| icelancer wrote:
| "Believe science."
|
| Vox and others stealth-editing articles, people yelling at
| you if you don't blindly believe the CDC/WHO, etc.
|
| Science by its very nature is heretical, questioning,
| skeptical. "Belief" in science is exactly what we should
| not be doing, yet is pushed by the academic elites.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| There's a difference between speculation and practicing
| belief, and what I see non-religous Americans practice is
| secular belief--that is--scientism. "Belief" in science.
| It's not speculation, because if it was, you might see
| people saying "I don't know, we'll wait and see" more
| often. Instead, I watch and read about people in America
| who are _convinced_ of certain outcomes without any thought
| as to whether or not what they posit is true.
| bitL wrote:
| Yeah, scientism used to be a huge problem at the end of the
| 19th/beginning of the 20th century, and we seem to be there
| again.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| '"Believe" in the science.'
| tomohawk wrote:
| As predicted by Nietzsche.
|
| For a great modern explainer, check out Beyond Reason, by Jordan
| Peterson. Rule VI, abandon ideology covers this.
| deadite wrote:
| Not at all ironic that you're being downvoted in this thread.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| I don't know why you were downvoted for this. It's something he
| explicitly described. You see it in the form of "corporate
| values." Corporations don't have values, people have values,
| and the subcontext of corporate values is that leadership at
| those companies make their own values.[1][2]
|
| When you hear about a corporation espousing "values," they're
| practicing corporate Nietzscheism. Most of the time, they're
| not doing it because they knowingly follow Friedrich
| Nietzsche's philosophy, but rather that they parrot the
| philosophy from other corporate examples... as predicted by
| Nietzsche.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transvaluation_of_values
|
| [2]: https://philosophynow.org/issues/29/Nietzsche_and_Values
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| The article says that people need not just political engagement
| but contemplation, standing outside the present moment and
| communing with something beyond. But is that a view that
| Americans now necessarily share? One concept that maybe has
| become quietly mainstream is materialism. (By that, however, I am
| not claiming that supporters of whatever American political camp
| are literally Marxists.) That is, any kind of moment away from
| present-day political struggles is viewed as capitulation or as
| callously ignoring the plight of the oppressed.
|
| As a non-American, I get the impression that this is a growing
| trend from it appearing even on e.g. internet literature forums
| in the last few years: poets writing abstract work at a distance
| from the political concerns of the present and seeking a certain
| timelessness and glimpse of eternity (think T.S. Eliot in "Burnt
| Norton") sometimes get called, by the Americans present, socially
| irresponsible and doing nothing for POC.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| Surely Marxism _is_ an abstraction from present-day political
| struggles? Capitalism didn 't appear yesterday.
| vmception wrote:
| I think this correlation is related to causation. I think there
| are registers in people's minds that are simply occupied.
|
| Addicts occupy their predisposition to addiction with a single or
| ever changing way of neglecting their responsibilities and
| relationships and health, based on simple earliest exposure.
|
| Susceptible people occupy their predisposition to susceptibility
| with religion or fervent ideology, the "choice" being simply the
| earliest exposure.
|
| Whichever one shows up first occupies that part of their mind. No
| different than a simpler organism impressing who its mother and
| caretaker is.
| vitiral wrote:
| Reducing the actions of people to objects or "simpler
| organisms" is rarely a helpful concept. Often people are much
| more complicated than our reductions of them.
| vmception wrote:
| I should wrote "analogous" instead of "no different", as
| analogies compare dissimilar things with common attributes,
| and could provide the same introspective capabilities without
| the easy ego based rebuttals
|
| There aren't enough differences for me to entertain the idea
| of backtracking though
| Growling_owl wrote:
| > I think there are registers in people's minds that are simply
| occupied.
|
| I think this is the case, anecdotally I noticed that if you are
| a sports fan, then the "us versus them" rhetoric works much
| less, or at least less than you'd expect in such people.
|
| At least for domestic politics, that's because you already get
| your dose of "us versus them" from some other domain in your
| life.
|
| Same for religion which is the main topic covered in the
| article:
|
| People who are religious are less likely to fall prey of cults.
