Alienation Is Killing Americans and Japanese • Hacker News Board

Re: Alienation Is Killing Americans and Japanese

#161

Post by humanrebar » Wed, Jun 01, 2016, 3:23 PM UTC

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #54

brightball wrote: post #35

A big part of this that's unpopular to discuss in current culture is people actively avoiding going to a church. Whether you actually donate and believe everything that is said isn't really a factor in whether or not you can show up every week, meet other people in your community, participate in events, be there for each other at during the hard times in life, have fun activities for your kids where you can meet othe…

Churches are definitely a great community resource, but I imagine that many people (myself included) don't want to be preached something we don't believe in every week even if it means losing out on those community benefits. I wonder if something else could be established, or even if such a thing as "athiest/agnostic churches" could be organized.

> Churches are definitely a great community resource, but I imagine that many people (myself included) don't want to be preached something we don't believe in every week even if it means losing out on those community benefits.

Participating in a healthy church is way too much work if all you get out of it is the community benefits. Healthy churches:

* feed and clothe people

* take care of the abandoned people in society (foster kids, shut-ins, people with personality disorders, the homeless, people with immigration problems, addicts)

* talk people into apologizing to each other (yeah, like your mom and her sister after all these years)

* educate themselves about local issues (homelessness, drug use, poverty, etc.) with a mind towards helping somehow

* mentor and provide structure for prisoners and ex-prisoners

* are involved in global relief... they've been doing charity-water-style projects for millenia

* do all the normal boring stuff involved in maintaining and funding an organization with facilities

* do intense critical analysis (including studying dead languages) of the Bible and related resources

* provide educational opportunities to underpivileged children

* put on an 90-120 minute A/V production once a week

* provide huge amounts of child care services, including background checks, training, instilling best practices to ensure safety of children, etc.

* provide therapy for people that need it (techniques here vary a lot but every church does it somehow)

* provide mentoring and care for people entering new life stages (newlyweds, new couples, divorcees, recently widowed, etc.)

That is to say it only makes sense to explore if you are interested in God. If you aren't, consider looking for something else and good luck on your journey.

Yes, there are people (many of them) who just show up sometimes for the A/V portion of the weekend, but that's pretty much missing the point. Unsurprisingly, they tend to have a rougher time 'getting' the whole church thing.

Re: Alienation Is Killing Americans and Japanese

#162

Post by Bartweiss » Wed, Jun 01, 2016, 3:23 PM UTC

kernelbandwidth wrote: post #153

Bartweiss wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm honestly not searching, though, so even the Unitarians feel awkward. At least as I understand it, Unitarianism is still at least deistic. The most I could offer would be moral introspection and some meditation work, none of it in real connection to the supernatural. I'm not opposed to religion on principle, but I'm certainly not trying to find something to place my faith in. If anything, the best I can see aiming…

Same boat here. I've repeatedly thought about going to UU events, but they're still too New Age for me. I've long been somewhat envious of my Jewish friends for the strong community aspect of the culture, which requires too much religion in other, well, religions. Nothing else seems to really drive as much community though, as far as I've seen at least.

I feel like this is a surprisingly common response (especially since so many people in the tech world meet a lot of practicing-but-nonreligious Jews). I have a lot of respect for UU organizations, but I just don't feel like I fit in with it, and I haven't found a good substitute. Solstice parties and their ilk are A) too rare for community-building and B) sort of a pallid imitation of real organizations.

Hobby groups and community organizations offer a bit of this, but it seems like there's a fairly specific identity/culture gap that's not easily filled with anything else for non-Jewish atheists/agnostics.

Re: Alienation Is Killing Americans and Japanese

#163

Post by bargl » Wed, Jun 01, 2016, 3:24 PM UTC

shepardrtc wrote: post #146

bargl wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an Ex-Christian, I miss the "third place" but I do not miss the church. I don't know where to get that same idea for my kids but I also don't want them growing up with a belief in the doctrine I grew up with. I also have strong feelings about what religions my child is exposed to. I don't mind him being exposed to multiple religions, but there are certain religions I would consider secondary and don't want to be h…

When I was young, my parents brought me to church for a little while just for something to do. They believed, but they didn't really care, so it wasn't anything that was discussed in my household. Looking back on it, I only cared what they said, not anyone else, so I ignored all the church BS and just played or whatever. I think that if you bring your kids to church, they'll still look to you for what to believe (or…

This is also really good advice. Thanks, I might end up doing that. I have to work something out with my wife obviously. I grew up going to both the Mormon (dad) and Catholic (mom) churches. So my faith has always been an oddity. Especially after I became an adult and began questioning things.

