7 ms·

A lack of shared philosophy means there's no open, shared spaces. Like tonight, I'm going to a Knights of Columbus meeting. On Thursday, we're leading marriage

A lack of shared philosophy means there's no open, shared spaces. Like tonight, I'm going to a Knights of Columbus meeting. On Thursday, we're leading marriage prep at our church. On Monday, it's my men's club meeting. Later in the month, we're having a church BBQ. Most of the time, we're over socialized. For the elderly, we have a shut-ins ministry to visit them. For the poor, the Vincent de Paul society still goes two-by-two to all those who have asked. We've gotten rid of churches, replaced them with nothing particularly inspiring, and now we're wondering where all the social cohesion went. EDIT: I will point out that I'm not restricting myself only to churches here. I think, in the past, America also had this characteristic -- anyone who believed in American ideals and sought to further them was an American. De Tocqueville mentioned this quality of Americans (every American is a president) in his various writings on American social structure. Unfortunately with the rise of identity politics and ethnic factionalism, we've lost this notion of 'America as an idea', as is seen in the reluctance of people to serve on juries, for example.

CalRobert 7y ago
I really miss church. Having a day where you knew you'd meet up with friendly people, have a potluck after, and maybe head to the beach, go for a hike, etc. was really nice. It's a shame I was a fraud since I never truly believed, and eventually stopped pretending. I haven't found anything to fill that part of my life since.
- karmelapple 7y ago
  How about volunteer with a group advocating for something you deeply support? Or how about Universal Unitarians?
- 01100011 7y ago
  Atheism will always struggle to grow its ranks until it replaces the necessary features provided by religion. I'm an atheist/agnostic who spent a few years in a very cult-like christian denomination. I can say a lot of bad things about it, but it did help me to become more social and taught me a lot about the benefits of shared beliefs. Having a network of people to call on in times of need is priceless. Regular socialization and group participation helped me graduate from being an anti-social outcast. You can form groups around hobbies and activities, but the bonds just aren't strong enough to overcome our natural tendencies to judge others or take offense at the slightest indiscretions. I think a lot of people like me end up Unitarian Universalists just so they can gain some semblance of a community again.
  - enraged_camel 7y ago
    >>Atheism will always struggle to grow its ranks until it replaces the necessary features provided by religion Strange claim, and wrong as well, since number of atheists/agnostics has been increasing steadily for a long time now, as fewer and fewer people identify as members of a particular religion.
    - irrational 7y ago
      What does that have to do with finding a replacement for the community aspects of churches?
    - 01100011 7y ago
      > since number of atheists/agnostics has been increasing steadily for a long time now, Worldwide or in the west? Is the number increasing as a percentage of world population, or are we only growing near the population growth rate? If we produce a bunch of aimless atheists, we may find ourselves outbred by cultures and belief systems which find ways to encourage their adherents to procreate.
  - fjsolwmv 7y ago
    Unitarian Universalisy is exactly the church for atheists who see the value in the non religious parts of church. The problem is most people don't understand the value of this, so most people won't get it unless they are driven to it by religion, and religious people tend to not notice that religion isn't the main reason the good parts of church are good. Religion is to church like the stone is to stone soup, including the part where dirt on the stone can mess up the soup.
    - tathougies 7y ago
      > religious people tend to not notice that religion isn't the main reason the good parts of church are good. I strongly disagree with this statement. While I am quite involved in my church now, and think that's great. A belief in God (independent of a congregation, and at times, in spite of the congregation) has kept me sane at the worst points in my life. I get that you do not see the value in this -- that is your right of course. However, please do not project your feelings on religious people.
- nervousvarun 7y ago
  Assuming you're in America, I recommend Habitat for Humanity. You're giving a family a home and the equity in that home that can legitimately change their lives for the better. Plus you learn useful skills (home repair is always good to know), it's decent exercise, and it's HIGHLY social as well.
