[HN Gopher] Self-control secrets of the Puritan masters
___________________________________________________________________
Self-control secrets of the Puritan masters
Author : dash2
Score : 109 points
Date : 2022-09-25 11:31 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (wyclif.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (wyclif.substack.com)
| otikik wrote:
| Master bath ion.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| I enjoy reading old texts on how to live. Recommendation:
| Epictetus' Discourses.
|
| This article was interesting enough but I couldn't find any of
| the cited texts online. Is anyone aware or examples that you can
| actually access?
| api wrote:
| I'm starting to think the Diamond Age by Neil Stephenson may end
| up being prophetic. In a culture overloaded with things trying to
| addict you, Puritanism becomes in fact an act of protest and
| transgression.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| The 17th century is what Dutch refer to as "the golden
| century".
|
| It was an age in which modern capitalism and banking was
| invented, religious tolerance was practiced and everyone was
| spending money like "the great Gatsby" on paintings and exotic
| food. It was a remarkably "un-Puritan" age. What was preached
| was rarely practiced. There's a reason why Puritans sought a
| new home.
| tsol wrote:
| I mean I grew up leftist, punk rocker, etc and all my formerly
| niche opinions are now in the mainstream. On the other hand, I
| also grew up Muslim and I can say that being a practicing
| Muslim right now can feel very counter- cultural. Dealing with
| constantly waves of anti- religious criticism from
| atheists(which for some reason liberals seem okay with, so I
| have to deal with this everywhere online), views that the
| government doesn't approve of in their current idea of what is
| acceptable, fighting to make me and my communities voice heard
| when neither party in power is really interested in listening
| to our complaints-- this all feels very rebellious to me as
| someone who grew up rebelling. I'm not even interested in
| rebelling anymore, but at this point the system does not even
| try to represent us.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Yes, we seem to have reached a point that being
| discriminatory against religion, a persons looks or being
| lower class are the few traits that are somehow still
| fashionable despite everything else being a cause for
| censorship, loss of employment, lawsuit or prosecution.
|
| Note, to front-run the typical knee-jerk reaction: I do not
| believe the religious are in some way actually oppressed, but
| that those most on the left who scream of oppression
| everywhere are extremely comfortable with making snide
| remarks on religion (and class, provided its white people).
|
| Ironically this runs up against the preferences of the people
| the left wishes to keep inside their political tent - they
| are almost universally more religious on average than white
| people.
| dan_mctree wrote:
| > I do not believe the religious are in some way actually
| oppressed
|
| Aren't they? Sure, western religious oppression is not
| violent and nothing compared to what happens in say Iran.
| But there are many circles where coming out as religious is
| a terrible idea and religious people feel it and end up
| self-suppressing and hiding their identity. Who wants to be
| known as the Christian when the world has decided they are
| idiots at best or villains at worst? You never quite know
| when it's safe to open up and when you could face sudden
| social exclusion, bullying, internet mobs, career impacts,
| etc.
|
| If this comment were under my real name I'm not sure I'd
| have dared type it with the way the winds are blowing. Even
| with anonymity, it's giving me pause whether it's really a
| good idea.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| I say this as a Christian who doesn't go to church much
| since COVID but used to go more weeks than not.
|
| I would argue the idea that in the US religion is in any
| way actually oppressed is more vibes than reality. But
| vibes matter for votes if your party is the one seen to
| be against religion.
|
| Remember that one of the two major US parties is
| basically the pro-theocracy party. The SCOTUS appointees
| by the former guy follow with that theme, of trying to
| impose a specific religions morality upon the nation,
| etc. So I think it's hard to say.
| socraticmethod wrote:
| > Who wants to be known as the Christian
|
| Christians do; many quite vocally, even aggressively.
| Thus the pushback.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Some, sure. No different than some vegans, atheists, DJT
| voters and Jets fans.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| "Christians" do, sure. But not all of us behave like
| that, or want others to behave like that. This is
| especially true outside the US, where a huge chunk of the
| Christian community is watching the US situation with
| concern.
| trasz wrote:
| I don't remember hearing about, say, Buddhists having to
| hide their religiosity.
|
| There is opposition about certain specific religions,
| which come from the fact those religions were, and often
| still are, hostile towards other people. An example would
| be Catholic homophobia and misogyny.
|
| tl;dr in the western world the "oppression against
| religion" is actually opposition against social
| pathologies promoted by certain religions
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| Buddhism had its share of violence too, IIRC.
| taeric wrote:
| I didn't think this needed a past tense?
| trasz wrote:
| Of course, and you will find cases of opposition to it in
| eg Tibet; on the other hand the negative aspects of
| Catholicism might be relatively unknown there.