|
| Religious people are less likely to elevate "false prophets"
| such as actors, musicians, rockstars and also the new
| phenomenon represented by technoutopian cult leaders such as
| Elon Musk or Elizabeth Holmes.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| What a condescending and misanthropic view of people. So we're
| just paramecia with "registers" waiting for occupation.
|
| As with anything, I think the real answer is much more nuanced.
|
| 1) This article is making the case that this behavior is
| universal, when there is no evidence of that. As always has
| been, there are subsects of any ideology that are ravenous in
| their dogma. They are always the loudest and get the most
| attention, because their actions are so extreme. It's selection
| bias by the media, who (wouldn't you know it) are the same
| folks making the assertion that political religiosity has
| supplanted deified religiosity.
|
| 2) If there's something resembling a "trend" happening around
| peoples' emotional investment in politics, it's likely around
| the fact that politics is increasingly prodding itself into
| peoples' lives. At the very least, if I travel abroad, and we
| have a president like Trump, I look like a fucking idiot. That
| sucks. At the worst, I'm a woman or minority whose livelihood
| is negatively affected constantly by political footballing.
|
| This has nothing to do with an absence of god, but everything
| to do with a real, quantifiable affect on peoples' lives. How
| can you expect people, secular or not, to put up with the state
| of social and political conversation as it exists today? If
| they're staunch conservatives, how can they put up with a clear
| wind blowing in the direction of socialism? If they're
| democrats, how can they put up with a clearly obstructionist
| and crooked counter party?
|
| Reducing all of that to computer parlance and the most basic
| biologies undermines the real problems that people are dealing
| with.
| mrfusion wrote:
| I don't think anyone judges you because of who the president
| is.
| vmception wrote:
| Because they're "staunch conservatives" or "democrats", as
| you wrote, because thats what they were exposed to first, not
| because they had an array of choices set in front of them
| with no external influence and said "that makes more sense"
|
| The same goes with religion
|
| The same goes with addicts
| [deleted]
| alkonaut wrote:
| I want to point out that this is incorrect:
|
| > It's rare to hear someone accused of being un-Swedish or un-
| British--but un-American is a common slur, slung by both left and
| right against the other. Being called un-American is like being
| called "un-Christian" or "un-Islamic," a charge akin to heresy.
|
| In fact to _be unswedish_ is not just a common idiom it's a
| positive one. It's when you don't show the typical negative
| Swedishness. You aren't "accused" of it, you are congratulated.
|
| "-I went to say hello to all the neighbors in my building. -What
| a nice and unswedish thing to do!"
| scotty79 wrote:
| "- You haven't joined a single armed conflict this decade! How
| un-American of you! Good job!"
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| >Immigrants to America tend to become American; emigrants to
| other countries from America tend to stay American.
|
| Is that true, or just the authors' speculation? Although it is
| easily explained. Everyone wants to be American because the USA,
| of all the countries in the world offers the greatest
| opportunities to the greatest number of people. They are the top
| of the food chain, in less nationalistic terms. (i'm not American
| btw but i can see the truth).
| underwater wrote:
| The "truth" you see is the designed outcome of soft diplomacy
| through the export of US culture via movies, television and the
| internet.
|
| I know lots of non-US folk who love the values and
| opportunities they experience in America. But I also know lots
| of others who don't.
|
| I see my own country adopting more and more aspects from
| America: individualism over community, the excessive
| consumerism, the Starbuck-ification of every facet of our
| lives, that I think are more harmful than beneficial.
| jltsiren wrote:
| Things may look a bit different from a (West) European
| perspective. I know enough people who used to live in the US
| but left, partly because they did not want to inflict US
| citizenship upon their children. Among all wealthy countries,
| US citizenship is probably the least desirable one if you don't
| plan to live there permanently.
|
| In any case, the expat/immigrant situation is familiar to many
| Europeans as well. The real difference is that most European
| countries are nation states, while the US is a land of
| immigrants and their descendants. "American" is an adopted
| identity. You become American if you have lived in the US long
| enough and consider yourself American. In contrast, "German" is
| an assigned identity. You are German if other Germans generally
| see you as German. You cannot become fully integrated into a
| nation state as long as other people pay attention to your
| origins.
