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Post by millring on Jul 22, 2023 11:36:59 GMT -5
I said "heavily". I didn't say "solely". But I do think it was the biggest, most universal factor.
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Post by millring on Jul 22, 2023 11:39:31 GMT -5
As long as we maintain the order that religion gave us, we remain somewhat civilized. But without a belief in the foundational reason behind it, that's a very precarious position. As soon as we are uncomfortable, it collapses. This proposition never manages to account for decent, civilized individual nonbelievers, nor for the systemic decency of societies lacking the elaborate authority structures/strictures of the Abrahamic faiths, nor for the systemic iniquities and cruelties generated or toleated by those faiths. In addition, observation of how other primates keep things orderly in their troupes suggests that the machineries of social control do not require a supernatural metaphysic. In fact, chimps and gorillas seem to be metaphysics-free. As far as I can tell, the crucial machineries for decent human behavior (which depend strongly on empathy) are installed at various stages between infancy and adolescence and do not depend on supernatural authority. My father's explanation for why I should do/not do something was generally "Because I said so," and my mother's ran to "How would you like it if somebody did that to you?" Eventually, these case-by-case directives and constraints were reinforced by explanations of the extended practical and systemic principles behind them. My parents were both believers, but deity rarely figured in their training regimens. To be fair, the example of Jesus was in there somewhere--though not in rules such as "Don't play in the traffic" or "Don't hit your little sister" or "Don't ride your bike after dark." The most important rule was "Don't worry or anger Ma." and you aren't the hoi polloi that needs taming. And our schools aren't succeeding as they did in the past. I suspect population has a lot to do with it. As does diversity.
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Post by Russell Letson on Jul 22, 2023 11:49:23 GMT -5
John, the crucial question would be why am I not among the uncivilized hoi polloi? And the crucial historical question would be, "Where is the evidence for supernaturalist religion* as the essential or even 'biggest, most universal factor' in installing socializing routines in our species?"
* I specify "supernaturalist religion" in anticipation of the inevitable argument that any ethical-moral system amounts to a religion. John doesn't make it, but other Soundholers have in the past. It's insufficiently rigorous and a distraction, but not really part of this discussion.
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Post by millring on Jul 22, 2023 12:13:48 GMT -5
(besides, you were raised in a strongly religiously influenced culture.). John Pizzarelli didn't need guitar lessons.
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Post by Rob Hanesworth on Jul 22, 2023 12:36:04 GMT -5
I am having a bit of trouble with the broad thesis that western civilization is declining. I still know too many people for whom things are still going pretty well. All of the children that Nancy and I have have bought homes. They are all pretty decent homes. My son's is the most humble of the bunch but he and his wife are content with it. Even our two oldest grandchildren have recently bought houses and both of their "starter" homes make me a little jealous.
Yes, there numerous individuals for who things are not going as they hoped or planned, but hasn't that always been the case? Does it represent an overall decline in civilization? Do you know a larger percentage of assholes than your parents did? There are gangs and crooks and greedy bastards trying to take every advantage they can with no concern for who they hurt. Is that an invention of the last few decades?
Nancy and I worked hard at our careers and that contributed to our current fairly comfortable life. But, there is no denying that there was also an element of luck or good fortune in our lives, opportunities that came at the right time, decisions made at forks in the road that were more guesswork than wisdom.
Maybe I am a naive Pollyanna, but I don't see as much decline as normality, granting again that things aren't going well for everyone.
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Post by Russell Letson on Jul 22, 2023 13:39:46 GMT -5
besides, you were raised in a strongly religiously influenced culture So were Torquemada, Cotton Mather, and Ayatollah Khomeini.
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Post by jdd2 on Jul 22, 2023 15:11:00 GMT -5
besides, you were raised in a strongly religiously influenced culture So were Torquemada, Cotton Mather, and Ayatollah Khomeini. I've never been able to figure out why, in movies or on TV, that that weird (stupid) shape is taken to represent--"this is a view of something thru binoculars".
