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.
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.
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.
Evolution is also a good touchpoint because everybody who considers themselves "rational" accepts it, and yet it is taught, and reasoned about, teleologically - compared to most pop-science topics which are analytical in nature.
I don't think most people would think of puddles as having telos. Telos goes beyond what is and looks at purpose and meaning in terms of what ought to be. Puddles don't really have a purpose in that sense, and neither does evolution. Puddles fill voids, not because that's their purpose, but simply because that's what happens when you have water, gravity, and the right kind of void. Likewise for evolution. I know some people like to ascribe telos to evolution, but they're simply wrong, at least as adjudicated by the evidence.
My understanding is that telos is about the final configuration of something, the outcome of it, as well as its goals in the human sense, and that these two ideas are covered by the concepts of intrinsic and extrinsic telos. Extrinsic telos, as in human purposive use, isn't what I was talking about - I meant intrinsic telos, the settled state that a system will reach if left to its own devices.
If you leave rain to its own devices, it will form puddles through gravity and the depressions in the environment. If you don't change the environment (practically impossible given species are part of the environment themselves, but hey-ho), evolution will (loosely) match the species to said environment, or kill them off, if allowed to run to infinite time.
Those examples both spell out the idea of intrinsic telos to me.
"Telos [refers] to the full potential or inherent purpose or objective of a person or thing,[2] similar to the notion of an 'end goal' or 'raison d'être'. Telos is the root of the modern term teleology, the study of purposiveness or of objects with a view to their aims, purposes, or intentions."
> (from τέλος, telos, 'end', 'aim', or 'goal,' and λόγος, logos, 'explanation' or 'reason')[1] or finality[2][3] is a reason or explanation for something as a function of its end, purpose, or goal, as opposed to as a function of, say, its cause.
> Natural teleology, common in classical philosophy, though controversial today,[5] contends that natural entities also have intrinsic purposes, irrespective of human use or opinion. For instance, Aristotle claimed that an acorn's intrinsic telos is to become a fully grown oak tree.
That's the angle I'm coming from. Especially this part, given my introduction to teleology was through learning about systems theory:
> An example of the reintroduction of teleology into modern language is the notion of an attractor.
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.
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.
Teleological thinking persists regardless of whether you're secular. The "ideological intensity" in the article is partly a result of teleological drive judging every facet of modern life, even the trivial. On the left it is how X contributes to equity vs oppression, and on the right it is how X contributes to orderliness vs dysfunction.
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.
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."
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)".
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.
I don't understand what this is supposed to mean. There is nothing in the context of "science itself" besides that particular scientific research or process. That's what it's defined as. Did you mean something like: a layperson might be inclined to place higher value on scientific research performed by a personal friend or colleague? That's probably true in some cases, but it's not "scientism."
You sure are doing a lot of not understanding in here. Let me break it down for you: the vast majority of people who say things like "trust the science" don't have the first clue about what the science actually says. It's a dogmatically held belief to them.
That isn't to say that the problem does not occur in other types, or that they're wrong about what they believe just because they don't understand it.
>You sure are doing a lot of not understanding in here.
I mean, yes? I don't pretend to know everything about everyone.
>the vast majority of people who say things like "trust the science" don't have the first clue about what the science actually says. It's a dogmatically held belief to them.
I can't agree with this, if they would change their mind about it, it's not a dogmatic belief. You seem to be generalizing about a large number of people, have you asked all of them if they would be open to changing their mind, given new evidence?
Every christian that turned atheist held a dogmatic belief, changing your mind later doesn't change that it is dogmatic. And in my experience, most people need more than rational opposing viewpoint to change their minds about most things.
scientism isn't typically practiced by scientists themselves, but atheist types who love pop-science and "science communicators" and the like. There's a ton of tropes associated with this belief system that have nothing to do with the actual process of scientific discovery. The Big Bang Theory as a show panders to this type, with physics techno-babble and guest appearances by Stephen Hawking (RIP) and Neil deGrasse Tyson.
You seem to be describing a stereotype and not an actual person, and also that seems to be conflating it with an actual view on religious beliefs (atheism). So I can't say I know what you mean.
There's no conflating. Scientism-types being atheist (or anti-theist) seems to be a pretty universal pattern in my experience. If I called someone a bible-basher, it wouldn't be conflating to say they're a Christian - it's a prerequisite. It's also a stereotype, but if I were to call somebody a bible-basher you'd (presumably) know the kinds of character traits I was implying (sanctimonious, primarily).
But this feels like describing the colour blue - if you don't already know what it is, being on Hacker News, I don't think I can help you. Familiarising yourself with the philosophy of science (like Karl Popper's ideas for a start) and then looking at the way that many redditors and HNers talk about science (especially pop-science in astronomy and physics) or treat whitepapers, "new study finds" journalism etc would make you notice the difference.
I'm still not really sure what that's supposed to mean or why it's not conflation, many Christians that I've met have wildly varying views on the bible. I also don't see what the difference here is supposed to be -- in general, there is not a lot of fact checking happening on public social media, and if there is, it also has a lot of its own bias. I don't see that as being specific to comments on scientific articles or evidence of any kind of "scientism," it's just the usual confirmation bias.
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.
I’m slightly surprised to see this line of thinking in HN. The so-called “Belief” in science is not driven by blind faith that what people are saying are true. It’s that you understand that before something is believed it goes through a rigorous system of fact checking / experimental confirmation. So if something is considered by people from different fields as true, then it likely is. But as you said, it’s questioning and skeptical so if new data is put forward then it can adjust. Science isn’t just about being right, it’s a system of truth finding and understanding.
>> The so-called “Belief” in science is not driven by blind faith that what people are saying are true. It’s that you understand that before something is believed it goes through a rigorous system of fact checking / experimental confirmation.
Right. None of which happened with the proclamations by the CDC/WHO who also had potential perverse incentives. Globally appointed scientists are not the arbiters of science. That is my biggest issue with the "believe science" movement.
> So if something is considered by people from different fields as true, then it likely is.
This is actually very unscientific, a good chunk of what we currently hold to be true within science disproved previous science. A good example of really strong, good and useful science that was later replaced is Newtonian mechanics.
In reality, science is never finished, but the prevailing view throughout time is "we have most of it figured out" and time and time again this is proven false. Hopefully it continues to be.
And it might not be comforting to confront, but yes, the vast majority of people's belief in science is not analytical or rational, it is dogmatic. It doesn't mean the particular scientific things people believe are wrong, but most people, even scientists themselves, hold a lot of beliefs dogmatically and the idea that it is rational is protection of the ego and comparable to belief in divine wisdom.
You only highlighted one sentence of what I said but left out the part where I said:
> if new data is put forward then it can adjust.
Which is essentially the same as the ideas you put forward.
Also, coming from a Physics background, I would argue that to say that Newtonian mechanics has been completely replaced is false. There are more accurate models of the universe especially as we go to a quantum level or levels approaching the speed of light, but for most models it still works. As the saying goes, “all models are wrong, but some models are more useful than others”. Newtonian mechanics still works, but it doesn’t work all the time.
But main thing is, we are in agreement that Science is not finished; there is a balance between being open to knowing that there might be a better model compared to what we know now, but until it disproves what we know now (or explains things out current models can’t and can be verified experimentally), there is no reason to not trust our currently accepted and verified ones.
> It’s that you understand that before something is believed it goes through a rigorous system of fact checking / experimental confirmation
To be honest, the way you’ve phrased this makes it sound like you’ve totally bought in to state secular scientismic dogma.
The entire concept of “fact checking” (outsourcing your rational facilities to journalists and e-celebs) is diametrically opposed to actual scientific thought.
It’s also completely false that before “something is believed” (by which I think you mean is ensconced as scientismic dogma by the cathedral) it is subject to actual “experimental confirmation” (under any reasonable interpretation of that term). How many times has the FDA changed the official “nutrition science” dietary recommendations over the last 50 years? The entire time, they’ve claimed their approach has been evidence-based, which may be true in some narrow sense, but the predictive confidence of their claims are so bad and noisy that they keep changing the official “scientific” beliefs.
This is not unique to nutrition. Many politically relevant fields have very strong-sounding dogmatic claims made from on high with what is actually extremely weak evidence.
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.
I don't know who "most people" are but if you are conflating science with values (I did a quick look up of the definition of "scientism") you are doing it wrong - and it isn't science. This reminds me of a video I watched once. An author named Sam Harris wrote an entire book titled The Moral Landscape that supposedly (I haven't read the book) makes the argument that science can precisely inform our value judgments . A physics professor named Sean Carol confronted him publicly on his views and explained the demarcation between values and science. Each time Sean would pin him down Sam would squirm around and change the topic or miss the point. I don't think most people agree with Sam Harris's view (which from what I've read embody what you are talking about) , but at the same time I don't think most people care about any of this stuff either way. :)
As someone who does agree with Sam Harris' view, I do notice that he does this thing where over explains his point to fog it up and then when confronted accuses his opponent of misattributing what he said. It is a clever but dishonest debate tactic.
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.
What's interesting about stated/explicit corporate values is they are almost always based on what you'd call "slave morality", like being good, traditionally moral participants. That's because those values are for underlings and PR for the general public, though set by the top.
But of course, they are actually run under the master morality of doing what is expedient to achieve the goal (usually money).
> 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.
It could also be that in the modern world, most powerful institutions don't associate themselves with religion directly (like pre-modern power structures, kingdoms and empires, etc) so they have no default values to fall back on. Large corporations transcend nations and cultures, so cannot even fall back on those specific cultural values. Thus they must make their own, not necessarily to mimick others, but because having a large organization with no publicly stated values is simply confusing to us hairless apes.
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 might be 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.
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.
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.
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
> 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.
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.
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"
Starting conditions matter but all kinds of forces (and they are ever changing) exist and act upon the chimp mind as it moves through the jungle that is life. Where it ends up is highly unpredictable.
So we get a chimp troupe like China were all the chimps appear to have the same programming or like US where chimps magically get polarized into exactly 2 camps on any issue or an Israel which due to the unique challenges it faces ends up with a knesset with more ideologies than anyone can keep track off.
Starting conditions are only one variable in a very complex equation.
>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).
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.
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.
Everyone in the world tries to move up through hard work, connections, and whatever advantages they are able to press.
"Recent studies suggest that there
is less economic mobility in the
United States than has long been
presumed. The last thirty years
has seen a considerable drop-off in
median household income growth
compared to earlier generations.