Re: Alienation Is Killing Americans and Japanese

#164

Post by s_kilk » Wed, Jun 01, 2016, 3:26 PM UTC

kerkeslager wrote: post #70

brightball wrote: post #35

A big part of this that's unpopular to discuss in current culture is people actively avoiding going to a church. Whether you actually donate and believe everything that is said isn't really a factor in whether or not you can show up every week, meet other people in your community, participate in events, be there for each other at during the hard times in life, have fun activities for your kids where you can meet othe…

I'd love to see a public discussion on this. Intuitively, I think you could be right that church participation brings about happiness and reduces alienation, but it's hard to discuss in a complete void of data. I admit I didn't look very hard, but a quick search only yielded a Pew Research study which showed that weekly church attendance was correlated with happiness, but being in good health had a much stronger corr…

Related to your first bullet-point, but there are also those who can't/won't attend because they refuse to be associated with the goings-on of the larger Church institution.

For one example, as recently as 1996, the Catholic Church ran slave-labour camps in Ireland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalene_Laundries_in_Ireland

When these camps were eventually shut down, some within the Church defended them, claiming they had done nothing wrong but had instead provided a service by enslaving these women. Not something many sane people want to be associated with.

Re: Alienation Is Killing Americans and Japanese

#165

Post by humanrebar » Wed, Jun 01, 2016, 3:44 PM UTC

zellyn wrote: post #55

brightball wrote: post #35

A big part of this that's unpopular to discuss in current culture is people actively avoiding going to a church. Whether you actually donate and believe everything that is said isn't really a factor in whether or not you can show up every week, meet other people in your community, participate in events, be there for each other at during the hard times in life, have fun activities for your kids where you can meet othe…

It's so difficult to find a church that (a) values community, and (b) hasn't made some kind of big, public decision against LGBTQ people. And that doesn't preach guilt and condemnation in a thousand overt or subtle ways…

> It's so difficult to find a church that (a) values community, and (b) hasn't made some kind of big, public decision against LGBTQ people.

What's a 'big, public decision'? The Bible is very clear that there is such a thing as sexual immorality and that same-sex relationships qualify. I've heard arguments that a long series of translation errors means that certain kinds of same-sex relationships are fine, but even so, the Bible does say there is such a thing as sexual immorality. I haven't seen a church that is fine with homosexual acts that also has a coherent position on those passages of scripture.

The only coherent position that's possible is that the Bible is just a good book with a lot of good ideas, but I'm not sure how to organize a community around that principle.

Let's say I put my foot in my mouth and hurt someone's feelings and need to apologize. There is a Bible verse in which Jesus said that we need to prioritize reconciliation over religious habits. If I thought the Bible was just a pretty good list of suggestions, I could easily ignore that teaching because .

That is to say, I don't really how to remove scriptural authority and still have a clear understanding of who God is and what that means to us.

Re: Alienation Is Killing Americans and Japanese

#166

Post by Bartweiss » Wed, Jun 01, 2016, 3:49 PM UTC

sbardle wrote: post #92

There was a recent study into the male suicide rate in Northern Ireland. It has boomed since the end of the Troubles. Historically, war has given men a sense of belonging. But it's not a great trade-off. The church can in theory be a good place to build social cohesion, but in the UK it is mired in cultural politics, so many people choose to avoid it.

The premature death rate (drugs, alcohol, suicide) among white, midwestern women in the US is really interesting to me.

There are a lot of pretty convincing theories about male death rates and how they're tied to conflict, demonstrations of courage, and clear purpose. I'd never heard the Ireland result, but it doesn't shock me. Obviously some of this is gender-agnostic, like sense of community, but some of it doesn't seem to be; there's a reason that young, unemployed men are the largest risk factor for social instability.