| antihipocrat wrote:
| Does the USA really offer the greatest opportunities to the
| greatest number of poor people as a share of the total
| population, of all countries in the world? Why do so many
| people from the USA believe this tripe without question?
|
| It feels like the 'shining city on the hill' was extremely
| effective propaganda, for the domestic population.
| bwb wrote:
| That isn't true if you mean in terms of achieving the classic
| American dream... Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and others
| are moving more people out of lower/middle class to
| middle/upper class as a percentage. I do not know in terms of
| raw numbers but via % we are behind.
| 13415 wrote:
| I believe people who move to the US also like the comparably
| low bureaucracy, as well as opportunities in some sectors.
| Personally, I've lost my interest in moving to the US (or
| even visiting it) a long time ago, around the time of Bush
| Jr. for various reasons, but I'm still convinced that
| founding a successful company with low starting capital is
| easier in the US than almost anywhere else. The same is true
| for acting, music, show business and all the support like
| film cutting, audio engineering, special effects, etc.
| Despite the increased competition, your career prospects in
| these areas will probably be much higher if you move to L.A.
| or NY than if you stay somewhere else in the world.
| version_five wrote:
| The "classic american dream" I believe involves being able to
| move up through hard work. At least in Canada, if we are
| moving people up class-wise it's by the government
| subsidizing them more than it is by rewarding hard work. So I
| believe the GPs point still stands.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| If you move to the USA from the developing world or even
| Eastern Europe, regardless of what job you do your salary
| immediately soars above whatever you made in your country of
| origin. Taxation on many consumer goods is also likely to be
| lower. (For example, electronics can be expensive elsewhere
| due to high import duties or VAT.) Of course, cost of living
| in the USA is also much higher, but nevertheless lots of
| immigrants feel that they have moved up in life just because
| of the higher wages and consumeristic lifestyle now available
| to them.
| RGamma wrote:
| At this point I think the EU should just set aside a nice
| space somewhere and make it a raw capitalist, no taxes, no
| regulations, no safety net zone.
|
| "Talent" seems to like that environment.
| akarma wrote:
| America is certainly the country with the most opportunity
| for the most people.
|
| A shift that _has_ occurred from the 1950s to present is that
| there is less of a guarantee of an upper-middle-class
| lifestyle through a moderate [1] amount of effort.
|
| That easier opportunity, however, was unique to the era.
| Prior to 1930, immigrants knew that America was a place for
| exceptionally hard work and tons of opportunity and freedom -
| that was the American dream. Not high taxation and
| government-funded class movement from lower-middle to upper-
| middle.
|
| [1] 40 hours a week, one full-time job for an established
| corporate company supporting a family
| nielsbot wrote:
| Wasn't taxation very high during the period describe, and
| declining gradually since then?
|
| I also thought home ownership was one of the main
| generators of wealth for families, and wasn't that
| government assisted in some way?
|
| (Not a historian)
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| No, taxation was not very high. Some tax _rates_ were
| very high but they had an extensive range of deductions
| that don 't exist today. The _effective_ tax rates, what
| people actually paid as a percentage of gross income,
| were similar to today.
|
| They lowered tax rates simultaneous with eliminating
| deductions, making the changes over time roughly neutral
| in terms of taxes paid.
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| You all work so hard for almost nothing (apart from
| 'stuff', that is now mostly made in China).
|
| In Europe people have a much more relaxed attitude to work,
| yet somehow pretty much everyone has a very high quality of
| life - judged by quality of food, freedom from fear (e.g.
| of losing their job, getting ill, or interactions with the
| 'police'), and time to spend with people important to you.
| rejectedandsad wrote:
| Yet people in most of Western Europe (discounting Switzerland
| and Luxembourg and maybe Norway) are objectively poorer than
| even the poorest American states.
| RGamma wrote:
| Why is quality of life measured on consumption crap so
| heavily? Personally idgaf about useless doodads that waste
| resources and space in my home (or mind).