And, by some measurements, we
are actually a less mobile society
than many other nations, including Canada, France, Germany and
most Scandinavian countries. This
challenges the notion of America as
the land of opportunity"
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.
That would be terrible for anyone living there, as would the environment, and the environment of every country around that country, etc.
Regulation = Civilization, Taxes = Civilization, Safety Net = Civilization
Now that doesn't mean you want a regulatory nightmare, the USA has real problems with license monopolies and city regs in some areas, but you also don't want unrestricted capitalism like the USA has that destroys people, society, and the common environment. Europe has a lot of work to do as well but at least they grasp this fundamental concept. The middle ground between these two is always hard to nail perfectly.
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
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.
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, things working properly (e.g. washing machines and public restroom doors!), 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.
Having grown up in (very) poor rural America (~3k population), gone to work/live in an urban area (close to 3 million metro population), and now live in an extraordinarily affluent but smallish (100k) midwest city, I really don't agree with your view of the US in the slightest.
[edit] I originally wanted to make the point that one of the things we buy is increased quality of life. Wrote the comment up and completely forgot to throw that in.
>You all work so hard for almost nothing (apart from 'stuff', that is now mostly made in China).
The hours of output from an individual varies greatly, from almost none to 120 hour work weeks (literally, I have seen the pay stubs). In addition, not all work is the same, and there are a _lot_ of cushy office jobs in which people may claim 40 hour weeks, have probably half of that is what one would call 'work.' You also imply that having a lot of things is somehow negative and that it's just 'stuff'. We buy plenty of stuff for plenty of reasons, which includes recreation and entertainment.
To further iterate on the point that it's not just 'stuff', there are a plethora of festivals, museums, theaters, outdoor spaces, theme parks, malls, and community gatherings. There is far more stuff to do than there is time in the day to do it here. I should also note, a lot of which is either completely free or at least pretty inexpensive.
To push the point home, it's also almost trivial to fly over to Europe. It's relatively normal among the middle class to take trips overseas. Airline tickets are not _that_ expensive after all.
>In Europe people have a much more relaxed attitude to work, yet somehow pretty much everyone has a very high quality of life
This is very true for many in America as well; a great deal many of the people I grew up with are still in poverty or working menial jobs... but they also are out boating every weekend in the summers, skiing in the winters, watching sports on huge flat screens. They may be cash-poor but are still reasonably rich in experiences. This is a tricky thing to measure from the economic lens alone.
> judged by quality of food
The food I've had in the US has ranged from Michelin star to Mac Donald's, both are fabulous, though one is more snobby. Perhaps in deeply rural areas with low populations, the food is more of the fast-food variety. Still, in most mid to large cities, the food has been consistently excellent across both price and quality offered.
> judged by things working properly (e.g. washing machines and public restroom doors!)
I don't think you could back this up by any data, and if I were to guess, this is based on some poor luck you had while visiting. Across the various places I've been, it's pretty unheard of not to have access to washers or dryers due to malfunction. Most areas have at least a couple of competing laundromats, and it costs no more than a couple of dollars to access them. Breakdowns happen to all equipment over time, and thankfully quality can be purchased if desired. If many still choose the initial price tag over that, so be it. Servicing a machine is cheap and easy, as is replacing one outright.
As for public restroom doors, I don't understand this at all as it hasn't been my experience in the slightest. Even in poor urban areas, doors work fine. I can assure you, the VAST majority of doors here work just fine!
> freedom from fear (e.g. of losing their job, getting ill, or interactions with the 'police'),
This entirely an individual thing; losing one's job isn't exactly the end of the world here either. Opportunity is all over the place. Maybe aside from suicidal people, everyone on earth fears getting ill. And maybe aside from high health care costs, assuming I didn't choose to pay for extra insurance, I'd still rather be 'poor' and uninsured here than most places in the world. It's not 'free' like many other countries, bu...
Yet people in most of Western Europe (discounting Switzerland and Luxembourg and maybe Norway) are objectively poorer than even the poorest American states.
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.
> 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.
> 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. :))
> If you have 'an army of low skilled workers' then there's no room 'to absorb so many low skilled migrants', surely?
Why? The world doesn't work by laws of semantic symmetry. The Swedish economy is structured on automation, on lack of personal service roles, and on skilled industry. Swedish furniture manufacturers use robots and those on the shop floor that remain are required to have skills to operate those robots. Neither will you will find a huge pool of labor cutting people's lawns or being nannies or replacing roofs because there aren't many lawns to cut, roofs are made to last longer and be less labor intensive, and personal service is stygmatized. It's like Holland, which is the breadbasket of Europe but is a pioneer in agricultural automation and does not rely on large amounts of cheap migrant labor, whereas the US agricultural sector does. Even for something like restaurants, Swedish culture makes much less use of them -- e.g. San Francisco has 500 restaurants per 100K, But once you transition to a high skilled economy it becomes much harder to absorb low skilled workers.
Here, things like labor policies play a role. A high minimum wage, generous benefits and travel may pencil out for a high skilled worker that is willing to be paid 1/2 what they could get in the U.S., but they don't pencil out for a low skilled worker unless the low skilled worker's wages are high enough so that the various costs pencil out, which means there can't be too many of them as the services they provide will be more expensive means and thus have smaller utilization. That is why people complain about things like taxis, restaurant meals, bus trips, etc., costing a lot in Sweden, which is why Stockholm has 1/10 as many restaurants per 100K compared to Tokyo and 1/5 as many compared to San Francisco. Those high wages basically require a more capital intensive production processes and don't leave a lot of room for low skilled jobs.
Btw, that is one of the arguments for high minimum wages and generous benefits. The idea is that it will force firms to invest in more capital so that labor becomes more productive. That's the phenomena of McDonald's creating robot tellers and getting rid of workers. That's the process by which the revenue generated per worker is high enough to justify generous benefits. And the question with that approach is always can the economy transition to a high skilled economy or will there be a permanent underclass of unemployable low skilled workers. And Sweden has done a decent job of making this transition, although there is always a problem with high unemployment, it hasn't been the fiasco predicted, as most of the labor force has transitioned to high skilled work. But then that creates a problem when you dump a lot of low skilled workers on the economy -- they find themselves in the permanent unemployed class.
The U.S., on the other hand, has lower costs of employing labor and thus is able to absorb low skilled labor but the flip side is you do not have the same pressures towards automation and capital investment, so the US economy overall is much more mixed. It's not a high tech economy, it has a lot of low skilled jobs as well, and those low skilled jobs don't enjoy the same level of benefits.
It's a tough call which approach is "better". Culturally, the US will never become Sweden, but there are pros and cons of each approach.
dutch farming (especially kasbouw/greenhouses) are absolutely crazy.
in 2019, they exported roughly 95 billion euro's. And they are the second exporter globally. Mind you the country is absolutely tiny in comparison to the number one exporter (the USA).
Yes, it's really a miracle of what you can accomplish with intelligence and capital investment. Very high wages even for agricultural workers, a small labor pool, and massive yields.
There is a reason folks flock more to SF rather than to nowhere state. If you save 10%, it is still 20k saved compared to 8k. If you lose your job, there are 10 choices compared to one (or none), access to cutting edge of tech rather than reading about it on hacker news and so on.
I think there are two major factors to life quality that many American cities somehow missed or never really cared about enough, being able to stroll through cities by foot and decent work conditions (mostly reasonable work and commute times & holidays).
A friend of mine moved to L.A. in the early 2000s, he's still there, married to an American, but he burned out in his job there very quickly. No wonder, they were living in a small apartment with a baby in downtown L.A. and he had to commute for 3 hours daily. He got back at 10 to 11 PM and got up at 6 AM to get to work again - every workday, with almost no holiday. That's insane by European standards.
The other catch I see is how ‘life changing’ your job as an engineer can be in us vs rest of the world. US definitely is the better bet for the young and risk taking.
You can always go back and settled wherever you want after making a ton of cash in the US (assuming it works out), reverse isn’t true as much.
It is easy to confuse a large splashy salary with what a real "life changing" job is for the majority of people. A salary that pays for a good life, real health care that actually covers you when you get sick, a real safety net that gets you back on your feet if something goes wrong, an environment run by the rule of law, an environment that isn't polluted, and a country that is building a real future for ALL the people and not just engineers.
Would you want your kids to grow up in the USA?
That is usually a good question to ask, as it shows if we are succeeding as a country. I think the USA is great if you are in the ~10% of the population who want to make loads of money, work 80 hours, and are in tech/lawyer/doctor. Everyone else is stuck in the same cultural mentality IMO, it's like living in a persistent guerilla war that you don't want to be fighting in.
Also, social control is quite a bit stricter in a lot of (especially northern) european countries compared to the US.
Showing one's wealth is in bad taste, and bragging about status is considering being an outlier.
This is slowly changing (since about the 80's) but prior to that, showing off your middle class wealth as a status indicator was frowned upon in certain circles. especially considering the hardship most people endured during and after ww2.
I was raised in the USA and I was raised that showing one's wealth is in bad taste. In fact I think most of the midwest feels similar. I still do. The point of money isn't to show it off, it is to put it to good use.
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).
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:
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 dollars it does with them 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.
If there is a global switch to the euro or the yuan, American imports could become more competitive, leading to increased economic activity in the US. Dollar or not, the United States still has substantial industrial capability.
Services account for more than three quarters of the US economy, but its manufacturing sector, which still accounts for more than a tenth of its economy, is second only to that of China.
"Yet people in most of Western Europe (discounting Switzerland and Luxembourg and maybe Norway) are objectively poorer than even the poorest American states.
"
This is utter nonsense, how are you getting that?
Imagine that I offered you two deals:
1. You make $45k a year, but all your costs are 50% of the base rate. Plus health care is included that covers everything with no expenses, childcare is included, and college education is included.
2. You make $60k a year, but all your costs are 200% of the base rate. Health care isn't covered and covers nothing when you really get sick, childcare is $1500 a month per kid, and college is going to cost you half a million dollars.
Holistically Western Europe as a whole is doing way better for it's people.
"Recent studies suggest that there
is less economic mobility in the
United States than has long been
presumed. The last thirty years
has seen a considerable drop-off in
median household income growth
compared to earlier generations.