| tsol wrote:
| >I do not believe the religious are in some way actually
| oppressed
|
| Then again, there are western countries where women cannot
| control what parts of their body they reveal in government
| jobs. They have to show their hair-- Muslim women cannot
| wear a hijab. The problem is when discussions about
| religion come up people don't think about the experiences
| of most of the other religions in the world, they default
| to whatever branches of Christianity exist around them.
|
| >Ironically this runs up against the preferences of the
| people the left wishes to keep inside their political tent
| - they are almost universally more religious on average
| than white people.
|
| Yes. And while I generally support the democrats more, I as
| a minority feel they are going to run into big problems if
| they continue the way they do. Allowing the anti-religious
| sentiments will push away a lot of people that currently
| make up their base. Whether you like religion or not, it's
| a bad strategy.
| mindslight wrote:
| Personally, we should all aim to be tolerant of others'
| paradigms. Religions are really just heuristics for how to
| live, including being sources of comfort based on the idea
| there is some larger purpose. And aggressively shitting on
| someone's belief system in passing conversation is a
| terribly unkind thing to do.
|
| But societally, religion has been used to keep people down
| for millennia. It continues to drastically fuck up our
| political environment, like the recent attempts of
| prohibiting basic medical care. Religion's proper place is
| that of personal belief system, not as a Schelling point to
| rally around for oppressing others. Until its malevolent
| societal power has been neutered, it's not terribly
| surprising that many of those of us on the receiving end
| will overreact.
|
| Also for what it's worth, the rabid atheist seems to be a
| less frequent real-world occurrence than the religious
| person who won't stop mentioning the concept of god.
| trasz wrote:
| Until you realize puritanism is just another addiction.
| swayvil wrote:
| There's a world of difference between "look within yourself" and
| "believe this authoritative stuff about what lays within
| yourself".
|
| Just like today, 99.99% did the latter. Trusting the narrative of
| the hour, conforming to the hivemind, etc. That's people for you.
|
| And all this fine discipline and self-control was guided by this
| broken perspective.
|
| Like a fine Lamborghini driven into a tree by a drunk. Don't
| blame the Lamborghini, blame the drunk.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| I wonder if in coming decades people will look at stable
| diffusion as the worst of corporate art.
|
| Skeuomorphism at least looked attractive if incredibly gaudy,
| this is just terrible.
| teddyh wrote:
| Warning: "Art by Stable Diffusion".
|
| (I read the whole article assuming that the images were real
| historical images, until I saw the last image, which was
| obviously generated.)
|
| I feel somewhat decieved. If you're going to use fake images, why
| not go all the way and generate the whole article text as well?
| dash2 wrote:
| It says Art by Stable Diffusion on the first image. There are
| few real historical images of Puritans meditating, levitating
| and doing yoga!
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| Indeed and you can tell just by looking at the second image
| that it is not authentic yoga, the spinal alignment is
| completely off.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| In tiny, low contrast text. Easy to miss.
| mylons wrote:
| lol. i haven't read the blog yet, but were puritans actually
| doing yoga?!
| starkd wrote:
| What a way to focus on irrelevant details. Is this person a
| little bit autistic?
| DennisP wrote:
| Warning: modern artists are perfectly capable of making
| illustrations like that even without the assistance of fancy
| AI.
| anothernewdude wrote:
| Those fooled you? They're terrible.
| teddyh wrote:
| I skimmed the images, and the initial images were woodcut-
| style, and not very obviously fake. Only the last one was
| styled like an engraving, and was much more obvious.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| From what I've read, of all the post-Reformation Christian
| denominations in the West, the Puritans seemed the closest to
| Orthodox Christianity, not necessarily in every dogmatic
| theological detail but in their approach to repentance as self-
| knowledge and taking an active role in improving the state of
| their soul. The sola fide notion that came out of the Reformation
| has resulted in a "set it and forget it" set of beliefs where it
| is hard to see much in the way of self-control or self-knowledge.
| _emacsomancer_ wrote:
| > their approach to repentance as self-knowledge and taking an
| active role in improving the state of their soul
|
| I find this suggestion very hard to square with the prominence
| of Predestination in Puritan theology.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| There were / are many theological concepts in the West that
| diverge from what the early Church taught due to the Schism
| of Rome, so I view some of that as symptoms of working within
| a broken chain of knowledge to begin with, but I do agree
| that the idea of Predestination as rigidly defined within
| Calvinist tradition undermines the notions of free will both
| of humans and of the Creator Himself.
|
| That being said, of all the Western Churches, it was the
| Puritans (specifically John Winthrop) who had the
| intelligence and courage to secure the Massachusetts Charter
| from King Charles I, providing both the intellectual and
| legal basis for liberty from the Continental monarchies.
| rpmisms wrote:
| I am Orthodox, but it isn't limited to Orthodox thought. A
| common way by which people come to Orthodoxy is through
| Buddhism or related easter mysticism, and then realize that
| Christian thinking combined with true mysticism is the way for
| them.