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Post by Cornflake on Jul 22, 2023 17:11:08 GMT -5
Russell, I was about to make my trademarked comment that religion does not have to be supernatural, nor do I think that any ethical system is religious. Then I decided to go look at the trees instead :-)
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Post by Russell Letson on Jul 22, 2023 18:50:44 GMT -5
So you say, so you say. But serially, any explanatory or behavior-regulatory system has what Kenneth Burke called a "god term," which I take to mean a top-level source of oughts/ought-nots*, and while I suppose it's possible to construct a religion-analogue that supplies behavior regulation, the absence of a beyond-nature component certainly makes them feel different from the religions I'm familiar with.
On the other hand, it certainly seems possible to construct non-supernaturalist systems that provide the emotional components that make religion so powerful and widespread in humankind (mystical/ecstatic/oceanic experience). But (says this materialist), those can be understood as neurochemical events, entirely confined to individual nervous systems rather than, say, representing two-way connection with entities outside said nervous systems. Other, of course, than each other and whatever thinking/feeling critters we share the world with. (I would really love to be able to talk to the animals. Though then I would probably not eat the ones I do.)
* Burke was mostly a rhetorician, so I take this term to indicate the propositions to/from which all others flow. I suspect that such propositions are not provable within the systems of which they are part--something like what I (kinda sorta) understand of Gödel's incompleteness idea.
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Post by Cornflake on Jul 22, 2023 20:33:21 GMT -5
William James said essentially that religion is the conviction that there is an unseen order in what occurs, and that we’re better off living in accordance with that order. Specific religions may believe other things. A prominent Catholic writer has suggested that Christians ditch the terms, faith and belief altogether and substitute the word trust, which is closer to the meaning of the original word. That’s as much dictating into my cell phone as I can handle. Best wishes.
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Post by Village Idiot on Jul 22, 2023 20:59:00 GMT -5
I am not a big city person, Janice, as you know. I have several friends who live in the Chicago suburbs. They never go into the city, ever. Not that they are afraid to, but because they have no desire to.
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Post by jdd2 on Jul 22, 2023 23:05:51 GMT -5
One sister lives in a big building right at the northwestern campus and hospital downtown--600 north michigan--and has been there for years, no plan to move. I've enjoyed visits there, but it's been ~5yrs since the last time.
Tho her work/study is not tied to the campus, one of our daughters is a student at northwestern and her advisor (and the part of NW that they're in) is in that same place. They live in evanston, but commute down, and right now she's doing a summer internship that I think is a bit farther south, and in a little (four days in office, one remote?). A couple few weeks ago, she didn't get into the actual TS concert, but was in the mob outside soldier field (sent a couple pics/movies of that).
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Post by millring on Jul 23, 2023 6:20:46 GMT -5
My parents were both believers, but deity rarely figured in their training regimens. How do you figure? Did they suddenly not believe the underlying principles and reasons for believing them when they were training you? How does that work? How did they extricate themselves from their world view and their own upbringing and reject all the reasons that they believed what they believed and lived as they lived so that -- as blank slate unbelievers -- they could train you properly to become the intellectual that you now are? Mandolins and guitars are made of exactly the same materials. And they are both stringed instruments. Minimizing the important differences between them is not a logical approach to forming a bluegrass band. It should be quite evident that though we may be primates, we are neither apes nor monkeys. The difference might be significant. In fact, the difference might be central to the question. Oh, and saying that because you don't need to believe there might be any consequences beyond this material world judging your behavior -- good or bad -- in order to make the right choices in this life, then nobody else needs such belief either isn't strictly logical. Most of humanity has had neither your education, nor your material privilege (as most of our country's population -- even the poor -- have a better standard of living than the rest of the world). It might be ever-so-slightly harder to make right choices (and what would "right" mean anyway in the absence of some transcendent -- not supernatural -- transcendent standard?) in a world in which you don't know where your next meal is coming from, not to mention you may not own a guitar. Also, I might suggest that the non-religious world of judgement on behavior is at least as strict, authoritarian, and brutal as any religious judgement. Additionally, it is mercurial and arbitrary. btw, my reasons for not believing in religion -- or, specifically, Christianity -- are (to my mind anyway) as good or better than yours. But I believe anyway.