| throw0101a wrote:
| There are perhaps other metrics to go for, other than
| 'just' monetary:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report#2020
| _re...
|
| Some other countries may have chosen to trade some personal
| income/wealth for other things.
|
| Further, while there may be more money in general in the
| US, using averages skews things a bit due to inequality;
| social mobility is lower in the US than many other
| countries:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Gatsby_curve
|
| If you're not already at/near the top in the US, good luck
| getting there.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Yeah, but that's because USA basically swims in cash
| because since world uses dollar as core currency for the
| global economy USA has to print more dollars to match the
| growth of global economy to avoid deflation. And once it
| prints it it does with those dollars what it pleases.
| Mainly buys ton of stuff from the world, but still keeps
| enough to maintain status of wealthy country.
|
| It's no wonder people can get more cash it the country that
| basically prints it for the whole world.
|
| Once the global economy start shrinking or the world moves
| to yuan or euro USA will descend to level of Eastern
| European country in a generation or two tops.
| ardit33 wrote:
| Yes. when I lived in Sweden, I noticed that Swedes in
| general have less stuff. Smaller housing, fewer cars, less
| ability to buy stuff, and even go out. The average engineer
| salary was almost half (about 60%) of those in NYC and SF,
| while prices coffee/going out in Stockholm were almost the
| same as in NYC. Rent prices were lower though.
|
| But, their quality of life seemed higher overall. Less
| stressful in general, more vacations and time off, more
| thoughtful planing of their cities, etc.
|
| So, it seems like a tradeoff. If you are a blue collar or
| unskilled worker, Sweden would have been better, while
| you'd struggle in the US. But if you are a skilled worker
| (even blue collar, like plumber or electrician), you'd do
| better in the US.
|
| I'd rather be a barista in Sweden than in the US, but I'd
| rather be an engineer in the US than in Sweden.
| sometimesshit wrote:
| Ardit,
|
| You need to measure purchasing power using PPP rate, but
| even still NY and SF known to be expensive areas with
| high tax rates.
|
| SF engineer could earn 200k year but this money could be
| much low as 80k in another state if you compare
| purchasing power.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| > If you are a blue collar or unskilled worker, Sweden
| would have been better,
|
| The problem here is that for the Swedes to enjoy their
| social benefits, they cannot afford to have too many low
| skilled workers. The swedish economy is a high skilled
| economy, perhaps the highest skilled in the world. There
| are very few low-skill jobs, _unlike_ the US which has an
| army of low skilled workers filling low skilled jobs.
| This is why the U.S. is able to absorb so many low
| skilled migrants whereas Sweden is having enormous
| problems finding jobs for their low skilled migrants. So
| while sure, you are better off being a low skilled worker
| in Sweden just as you are better off being a high skilled
| worker in the U.S., but that 's because these two
| economies are structured very differently.
| OJFord wrote:
| > The swedish economy is a high skilled economy, perhaps
| the highest skilled in the world. There are very few low-
| skill jobs, unlike the US which has an army of low
| skilled workers filling low skilled jobs. This is why the
| U.S. is able to absorb so many low skilled migrants
| whereas Sweden is having enormous problems finding jobs
| for their low skilled migrants.
|
| How is that not backwards?
|
| If you have 'an army of low skilled workers' then there's
| no room 'to absorb so many low skilled migrants', surely?
|
| If you have 'a high-skilled economy' then surely you are
| 'having enormous problems' _filling_ your low-skilled
| jobs, and welcome migrants?
|
| Indeed, isn't Sweden famously highly accepting of
| migrants and in particular refugees? Presumably skewed
| low-skilled if at all?
|
| (Neither Swedish nor American, so not pushing an agenda,
| just commenting. :))
| kortilla wrote:
| It's harder to move to Canada though.