|
| Self-knowledge is really the core of a good life, and I'll
| happily die on that hill.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| Indeed, Fr. Seraphim Rose is a great modern example of this
| exact process. His essay on Nihilism is like reading the last
| few centuries in reverse order.
| jkcorrea wrote:
| "make conscience of the idle rovings of our braines" and
| "enter... those darke closets of thy heart"
|
| I've been battling a few addictions recently. None so severe that
| they impacted my health or relationships in any major way, and so
| I lived with these habits very functionally for most of my adult
| life.
|
| It's incredible the kind of grip a habit can have on you. Despite
| how much I tried to change, that grip only grew tighter. It
| wasn't until I joined a 12 step program and met people who were
| like me that I started the process of unwinding. Making
| conscience every thought that led to my negative behaviors was
| the first step. The next giant hurdle was de-identifying with
| those thoughts and behaviors, which for me was probably the
| hardest part.
|
| Probably the best tool for me right now is like the quote says,
| to just really examine your thoughts and honestly tell yourself
| why you're having the craving/urge. If you can really be honest
| about it and recognize your addiction is only going to make the
| situation worse, I find you can start to "dampen" the craving. It
| suddenly isn't as appealing.
|
| It's not easy though, for every time I can successfully
| introspect and tell myself an honest, hard truth, there's 10
| times I tell a self-lie and let myself believe it simply because
| to know otherwise would be too big a burden to bear in that
| moment
|
| I didn't last long in the 12 step program, maybe it's not exactly
| for me. But a lot of what's talked about in this article is also
| part of 12 step: self-awareness, daily journaling and gratitude,
| spiritualizing others, having a community to go through the
| process with, etc. Even though I didn't continue with it, the few
| meetings I attended were honestly life changing and I highly
| recommend anyone who thinks they may have an addiction problem
| (pro tip: if you arent sure but a specific behavior came to mind,
| you probably do) to try one out. There's plenty for all kinds of
| addictions, turns out you're not alone
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| I prefer self-control to government legislation or peer pressure.
|
| There was an article here on HN about a spying app that lets your
| church community make sure you're not watching porn. So bizarre.
| Either you believe in what you're doing or you don't.
| drdeca wrote:
| Is the reason you view it that way due to having anti-anti-porn
| sentiments?
|
| Suppose instead of a app where a church community can see
| whether the person who has installed the application has viewed
| pornography, you instead consider someone who has suffered from
| alcoholism and is trying to stay away from alcohol, and wishes
| to be held accountable to others for their decisions.
|
| (Now, of course, one difference between these scenarios is that
| alcoholism is like, a medical condition? but the analogy is
| about the type of intervention, not saying that the two
| scenarios exactly correspond.)
|
| What one might call a "revealed preference" might not be a
| preference that the person who has it, endorses.
|
| Suppose someone is finding that they keep distracting themself
| with some diversion (perhaps a videogame) when the course of
| action they endorse for themself is to complete some other task
| first. They might turn to their friend, hand them the (e.g.)
| video game console or whatever, and tell their friend to hold
| on to it until they've demonstrated to the friend that they've
| accomplished the task.
|
| Of course, if someone doesn't choose such an arrangement, and
| it is foisted on them by others, then that can be more
| questionable,
|
| but the general mechanism of using others, and the judgement of
| others, to guide one's actions towards what one wants one's
| future actions to be like, is legitimate, and can be useful.
| neither_color wrote:
| _There's an explosion of new movements and techniques to fight
| procrastination, from Pomodoro (which gives you timed breaks when
| your tomato-shaped kitchen timer runs out) to self-help books and
| subreddits..._
|
| The highlight of my early 20s was embracing the hedonism
| treadmill as a rejection of "imposed morals", only to spend
| countless hours trying tons of self help books and listening to
| podcasts about discipline and grit and motivation and positive
| thinking, etc.
|
| At some point, no matter which path you take, you'll find good
| secular justification for limiting your exposure to toxic people
| in life and limiting your swearing to improve your vocabulary and
| avoiding processed food, short term hookups, sleeping well,
| helping others, meditating, saying affirmations, thinking
| positively(using faith to counteract "rational evidence" that
| something will fail or wont work) and so on.
|
| You're following so many rules (self developed through experience
| and knowledge) that it gives you more appreciation for how the
| different religions were themselves using heuristics developed
| over thousands of years of trial and error to give you an optimal
| set of rules that would more than likely produce the best outcome
| for your life, given the environmental constraints and lack of
| scientific knowledge at the time. It was not simply "sky daddy
| made rulebook"
| [deleted]
| alexvoda wrote:
| However, the environmental constraints change and the amount of
| scientific knowledge also changes(and hopefully improves) over
| time.