  - maxerickson 7y ago
    Do note that Habitat is fundamentally Christian: https://www.habitat.org/about/mission-and-vision https://www.habitat.org/about/mission-and-vision
    - nervousvarun 7y ago
      Had no idea. Honestly I've done volunteer work for them for years now and never heard this brought up in any way. Definitely not forced on you and not any sort of requirement to join/volunteer.
      - maxerickson 7y ago
        Yeah, the bottom of the page there also says they don't proselytize.
- fenwick67 7y ago
  Yeah I lived that life for a while too, I was even in the church band for a bit, after I admitted atheism to myself. I loved church, except the whole god part.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  Check out https://www.sundayassembly.com/ https://www.sundayassembly.com/
yingw787 7y ago
I find that true too. Friends from mutual interest oftentimes are friends of convenience. You don't know them for their intrinsic value, you only know them by what they bring to the table. And it sucks.
- hikarudo 7y ago
  "If friendship has a basis it is this: that a person may desire the company of someone for whom he has no specific purpose" - Roger Scruton
chapium 7y ago
Refitting our libraries to be more like community centers would help. Having visited a few libraries abroad, I think ghis is whats missing in the US.
- fjsolwmv 7y ago
  This is happening a lot across the US, but should happen more. And doing so doesn't put the books part at risk, as some fear; and it might turn people on to books by proximity.
- tathougies 7y ago
  I don't think this helps. It's not just having a space to meet. It's having a reason to meet. Without the unifying force of religion or another philosophy, we invariably devolve into family-based group identity, which is another word for ethnonationalism or identity politics.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - bilbo0s 7y ago
    >which is another word for ethnonationalism or identity politics... To be fair, so is "religion" in practice.
    - tathougies 7y ago
      Identity politics, perhaps. Ethnonationalism, I don't think is an inherent part of it, as is seen in the universal audience of certain major religions, like Islam and Christianity
  - jtmcmc 7y ago
    the obvious counter example to this is people who meetup and create subcultures - the array of which are vast.
flukus 7y ago
> A lack of shared philosophy means there's no open, shared spaces. Like tonight, I'm going to a Knights of Columbus meeting. On Thursday, we're leading marriage prep at our church. On Monday, it's my men's club meeting. Later in the month, we're having a church BBQ. Most of the time, we're over socialized. Church is not only open shared space, my equivalent is the local sports club for instance. There are many optional activities through the week, lawn bowls Saturday Afternoon and Tuesday night, Cricket Saturday afternoon, pool Wednesday night, darts Thursday night, the parents from the next door school meet there (often with teachers) on Friday afternoon when thye pick the kids up and the bar is open everyday. On any given day you can find children running around to people in their 90's and everyone from the wealthiest few percent of society to the destitute. The lack of shared philosophy is a good thing, it exposes you to a much broader range of society. Places like this might be a lot rarer than they should be, but that is not an intractable problem, I've seen similar communities develop from as little as a bit of land granted by the local government and a shed. There are still some things groups like this could learn from some churches though, as things get increasingly legalistic the answer to personal infractions is to throw them out, we need to be more community oriented and forgiving for instance.
- tathougies 7y ago
  No no no. Your examples of sports clubs are exactly antithetical to the kinds of shared spaces I described. My point was that you need shared space based on a shared philosophy (or metaphysics or religion). Interest-based groups are nice, but they do not foster the kinds of connectedness that are fostered in religious-like groups. For example, my brother and I share little interests in common. However, we would trust each other with our children. On the other hand, I would not trust my programming language community friends with my kids. Why not? Because my relationship with my brother is based on a shared philosophy of what's important in life (given to us by our parents of course), whereas my relationship with the PL community is based on simple shared interests. For all I know, my PL friends could all be nazis. That's the problem with interest-based clubs -- without an underlying worldview, they cannot foster the kind of intimate social experiences fostered in church. I mean, I would trust many of my church friends with taking care of our children, despite having absolutely no shared interests in common. That's really different to how I view my friends with shared interests, who -- although I may spend more time with -- I don't trust at that intimate level.