And, by some measurements, we
are actually a less mobile society
than many other nations, including Canada, France, Germany and
most Scandinavian countries. This
challenges the notion of America as
the land of opportunity"
GDP per capita is lower, but household wealth is higher and when you add in all the benefits received (e.g. healthcare, pensions) you would get a pretty big difference between median household wealth in most of Western Europe and median HH wealth in the U.S., with western europe holding the advantage.
Comparing Europe and the U.S. is a complex business, and I find myself offending cheerleaders on both sides.
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.
I'm also curious to have more details. I'm Canadian and historically have been a big proponent of our country, to the point of smugness. But I'm currently very bearish on our future and curious to hear what others are thinking.
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.
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.
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."
> 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.
Rates of entrepreneurship are higher in Scandinavian countries[1].
It's also easier to start your own business in such countries because you don't already have to be wealthy enough to afford spending $36k in premiums alone each year for your family's health insurance on the individual market.
>> 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.
We never had a true working class party or the same kind of safety net as they have in Europe, because all the class divisions could be papered over with free stuff and money- first, a whole continents worth of free land, and then when all Europe was destroyed, a 60 year burst of huge profits. So you know, it’s material conditions in the end. Matt Christman and Sean KB did an excellent podcast on this called History is a Weapon: Q is You.
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.
I am curious how being "individualists" had them end up with something like Homeowners Associations. I am an individualist myself to a relatively high degree and I do not understand how something like that can be tolerated at all.
My first inclination is that the individualism has turned from (admittedly, rosy nostalgia follows here) a propensity towards creative expression and unique identity amongst the whole, into an assertion of control that serves my needs at the expense of others. In my experience, while HOAs can be well-intentioned, they provide easy opportunity for people to build small kingdoms, and for most, being a king is quite tempting.
A HOA certainly doesn't seem to be about community. Community would be about embracing differences and respecting each person's right to live as they wish.
HOAs seems to be more about using bureaucracy to control others and force them to do what the person with power wants. There is a classic quote “There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
I think the dark side of individualism is that it can create the mindset that other's success comes at your expense, which pitches people and groups against each other, and makes differences a threat and not a strength. It also also discourages people from acknowledging their own limitations, because if someone is smarter or better than you then they will be more successful, and that means you lose.
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.
Some Americans I know make a big difference between being a settler nation, like those who came to where there was no civilisation but hunters/gatherers, vs immigrants who move into the blooming civilisation
That's like, the difference between one ship full of Pilgrims and every subsequent ship, or between one wagon train and every subsequent wagon train, or between the people on the Mayflower and their kids (who showed up in a society that already existed).
It's more than a gradient, it's like counting up ones to make 1,000,000. Which one is showing up to a small number and making it big, and which ones are showing up to a big number and hanging around?
The people who draw the distinction generally don't like the pilgrims settlers because of what they did when they got here. In contrast to immigrants, who did not "settle" anyone or any land. You can see a lot of this in today's politics as well.
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.
Anecdotally, it feels true. I, like many Americans, know an enormous number of immigrants and poor people that moved into the middle and upper-middle class through hard work and discipline. There is still plenty of opportunity to do that US if you apply yourself. Economic mobility is very high in the US (which is distinct from social mobility).
When I've worked in Europe, it has always been evident that this is much harder to achieve there for poor people and immigrants. The entire social system is setup to limit the ability of ambitious people to rise above whatever station they were born into in a way that isn't really a thing in the US. This contributes to why engineering wages are relatively low in Europe.
The US ranks very high in terms of absolute mobility. Measures of relative mobility are only comparable between countries if they have similar wage compression curves, which is also partially a function of country size. US wages are much less compressed than in Europe -- see also: engineering wages -- so they aren't meaningfully comparable in relative terms.
Given two countries with the same median wage (PPP), a 20k increase in income in one country may be relatively "economically mobile" and a 40k increase in income in the other is not, even though the income increase is much larger in real terms. When average people talk about economic mobility, they mean the second case; using relative mobility is misleading.
I am an American, and I have known a number of immigrants over the years, one who won the lottery in order to come to the US. They have mostly but not all been from Eastern bloc countries.
Every single one of those people is grateful to have come here, is amazed that the people born here do not take advantage of their birthright of opportunities, and absolutely does not think that talk about the greatest opportunities is tripe or propaganda. They are also dumbfounded at the problems that we create for ourselves as a country. Yet, to a one, they all wish they could bring their parents and families here.
I have had similar sentiments expressed to me from immigrants who have come to the country where I'm from (Australia).
It's possible that the opportunities given to migrants relocating to any highly developed nation are equivalent. That is, not a phenomenon unique to the USA.
> It's possible that the opportunities given to migrants relocating to any highly developed nation are equivalent.
That's an excellent point, and one I doubt even needs to be answered to any degree of certainty. Everyone wants a better life, and that can be had in many ways and places.
I can see how during the last 30 years opportunities become fewer and fewer in Canada. I assume it is probably the same in the US. Well we have to feed ever increasing appetites of 3-percenters or whatever the number is. On top of that there are generally more and more people and less resources.
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.
> emigrants to other countries from America tend to stay American
I don't think that's true of Australia. American Australians tend to assimilate pretty well, and after a while people tend to mostly forget they were Americans originally, even if they still have a bit of an accent. The Australian politician Kristina Keneally is an example. She was born in Nevada, grew up in Ohio, didn't move to Australia until her 20s. But I don't think anyone really thinks of her as "an American". She's an Australian politician. You might like her politics or you might dislike them, but nobody really cares about where she was born and grew up. She's one of us now.
The Australian media has even taken to (at times) calling Virginia Roberts Giuffre (the most notable public victim of Jeffrey Epstein) "an Australian", without qualification. (She married an Australian man, had kids with him, now they live here.) Whereas the American media just calls her an American.
The Australian media always wanted to view Mel Gibson as an Australian, even when he said that he himself identified as an American rather than as an Australian. (I think they are less keen on that now that he has made himself a bit of a persona non grata through his behaviour. America, you can have him.)
In which case the real difference here is not where one is immigrating from (America or elsewhere), but rather where one is immigrating to: an immigrant-dominated society like Australia, Canada, New Zealand, US, maybe Argentina too; or one dominated by people whose ancestors have lived there for countless centuries, such as most European, Middle Eastern, African or Asian countries.
The original quote we were discussing, "Immigrants to America tend to become American; emigrants to other countries from America tend to stay American" is mistaken because it is viewing it primarily in terms of Americanness, instead of the nature of the society receiving the immigrant
There aren't all that many immigrant nations like the US though. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, that's pretty much it? Maybe Singapore or the UK at a stretch.
I agree there aren't many. It still is myopic to view this as something specific to America, as opposed to a generic quality possessed by all immigrant-dominated societies, and the fact that there are only a few such societies doesn't change that. Many (obviously not all) American authors do tend to view it in that myopic US-centric way. America is never as exceptional as some Americans think.
Most of the Caribbean (save Cuba/DR?), Taiwan, Mauritius, Seychelles, Maldives, Argentina, Chile, maybe Uruguay/Costa Rica/Panama. Singapore doesn't seem like a stretch. The UK doesn't really count. Granted, most of these are pretty small.
Just googled Kristina Keneally. You're living out very relevant info.
Born to and raised by Australian mother.
Then married Australian man before moving to Australia.
I think the blood and subsequent marriage connection helped immensely in how she is viewed. I think that would be the same for most other Euro nations. At least one parent of the land along with partner from the land and residing in the land for 30+ years.
I really don't think most people care about the fact she has an Australian mother. In fact, I myself had forgotten that fact. If she hadn't, I don't think it would really make a difference to how she is viewed in Australia. (My mother was born in Scotland but calling myself “Scottish” feels weird, like the real Scots are going to call me out for being a fake one.)
Virginia Roberts Giuffre has been called an "Australian" by the Australian media (e.g. [0]) even though as far as I am aware she has no Australian ancestry. She is also married to an Australian man but I think you are putting more emphasis on that fact than what counts. Most Australians, if they think of her as an Australian, it is because she has adopted this country as her homeland through immigration, not because she married an Australian. If she married an Australian but stayed in the US, nobody would think of her as Australian. If she had moved here as a single person, or with a non-Australian husband, people probably still would.
In somewhat of the reverse, the British politician Patricia Hewitt was born in Australia and grew up here, but I'd probably think of her as British first and Australian very much second. The country in which she has lived the bulk of her adult life, and in which she has had her political career, is more significant in identifying her than where she was born and raised.
One reason they dont give up citizenship is that you are "declared" death and the IRS will come an collect there share. It can become quite expensiv for expats.
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?
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.
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.
This is an extremely ignorant position that trivializes "religion". First of all, as I have written elsewhere, everyone is religious. The question is: how good and true is your religion? To call it merely irrational is to show a total lack of understanding of the subject. And because religions are many, it makes little sense to speak of "religion" categorically in this way because they often have little or nothing in common. You have to address and criticize particular religions for particular reasons.
Furthermore, those who defect from the religious faith on which their society or civilization was built often ride the coat tails of that religious faith without working out the logical consequences of their rejection. That is, it is better to describe the rejector as a heretic or an apostate than someone who has somehow freed himself from the faith in question and all its trappings. Many of these ideologies we're seeing are profound distortions or perversions of some selected element of Christianity or previous heretical position. That's one reason heresy was always regarded as dangerous. It comes from the Greek hairesis meaning "a taking or choosing for oneself, a choice"[0] meaning taking a cafeteria approach toward the dogmas of the faith which exist as a coherent whole. Any distortion or selectivity produces severe downstream consequences like ideology. Secularism and liberalism are examples. They are Christian heresies and cannot be comprehended apart from the Christian context within which they emerged.
Nietzsche, who was an atheist, was smart enough to see this. The "Twilight of the Idols" is all about how silly this secular triumphalism, or even just contentment, is because it fails to see that the consequences of having "killed God" are not yet fully made manifest, but eventually will be made manifest because this state of affairs is unsustainable, and that this will result ultimately in total disorientation and chaos (I disagree with Nietzsche that God was merely an instrumental idea, but he did at least grasp the parochial and myopic nature of so many atheists and secular people; for him, atheism was a terrible thing). Intellectually serious atheists are all in agreement about how terrible atheism is (i.e., not the provincial variety like Dawkins). This state produces a fertile ground for ideology, i.e., irrational half-assed false religions.
This is an extremely ignorant position that trivializes "religion". First of all, as I have written elsewhere, everyone is religious.