|
| Therefore the heuristics turned into rule book will inevitably
| become harmful eventually.
|
| Also keep in mind that the rulebooks did not produce anything
| close to any ideal personal outcome. They always produced the
| ideal societal outcome that would preserve the existing
| structure of society. If said structure meant you were
| inherently harmed, your personal ideal was subordinated to
| that.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Your response reminds me of the quote: "Tradition is a set of
| solutions for which we have forgotten the problems. Throw away
| the solution and you get the problem back. Sometimes the
| problem has mutated or disappeared. Often it is still there as
| strong as it ever was." -- Donald Kingsbury
|
| Watching our politics speed-run the 60s-80s again reminds me of
| this every day. Hopefully we hit the 90s soon, those were
| pretty rad.
| hcrisp wrote:
| Reminds me of another quote: "Tradition is the living faith
| of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living."
| -- Jaroslav Pelikan (per the web)
| darkteflon wrote:
| Indeed, reminded me of this article from a few years back,
| which left quite the impression: https://scholars-
| stage.org/tradition-is-smarter-than-you-are...
| rakejake wrote:
| Fantastic article. Thanks for sharing.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Another interesting read with some ideological bends I
| can't completely buy into is Rob Henderson & his writing on
| "Luxury Beliefs".
|
| Basically the concept you may notice if you are in HCOL
| blue urban elite circles..
|
| Well to do left of center people who espouse discouragement
| of / being against many traditional concepts (monogamy, two
| parent households, kids after marriage, strict discipline,
| follow the law, being drug-free, going to college for a
| career, etc) .. but largely actually follow it and is how
| they / their parents got where they are.
|
| And either way they have the means to not be effected by
| the negative effects of this non-traditionalism.
|
| However if you are middle/lower class and follow the same
| non-traditional path, the personal costs to you & your
| offspring of frequent drug use, being a single parent, etc
| are almost insurmountable and are some of the leading
| causes of generational poverty.
|
| That is - it is easy to say "hard work doesn't pay off, do
| drugs, break the law, and free love" when you are going
| from an elite (fully paid for by parents) university campus
| to start your career & live in NYC/SF/LA/Boston (with
| college & parents helping you with job connections, and
| parents helping underwrite your housing until you get on
| your feet). For them the worst cost of failure is moving
| back with mom&dad to their comfortable leafy suburb.
| SamBam wrote:
| > discouragement of / being against...
|
| I know lots of liberal elites, and don't know any who are
| actually _against_ two parent households, kids after
| marriage, following the law, being drug-free, going to
| college for a career, etc
|
| This is a ridiculous assertion.
|
| But I know many of these same people who believe in not
| judging those who do not follow all of these ideals, and
| want systems in place that support, say, single mothers
| or whatever.
|
| This is very different.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| A fair critique I would probably rephrase it as
| "questioning the value of" rather than "discouraging /
| being against" x traditional values.
|
| And yes, as these people age/mature it usually morphs
| more into - we should be much more supportive with
| systems in place to help single mothers, etc.
|
| Unfortunately there's limits to what the state can do to
| replace family, and there are good reasons to encourage
| people to not fall for the same pitfalls that trap them
| into cycles of poverty, no matter how much the state does
| to make that poverty less painful.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| In the same way, N. N. Taleb talks of the wisdom of
| grandmothers. All the old sayings represent hard earned
| knowledge.
|
| Some traditions are based on superstition, but certainly not
| all of them.
| lolinder wrote:
| This draws on Chesterton's perspective on tradition. He's
| most famous around here for his Fence. Past the part that is
| commonly cited, he says this [0]:
|
| > The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by
| somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly
| improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were
| for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some
| reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody.
| And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge
| whether the reason was reasonable.
|
| > ...
|
| > If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed
| to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad
| purposes, or that they have since become bad purposes, or
| that they are purposes which are no longer served. But if he
| simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that
| has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the
| traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion.
|
| [0] https://archive.org/stream/G.K.ChestertonTheThing/G.K.Che
| ste...
| endemic wrote:
| Very applicable to programming as well.
| SamBam wrote:
| Often those traditions may have important, forgotten
| reasons, but just as often traditions were created to say
| "we are our people, we're not those other folk."
|
| See: dietary laws, circumcision, restrictions on what
| materials your clothes may be made out of, rules for what
| hair you're allowed to cut, and when you should or
| shouldn't cover your head, etc. etc.
|
| (And before people jump in with "maybe there was a specific
| reason for the dietary laws, e.g. pork was unhealthy," that
| doesn't explain why you'd have peoples living side-by-side
| with opposing dietary laws.)
