How scrolling becomes a religious act
etymology.substack.com
How scrolling becomes a religious act
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Re: How scrolling becomes a religious act
#2> ...I don’t think religion is an inherently bad thing either.
Agree to disagree. Regardless I don't think their points are about religion. It seems like they're just complaining about memic and ritualistic behavior that happens on phones. Using the religion label feels more meant for click bait than as a fitting metaphor.
Re: How scrolling becomes a religious act
#3Anthropic is releasing blog articles where they are discovering how Claude works through experiments and observations. It seems more like science than engineering when even the creators have to run scientific experiments to figure out how what they engineered works.
https://www.anthropic.com/research/tracing-thoughts-language...
Re: How scrolling becomes a religious act
#4Tribes - and jockeying for position within them - is as old as humanity itself.
I often wonder whether the earliest religious leaders (think Egyptian pharaoh era), knew what they were doing, and figured that telling people why tombs needed to be built was much better than building them, so they got to the right side of the table.
Today, I wonder if that's what is really going on with business leaders: they know it's all crap, but if they say that, there is a risk they're going back to the open plan office with the rest of the schmucks.
Re: How scrolling becomes a religious act
#5If personifying something means we worship it in a religious context then people have been worshipping our mode of transportation since the dawn of time, plus slot machines and a whole host of other things.
Re: How scrolling becomes a religious act
#6I really dislike these posts that are clearly written by someone unfamiliar with religion as a topic, and just use “worship” or “religion” as synonyms for “being obsessed with something to an irrational degree.” That isn’t an accurate description of the concept of religion, nor is it a synonym of irrational. Religion is probably one of the most complex yet misunderstood areas of study today.
Phones are no more worshipped in a religious sense than printed Bibles were worshipped in Gutenberg’s era. They are technological vectors for idea transfer that facilitate ideologies/worldviews/religions, not those things themselves. Being distracted by your phone doesn’t come with an entire metaphysical picture about the nature of life and death, proper social roles, or most of the other things religious systems typically come with.
Also - Durkheim is name dropped here, with the incorrect tense (he doesn’t argue, he argued, as he’s been dead for a long time.)
Re: How scrolling becomes a religious act
#7> Participating in group trends is fun—and essential to being human. It’s just important to remember exactly what we’re doing, and how our need for belonging can be manipulated by bad actors. Only then can we retain our individuality and understanding of what’s happening.
Ah; this looks relevant to a topic I met through Kegan's model of adult development. Apparently around 66% [0] of the population doesn't think in a way where "retaining [their] individuality" is even seen as possible, let alone desirable. They'd probably equate it to teenage impulsiveness.
It explains a lot of politics, practical dealings and provides a very neat model for understanding what religions are actually doing. This sort of call to action from the article is fundamentally misguided as general advice because it misses that people are socially designed to just follow that crowd in a way that can be quite astonishing. Their strategy is, nearly explicitly, to be manipulated by whatever actors rise to the top of the heap. Good, bad or other, they won't (in a practical sense can't) judge.
[0] https://brucesreflections.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Keg...
Re: How scrolling becomes a religious act
#8I really dislike these posts that are clearly written by someone unfamiliar with religion as a topic, and just use “worship” or “religion” as synonyms for “being obsessed with something to an irrational degree.” That isn’t an accurate description of the concept of religion, nor is it a synonym of irrational. Religion is probably one of the most complex yet misunderstood areas of study today. Phones are no more worshi…
You are trying to fight how people use words and you won’t be successful. Phrases like “religious fervor” and “religiously ” etc. are in common usage and refer to things outside of religion.
Phones are worshipped in the sense that many people are lost or will panic if they had to do without them for an extended period of time. Using worshipped evokes an image that is apt.
Re: How scrolling becomes a religious act
#9[deleted]
Re: How scrolling becomes a religious act
#10I really dislike these posts that are clearly written by someone unfamiliar with religion as a topic, and just use “worship” or “religion” as synonyms for “being obsessed with something to an irrational degree.” That isn’t an accurate description of the concept of religion, nor is it a synonym of irrational. Religion is probably one of the most complex yet misunderstood areas of study today. Phones are no more worshi…
You are trying to fight how people use words and you won’t be successful. Phrases like “religious fervor” and “religiously ” etc. are in common usage and refer to things outside of religion. Phones are worshipped in the sense that many people are lost or will panic if they had to do without them for an extended period of time. Using worshipped evokes an image that is apt.
I’m just calling out sloppy thinking and sloppy word choice.
And beyond that, the author explicitly made the reference to religion as a concept and to religious sociology by bringing up Durkheim. He made the analogy to actual religion.