-- I can't see how that statement doesn't trivialize religion at least as much. IE, if everyone is "religious", you've set a very low bar for what qualifies as religious
I think made it clear you have religious beliefs, which involve ... clearly false views of the cosmos (with the possible exception of Buddhism) and you have religious institutions, which serve a variety of social, economic and psychological purposes. A church can be club with a few nods to God or it can be something like a political party hell bent on power or it can be other things. Many American Unitarians maintain the form of religion while dropping all the God part and that's as fine as anything as far as I'm concerned.
> if everyone is "religious", you've set a very low bar for what qualifies as religious
And if everyone has “beliefs” then you have set a very low bar for what qualifies as belief which makes everyone a believer.
You are playing a silly power game where you dismiss other people’s conceptual schemes so you can peddle your own.
My view of the cosmos is that it is a computer simulation.
It isn’t clearly false. But it is clearly a religion. Even though it is backed up by the fact that all asymmetrical/equational reasoning (all of the Mathematics supporting Physics/Cosmology) is computational.
And if everyone has “beliefs” then you have set a very low bad for what qualifies as belief.
Sure, if you look at what qualifies as a belief, it's pretty random.
My view of the cosmos is that it is a computer simulation.
It seems like the main thing this shares with religion is that it's wholly unverifiable. If you develop it in common with others and perhaps add rituals, you could qualify it along with Pastafarians [1]. But Pastafarian know it's a joke.
I might have some wholly unverifiable beliefs but I don't have a commitment to maintain such beliefs. That's where I'd locate the difference.
You can verify that Physics is captured in Mathematics.
Mathematics is a Turing-recognisable language.
If the universe is Physical then it is computable. This is a trivially true belief (see Church-Turing-Deutsch principle).
You can falsify my belief by producing Physics in language other than Mathematics.
Of course, as an instrumentalist/physicist, I don’t care if my beliefs are “actually true” as long as they work.
I agree with you that in the absence of what we conventionally call "religion" doesn't mean the essential character of religion is erased. Abandoning one religion means adopting another. Abandoning a religious faith with thousands of years of refinement for some quackery invented yesterday, especially without proportional reason, is not exactly the move of a sound mind.
I also think religion serves a real need, but all real needs have real objects. And so I do not use the word "utility" here as if the content of the faith didn't matter, that religion is just some instrument that gets us this "other stuff" and has no intrinsic truth or meaning itself. A true religious faith is practiced because it is about the ultimate meaning of one's life and thus the meaning of everything else in life. Thus everything is always subordinate to one's faith. It is important for the faith to be true in order to be able to live one's life in the light of true ends, not mythical counterfeits. This does not contradict the essence of your main point, namely, the the eviction of one religion does not abolish religion. It typically just replaces it with something inferior.
> “Why do science and philosophy matter?”
I would say philosophical and religious answers. Recall that philosophy is also reflexive.
But indeed, scientism is indefensible. It is a philosophical position and thus cannot be defended scientifically. You cannot simply assert it without justification.
I don't understand the question. Truth is the correspondence of the mind with the real. The value of some truths is mostly instrumental. The value of others is that it is good for us to know them for themselves. If you are using "utility" to mean "value", then maybe you accept this, but utility is typically something like a species of value, as I understand it. Pure practicality is incoherent. They needs to be a terminus.
What is "need" here? Toward what end? Need is always about ends.
> Reflexivity is precisely where meaning/religion comes from. From the self.
Meaning doesn't come from ourselves. We cannot invent meaning. Either something means something, or it doesn't. What you describe is mental illness and delusion. I also don't see what this has to do with truth/utility.
You saw sagacious Solomon |
You know what came of him |
To him, complexities seemed plain |
He cursed the hour that gave birth to him |
And saw that everything was vain |
How great and wise was Solomon |
The world, however, did not wait |
But soon observed what followed on |
It's wisdom that had brought him to this state |
How fortunate the man with none
You saw courageous Caesar next |
You know what he became |
They deified him in his life |
Then had him murdered just the same |
And as they raised the fatal knife |
How loud he cried "you too my son!" |
The world, however, did not wait |
But soon observed what followed on |
It's courage that had brought him to that state |
How fortunate the man with none
You heard of honest Socrates |
The man who never lied |
They weren't so grateful as you'd think |
Instead the rulers fixed to have him tried |
And handed him the poisoned drink |
How honest was the people's noble son |
The world, however, did not wait |
But soon observed what followed on |
It's honesty that brought him to that state |
How fortunate the man with none
Here you can see respectable folk |
Keeping to God's own laws |
So far he hasn't taken heed |
You who sit safe and warm indoors |
Help to relieve out bitter need |
How virtuously we had begun |
The world, however, did not wait |
But soon observed what followed on |
It's fear of God that brought us to that state |
How fortunate the man with none
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Brendan Michael Perry / Bertolt Brecht / John Willett
> “Why do science and philosophy matter?” has only religious/ideological answers
The question needs not be asked. But most people are not areligious, they have been raised within a context of religion where the question was asked to them. Religion begets religion because it teaches people that there are higher meanings and pushes people to seek their answers.
A true areligious person does not ponder about the meaning of life, why we are here, and what it is we need to do with ourselves. An areligious person can simply exist in peace, guided simply by ones natural desires for fun, pleasure, comfort, safety, growth and love.
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.
I don't go so far as denouncing morals, I'm glad they exist, but I'm very skeptical of them.
Morality works well for its evolved purpose, which is to bind together small tribes and push someone into action in response to visual and audio cues that someone is suffering.
Beyond that, it's highly flawed.
It doesn't get switched on for out-groups. Arguably it contributes to tribal conflict.
It can be co-opted so easily by nefarious charismatic leaders, motivating morally outraged people towards atrocity.
It can be co-opted easily by a victim-playing psychopath in an interpersonal setting for personal gain.
It's used as a mask for policies and ideologies that are really a byproduct of jealousy, envy, self-interest, among other motivations.
It's not rational, we become less altruistic as the scale of the problem grows, and we respond more to emotional stimuli than actual information about what's going on.
The problem with talking about "morals"-vs-"ethics" is that it isn't very clear what is the actual difference between them.
One point of view–to which I subscribe–is that the terms are synonyms. One comes from Latin, the other comes from Greek. English does that sometimes.
Others insist they differ in meaning. But there doesn't seem to be any consensus on what the actual difference is. I've heard many proposals, and the only thing I've found they have in common is that they disagree with each other.
Some people say "morals" is about principles and "ethics" is about their application. Others say "morals" are religious and "ethics" are secular. Yet others say "morals" are personal and "ethics" are professional and/or political. I'll just stick with using the two words as interchangeable synonyms myself.
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.
I asked this from a Christian friend of mine. He said that the "uninitiated", like indigenous people will be judged by their conscience.
I told him that people in Iraq are 99% muslims and they definitely know about the existence of Christianity so they aren't really uninitiated. If I remember correctly, he said that if a culture poisons your mind to not believe in the Christian God, then you're still considered "uninitiated".
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.
>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.
In America, religion has always had an outsized influence in everything, including leftist movements. It's no surprise that its influence has extended to other movements in ways both subtle and (perhaps) surprising.
It isn't. Politics being the new religion and growing amounts of atheism and agnosticism has commonly been the scapegoat. But it is easy to disprove. The South is extremely religious and just as radical (if not more) than the areas of the country that aren't as religious. If it was the lack of religion we'd see the political fervor be less homogeneously distributed (and similarly if religion caused this division).
Neither is this news to people nor is it a good claim. But it is a believable claim so that's why we're talking about it.
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.
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.
No it basically is. Nor does it have multiple definitions. The only people who claim it does are those trying to smuggle censorship in while calling it "freedom of speech".
So you think sexual harassment at work, child porn, libel and death threats should be legal? You think platforms should take no action against spam, doxxing or revenge porn? Those are all examples of censorship.
Not that I disagree with you, but you're improperly combining the censorship actions of private individuals and of governments. Freedom of speech has never limited what actions private platform holders can take against users.
Fair points; I'm trigger happy from progressives demanding people be fired for liking a tweet and am unwilling to let them weasel their way into stupid demands but those examples that surround actual legality are fair counters.
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.
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.
> 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!”
In my anecdotal experience, calling out "un-Nationality" seems way more common in the New World than the Old World and I wonder if this is still remnants of nation-building side effects.
As an American I find being accused of being unAmerican is usually something I find humorous:
1) If you don't blow stuff up on 4th of of July you are unAmerican!
2) If you can't eat Hotdogs like Joey Chestnut you are unAmerican!
3) If you don't own gun you are...
Many would argue that Brexit was more about English nationalism than British nationalism.
What makes the UK very complex is the coexistence of two layers of national identity – British layered over English, Scottish, Welsh, (Northern) Irish. Which layer a person identifies with is very often determined by their politics, and sometimes also by religious/cultural background. (British vs Irish identity in Northern Ireland tends to correspond with Protestant vs Catholic religious background, albeit there are exceptions to that generalisation.) At the same time, given England is 85% of the population, the boundary between "British nationalism" and "English nationalism" is often quite vague. Its boundaries with Scottish nationalism, Welsh nationalism, Irish nationalism, tend to be more clearly cut.
I don’t think England would ever leave the UK, as English people view England as the main UK country. Also, the EU has been blamed for decades as a scapegoat, whereas the UK definitely hasn’t.
So we can cut it along perceived ethnic lines too?
This is just more pernicious divisiveness. Those areas that are most Welsh also voted in significant numbers for Brexit.
The people of the UK, in various proportions in various places, voted to leave the EU. It may suck, but pretending it’s purely an English problem is delusion.
If you want someone to blame, blame the people that voted for Brexit everywhere. This exoneration of particular regions is bizarre. How can it be all about English Nationalism when a third of Scots voted that way too?
British nationalism is built on building things up as British not tearing things down as unBritish.
“‘Cor tea and digestives on a rainy day, what could be more british”
National identity precludes other nationalities, which is largely the impetus for Brexit. Brits are not ever blamed for being unBritish, even if they don’t like football.
That's not true, we regularly judge people not doing things the 'right' way, but we just don't use the term 'un-British'. It's hard to explain, but there are code-phrases that some use like 'its not the done thing', or 'they're not our sort of people'.
Supporting football's not really 'British', and a fairly modern phenomenon. In the 80s it was deemed uncouth and heavily associated with hooliganism, but rehabilitated in the 90s, and is already falling out of fashion again.