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Post by millring on Jul 23, 2023 6:24:41 GMT -5
I suspect that it is because we so profoundly misunderstand evolution ... and then run with that misunderstanding ... that we don't grasp that we're all just tamed barbarians. Humans are not a constantly improving race (no organism is. we're all simply changing. in our case, we're obese, drug-dependent, and addicted, and every new change to our environment culls the herd). For 10,000 years mankind has relied heavily on religion to civilize us. Now we are rejecting religion (which may or may not be a good idea) and its role in civilizing, but I fear we are, in its absence, moving forward with several very mistaken notions -- not the least of which is that we are getting better and therefore what is newer is superior to what came before. As long as we maintain the order that religion gave us, we remain somewhat civilized. But without a belief in the foundational reason behind it, that's a very precarious position. As soon as we are uncomfortable, it collapses. That my well be true, but that also says there is no humanity without religious fiction. You got several likes for this, so it must be easy enough to understand what you're saying. But I don't.
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Post by brucemacneill on Jul 23, 2023 7:12:41 GMT -5
This thread doesn't click with me so can someone here define "Western Civilization"? Civilization has existed in various forms across the planet for several thousand years, maybe many thousand years since we keep discovering older and older constructions that appeared to require organization and cooperation amongst humanoids. What's declining, IMHO, is what we grew up in post WWII in the U.S.A. The decline is because of your willingness to want a one world government rather than the U.S.A. concept of government by the individual citizens self reliance and the capitalist meritocracy it envisioned.
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Post by millring on Jul 23, 2023 7:31:55 GMT -5
For what it's worth, coincidentally this came up on facebook this morning. Of course, Hari doesn't explain what put us in the "hyperconsumerist, hyperindividualist, isolated world", or what exactly those terms mean (they're politically and socially charged and presuppositional). So essentially, he's really saying not a whole lot (besides which, there's the possibility that no such study happened, or that it actually happened as presented). But since it's yet another observation about this subject, I thought I'd share it.
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Post by howard lee on Jul 23, 2023 8:23:23 GMT -5
Jan, I am sorry about your DIL's experience and am glad that she is alright and wasn't hurt. I grew up in New York in the 1970s and 1980s, and one thing you learned early on was not to appear affluent on the street—or on the subway especially. Don't wear a too nice coat. Don't flash jewelry or cash. And the #1 rule was to be vigilant and aware of your surroundings and who occupied those spaces, all the time. This was before there were transit police (now they are crawling all over the subway system).
I hope both son and DIL stay safe. If they want to relocate, they should consider Brooklyn—it is one of the most gentrified boroughs in the city these days, and a quick commute to Sloan Kettering and Rockefeller Medical Center for a cancer researcher. I'm just sayin'.
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Post by theevan on Jul 23, 2023 8:37:37 GMT -5
"The opposite of addiction isn't sobriety, it's connection".
That is so good! Thanks.
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Post by John B on Jul 23, 2023 10:05:25 GMT -5
Jan, I am sorry about your DIL's experience and am glad that she is alright and wasn't hurt. I grew up in New York in the 1970s and 1980s, and one thing you learned early on was not to appear affluent on the street—or on the subway especially. Don't wear a too nice coat. Don't flash jewelry or cash. And the #1 rule was to be vigilant and aware of your surroundings and who occupied those spaces, all the time. This was before there were transit police (now they are crawling all over the subway system). I hope both son and DIL stay safe. If they want to relocate, they should consider Brooklyn—it is one of the most gentrified boroughs in the city these days, and a quick commute to Sloan Kettering and Rockefeller Medical Center for a cancer researcher. I'm just sayin'. Like the Barenaked Ladies song says, "if I had a million dollars" I'd move to Brooklyn in a heartbeat. Well, maybe two million. Or ten.
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Post by John B on Jul 23, 2023 10:10:03 GMT -5
"The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection. And our whole society, the engine of it, is geared toward making us connect with things not people. You are not a good consumer citizen if you spend your time bonding with the people around you and not stuff. In fact, we are trained from a young age to focus our hopes, dreams, and ambitions on things to buy and consume. Drug addiction is a subset of that." This really grabs me.
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