| yongjik wrote:
| While the sentiment may be true for Americans living in
| America, if an American decides to emigrate to a different
| country then they obviously think living in this new country is
| better for them - unless they move back later, I don't think
| emigrating Americans remain "American" for long, certainly not
| after a generation or two.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| From the 1880s to 2000 this may have been the case, but I don't
| think it is anymore. Any country with public health insurance
| that is decent is more attractive than the US. People are not
| blind, they see Americans dying of diabetes because they can't
| afford insulin that they attempted to crowdfund. [1]
|
| The US has evolved into a modern dystopia under the first-past-
| the-post system and cloture in the senate. I think the election
| of Donald Trump was the signal to the rest of the world that
| America's democracy may not even be a democracy. Republicans
| are currently digging themselves in to remove as much democracy
| from the American political system as possible. [2] I'm not
| sure where the country will end up.
|
| [1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/shane-patrick-boyle-
| died-a...
|
| [2]
| https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2021/06/the-...
| newfriend wrote:
| > The US has evolved into a modern dystopia
|
| > America's democracy may not even be a democracy
|
| > Republicans are currently digging themselves in to remove
| as much democracy
|
| Here's the ideological intensity that the article mentioned.
| This is delusional.
|
| The smartest, most driven people still come to the US to
| start businesses and seek fortune, because it's the best
| place in the world to do so.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| I'm not from the US, so I suppose I don't know. One of my
| uncles immigrated there and works in a VA hospital. The
| stories he tells me, of people dying of ailments that are
| common in the third world, seems to suggest otherwise.
| krapp wrote:
| Everything f38zf5vdt said and that you've quoted here can
| be true (at least subjectively) while your own reply is
| also true. You're not actually addressing or contradicting
| their arguments, such as they are, just declaring them
| categorically invalid because "capitalism."
| bdv5 wrote:
| In other words the opportunists come to the US. The most
| selfish and greedy. The results speak for themselves.
| icelancer wrote:
| >> Any country with public health insurance that is decent is
| more attractive than the US.
|
| Depending on what you want to do with your life, this is
| mostly true. But immigration laws to countries with these
| kinds of welfare structures tend to be much tighter than ones
| without for reasons that are obvious.
| vitiral wrote:
| I feel that many issues are not only a confusion of values, but a
| confusion of what values even _are_. There is some cookie cutter
| bullshit about what is "good" or "bad" and this is used to paint
| a broad and incoherent picture which breaks down the structures
| it is painted on. Like confusing ageism with public policy of how
| to handle disease. Or being idealistic to avoide concern over
| secondary consequences. You can be called a lot of names by
| trying to point out secondary consequences which harm certain
| woke policy choices. When did someone decide there were clear
| answers to challenging issues and cut off further debate?
| yoshamano wrote:
| The Christian Science Monitor also ran a similar article last
| month that I feel is worth a read.
|
| https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2021/0512/Is-politics...
|
| Rather than try to drive any particular point this is more of a
| discussion piece about this moment in time.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| We may be on the cusp of a great religious revival, due to the
| increased acceptance and eventual mainstreaming of psychedelics.
|
| People often interpret their psychedelic experiences in religious
| terms, and psychedelic use has often created new religions and
| helped to engender an authentic reconnection to existing
| religions.
|
| Mainstream religions rarely offer much more than platitudes or a
| place to socialize for the majority of their adherents, of whom
| many are part of the religion simply because their parents were,
| or because the church is the social center of their town.
|
| They don't have an authentic connection to the teachings, many
| don't even read their sacred scriptures, rely on priests to tell
| them what to believe, and usually neither they nor their priests
| ever had a mystical experience.
|
| Then psychedelics come in to the picture, and suddenly they may
| have a renewed sense of the sacred, religious texts and spaces
| come alive, and they may even come face to face with what they
| experience as the genuine heart of their tradition, including
| meeting, talking to or even being god.
|
| This is not an uncommon occurrence, even for atheists and
| agnostics.
|
| I don't think the mainstream culture has fully appreciated either
| how enormously powerful such experiences can be, nor their
| repercussions.
|
| Historically, mainstream religions have been very against drug
| use, but it'll be interesting to see what happens when their
| churches, mosques, and synagogues start filling up with people
| who were drawn there through mystical experiences they had on
| psychedelics.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Walk into a mainstream religious setting. None of them are
| there because they got high. If that were the case, the 70s
| would have looked a lot different.