Football support is heavily wrapped up in the complicated British classes, in the 90s/00s it was cool to pretend to be working class when you were middle class, and supporting football was a visible way of doing that.
The economy. I'm sure there's an undercurrent of xenophobia and "little England"-ism which explains it, but it's not the full picture. Probably the biggest factor is that neoliberalism has been fucking working class people over since Thatcher. It's (sadly) empirically demonstrated that economic hardship pushes people to right-wing populism (see the 1930s, and the 2010s).
Marx was right, history is moved by the material conditions of people (not fully, but in large part).
To clarify the point, when other Swedes act a little “unswedish” it may be cosmopolitan cool, but it is limited to the national/ethnic in group. When Arabs, Somalians, or Nigerians, or other foreign peoples act unswedish its expected, and if loud, an annoyance
> 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.
People may be called un-American as a political weapon, but that's about all it is. People in politics use all sorts of childish phrases as weapons. In reality I've never been called un-American or seen another person called un-American, unless it was for humor.
Long time ago I was accused of being "un-Canadian(TM)" by neighbor because I do not watch hockey. Actually I do not watch sports at all but it did not matter to him. God knows what would've happened had I admitted not pouring maple syrup on my morning eggs and bacon.
Belly bacon strips are far more popular than peameal in Canada. Peameal for sure exists (unlike American "Canadian Bacon"), but 90% of people still have bacon that would be normal bacon to an American. If you go to a Canadian diner and order "bacon" unqualified, you'll get strips of belly bacon.
Could you just get away by telling you are contributing your share to strategic reserve[1] to stabilize price for all Canadians. That would be very patriotic thing to do :-)
>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.
One wonders how a people reaches this level of demoralization.
One political party in Australia tried to adopt this and starting calling people "un-Australian".
The leader of the other party stood up and tore him to shreds, saying that the magic of Australia is that it's a country of immigrants and that by very definition, everyone there is Australian. It's perfectly fine to disagree about stuff and have discussions, but we're all still Australian. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to tear the country apart and should never be given a microphone again.
The other guy has never tried that childish divisive tactic again.
Unaustralian is reasonably common, used as a slur by both sides of politics, the same as described in the article. Tends to be called out with accusations of jingoism in the mud flinging though, which might make it different.
As a black man I have been called unblack plenty times when my views differed. It's a pretty effective slur that leads to one keeping their opinion to themselves.
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.
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.
A lot of people found religion in the 60's and 70's due to psychedelics, and have continued to do so ever since. As an example, many people were first drawn to Eastern religions through psychedelic experiences.
Also, arguments have been made that even the mainstream religions were originally founded (and in their early years sustained) due to psychedelic use. For an example see Allegro's "The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross".
That's not to mention many smaller religions such as the Native American Church, Santo Daime, Uniao Do Vegetal, etc.
Something else to consider is that drug use has been so stigmatized (not to mention illegal) for so long that many users have been afraid to come forward and admit their psychedelic use. That's been changing due to the Psychedelic Renaissance and its positive reception in the press, but there are likely to be many more people who haven't come out of the closet yet (not to mention users who died before this more permissive era started). So the number of people who were drawn to religion through psychedelic use is probably much larger than we know.
I'm sure plenty of them did. But it's interesting I don't see Christians, Jews, or Muslims talk about how they get high all the time. They'd be put off by you suggesting it. It's even a central practice to not do so.
One thing I learned from psychedelic usage is the powerful of the minds ability to imagine things about reality and present them as reality itself. I think the realization of this sort of thing might contribute to many psychedelic users to adopt a more ~spiritual outlook on life, which I believe is more aligned with how things really are.
I used to be an atheist, then after experimenting with psychedelics I became agnostic, then after some major struggle in life now God is central to my life and I enjoy reading the Bible and the Bhagavad Gita. I had never touched anything similar before psychedelics, I was prejudiced against religions, religious people, spirituality and anything that wasn't materialistic.
This is such a belittling and reductionist take on religiosity that all I can do, as a religious person myself, who is well educated (because that's the other assumed trope common in places like these: people must be religious because they are otherwise ignorant or uneducated), is laugh.
Not only has American theological ignorance increased (people like Richard Dawkins for example, popular in atheist cultures, has just downright comically terrible theology and understanding of the Bible), but as well as ignorance of the human psyche.
I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
spiritually yes .. however, for me it took many, small and far apart, ventures into Bible study to find that in the Old Testament, it is literally a guiding principle to refrain from drugs that induce ecstatic experience.. The Old Testament g*d is a sober one.. (oh wait, wine) Fast-forward 2+ thousand years, and the structures of capital R Religion focus on tangible outcomes with built, physical infrastructure .. family structures and committments..
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."
Huh? Maybe France is a bit special, but I'd wager you could move to Germany, the Netherlands or Scandinavia and call yourself [insert local identity] just as quickly as you could in the US. At least in the cities (but then again, try being a Syrian refugee in rural Alabama).
Sure, it doesn't happen on day one, but it doesn't in the US either.
The United States has the world's largest Christian population, and its founding was directly influenced by religion; the Church of England and the Puritans.[1][2][3][4]
To suggest otherwise is to completely ignore not only history, but the present.
This isn't really the whole story. Many of the founders were Deist and/or practically irreligious.
The other important distinction is that the Church of England is essentially a state church. In many ways the U.S. Constitution, on which Nonconformists had far more influence, is its antithesis. [1] Puritanism/Nonconformism views religion as a personal or at most a local matter.
One of the references you shared has an interesting quote to this effect stating that when England tried to impose it's unelected colonial official rule, Puritan officials "were of opinion that God would never suffer me to land again in this country, and thereupon began in a most arbitrary manner to assert their power higher than at any time before." [2]
A much more accurate picture of what the U.S. started out as and has become today would be a mosaic or a patchwork of various religions and/or philosophies where one always has a choice whether to participate (or abstain).
That's so far from the truth, that it's a fraudulent historical claim. They were almost all religious, and the early population of both the proto-United States, and the then-declared independent states were predominantly Protestant.
I think it's a contestable claim, sure, but fraudulent is a bit doth protest too much in this case. Out of curiosity, what does being religious actually mean in the way that you used the term above?
Besides the purely superficial, "I believe in such and such" (and not backed up by any inner conviction) sort. Because a purely nominal religiosity is hardly evidence of any substantive cultural or political influence. It takes more than that to count as influence IMO.
> The USA is the only country where you can move to and say you're from.
North of the border there's a vast, mythical place called Canada - about 20% of Canadians were not born there [1].
Yes, this feeling of "acquired origin" is not true of every country, but the US and Canada are seldom the only place.
In my experience, the same would happen in many South American countries if one is successful in integration - there's no snobbery about not being born there.
> 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.
Not the only country, the same is true of Australia. I mentioned in another comment the Australian politician Kristina Keneally, who was born in Nevada, grew up in Ohio, didn't move to Australia until her 20s. To me, she's an Australian. I think most Australians would probably say the same thing.
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 458 ms ] threadEvolution is also a good touchpoint because everybody who considers themselves "rational" accepts it, and yet it is taught, and reasoned about, teleologically - compared to most pop-science topics which are analytical in nature.
If you leave rain to its own devices, it will form puddles through gravity and the depressions in the environment. If you don't change the environment (practically impossible given species are part of the environment themselves, but hey-ho), evolution will (loosely) match the species to said environment, or kill them off, if allowed to run to infinite time.
Those examples both spell out the idea of intrinsic telos to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telos
"Telos [refers] to the full potential or inherent purpose or objective of a person or thing,[2] similar to the notion of an 'end goal' or 'raison d'être'. Telos is the root of the modern term teleology, the study of purposiveness or of objects with a view to their aims, purposes, or intentions."
Puddles don't have aims, purposes, or intentions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology
> (from τέλος, telos, 'end', 'aim', or 'goal,' and λόγος, logos, 'explanation' or 'reason')[1] or finality[2][3] is a reason or explanation for something as a function of its end, purpose, or goal, as opposed to as a function of, say, its cause.
> Natural teleology, common in classical philosophy, though controversial today,[5] contends that natural entities also have intrinsic purposes, irrespective of human use or opinion. For instance, Aristotle claimed that an acorn's intrinsic telos is to become a fully grown oak tree.
That's the angle I'm coming from. Especially this part, given my introduction to teleology was through learning about systems theory:
> An example of the reintroduction of teleology into modern language is the notion of an attractor.
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.
I sincerely think that it's the thing holding us back the most in the 21st century.
That isn't to say that the problem does not occur in other types, or that they're wrong about what they believe just because they don't understand it.
I mean, yes? I don't pretend to know everything about everyone.
>the vast majority of people who say things like "trust the science" don't have the first clue about what the science actually says. It's a dogmatically held belief to them.
I can't agree with this, if they would change their mind about it, it's not a dogmatic belief. You seem to be generalizing about a large number of people, have you asked all of them if they would be open to changing their mind, given new evidence?
But this feels like describing the colour blue - if you don't already know what it is, being on Hacker News, I don't think I can help you. Familiarising yourself with the philosophy of science (like Karl Popper's ideas for a start) and then looking at the way that many redditors and HNers talk about science (especially pop-science in astronomy and physics) or treat whitepapers, "new study finds" journalism etc would make you notice the difference.
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.
Right. None of which happened with the proclamations by the CDC/WHO who also had potential perverse incentives. Globally appointed scientists are not the arbiters of science. That is my biggest issue with the "believe science" movement.
This is actually very unscientific, a good chunk of what we currently hold to be true within science disproved previous science. A good example of really strong, good and useful science that was later replaced is Newtonian mechanics.
In reality, science is never finished, but the prevailing view throughout time is "we have most of it figured out" and time and time again this is proven false. Hopefully it continues to be.
And it might not be comforting to confront, but yes, the vast majority of people's belief in science is not analytical or rational, it is dogmatic. It doesn't mean the particular scientific things people believe are wrong, but most people, even scientists themselves, hold a lot of beliefs dogmatically and the idea that it is rational is protection of the ego and comparable to belief in divine wisdom.
> if new data is put forward then it can adjust.
Which is essentially the same as the ideas you put forward.
Also, coming from a Physics background, I would argue that to say that Newtonian mechanics has been completely replaced is false. There are more accurate models of the universe especially as we go to a quantum level or levels approaching the speed of light, but for most models it still works. As the saying goes, “all models are wrong, but some models are more useful than others”. Newtonian mechanics still works, but it doesn’t work all the time.