azhu 7y ago
> Unfortunately with the rise of identity politics and ethnic factionalism, we've lost this notion of 'America as an idea' I hate to open from this angle, but does your ethnicity happen to be the dominant one in this country? If it’s not, I’m not sure how you’re not seeing how ethnic factionalism is a step towards the realization of the idea of America that you purport it to have murdered. The American idea is unimpeded opportunity. Any individual’s definition of unimpeded opportunity depends on their culture. Friction between cultures creates a perception of impeded opportunity. The truth is that what is perceived as lost by one is gained many times over by every other.
- tathougies 7y ago
  I am conspicuously non white; not that that actually matters (yet another way in which ethno nationalism has become entrenched -- you have to justify your own beliefs with skin color!). And yes, your inability to fathom that a non white guy may perceive ethnic tension to be higher now just shows how disconnected the races are. I dont believe that theres any value in having several distinct cultures in one nation. For one, i think some cultures are better than others. American values are frankly superior to most other cultures. We should feel free to share aesthetics (which is what most mean by multiculturalism), but I dont see the value in being forced to adopt other philosophies or moralities (which is what has been forced down our throats as multiculturalism). For example, we can decide chow mein tastes nice and bhangra dancing is fun, but we cant let that influence our fundamental conception of freedom, which is ultimately firmly rooted in a Greco-roman value system via Puritanism.
scarejunba 7y ago
That's a space Cafés Philosophiques fill in secular society in some places, but I don't want to go to one in America. It'll probably be full of weirdos. "Third places" like this need to be absent of tension. Anyway, I fixed that by having a key set of friends who always hang out, usually at a specific friend's home. We play board games guaranteed every two weeks, are on a shared Slack instance, and hang out practically every week. Feels good. Back in the UK, it was the pub. Same folks at the pub. You can count on them for help. Quite a family.
chepaslaaa 7y ago
Tocqueville wrote that shit about every american being a president at a time when slavery was in full swing. He had the rose tinted googles of a french noble. You have rose tinted googles if you think ethnic factionalism has gotten worst.
- tathougies 7y ago
  > You have rose tinted googles if you think ethnic factionalism has gotten worst. Nah... as a brown guy, I've seen America go from 'you can be American too' to 'you shouldn't even try' (from the left because it's immoral to want to be 'American' and from the right because it's impossible). I think it's worse. > slavery was in full swing. Despite the inhumanity of it, one point of slavery was to convert the perceived-to-be uncivilized slaves to 'civilization'. The means were immoral, but the intent proves my point.
  - mwfunk 7y ago
    I’m not so sure that looking on the bright side of slavery proves any points here. Any “civilizing” that was done would have been for the purpose of making them better slaves. Over the last 48 years I’ve lived in crime- and poverty-ridden neighborhoods in Detroit, various places in the South with widely varying degrees of Deepness, and various parts of California. It’s very hard for me to say how things have changed across all of those years and places, but I absolutely think that in the aggregate, successive generations have become less racist, and that in turn can sometimes have a civilizing effect on older generations. And of course, as people get older, some of them grow up instead of just doubling down on old fears and hatreds. One thing that has changed in recent years are people who were super racist all along feeling like they can start saying the quiet parts out loud again. As one example, I don’t see White Nationalist types as being a new phenomena at all, but rather people who’ve been emboldened by politicians who tell them what they want to hear. In that sense I agree with you that things have gotten worse, but I don’t see that as more people being more racist. Rather it’s (ironically) a minority of Americans feeling like they can come out of the woodwork and be as openly shitty to other people as they always wished they could be. Hopefully in the long term this will result in this now-exposed slimy underbelly of America shriveling in the light of day when they realize they’re much more on the fringe than they thought. Hopefully. And hopefully that happens quickly enough not to do lasting damage to race relations. If not, America may be beyond recovery, as it would sadly deserve to be. No amount of history or accumulated political philosophy or national ideals or traditions can help a nation survive a population that collectively decides it would rather have a Putin or a Bolsonaro than a Washington or a Lincoln. Time will tell.
