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As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen

theatlantic.com

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Re: As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen

#31

Post by briefcomment »

rogerkirkness wrote: post #23
briefcomment wrote: post #17

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've come to terms with this by denouncing morals and focusing on ethics.

I agree about morals. They're always relative, and can sometimes be fluid. Holding someone to a set of morals is usually pretty shortsighted.

What do you mean by ethics here?

The one thing I try to hold myself to is to maximize individual choice, even if I don't currently agree with some of the choices.

Re: As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen

#32

Post by wyager »

wturner wrote: post #3

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.

The “science” most people believe (more accurately called scientism) is an aspect of the state secular religion.

Re: As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen

#33

Post by vmception »

vitiral wrote: post #11
vmception wrote: post #6

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"…

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

Re: As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen

#35

Post by beaconstudios »

rogerkirkness wrote: post #22
wturner wrote: post #3

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 centers in our brain atrophy but remain active even if you denounce religion.

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.

Re: As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen

#36

Post by ukj »

Spooky23 wrote: post #20
ukj wrote: post #13

Well…yeah! Religion serves a function. Even if that function is psychological. When you take religion away, something else will fill the utility-gap. Silly humans failing to grasp the purpose of stories/narratives. Edit for the downvoters (who clearly don’t understand): the question “Why do science and philosophy matter?” has only religious/ideological answers.

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.

We are social animals. A religion is what scientists call a “paradigm”.

The socially acceptable ideas/paradigms of today are the religions of next century.

Hegel was right.

Re: As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen

#39

Post by jakelazaroff »

Causality1 wrote: post #26

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.

Re: As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen

#40

Post by ardit33 »

rejectedandsad wrote: post #30
bwb wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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