But main thing is, we are in agreement that Science is not finished; there is a balance between being open to knowing that there might be a better model compared to what we know now, but until it disproves what we know now (or explains things out current models can’t and can be verified experimentally), there is no reason to not trust our currently accepted and verified ones.
To be honest, the way you’ve phrased this makes it sound like you’ve totally bought in to state secular scientismic dogma.
The entire concept of “fact checking” (outsourcing your rational facilities to journalists and e-celebs) is diametrically opposed to actual scientific thought.
It’s also completely false that before “something is believed” (by which I think you mean is ensconced as scientismic dogma by the cathedral) it is subject to actual “experimental confirmation” (under any reasonable interpretation of that term). How many times has the FDA changed the official “nutrition science” dietary recommendations over the last 50 years? The entire time, they’ve claimed their approach has been evidence-based, which may be true in some narrow sense, but the predictive confidence of their claims are so bad and noisy that they keep changing the official “scientific” beliefs.
This is not unique to nutrition. Many politically relevant fields have very strong-sounding dogmatic claims made from on high with what is actually extremely weak evidence.
These two things are the opposite of each other. Would you prefer Vox not edit articles?
For a great modern explainer, check out Beyond Reason, by Jordan Peterson. Rule VI, abandon ideology covers this.
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
But of course, they are actually run under the master morality of doing what is expedient to achieve the goal (usually money).
> 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.
It could also be that in the modern world, most powerful institutions don't associate themselves with religion directly (like pre-modern power structures, kingdoms and empires, etc) so they have no default values to fall back on. Large corporations transcend nations and cultures, so cannot even fall back on those specific cultural values. Thus they must make their own, not necessarily to mimick others, but because having a large organization with no publicly stated values is simply confusing to us hairless apes.
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.
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.
There aren't enough differences for me to entertain the idea of backtracking though
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.
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.
The same goes with religion
The same goes with addicts
So we get a chimp troupe like China were all the chimps appear to have the same programming or like US where chimps magically get polarized into exactly 2 camps on any issue or an Israel which due to the unique challenges it faces ends up with a knesset with more ideologies than anyone can keep track off.
Starting conditions are only one variable in a very complex equation.
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).
Everyone in the world tries to move up through hard work, connections, and whatever advantages they are able to press.
"Recent studies suggest that there is less economic mobility in the United States than has long been presumed. The last thirty years has seen a considerable drop-off in median household income growth compared to earlier generations. And, by some measurements, we are actually a less mobile society than many other nations, including Canada, France, Germany and most Scandinavian countries. This challenges the notion of America as the land of opportunity"
https://www.pewtrusts.org/-/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/wwwpe...
"Talent" seems to like that environment.
Regulation = Civilization, Taxes = Civilization, Safety Net = Civilization
Now that doesn't mean you want a regulatory nightmare, the USA has real problems with license monopolies and city regs in some areas, but you also don't want unrestricted capitalism like the USA has that destroys people, society, and the common environment. Europe has a lot of work to do as well but at least they grasp this fundamental concept. The middle ground between these two is always hard to nail perfectly.
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
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)
They lowered tax rates simultaneous with eliminating deductions, making the changes over time roughly neutral in terms of taxes paid.
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, things working properly (e.g. washing machines and public restroom doors!), 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.
[edit] I originally wanted to make the point that one of the things we buy is increased quality of life. Wrote the comment up and completely forgot to throw that in.
>You all work so hard for almost nothing (apart from 'stuff', that is now mostly made in China).
The hours of output from an individual varies greatly, from almost none to 120 hour work weeks (literally, I have seen the pay stubs). In addition, not all work is the same, and there are a _lot_ of cushy office jobs in which people may claim 40 hour weeks, have probably half of that is what one would call 'work.' You also imply that having a lot of things is somehow negative and that it's just 'stuff'. We buy plenty of stuff for plenty of reasons, which includes recreation and entertainment.
To further iterate on the point that it's not just 'stuff', there are a plethora of festivals, museums, theaters, outdoor spaces, theme parks, malls, and community gatherings. There is far more stuff to do than there is time in the day to do it here. I should also note, a lot of which is either completely free or at least pretty inexpensive.
To push the point home, it's also almost trivial to fly over to Europe. It's relatively normal among the middle class to take trips overseas. Airline tickets are not _that_ expensive after all.
>In Europe people have a much more relaxed attitude to work, yet somehow pretty much everyone has a very high quality of life
This is very true for many in America as well; a great deal many of the people I grew up with are still in poverty or working menial jobs... but they also are out boating every weekend in the summers, skiing in the winters, watching sports on huge flat screens. They may be cash-poor but are still reasonably rich in experiences. This is a tricky thing to measure from the economic lens alone.
> judged by quality of food
The food I've had in the US has ranged from Michelin star to Mac Donald's, both are fabulous, though one is more snobby. Perhaps in deeply rural areas with low populations, the food is more of the fast-food variety. Still, in most mid to large cities, the food has been consistently excellent across both price and quality offered.
> judged by things working properly (e.g. washing machines and public restroom doors!)
I don't think you could back this up by any data, and if I were to guess, this is based on some poor luck you had while visiting. Across the various places I've been, it's pretty unheard of not to have access to washers or dryers due to malfunction. Most areas have at least a couple of competing laundromats, and it costs no more than a couple of dollars to access them. Breakdowns happen to all equipment over time, and thankfully quality can be purchased if desired. If many still choose the initial price tag over that, so be it. Servicing a machine is cheap and easy, as is replacing one outright.
As for public restroom doors, I don't understand this at all as it hasn't been my experience in the slightest. Even in poor urban areas, doors work fine. I can assure you, the VAST majority of doors here work just fine!
> freedom from fear (e.g. of losing their job, getting ill, or interactions with the 'police'),
This entirely an individual thing; losing one's job isn't exactly the end of the world here either. Opportunity is all over the place. Maybe aside from suicidal people, everyone on earth fears getting ill. And maybe aside from high health care costs, assuming I didn't choose to pay for extra insurance, I'd still rather be 'poor' and uninsured here than most places in the world. It's not 'free' like many other countries, bu...
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.
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.
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. :))
Why? The world doesn't work by laws of semantic symmetry. The Swedish economy is structured on automation, on lack of personal service roles, and on skilled industry. Swedish furniture manufacturers use robots and those on the shop floor that remain are required to have skills to operate those robots. Neither will you will find a huge pool of labor cutting people's lawns or being nannies or replacing roofs because there aren't many lawns to cut, roofs are made to last longer and be less labor intensive, and personal service is stygmatized. It's like Holland, which is the breadbasket of Europe but is a pioneer in agricultural automation and does not rely on large amounts of cheap migrant labor, whereas the US agricultural sector does. Even for something like restaurants, Swedish culture makes much less use of them -- e.g. San Francisco has 500 restaurants per 100K, But once you transition to a high skilled economy it becomes much harder to absorb low skilled workers.
Here, things like labor policies play a role. A high minimum wage, generous benefits and travel may pencil out for a high skilled worker that is willing to be paid 1/2 what they could get in the U.S., but they don't pencil out for a low skilled worker unless the low skilled worker's wages are high enough so that the various costs pencil out, which means there can't be too many of them as the services they provide will be more expensive means and thus have smaller utilization. That is why people complain about things like taxis, restaurant meals, bus trips, etc., costing a lot in Sweden, which is why Stockholm has 1/10 as many restaurants per 100K compared to Tokyo and 1/5 as many compared to San Francisco. Those high wages basically require a more capital intensive production processes and don't leave a lot of room for low skilled jobs.
Btw, that is one of the arguments for high minimum wages and generous benefits. The idea is that it will force firms to invest in more capital so that labor becomes more productive. That's the phenomena of McDonald's creating robot tellers and getting rid of workers. That's the process by which the revenue generated per worker is high enough to justify generous benefits. And the question with that approach is always can the economy transition to a high skilled economy or will there be a permanent underclass of unemployable low skilled workers. And Sweden has done a decent job of making this transition, although there is always a problem with high unemployment, it hasn't been the fiasco predicted, as most of the labor force has transitioned to high skilled work. But then that creates a problem when you dump a lot of low skilled workers on the economy -- they find themselves in the permanent unemployed class.
The U.S., on the other hand, has lower costs of employing labor and thus is able to absorb low skilled labor but the flip side is you do not have the same pressures towards automation and capital investment, so the US economy overall is much more mixed. It's not a high tech economy, it has a lot of low skilled jobs as well, and those low skilled jobs don't enjoy the same level of benefits.
It's a tough call which approach is "better". Culturally, the US will never become Sweden, but there are pros and cons of each approach.
[0] https://www.government.nl/latest/news/2020/01/17/dutch-agric...
Here is an interesting article with some pictures, demonstrating what Dutch high-tech farming looks like: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/holland-...
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.
It's complex. The Americans can always buy a car but never foods. This become a meme in my home country.
There are always trade offs.
There is a reason folks flock more to SF rather than to nowhere state. If you save 10%, it is still 20k saved compared to 8k. If you lose your job, there are 10 choices compared to one (or none), access to cutting edge of tech rather than reading about it on hacker news and so on.
Any examples?
I have not seen any cutting edge tech for while.
A friend of mine moved to L.A. in the early 2000s, he's still there, married to an American, but he burned out in his job there very quickly. No wonder, they were living in a small apartment with a baby in downtown L.A. and he had to commute for 3 hours daily. He got back at 10 to 11 PM and got up at 6 AM to get to work again - every workday, with almost no holiday. That's insane by European standards.
You can always go back and settled wherever you want after making a ton of cash in the US (assuming it works out), reverse isn’t true as much.
Would you want your kids to grow up in the USA?
That is usually a good question to ask, as it shows if we are succeeding as a country. I think the USA is great if you are in the ~10% of the population who want to make loads of money, work 80 hours, and are in tech/lawyer/doctor. Everyone else is stuck in the same cultural mentality IMO, it's like living in a persistent guerilla war that you don't want to be fighting in.
Showing one's wealth is in bad taste, and bragging about status is considering being an outlier. This is slowly changing (since about the 80's) but prior to that, showing off your middle class wealth as a status indicator was frowned upon in certain circles. especially considering the hardship most people endured during and after ww2.