dv_dt 7y ago
I don't know if the reluctance of people to serve on juries is really an example of reluctance to serve, or an example of reduced wages & benefits given to workers, and a reluctance to serve with a financial hardship. All sorts of social gatherings, including civic life is affected by the tightening of finances and leisure.
- tathougies 7y ago
  You may be right. That is an angle I didn't really explore in my comment. Again though, I think having organizations, such as churches, which are (hopefully) continuously pointing out that money isn't the end-all-be-all of life does help and are willing to offer financial 'aid' to its members (in quotes, because this aid is often not explicitly financial in nature, such as offers of free day care).
bilbo0s 7y ago
>Unfortunately with the rise of identity politics and ethnic factionalism... Are you aware of what de Tocqueville, thought of Native Americans and Blacks? Even from de Tocqueville's brief time here, he could see the ethnic factionalism. If you're uncertain he saw the US in terms of ethnic factions, reread chapter 18 of his Democracy in America. Ethnic factionalism was central to the US. (It is this ethnic factionalism that, historically, holds us back actually.) Now, I might concede that Identity Politics may be new. (Only in the sense that we certainly had no LGBTQ etc political movements here in the 19th century for instance.) But to suggest that ethnic factionalism in the US is new is just to ignore the history of the United States.
- derp_dee_derp 7y ago
  ah yes, the "we can't listen to any ideas from anyone born before the year 2000 because they were racist" argument. we're all done here, ladies and gentlemen. De Tocqueville's ideas are hereby tainted and therefor void. guess we should drop that whole pythagorous theorum while we're at it too, considering Pythagorous' personal beliefs. Also Newton was super racist, so gravity is out. Also every one turn off your lights and your phone because we can't use electricity because of how racist Ben Franklin was.
  - scarejunba 7y ago
    I think he's just arguing that the factionalism has been around for a while; that the "rise of ... ethnic factionalism" isn't a new thing. He obviously considers de Tocqueville a reputable source on the issue so he's not undermining him here. I think your criticism is misdirected.
  - bilbo0s 7y ago
    >"we can't listen to any ideas from anyone born before the year 2000 because they were racist"... Woah, woah, woah. Where did you get that? No one cares whether de Tocqueville was racist or not. The material point of the post is that ethnic factionalism did not rise in the US in the past few decades, it's been with us from the beginning. De Tocqueville was simply a convenient stylistic means of illustrating this fact, as the original poster implicitly relied on the authority of de Tocqueville in his assertion that ethnic factionalism is new to the US. You're jumping to a conclusion that no one made man.
jtmcmc 7y ago
wow you managed to work in a vaguely racist patronizing attack in your pro church post bemoaning the lack of upstanding morality in america. It's no wonder one of the richest organizations in the world is able to fund plenty of third places for its members. As it stands you can derive community along any number of axes while even celebrating diversity. The issue isn't there are no potentialities for community but rather that there are few spaces available and little time for most people who struggle to make ends meet.
- watwut 7y ago
  Where do you see racist patronizing attack?
- tathougies 7y ago
  > As it stands you can derive community along any number of axes while even celebrating diversity. Hmm... the Catholic church celebrates diversity, so I'm not sure what you're on about.
  - jtmcmc 7y ago
    You literally bemoan identity politics. The catholic church certainly does not celebrate all kinds of diversity ;)
watwut 7y ago
> Unfortunately with the rise of identity politics and ethnic factionalism, we've lost this notion of 'America as an idea' Yeah, there is more ethnic factionalism and identity politics then at the time of ku-klux-klan or reconstruction or Jim Crow ... I get your point, but the races were divided before now.

