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.
As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen
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Re: As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen
#42isn't ideological intensity an euphemism for religious faith? or is that the joke
religio = piety
ideo = images / ideas
I think religious devotion is a subset of ideological intensity.
Re: As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen
#43>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 Ame…
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.
[1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/shane-patrick-boyle-died-a...
[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2021/06/the-...
Re: As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen
#44I 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.
'"Believe" in the science.'
Re: As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Evolution fits species to their environments in exactly the same sense (though not quite by the same mechanism) that gravity fits puddles to theirs.
Re: As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen
#46>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 Ame…
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.
It’s harder to move to Canada though.
Re: As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen
#47As predicted by Nietzsche. For a great modern explainer, check out Beyond Reason, by Jordan Peterson. Rule VI, abandon ideology covers this.
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.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transvaluation_of_values
[2]: https://philosophynow.org/issues/29/Nietzsche_and_Values
Re: As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Evolution fits species to their environments in exactly the same sense (though not quite by the same mechanism) that gravity fits puddles to theirs.
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.
Re: As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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.
Re: As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen
#50>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 Ame…
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 th…
> The US has evolved into a modern dystopia
> 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.