I was raised in the USA and I was raised that showing one's wealth is in bad taste. In fact I think most of the midwest feels similar. I still do. The point of money isn't to show it off, it is to put it to good use.
* 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.
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.
https://www.statista.com/chart/20858/top-10-countries-by-sha...
This is utter nonsense, how are you getting that?
Imagine that I offered you two deals:
1. You make $45k a year, but all your costs are 50% of the base rate. Plus health care is included that covers everything with no expenses, childcare is included, and college education is included.
2. You make $60k a year, but all your costs are 200% of the base rate. Health care isn't covered and covers nothing when you really get sick, childcare is $1500 a month per kid, and college is going to cost you half a million dollars.
Holistically Western Europe as a whole is doing way better for it's people.
"Recent studies suggest that there is less economic mobility in the United States than has long been presumed. The last thirty years has seen a considerable drop-off in median household income growth compared to earlier generations. And, by some measurements, we are actually a less mobile society than many other nations, including Canada, France, Germany and most Scandinavian countries. This challenges the notion of America as the land of opportunity"
https://www.pewtrusts.org/-/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/wwwpe...
Comparing Europe and the U.S. is a complex business, and I find myself offending cheerleaders on both sides.
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-...
> 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.
Rates of entrepreneurship are higher in Scandinavian countries[1].
It's also easier to start your own business in such countries because you don't already have to be wealthy enough to afford spending $36k in premiums alone each year for your family's health insurance on the individual market.
[1] https://www.oecd.org/sdd/business-stats/EAG-2018-Highlights....
Keep believing that myth.
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.
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.
HOAs seems to be more about using bureaucracy to control others and force them to do what the person with power wants. There is a classic quote “There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
I think the dark side of individualism is that it can create the mindset that other's success comes at your expense, which pitches people and groups against each other, and makes differences a threat and not a strength. It also also discourages people from acknowledging their own limitations, because if someone is smarter or better than you then they will be more successful, and that means you lose.
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.
Also, the 20th century saw massive changes in where people lived compared to "their country".
prior to world war 1, this was a far more mixed affair (see, the austrian-hungarian empire and the greeks in anatolia).
Just because the farming and ranching looks different, doesn't make it not farming or ranching
It feels like the 'shining city on the hill' was extremely effective propaganda, for the domestic population.
When I've worked in Europe, it has always been evident that this is much harder to achieve there for poor people and immigrants. The entire social system is setup to limit the ability of ambitious people to rise above whatever station they were born into in a way that isn't really a thing in the US. This contributes to why engineering wages are relatively low in Europe.
Not so much. The U.S. is not even in the top 10 of countries for Economic mobility.
Given two countries with the same median wage (PPP), a 20k increase in income in one country may be relatively "economically mobile" and a 40k increase in income in the other is not, even though the income increase is much larger in real terms. When average people talk about economic mobility, they mean the second case; using relative mobility is misleading.
Every single one of those people is grateful to have come here, is amazed that the people born here do not take advantage of their birthright of opportunities, and absolutely does not think that talk about the greatest opportunities is tripe or propaganda. They are also dumbfounded at the problems that we create for ourselves as a country. Yet, to a one, they all wish they could bring their parents and families here.
It's possible that the opportunities given to migrants relocating to any highly developed nation are equivalent. That is, not a phenomenon unique to the USA.
That's an excellent point, and one I doubt even needs to be answered to any degree of certainty. Everyone wants a better life, and that can be had in many ways and places.
I don't think that's true of Australia. American Australians tend to assimilate pretty well, and after a while people tend to mostly forget they were Americans originally, even if they still have a bit of an accent. The Australian politician Kristina Keneally is an example. She was born in Nevada, grew up in Ohio, didn't move to Australia until her 20s. But I don't think anyone really thinks of her as "an American". She's an Australian politician. You might like her politics or you might dislike them, but nobody really cares about where she was born and grew up. She's one of us now.
The Australian media has even taken to (at times) calling Virginia Roberts Giuffre (the most notable public victim of Jeffrey Epstein) "an Australian", without qualification. (She married an Australian man, had kids with him, now they live here.) Whereas the American media just calls her an American.
The Australian media always wanted to view Mel Gibson as an Australian, even when he said that he himself identified as an American rather than as an Australian. (I think they are less keen on that now that he has made himself a bit of a persona non grata through his behaviour. America, you can have him.)
The original quote we were discussing, "Immigrants to America tend to become American; emigrants to other countries from America tend to stay American" is mistaken because it is viewing it primarily in terms of Americanness, instead of the nature of the society receiving the immigrant
Born to and raised by Australian mother. Then married Australian man before moving to Australia.
I think the blood and subsequent marriage connection helped immensely in how she is viewed. I think that would be the same for most other Euro nations. At least one parent of the land along with partner from the land and residing in the land for 30+ years.
I really don't think most people care about the fact she has an Australian mother. In fact, I myself had forgotten that fact. If she hadn't, I don't think it would really make a difference to how she is viewed in Australia. (My mother was born in Scotland but calling myself “Scottish” feels weird, like the real Scots are going to call me out for being a fake one.)
Virginia Roberts Giuffre has been called an "Australian" by the Australian media (e.g. [0]) even though as far as I am aware she has no Australian ancestry. She is also married to an Australian man but I think you are putting more emphasis on that fact than what counts. Most Australians, if they think of her as an Australian, it is because she has adopted this country as her homeland through immigration, not because she married an Australian. If she married an Australian but stayed in the US, nobody would think of her as Australian. If she had moved here as a single person, or with a non-Australian husband, people probably still would.
In somewhat of the reverse, the British politician Patricia Hewitt was born in Australia and grew up here, but I'd probably think of her as British first and Australian very much second. The country in which she has lived the bulk of her adult life, and in which she has had her political career, is more significant in identifying her than where she was born and raised.
[0] https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/virgin...
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.
The socially acceptable ideas/paradigms of today are the religions of next century.
Hegel was right.
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.
I have a very broad definition - to me any belief system (collection of concepts used for understanding the world) is a religion.
Rationalism is one religion. Irrationalism is another religion.
Any preference you have for one or the other is just your opinion. The bias that you can’t justify.
The long-surviving is statistically unlikely to be irrational. It survived the test of time - Entropy.
What is far more likely is that you don’t (yet) understand what religion is.
Furthermore, those who defect from the religious faith on which their society or civilization was built often ride the coat tails of that religious faith without working out the logical consequences of their rejection. That is, it is better to describe the rejector as a heretic or an apostate than someone who has somehow freed himself from the faith in question and all its trappings. Many of these ideologies we're seeing are profound distortions or perversions of some selected element of Christianity or previous heretical position. That's one reason heresy was always regarded as dangerous. It comes from the Greek hairesis meaning "a taking or choosing for oneself, a choice"[0] meaning taking a cafeteria approach toward the dogmas of the faith which exist as a coherent whole. Any distortion or selectivity produces severe downstream consequences like ideology. Secularism and liberalism are examples. They are Christian heresies and cannot be comprehended apart from the Christian context within which they emerged.
Nietzsche, who was an atheist, was smart enough to see this. The "Twilight of the Idols" is all about how silly this secular triumphalism, or even just contentment, is because it fails to see that the consequences of having "killed God" are not yet fully made manifest, but eventually will be made manifest because this state of affairs is unsustainable, and that this will result ultimately in total disorientation and chaos (I disagree with Nietzsche that God was merely an instrumental idea, but he did at least grasp the parochial and myopic nature of so many atheists and secular people; for him, atheism was a terrible thing). Intellectually serious atheists are all in agreement about how terrible atheism is (i.e., not the provincial variety like Dawkins). This state produces a fertile ground for ideology, i.e., irrational half-assed false religions.
[0] https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=heresy
-- I can't see how that statement doesn't trivialize religion at least as much. IE, if everyone is "religious", you've set a very low bar for what qualifies as religious
I think made it clear you have religious beliefs, which involve ... clearly false views of the cosmos (with the possible exception of Buddhism) and you have religious institutions, which serve a variety of social, economic and psychological purposes. A church can be club with a few nods to God or it can be something like a political party hell bent on power or it can be other things. Many American Unitarians maintain the form of religion while dropping all the God part and that's as fine as anything as far as I'm concerned.
And if everyone has “beliefs” then you have set a very low bar for what qualifies as belief which makes everyone a believer.
You are playing a silly power game where you dismiss other people’s conceptual schemes so you can peddle your own.
My view of the cosmos is that it is a computer simulation.
It isn’t clearly false. But it is clearly a religion. Even though it is backed up by the fact that all asymmetrical/equational reasoning (all of the Mathematics supporting Physics/Cosmology) is computational.
Sure, if you look at what qualifies as a belief, it's pretty random.
My view of the cosmos is that it is a computer simulation.
It seems like the main thing this shares with religion is that it's wholly unverifiable. If you develop it in common with others and perhaps add rituals, you could qualify it along with Pastafarians [1]. But Pastafarian know it's a joke.
I might have some wholly unverifiable beliefs but I don't have a commitment to maintain such beliefs. That's where I'd locate the difference.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster
You can verify that Physics is captured in Mathematics.
Mathematics is a Turing-recognisable language. If the universe is Physical then it is computable. This is a trivially true belief (see Church-Turing-Deutsch principle).
You can falsify my belief by producing Physics in language other than Mathematics.
Of course, as an instrumentalist/physicist, I don’t care if my beliefs are “actually true” as long as they work.
I also think religion serves a real need, but all real needs have real objects. And so I do not use the word "utility" here as if the content of the faith didn't matter, that religion is just some instrument that gets us this "other stuff" and has no intrinsic truth or meaning itself. A true religious faith is practiced because it is about the ultimate meaning of one's life and thus the meaning of everything else in life. Thus everything is always subordinate to one's faith. It is important for the faith to be true in order to be able to live one's life in the light of true ends, not mythical counterfeits. This does not contradict the essence of your main point, namely, the the eviction of one religion does not abolish religion. It typically just replaces it with something inferior.
> “Why do science and philosophy matter?”
I would say philosophical and religious answers. Recall that philosophy is also reflexive.
But indeed, scientism is indefensible. It is a philosophical position and thus cannot be defended scientifically. You cannot simply assert it without justification.
If it has none then I don’t need it.
Reflexivity is precisely where meaning/religion comes from. From the self.