CalRobert 7y ago

I really miss church. Having a day where you knew you'd meet up with friendly people, have a potluck after, and maybe head to the beach, go for a hike, etc. was really nice. It's a shame I was a fraud since I never truly believed, and eventually stopped pretending. I haven't found anything to fill that part of my life since.

karmelapple 7y ago
How about volunteer with a group advocating for something you deeply support? Or how about Universal Unitarians?
01100011 7y ago
Atheism will always struggle to grow its ranks until it replaces the necessary features provided by religion. I'm an atheist/agnostic who spent a few years in a very cult-like christian denomination. I can say a lot of bad things about it, but it did help me to become more social and taught me a lot about the benefits of shared beliefs. Having a network of people to call on in times of need is priceless. Regular socialization and group participation helped me graduate from being an anti-social outcast. You can form groups around hobbies and activities, but the bonds just aren't strong enough to overcome our natural tendencies to judge others or take offense at the slightest indiscretions. I think a lot of people like me end up Unitarian Universalists just so they can gain some semblance of a community again.
- enraged_camel 7y ago
  >>Atheism will always struggle to grow its ranks until it replaces the necessary features provided by religion Strange claim, and wrong as well, since number of atheists/agnostics has been increasing steadily for a long time now, as fewer and fewer people identify as members of a particular religion.
  - irrational 7y ago
    What does that have to do with finding a replacement for the community aspects of churches?
  - 01100011 7y ago
    > since number of atheists/agnostics has been increasing steadily for a long time now, Worldwide or in the west? Is the number increasing as a percentage of world population, or are we only growing near the population growth rate? If we produce a bunch of aimless atheists, we may find ourselves outbred by cultures and belief systems which find ways to encourage their adherents to procreate.
- fjsolwmv 7y ago
  Unitarian Universalisy is exactly the church for atheists who see the value in the non religious parts of church. The problem is most people don't understand the value of this, so most people won't get it unless they are driven to it by religion, and religious people tend to not notice that religion isn't the main reason the good parts of church are good. Religion is to church like the stone is to stone soup, including the part where dirt on the stone can mess up the soup.
  - tathougies 7y ago
    > religious people tend to not notice that religion isn't the main reason the good parts of church are good. I strongly disagree with this statement. While I am quite involved in my church now, and think that's great. A belief in God (independent of a congregation, and at times, in spite of the congregation) has kept me sane at the worst points in my life. I get that you do not see the value in this -- that is your right of course. However, please do not project your feelings on religious people.
nervousvarun 7y ago
Assuming you're in America, I recommend Habitat for Humanity. You're giving a family a home and the equity in that home that can legitimately change their lives for the better. Plus you learn useful skills (home repair is always good to know), it's decent exercise, and it's HIGHLY social as well.
- maxerickson 7y ago
  Do note that Habitat is fundamentally Christian: https://www.habitat.org/about/mission-and-vision https://www.habitat.org/about/mission-and-vision
  - nervousvarun 7y ago
    Had no idea. Honestly I've done volunteer work for them for years now and never heard this brought up in any way. Definitely not forced on you and not any sort of requirement to join/volunteer.
    - maxerickson 7y ago
      Yeah, the bottom of the page there also says they don't proselytize.
fenwick67 7y ago
Yeah I lived that life for a while too, I was even in the church band for a bit, after I admitted atheism to myself. I loved church, except the whole god part.
toomuchtodo 7y ago
Check out https://www.sundayassembly.com/ https://www.sundayassembly.com/

yingw787 7y ago

I find that true too. Friends from mutual interest oftentimes are friends of convenience. You don't know them for their intrinsic value, you only know them by what they bring to the table. And it sucks.

hikarudo 7y ago
"If friendship has a basis it is this: that a person may desire the company of someone for whom he has no specific purpose" - Roger Scruton

chapium 7y ago

Refitting our libraries to be more like community centers would help. Having visited a few libraries abroad, I think ghis is whats missing in the US.

fjsolwmv 7y ago
This is happening a lot across the US, but should happen more. And doing so doesn't put the books part at risk, as some fear; and it might turn people on to books by proximity.
tathougies 7y ago
I don't think this helps. It's not just having a space to meet. It's having a reason to meet. Without the unifying force of religion or another philosophy, we invariably devolve into family-based group identity, which is another word for ethnonationalism or identity politics.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  >which is another word for ethnonationalism or identity politics... To be fair, so is "religion" in practice.
  - tathougies 7y ago
    Identity politics, perhaps. Ethnonationalism, I don't think is an inherent part of it, as is seen in the universal audience of certain major religions, like Islam and Christianity
- jtmcmc 7y ago
  the obvious counter example to this is people who meetup and create subcultures - the array of which are vast.

flukus 7y ago

> A lack of shared philosophy means there's no open, shared spaces. Like tonight, I'm going to a Knights of Columbus meeting. On Thursday, we're leading marriage prep at our church. On Monday, it's my men's club meeting. Later in the month, we're having a church BBQ. Most of the time, we're over socialized. Church is not only open shared space, my equivalent is the local sports club for instance. There are many optional activities through the week, lawn bowls Saturday Afternoon and Tuesday night, Cricket Saturday afternoon, pool Wednesday night, darts Thursday night, the parents from the next door school meet there (often with teachers) on Friday afternoon when thye pick the kids up and the bar is open everyday. On any given day you can find children running around to people in their 90's and everyone from the wealthiest few percent of society to the destitute. The lack of shared philosophy is a good thing, it exposes you to a much broader range of society. Places like this might be a lot rarer than they should be, but that is not an intractable problem, I've seen similar communities develop from as little as a bit of land granted by the local government and a shed. There are still some things groups like this could learn from some churches though, as things get increasingly legalistic the answer to personal infractions is to throw them out, we need to be more community oriented and forgiving for instance.