| pyuser583 wrote:
| lolinder wrote:
| I agree, and Chesterton agrees. He's very explicit in
| saying that if you can accurately identify the reason a
| fence is there and that reason is no longer applicable or
| was never a very good one, you are justified in removing
| it. The point isn't to never tear down a fence, it's to
| question your impulse to tear down _every_ fence the
| instant you see one.
|
| It's very much the same idea as "don't start ripping out
| and refactoring 'legacy' code on your first day on the
| job." You may actually have inherited a completely
| garbage code base, but you may also simply not understand
| the constraints that dictated the architecture you've
| been given. Once you understand those constraints,
| refactor away!
|
| With regards to your example: Dietary laws may well be
| outdated, but modern Jews may also argue that setting
| themselves apart is still a very worthwhile reason to
| avoid pork--it's probably part of the reason why they
| managed to remain a separate culture even without a
| proper homeland, and remaining a distinct culture is
| valuable to them.
| freahsteaksauce wrote:
| What kind of fence is it when you think you know why the
| fence is there but you're obviously wrong?
| lazide wrote:
| It does explain how you would have people living side by
| side, if you look at how people tend to work.
|
| Take cigarettes for instance. We know they're unhealthy.
| There are also still millions (hundreds?) smoking them
| every day.
|
| People give up and fall into habits unless there is
| strong reinforcement. If you get a parasite and have no
| way to get rid of it (because of lack of modern medicine)
| because you ate pork, not like you're going to stop
| eating pork necessarily any more. Especially if it's
| cheap in your area.
|
| If there is another group of people who manages to not
| have those issues because they don't eat pork - they're
| going to keep not eating it after seeing that too!
| thih9 wrote:
| > heuristics developed over thousands of years of trial and
| error to give you an optimal set of rules that would more than
| likely produce the best outcome for your life
|
| Unless you're cherry picking rules from the set, the outcome
| would be far from best.
|
| My point is that thousands of years of trial and error may
| include some valuable insight but also some pretty outdated
| approaches.
| lolinder wrote:
| The question isn't if we've reached a global maximum (we
| obviously haven't) it's if _we_ can do better than thousands
| of years of trial and error?
|
| I can see the rationale for taking tradition as a baseline
| and tweaking it to better fit modern times. That's what every
| generation has done. The direction many of us are heading,
| however, is to assume that tradition is all bogus and we can
| do better today with just the scientific method.
|
| I hope if the replication crisis in psychology has taught us
| anything it's that science applied to people is still in its
| infancy and we are not yet at a place where we can entirely
| discard the wisdom of our ancestors.
| thih9 wrote:
| > The question isn't if we've reached a global maximum
|
| On the contrary; top level comment said "rules that would
| more than likely produce the best outcome for your life". I
| disagreed.
| lolinder wrote:
| "The best outcome" doesn't mean the best life
| theoretically possible, it means the best life you can
| achieve for yourself in the life that you have. You do
| not have access to infinite information about how to live
| a good life. You have access to a limited amount of
| knowledge gained scientifically, an even more limited
| amount of your personal lived experience, and a vast
| trove of traditional wisdom. Given that limited
| knowledge, OP asserts that the best outcomes are achieved
| by paying heed to traditional wisdom.
|
| There are certainly better ways to live than the ones
| handed down to us over millennia, and I think we _ought_
| to fine-tune what we 've been given and learn from other
| cultures' traditions. But discarding _everything_ our
| ancestors have given us because we think we know better
| is sheer arrogance.
| BigHatLogan wrote:
| Beautifully said. It strikes me as incredibly arrogant and
| condescending that so-called rational, educated people today
| will gleefully throw out centuries (if not millennia) of
| knowledge because they (justifiably) take issues with some of
| it. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater comes to mind. I'm
| not particularly religious, but there have always been aspects
| of religion that I've admired and aspects that I've disliked.
|
| Your local Crossfit gym and book club, I promise you, are not
| adequate replacements for traditional recurring weekly
| gatherings, where it's normal (and expected!) to share what's
| on your mind, what's troubling you, what you are grieving over,
| what you are celebrating, etc. I've found that the quality of
| discourse here is much higher than the standard, "Did you watch
| Succession last week?", surface-level discourse at many of
| these alleged replacements.
|
| And then, like you mentioned, they embark on a decades-long
| quest, only to end up at more or less the place they would've
| ended up otherwise. Or they find themselves completely lost and
| wayward.
|
| I don't have a prescription here, but complete rejection of
| something seems almost as dull and narrow-minded as total
| dogmatic acceptance of it.
| xabotage wrote:
| You're looking at weekly religious gatherings through rose-
| colored lenses. A crossfit gym membership and book club could
| very well produce a far healthier local community than a
| church. Religion does not have a monopoly on the variables
| that attract healthy, thoughtful, intelligent people (in
| fact, trends in the US suggest quite the opposite).