I don't understand the question. Truth is the correspondence of the mind with the real. The value of some truths is mostly instrumental. The value of others is that it is good for us to know them for themselves. If you are using "utility" to mean "value", then maybe you accept this, but utility is typically something like a species of value, as I understand it. Pure practicality is incoherent. They needs to be a terminus.
What is "need" here? Toward what end? Need is always about ends.
> Reflexivity is precisely where meaning/religion comes from. From the self.
Meaning doesn't come from ourselves. We cannot invent meaning. Either something means something, or it doesn't. What you describe is mental illness and delusion. I also don't see what this has to do with truth/utility.
That is only the correspondence theory of truth.
There are many other truth-theories.
There is the coherence theory, pragmatic theory, constructivist theory, consensus theory. Why have you chosen that particular truth-theory?
I use utility in the same sense of “teleos” - end purpose.
What is the purpose of truth? What is the purpose of having a mind correspond with the real?
For your particular conception - it is impossible for any mind to correspond to the real because any given mind is only a subset of the real.
This is a peculiar idea.
What does my cat mean?
You saw sagacious Solomon | You know what came of him | To him, complexities seemed plain | He cursed the hour that gave birth to him | And saw that everything was vain | How great and wise was Solomon | The world, however, did not wait | But soon observed what followed on | It's wisdom that had brought him to this state | How fortunate the man with none
You saw courageous Caesar next | You know what he became | They deified him in his life | Then had him murdered just the same | And as they raised the fatal knife | How loud he cried "you too my son!" | The world, however, did not wait | But soon observed what followed on | It's courage that had brought him to that state | How fortunate the man with none
You heard of honest Socrates | The man who never lied | They weren't so grateful as you'd think | Instead the rulers fixed to have him tried | And handed him the poisoned drink | How honest was the people's noble son | The world, however, did not wait | But soon observed what followed on | It's honesty that brought him to that state | How fortunate the man with none
Here you can see respectable folk | Keeping to God's own laws | So far he hasn't taken heed | You who sit safe and warm indoors | Help to relieve out bitter need | How virtuously we had begun | The world, however, did not wait | But soon observed what followed on | It's fear of God that brought us to that state | How fortunate the man with none
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Brendan Michael Perry / Bertolt Brecht / John Willett
How Fortunate the Man With None lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, BMG Rights Management
The question needs not be asked. But most people are not areligious, they have been raised within a context of religion where the question was asked to them. Religion begets religion because it teaches people that there are higher meanings and pushes people to seek their answers.
A true areligious person does not ponder about the meaning of life, why we are here, and what it is we need to do with ourselves. An areligious person can simply exist in peace, guided simply by ones natural desires for fun, pleasure, comfort, safety, growth and love.
That is a religious belief in denial of my factual needs.
> A true areligious person does not ponder about the meaning of life, why we are here
Great! So why does science matter to a true areligious person?
It's probably some sort of natural calibration process.
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.
Morality works well for its evolved purpose, which is to bind together small tribes and push someone into action in response to visual and audio cues that someone is suffering.
Beyond that, it's highly flawed.
It doesn't get switched on for out-groups. Arguably it contributes to tribal conflict.
It can be co-opted so easily by nefarious charismatic leaders, motivating morally outraged people towards atrocity.
It can be co-opted easily by a victim-playing psychopath in an interpersonal setting for personal gain.
It's used as a mask for policies and ideologies that are really a byproduct of jealousy, envy, self-interest, among other motivations.
It's not rational, we become less altruistic as the scale of the problem grows, and we respond more to emotional stimuli than actual information about what's going on.
One point of view–to which I subscribe–is that the terms are synonyms. One comes from Latin, the other comes from Greek. English does that sometimes.
Others insist they differ in meaning. But there doesn't seem to be any consensus on what the actual difference is. I've heard many proposals, and the only thing I've found they have in common is that they disagree with each other.
Some people say "morals" is about principles and "ethics" is about their application. Others say "morals" are religious and "ethics" are secular. Yet others say "morals" are personal and "ethics" are professional and/or political. I'll just stick with using the two words as interchangeable synonyms myself.
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.
I told him that people in Iraq are 99% muslims and they definitely know about the existence of Christianity so they aren't really uninitiated. If I remember correctly, he said that if a culture poisons your mind to not believe in the Christian God, then you're still considered "uninitiated".
That seems like quite the cop out lol. Pretty sure any decision to not practice Christianity would meet this criteria.
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.
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.
Neither is this news to people nor is it a good claim. But it is a believable claim so that's why we're talking about it.
ideo = images / ideas
I think religious devotion is a subset of ideological intensity.
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.
Of course, it's about the same thing as 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.
If you only meant the west then that is accurate, but due to the various birth rates it could very easily change with immigration.
> 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!”
What makes the UK very complex is the coexistence of two layers of national identity – British layered over English, Scottish, Welsh, (Northern) Irish. Which layer a person identifies with is very often determined by their politics, and sometimes also by religious/cultural background. (British vs Irish identity in Northern Ireland tends to correspond with Protestant vs Catholic religious background, albeit there are exceptions to that generalisation.) At the same time, given England is 85% of the population, the boundary between "British nationalism" and "English nationalism" is often quite vague. Its boundaries with Scottish nationalism, Welsh nationalism, Irish nationalism, tend to be more clearly cut.
The idea it is purely an English phenomenon is divisive and pernicious.
Many of the residents of Wales who voted for Brexit are English: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/sep/22/english-peop...
The areas of Wales which identify the most strongly as Welsh had the some of the lowest votes for Brexit.
This is just more pernicious divisiveness. Those areas that are most Welsh also voted in significant numbers for Brexit.
The people of the UK, in various proportions in various places, voted to leave the EU. It may suck, but pretending it’s purely an English problem is delusion.
If you want someone to blame, blame the people that voted for Brexit everywhere. This exoneration of particular regions is bizarre. How can it be all about English Nationalism when a third of Scots voted that way too?
When did I ever say it was all about English nationalism? I think I only said that in your head.
“‘Cor tea and digestives on a rainy day, what could be more british”
National identity precludes other nationalities, which is largely the impetus for Brexit. Brits are not ever blamed for being unBritish, even if they don’t like football.
Supporting football's not really 'British', and a fairly modern phenomenon. In the 80s it was deemed uncouth and heavily associated with hooliganism, but rehabilitated in the 90s, and is already falling out of fashion again.
Football support is heavily wrapped up in the complicated British classes, in the 90s/00s it was cool to pretend to be working class when you were middle class, and supporting football was a visible way of doing that.
The economy. I'm sure there's an undercurrent of xenophobia and "little England"-ism which explains it, but it's not the full picture. Probably the biggest factor is that neoliberalism has been fucking working class people over since Thatcher. It's (sadly) empirically demonstrated that economic hardship pushes people to right-wing populism (see the 1930s, and the 2010s).
Marx was right, history is moved by the material conditions of people (not fully, but in large part).
People may be called un-American as a political weapon, but that's about all it is. People in politics use all sorts of childish phrases as weapons. In reality I've never been called un-American or seen another person called un-American, unless it was for humor.
That sounds tasty. Can I be an honorary Canadian?
Anyways being way older I am now more into BBQ and veggies.
1. https://www.vpr.org/post/inside-global-strategic-maple-syrup...
Unbritishness definitely gets thrown around, especially these days.
One wonders how a people reaches this level of demoralization.
The leader of the other party stood up and tore him to shreds, saying that the magic of Australia is that it's a country of immigrants and that by very definition, everyone there is Australian. It's perfectly fine to disagree about stuff and have discussions, but we're all still Australian. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to tear the country apart and should never be given a microphone again.
The other guy has never tried that childish divisive tactic again.
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.
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.
A lot of people found religion in the 60's and 70's due to psychedelics, and have continued to do so ever since. As an example, many people were first drawn to Eastern religions through psychedelic experiences.
Also, arguments have been made that even the mainstream religions were originally founded (and in their early years sustained) due to psychedelic use. For an example see Allegro's "The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross".
That's not to mention many smaller religions such as the Native American Church, Santo Daime, Uniao Do Vegetal, etc.
Something else to consider is that drug use has been so stigmatized (not to mention illegal) for so long that many users have been afraid to come forward and admit their psychedelic use. That's been changing due to the Psychedelic Renaissance and its positive reception in the press, but there are likely to be many more people who haven't come out of the closet yet (not to mention users who died before this more permissive era started). So the number of people who were drawn to religion through psychedelic use is probably much larger than we know.
Not only has American theological ignorance increased (people like Richard Dawkins for example, popular in atheist cultures, has just downright comically terrible theology and understanding of the Bible), but as well as ignorance of the human psyche.
I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
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."
Sure, it doesn't happen on day one, but it doesn't in the US either.
To suggest otherwise is to completely ignore not only history, but the present.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymouth_Colony
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_of_New_England#Establ...
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Province_of_Massachusetts_Bay
[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Province_of_Massachusetts_Bay#...
The other important distinction is that the Church of England is essentially a state church. In many ways the U.S. Constitution, on which Nonconformists had far more influence, is its antithesis. [1] Puritanism/Nonconformism views religion as a personal or at most a local matter.
One of the references you shared has an interesting quote to this effect stating that when England tried to impose it's unelected colonial official rule, Puritan officials "were of opinion that God would never suffer me to land again in this country, and thereupon began in a most arbitrary manner to assert their power higher than at any time before." [2]
A much more accurate picture of what the U.S. started out as and has become today would be a mosaic or a patchwork of various religions and/or philosophies where one always has a choice whether to participate (or abstain).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonconformist_(Protestantism)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_of_New_England#Dudley...
Besides the purely superficial, "I believe in such and such" (and not backed up by any inner conviction) sort. Because a purely nominal religiosity is hardly evidence of any substantive cultural or political influence. It takes more than that to count as influence IMO.
North of the border there's a vast, mythical place called Canada - about 20% of Canadians were not born there [1].
Yes, this feeling of "acquired origin" is not true of every country, but the US and Canada are seldom the only place.
In my experience, the same would happen in many South American countries if one is successful in integration - there's no snobbery about not being born there.
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canada-s-foreign-born-populat...
Not the only country, the same is true of Australia. I mentioned in another comment the Australian politician Kristina Keneally, who was born in Nevada, grew up in Ohio, didn't move to Australia until her 20s. To me, she's an Australian. I think most Australians would probably say the same thing.
Said President Bush in 2005. Once politics and faith intermingle the result is higher intensity.
America has been into that since the very beginning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apotheosis_of_Washington