| perfmode wrote:
| it's worth also introducing another word into the vocabulary of
| the discussion: spirituality
| [deleted]
| ukj wrote:
| Well...yeah!
|
| Religion serves a function. Even if that function is
| psychological.
|
| When you take religion away, something else will fill the
| utility-gap.
|
| Silly humans failing to grasp the purpose of stories/narratives.
|
| Edit for the downvoters (who clearly don't understand): the
| question "Why do science and philosophy matter?" has only
| religious/ideological answers.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Religion is about culture, belief and community. The fading of
| the mainstream religions is making room for the more
| fundamentalist, marketing driven religious practices that are
| often about money and politics.
| ukj wrote:
| We are social animals. A religion is what scientists call a
| "paradigm".
|
| The socially acceptable ideas/paradigms of today are the
| religions of next century.
|
| Hegel was right.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| There are parts of Europe that have far more community and
| where people are far more social but far less religious
| than the US.
|
| Religion is just a long surviving irrational belief system.
| It may serve a more social purpose or a less social
| purpose. Oppositely, the purpose of unifying a community
| can be served by a number of things, religion isn't
| necessary for that. As other mention, extreme religiosity
| is rising in the US even as average religion is declining
| but that's naturally ideological.
| [deleted]
| dilawar wrote:
| Really? How about growth and decline of Marxism vis-a-vis
| religion?
| [deleted]
| briefcomment wrote:
| People feel the urge to label some one, group, or idea, as bad. I
| get around this by accepting that I am bad. It helps me see the
| best in everyone else, and makes me hold myself to really high
| standards. It is sometimes unpleasant though.
|
| It's probably some sort of natural calibration process.
| rogerkirkness wrote:
| I've come to terms with this by denouncing morals and focusing
| on ethics.
| briefcomment wrote:
| I agree about morals. They're always relative, and can
| sometimes be fluid. Holding someone to a set of morals is
| usually pretty shortsighted.
|
| What do you mean by ethics here?
|
| The one thing I try to hold myself to is to maximize
| individual choice, even if I don't currently agree with some
| of the choices.
| Swizec wrote:
| Isn't this what Catholicism is all about? We are all sinners
| and terrible people. Therefore we should see the best in fellow
| human and give money to the church so it can offset our tab
| with god
|
| I realize most people stick to the "everyone is bad" part and
| forget that they too are an everyone and gloss over the whole
| forgiveness and acceptance part.
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| Uhhh... this article is really out of touch with the world and
| I'm pretty sure they totally didn't understand at a minimum half
| of what they're talking about.
|
| I'd really like to point out something that's just a fact, that
| was told to me, while I was abroad, by non-US citizens:
|
| The USA is the only country where you can move to and say you're
| from. I can't ever move to France and call myself French. I can't
| move to Germany and be German, no more than I can ever move to
| Japan and call myself Japanese. One can however, move to the
| United States, and call themselves American.
|
| There is something binding to America, much greater than
| religion, and it's the idea of freedom. Not even real freedom,
| just the god damn idea of it.
|
| > As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has
| risen
|
| ROFLCOPTR. Next you're going to try and sell me a tool to predict
| stock prices based on the weather (and I did read more after
| laughing my ass off at the sub heading).
|
| To assume that religion is what held together America is itself
| fucking stupid. I could accept greed, war mongering, or pretty
| much anything except the bullshit veil of religion. This was
| obviously written by someone who has no lens without religion and
| so applies it everywhere they can. It'd be more accurate to title
| this article "let's blame the problems of the world on the
| decline of religion, because I'm to stupid and willfully ignorant
| to accept the complex dynamics of modern society."
| antattack wrote:
| "Join me in our crusade to reap the rewards of our global
| victory'
|
| Said President Bush in 2005. This is when politics started
| exploiting faith in the open.
| freshhawk wrote:
| Uh ... is it news to people that american nationalism is a very
| religious belief system?
|
| It isn't to outsiders, I definitely heard this comparison made
| when I was in school ... which was the 90's.