| aliasxneo wrote:
| I appreciate the content provided, but I'm a bit confused about
| who the target audience is in this piece. The methodologies
| employed by the Puritans in regard to soul care were dependent on
| accepting the fact that Christ is alive and active in us, working
| through His Spirit. Attempting these techniques from a purely
| secular standpoint is likely to not result in much value.
|
| "Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my
| presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own
| salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you
| both to will and to do for His good pleasure." (Phil 2:12-13)
| tluyben2 wrote:
| I read it as history, as I see anything religious; interesting
| folklore and history.
| aliasxneo wrote:
| That makes sense, but I didn't see the thrust of the article
| as a history lesson, it seemed to be recommending Puritan
| methodologies outside of their religious context.
| [deleted]
| KaiserPro wrote:
| I think drawing inspiration on temperance from "puritans" based
| on their own writings is possible only going to tell you how they
| wanted to be perceived.
|
| "puritanism" and thats a wide term isn't overly specific. the
| mayflower lot were "the Leiden congregation" or something
| similar. You can see the range of opinion here:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Dissenters#/media/File...
|
| Also, as the colonies that were founded on religion were based on
| social regulation, by people reporting, or falling out with
| others for not following convention.
|
| in short, its more playground than useable self discipline
| example.
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| Conspicuously Absent:
|
| The Puritan method of avoiding temptation by invading neighboring
| communities that did not share their austere and guilt-riddled
| lifestyle choice, driving them from their homes, taking them
| prisoner, and/or outright murder in the name of their self-
| proclaimed righteousness.
|
| There's a reason they got chased out of wherever they showed
| up...history should rightfully remember them as a bunch of self-
| important no-fun assclowns.
| Ntrails wrote:
| > history should rightfully remember them as a bunch of self-
| important no-fun assclowns.
|
| Let us all remember everyone as only their worst things, and
| learn nothing from their best eh?
| swayvil wrote:
| That's a bit of a caricature.
|
| Surely they did what was only right and necessary. Put their
| faith in good authorities and sensible arguments.
|
| Just like us.
| starkd wrote:
| This completely misses the point. It's almost like you didn't
| even read the article. He makes clear they were by no means
| perfect, nor did they genuinely see themselves that way. Where
| the Buddhists' self-reflection was to accept reality, the
| puritans strove to change the self. This doesn't mean they all
| succeeded. You just want to denounce everyone else as imperfect
| (which is easy to do). You might try the Puritans' advice and
| look at your own failings first.
| dash2 wrote:
| I assume you are thinking of America, but what makes you think
| that's to do with Puritanism? Catholics did very much the same
| in the Americas. In fact, didn't people of all religions,
| including Native Americans, often fight with and attack their
| neighbours, throughout human history?
| thisiscorrect wrote:
| The Puritans were especially strident in imposing their
| beliefs though. Their concept of collective salvation meant
| they'd brook no dissent at all. And so _anyone_ not toeing
| the line was treated as a mortal threat and could be subject
| to immense cruelty.
|
| Interestingly, many descendants of these Puritans are still
| just as willing to impose their own religious beliefs on the
| rest of humanity. Although some details of the religion are
| vastly different, its rough shape is still the same (humanity
| can be remade and perfected, everyone must join in this
| endeavor or we're all lost, rejection of hierarchy, etc.) I'd
| wager this is even the source of many of the moral conceipts
| we see in America's foreign policy. Every farflung tribe on
| Earth must organize a government the way we organize ours.
| Every society must tolerate the same beliefs that we do, and
| also not tolerate the same things that we do not.
| dash2 wrote:
| I don't think they had a concept of _collective_ salvation.
| They were very clear that salvation was individual, and
| that even people who thought they were saved, and who
| everyone around them thought was saved, might not be. I
| think you 're right that they were strict about imposing
| their beliefs, at least in C17 New England, but I am not
| sure that relates much to their foreign policy wrt the
| Indian tribes. But I will defer to someone who knows more.
| thisiscorrect wrote:
| A very accessible book which discusses exactly the
| intersection of Puritan beliefs and their treatment of
| American Indians is "American Nations" (https://www.googl
| e.com/books/edition/American_Nations/Oc5VDw...).
|
| https://www.chronicle.com/article/patriotism-and-the-
| puritan... is an essay on a related topic.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| I was thinking also of this:
|
| > If life coaches make their living by pushing us to do what we
| know we ought to, for a Puritan, the whole community of
| brethren was the coach.
|
| Has this person even heard of "The Scarlet Letter"? Or know
| anything about Puritans using stocks, whips or brands on
| sinners? Or mutilating them by cutting off ears or boring holes
| in their tongues.