tathougies 7y ago
No no no. Your examples of sports clubs are exactly antithetical to the kinds of shared spaces I described. My point was that you need shared space based on a shared philosophy (or metaphysics or religion). Interest-based groups are nice, but they do not foster the kinds of connectedness that are fostered in religious-like groups. For example, my brother and I share little interests in common. However, we would trust each other with our children. On the other hand, I would not trust my programming language community friends with my kids. Why not? Because my relationship with my brother is based on a shared philosophy of what's important in life (given to us by our parents of course), whereas my relationship with the PL community is based on simple shared interests. For all I know, my PL friends could all be nazis. That's the problem with interest-based clubs -- without an underlying worldview, they cannot foster the kind of intimate social experiences fostered in church. I mean, I would trust many of my church friends with taking care of our children, despite having absolutely no shared interests in common. That's really different to how I view my friends with shared interests, who -- although I may spend more time with -- I don't trust at that intimate level.

azhu 7y ago

> Unfortunately with the rise of identity politics and ethnic factionalism, we've lost this notion of 'America as an idea' I hate to open from this angle, but does your ethnicity happen to be the dominant one in this country? If it’s not, I’m not sure how you’re not seeing how ethnic factionalism is a step towards the realization of the idea of America that you purport it to have murdered. The American idea is unimpeded opportunity. Any individual’s definition of unimpeded opportunity depends on their culture. Friction between cultures creates a perception of impeded opportunity. The truth is that what is perceived as lost by one is gained many times over by every other.

tathougies 7y ago
I am conspicuously non white; not that that actually matters (yet another way in which ethno nationalism has become entrenched -- you have to justify your own beliefs with skin color!). And yes, your inability to fathom that a non white guy may perceive ethnic tension to be higher now just shows how disconnected the races are. I dont believe that theres any value in having several distinct cultures in one nation. For one, i think some cultures are better than others. American values are frankly superior to most other cultures. We should feel free to share aesthetics (which is what most mean by multiculturalism), but I dont see the value in being forced to adopt other philosophies or moralities (which is what has been forced down our throats as multiculturalism). For example, we can decide chow mein tastes nice and bhangra dancing is fun, but we cant let that influence our fundamental conception of freedom, which is ultimately firmly rooted in a Greco-roman value system via Puritanism.

scarejunba 7y ago

That's a space Cafés Philosophiques fill in secular society in some places, but I don't want to go to one in America. It'll probably be full of weirdos. "Third places" like this need to be absent of tension. Anyway, I fixed that by having a key set of friends who always hang out, usually at a specific friend's home. We play board games guaranteed every two weeks, are on a shared Slack instance, and hang out practically every week. Feels good. Back in the UK, it was the pub. Same folks at the pub. You can count on them for help. Quite a family.

chepaslaaa 7y ago

Tocqueville wrote that shit about every american being a president at a time when slavery was in full swing. He had the rose tinted googles of a french noble. You have rose tinted googles if you think ethnic factionalism has gotten worst.

tathougies 7y ago
> You have rose tinted googles if you think ethnic factionalism has gotten worst. Nah... as a brown guy, I've seen America go from 'you can be American too' to 'you shouldn't even try' (from the left because it's immoral to want to be 'American' and from the right because it's impossible). I think it's worse. > slavery was in full swing. Despite the inhumanity of it, one point of slavery was to convert the perceived-to-be uncivilized slaves to 'civilization'. The means were immoral, but the intent proves my point.
- mwfunk 7y ago
  I’m not so sure that looking on the bright side of slavery proves any points here. Any “civilizing” that was done would have been for the purpose of making them better slaves. Over the last 48 years I’ve lived in crime- and poverty-ridden neighborhoods in Detroit, various places in the South with widely varying degrees of Deepness, and various parts of California. It’s very hard for me to say how things have changed across all of those years and places, but I absolutely think that in the aggregate, successive generations have become less racist, and that in turn can sometimes have a civilizing effect on older generations. And of course, as people get older, some of them grow up instead of just doubling down on old fears and hatreds. One thing that has changed in recent years are people who were super racist all along feeling like they can start saying the quiet parts out loud again. As one example, I don’t see White Nationalist types as being a new phenomena at all, but rather people who’ve been emboldened by politicians who tell them what they want to hear. In that sense I agree with you that things have gotten worse, but I don’t see that as more people being more racist. Rather it’s (ironically) a minority of Americans feeling like they can come out of the woodwork and be as openly shitty to other people as they always wished they could be. Hopefully in the long term this will result in this now-exposed slimy underbelly of America shriveling in the light of day when they realize they’re much more on the fringe than they thought. Hopefully. And hopefully that happens quickly enough not to do lasting damage to race relations. If not, America may be beyond recovery, as it would sadly deserve to be. No amount of history or accumulated political philosophy or national ideals or traditions can help a nation survive a population that collectively decides it would rather have a Putin or a Bolsonaro than a Washington or a Lincoln. Time will tell.