|
| This also feels more like americans adjusting to having explicit
| ideological beliefs in the first place, since the decades-long
| political monoculture is breaking up. There is an interesting
| religious feel to party affiliation in the US, but nothing
| particularly exceptional compared to other places. Maybe that's
| an outsider missing some nuance though.
| remarkEon wrote:
| >Uh ... is it news to people that american nationalism is a
| very religious belief system?
|
| I think the "news" here, such as there actually is any, is that
| modern secular progressivism has adopted (transplanted?) many
| religious notions from e.g. Catholicism, and the comparison
| bothers people because the left prides itself on being anti-
| religious. American Nationalism has pretty much always been
| tied to Christianity given the history of the country, so yeah
| it's not surprising at all to point that out.
| tonymet wrote:
| Becoming more religious has helped me identify religious
| tendencies in the secular world. Ideology doesn't imply
| supernatural deities, and some worldly phenomenon can be elevated
| to a supernatural level. Secular belief contains rituals, origin
| stories, deities, saints, priesthood, vice & virtue just as
| religion does.
|
| One aspect of religion I appreciate is that these aspects are
| well codified and debated - i.e. much more explicit.
|
| In the secular world these aspects exist but they are implied.
| Thus they are difficult to debate and attack.
|
| Few people understand that most religions e.g. Judaism and
| Christianity have an apologetic discipline - a deliberate arm
| open to debate.
|
| The secular world would benefit from adopting more formal
| definitions of their belief system. I think that would reduce the
| conflict and neurosis that comes from engaging a nebulous system.
|
| You may not believe in religion, but religions are a good
| template for ideology.
| ta2162 wrote:
| It will be interesting to see how far this develops as
| generations become less and less religious. It will be
| interesting to see how areas like the Middle East change.
| Causality1 wrote:
| This is mirrored in the precipitously dropping support for
| freedom of speech in the US, especially among youth. As ideology
| becomes more intense heresy becomes less acceptable, and it seems
| if people can't quell heretical speech with threats of fire and
| brimstone they'll do it with legislation and police.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Freedom of speech isn't a "non-ideological" ideal, and there's
| not one single definition. For example, most liberals (in the
| classical sense) support free speech but are not absolutists; a
| libertarian might see that as repressive, while a progressive
| might see it as dangerous.
| oblak wrote:
| isn't ideological intensity an euphemism for religious faith? or
| is that the joke
| bencollier49 wrote:
| religio = piety
|
| ideo = images / ideas
|
| I think religious devotion is a subset of ideological
| intensity.
| eruci wrote:
| That's good news! Ideology is more malleable than religion.
| papito wrote:
| Religion is going away and political affiliation resembles more
| of a cult. You know, very healthy.
| bobthechef wrote:
| Religion isn't going away. Ideology is religion. Very bad
| religion, but it is religion (or a "cult" to use your language,
| though that term is overloaded). And no one is without
| religion. Everyone worships something. The question is: are you
| worshiping the _right_ thing?
|
| In terms of the "traditional" churches in the US, yes, mainline
| Protestantism is dying because it is a spent force (it has more
| or less fully acquiesced to the culture, become a consumer and
| servant of that culture, which means it no longer has any
| purpose). Muslims who move her tend to become moderates and
| likely shed Islam entirely eventually. You do see some growth
| among Evangelicals, but in any case, globally (Africa, Asia),
| you do see Catholicism and Islam growing. The West is in this
| sense a decadent freak.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| The total number of people identifying as religious in the US
| is declining. The number of people identifying as
| evangelical/"born again" is rising.
|
| Of course, it's about the same thing in the religious and non-
| religious cult-dynamics are somewhat similar.
|
| Of course, it's a product of any "local community" fading away
| - the moderating influence of random people living near one is
| fading.
| someotherblah wrote:
| America does have a god. It's called "the product". Just because
| it's falling short of the vaccum religion used to fill doesn't
| mean we won't pivot to something else. Enjoy the ride folks.
| kortilla wrote:
| For a good chunk of the of the country the god is actually
| anti-capitalist ideals now,
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/MzBm5
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