|
| When I think of "life coach" I don't envision someone branding
| me or cutting off an ear if I don't meet this weeks "life goal"
| starkd wrote:
| Oh, c'mon. Everyone knows there's more depth to history than
| the common populist version. As a group, most humans fail
| miserably. At any time in history, this is is so. This
| doesn't mean individual's from any era have nothing to offer
| in terms of understanding ourselves. You might try broadening
| your reading list beyond the high school approved reading
| list.
| jkepler wrote:
| Actually, the Puritans left England for Holland because they
| were at the receiving end of violent imprisonment for holding
| religious convictions that differed with the Anglican church
| and authorities. Then they left the Netherlands because they
| felt that their children were becoming too Dutch.
|
| After the Puritans founded Plymouth Bay colony, they let
| William Rogers (if I have his name correct) leave when he
| disagreed with them, and he went and founded Rhode Island...
| where he eventually excommunicated his own wife (so maybe he
| just had issues getting on with folks).
|
| So I'm not sure what episodes of violently attacking neighbors
| you're speaking of.
|
| Additionally, according to American feminist history researcher
| Mardi Keyes in a lecture I heard years ago, Puritan New England
| was the first society in the world where legally women had the
| full right to bring divorce suites in cases of abuse,
| infidelity, or neglect; 50% of the cases were brought by women
| (she said if you look of the court records one can see this
| evidence) and it was the closeness of their communities that
| enabled neighbors and friends to provide testimonial evidence,
| which often enabled women to leave dreadful marriages. This
| stands in stark contrast to the pejorative caricaturing of
| Puritans as anti-women.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| We are free to pick and choose what we think is worth
| preserving or adopting.
| aliasxneo wrote:
| I've read a majority of the Puritan works available to us (at
| least a couple of dozen), and while I don't necessarily agree
| with them on all points theologically, they certainly
| perfected the art of soul care. In particular, Richard Sibbes
| is poetic in the way he addresses brokenheartedness (his
| work, The Broken Reed, probably sits at the apex of this).
|
| They also had a significantly higher view of pastoral care,
| one that I wish had not been lost in our modern age. I try to
| read the Reformed Pastor at least once every few years as a
| reminder (contrary to popular belief, this has nothing to do
| with reformed theology).
| starkd wrote:
| Also contrary to popular belief, it was not that the
| Puritans genuinely thought themselves to be better than
| everyone else. Their writing indicate they were all too
| acutely aware of their sinfulness. They knew of the
| difficulties in steering clear of it. When you are starving
| and you find bread, it is only natural you want to inform
| others how they too can find it. This is probably the root
| of their overzealousness.
| Kye wrote:
| But maybe let's avoid things that are dependent on violent
| overthrow of competing ideologies. If a way of life only
| works by crushing other ways, it's a bit garbage.
| yuuu wrote:
| "dependent on" != "associated with"
| Kye wrote:
| Well, the topic is Puritanism. That's what I was talking
| about.
| yuuu wrote:
| All aspects of Puritanism are "dependent on violent
| overthrow of competing ideologies?"
| Kye wrote:
| These were people who fled Europe because they considered
| the Catholic church of the 1500s/1600s too liberal. How
| well do you think they got on with their neighbors? I've
| seen firsthand how effective an eliminationist ideology
| can be even without overt violence growing up in Baptist
| country.
| yuuu wrote:
| It's unclear what you're trying to say. All aspects of
| Puritanism are bad because some people did violent
| things, historically? Nobody's arguing with the latter,
| and the comment you originally responded to was, "We are
| free to pick and choose what we think is worth preserving
| or adopting."
| smoldesu wrote:
| You are definitely free to associate with whoever you
| choose, just as others are are free to judge you for
| associating with those people. I'm someone who likes to
| give most ideas a fair shake, but I'm also not going to
| entertain a defence of fascism that highlights the
| decline of animal cruelty under Hitler. Most people who
| aren't me would probably walk away as soon as you bring
| up Orthodoxy.
| starkd wrote:
| The comparison to fascism is not even relevant here.
| Fascism is a corporate/government collaboration to
| achieve a specific end. Puritans were not talking about
| this. They were about self-reflection and self-
| improvement. The overzealotry of Puritism was based on
| populist uprisings. The failed collectivist experiments
| of the 20th century took a far greater toll on humanity
| than the Puritans ever did. By far.
| yuuu wrote:
| You have a good point. I tend to not entertain ideas
| based on overused strawman comparisons with Hitler and
| Nazis.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Self reflection and discipline is garbage?
| Kye wrote:
| Those are features of many ways of life, not ways of life
| in themselves. What those terms mean depends on the
| backing ideology. They don't exist in isolation. This
| thread is discussing Puritanism.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| Now do... the entirety of human endeavor. Whenever we discover
| a way we think is good, some of us decide we should impose it
| on others by force. The Puritans were nothing special in that
| regard, though high school reading lists tend to focus on them.