Given all that, it's intriguing to see that what's going wrong in the American heartland is affecting women at least as strongly as men. A lot of the easy answers (unemployment, worsened employment, lack of education) are all things that have mostly changed to the detriment of men (they might be better or worse for women, but we care about recent change and that would imply declining results for men). So that drives me into suspicions that this isn't something we can handwave with "construction took a downturn" or "bad warehouse jobs" - there seems to be a broader anomie transcending those simple problems.

Re: Alienation Is Killing Americans and Japanese

#167

Post by s_kilk » Wed, Jun 01, 2016, 3:52 PM UTC

huxley wrote: post #76

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Churches are definitely a great community resource, but I imagine that many people (myself included) don't want to be preached something we don't believe in every week even if it means losing out on those community benefits. I wonder if something else could be established, or even if such a thing as "athiest/agnostic churches" could be organized.

You'll find that in some communities, the Universalist Unitarians or liberal/universalist/nontheist Quaker meetings might fit the need. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarian_Universalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quakers I've known several atheists/agnostics that go to both locally and the few times I've gone to either the meetings tend to be quite low in dogma. Not my thing, but if you crave that sort of commu…

Thumbs-up for mentioning the Quakers. I'm not a believer at all, but they're generally great people and super non-preachy.

Re: Alienation Is Killing Americans and Japanese

#168

Post by JoeAltmaier » Wed, Jun 01, 2016, 4:02 PM UTC

Bartweiss wrote: post #162

kernelbandwidth wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same boat here. I've repeatedly thought about going to UU events, but they're still too New Age for me. I've long been somewhat envious of my Jewish friends for the strong community aspect of the culture, which requires too much religion in other, well, religions. Nothing else seems to really drive as much community though, as far as I've seen at least.

I feel like this is a surprisingly common response (especially since so many people in the tech world meet a lot of practicing-but-nonreligious Jews). I have a lot of respect for UU organizations, but I just don't feel like I fit in with it, and I haven't found a good substitute. Solstice parties and their ilk are A) too rare for community-building and B) sort of a pallid imitation of real organizations. Hobby groups…

Funny thing about UU is, every congregation is different. I live in a college town; even the carpenters have a PhD. You meet all kinds at UU meetings.

But yeah the demographic of UU members is "High functioning non-contributors"

Re: Alienation Is Killing Americans and Japanese

#169

Post by xemdetia » Wed, Jun 01, 2016, 4:02 PM UTC

rebeccaskinner wrote: post #63

brightball wrote: post #35

A big part of this that's unpopular to discuss in current culture is people actively avoiding going to a church. Whether you actually donate and believe everything that is said isn't really a factor in whether or not you can show up every week, meet other people in your community, participate in events, be there for each other at during the hard times in life, have fun activities for your kids where you can meet othe…

I think in a lot of places churches have served as a defactor "third place" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place ) for communities. It seems like the decline in church attendance mirrors the decline in a lot of third place spaces. None of my grandparents ever attended church with any regularity, but I know that they were all involved in various social and community activities with the types of clubs that don't…

I feel the biggest hole in technical/small social groups vs. church groups is the lack of permanency. With most church organizations there is a built in way to bring fresh people in to associate with the church, and a dedicated place to meet that you can expect to be there with modest assumptions 10 years from now. A technical group is generally completely nomadic, they have to do a lot of work to bring people together. The glue that keeps them together is flimsy as well- a tech group is less likely to keep someone who makes a drastic change in occupation (IT to a brewer) compared to a church.

The major lack of easy association to the group is something that is hard to replicate in the nonsecular space. There is nothing strongly compelling about a group that's focus is too general, and the difficulty to bridge the gap from outsider to inclusion can be too high for a group that is interesting.

Re: Alienation Is Killing Americans and Japanese

#170

Post by ajkjk » Wed, Jun 01, 2016, 4:02 PM UTC

further_tech wrote: post #98

baron816 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not?

Well... that's an extremely arrogant question. Can a startup change the core of human nature? Can it change thousands of years of Philosophy? Can it change our socio-economic background? Can it change history? If you can, then... dear Lord... this is Apotheosis.

It's not arrogant at all. You said something that didn't make sense without substantiation. It's not arrogant to question you.