dv_dt 7y ago

I don't know if the reluctance of people to serve on juries is really an example of reluctance to serve, or an example of reduced wages & benefits given to workers, and a reluctance to serve with a financial hardship. All sorts of social gatherings, including civic life is affected by the tightening of finances and leisure.

tathougies 7y ago
You may be right. That is an angle I didn't really explore in my comment. Again though, I think having organizations, such as churches, which are (hopefully) continuously pointing out that money isn't the end-all-be-all of life does help and are willing to offer financial 'aid' to its members (in quotes, because this aid is often not explicitly financial in nature, such as offers of free day care).

bilbo0s 7y ago

>Unfortunately with the rise of identity politics and ethnic factionalism... Are you aware of what de Tocqueville, thought of Native Americans and Blacks? Even from de Tocqueville's brief time here, he could see the ethnic factionalism. If you're uncertain he saw the US in terms of ethnic factions, reread chapter 18 of his Democracy in America. Ethnic factionalism was central to the US. (It is this ethnic factionalism that, historically, holds us back actually.) Now, I might concede that Identity Politics may be new. (Only in the sense that we certainly had no LGBTQ etc political movements here in the 19th century for instance.) But to suggest that ethnic factionalism in the US is new is just to ignore the history of the United States.

derp_dee_derp 7y ago
ah yes, the "we can't listen to any ideas from anyone born before the year 2000 because they were racist" argument. we're all done here, ladies and gentlemen. De Tocqueville's ideas are hereby tainted and therefor void. guess we should drop that whole pythagorous theorum while we're at it too, considering Pythagorous' personal beliefs. Also Newton was super racist, so gravity is out. Also every one turn off your lights and your phone because we can't use electricity because of how racist Ben Franklin was.
- scarejunba 7y ago
  I think he's just arguing that the factionalism has been around for a while; that the "rise of ... ethnic factionalism" isn't a new thing. He obviously considers de Tocqueville a reputable source on the issue so he's not undermining him here. I think your criticism is misdirected.
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  >"we can't listen to any ideas from anyone born before the year 2000 because they were racist"... Woah, woah, woah. Where did you get that? No one cares whether de Tocqueville was racist or not. The material point of the post is that ethnic factionalism did not rise in the US in the past few decades, it's been with us from the beginning. De Tocqueville was simply a convenient stylistic means of illustrating this fact, as the original poster implicitly relied on the authority of de Tocqueville in his assertion that ethnic factionalism is new to the US. You're jumping to a conclusion that no one made man.

jtmcmc 7y ago

wow you managed to work in a vaguely racist patronizing attack in your pro church post bemoaning the lack of upstanding morality in america. It's no wonder one of the richest organizations in the world is able to fund plenty of third places for its members. As it stands you can derive community along any number of axes while even celebrating diversity. The issue isn't there are no potentialities for community but rather that there are few spaces available and little time for most people who struggle to make ends meet.

watwut 7y ago
Where do you see racist patronizing attack?
tathougies 7y ago
> As it stands you can derive community along any number of axes while even celebrating diversity. Hmm... the Catholic church celebrates diversity, so I'm not sure what you're on about.
- jtmcmc 7y ago
  You literally bemoan identity politics. The catholic church certainly does not celebrate all kinds of diversity ;)

watwut 7y ago

> Unfortunately with the rise of identity politics and ethnic factionalism, we've lost this notion of 'America as an idea' Yeah, there is more ethnic factionalism and identity politics then at the time of ku-klux-klan or reconstruction or Jim Crow ... I get your point, but the races were divided before now.