| maxbond wrote:
| It's not that this is actually something everyone does, but
| that those people also foist their views of history on us,
| and include this narrative to naturalize and justify their
| behavior.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| >> some of us
|
| > not... something everyone does
|
| Yeah.
|
| That being said, I think you're ascribing to intent what is
| attributable to worldview: people of that sort see history
| in terms of the advancement of the Gospel, the ongoing
| Communist revolution, or the progress of industrialization,
| and they communicate it as such.
| maxbond wrote:
| > Yeah.
|
| I misspoke, what I meant was, this isn't the inevitable
| course of history; the past is prologue and not destiny.
| I believe one of the reasons this pattern repeats is the
| idea that it is "natural" and inevitable, and while it is
| literally true that it is natural - everything is - that
| doesn't mean it is "human nature" in the sense that it is
| inescapable. Cancer is natural, that doesn't mean we have
| to accept it.
|
| > That being said, I think you're ascribing to intent
| what is attributable to worldview: people of that sort
| see history in terms of the advancement of the Gospel,
| the ongoing Communist revolution, or the progress of
| industrialization, and they communicate it as such.
|
| I agree, I was personifying larger-than-human phenomena,
| so while I find intent to be a useful metaphor it it
| isn't literally true. The thing I want to communicate
| with this metaphor is that there are choices and an
| agenda involved, motivated reasoning.
|
| Your examples are good, I think a particularly
| illustrative one is "the white man's burden"; the idea
| that white people must bear the "burden" of the Atlantic
| slave trade and colonialism more broadly is patently
| absurd, very clearly working backwards from the premises
| that colonialism is good, actually, and good for the
| colonized at that, to find an intellectual justification
| for behavior that was obviously deeply immoral and
| incompatible with their stated beliefs. This is just
| going so far out on a limb that it's really easy to see
| the game they're playing, but in all of these examples
| we've cited, it's a repackaging of political realism to
| match the aesthetics of that society and time in history.
|
| Someplace I see this in our time is in the rhetoric of
| Jordan Peterson, an obvious chauvinist who's created an
| intellectual framework for why the patriarchy is good,
| actually. If you peer past his showmanship and undeniable
| charisma, you see the that same kernel of political
| realism; "the strong do what they may, and the weak
| suffer what they must." So for him in particular it's
| like, oh isn't it so terrible that the lower class is
| destitute, but what's much more important than their
| conditions are that we need steep hierarchies, and
| wouldn't you know it, I've got some misrepresentations of
| lobster biology to justify this as natural and
| inevitable. Peterson is far more artful than Kipling, and
| he does a better job of keeping the quiet part quiet, but
| it's a repackaging of the same ideas.
| fedeb95 wrote:
| In case you're tempted to fall for this rough classification of
| modern sins and a revival of old ones, think again and discover
| how awfully biased this article is toward a certain moral. If you
| sleep with dogs...
| Ensorceled wrote:
| > In case you're tempted to fall for this rough classification
| of modern sins and a revival of old ones, think again
|
| Or, do a basic google search on Puritans and their punishments
| ...
| erganemic wrote:
| " _The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that
| which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new
| thing under the sun._
|
| _Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it
| hath been already of old time, which was before us._ "
|
| - Ecclesiastes 1:9-10, KJV
| thrown_22 wrote:
| We fused the atom and became gods.
|
| It's just that godhood is not evenly distributed yet.
| tsol wrote:
| ..God's with depression and an opioid epidemic lol
| beckingz wrote:
| Classically very Greek in that regard?
| python_fnanatic wrote:
| No. The Greek Gods were debauches but they didn't
| cloister themselves in their homes and marinate in their
| neurosis
| wnoise wrote:
| Lots of accounts of Hades are exactly that.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Is that a quote?
| kingkawn wrote:
| Ain't no gods walking this earth, just a bunch of pompous
| fools who give themselves goosebumps by calling themselves
| gods
| thrown_22 wrote:
| And yet we're still better than a god who would drown the
| world for reasons.
|
| But then he promised never to do it again with a rainbow.
| lonelyasacloud wrote:
| > "And yet we're still better than a god who would drown
| the world for reasons."
|
| And one of the consequences of global warming is?
| kingkawn wrote:
| God gave Noah the rainbow sign / No more water / the fire
| next time
| sposeray wrote:
| sramsay wrote:
| The author is drawing comparisons (playfully, I admit) with
| Buddhism, but the Puritans were following a tradition that goes
| back to late antiquity in the west. Books like the ones being
| described, in which the "psychology of sin" (so to speak) is
| dissected and various remedies put forth goes back at least to
| Evagrius (4th century), and likely far further than that.
|
| The Reformers sought to change many aspects of the "old
| religion," but a basic asceticism was not among them.
| dash2 wrote:
| I'd love to know more about this, why not expand your comment?
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