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Not to be overly melodramatic or sardonic but life is damaging to mental health, urban, rural, or otherwise. And not just modern life, but rather it is, I belie
by zaroth 7y ago
Not to be overly melodramatic or sardonic but life is damaging to mental health, urban, rural, or otherwise. And not just modern life, but rather it is, I believe, our human condition.
Too many of the people I meet are ground down, sliding by, holding on, grappling with their identity and place in the world, somewhere on the scale of mildly scarred to full blown post traumatic, anxiety ridden, and/or profoundly lost.
Religion has abjectly failed humanity as a primary means for grappling with and managing the crushing gears of life. The idea that our non-denominational “community” is supposed to fill in the gap is laughable. The dream that the Internet would somehow fill that role at scale has proven in many cases to do just the opposite.
It’s not that humanity is lost or without hope, but we destroy ourselves (and our planet) in the way we live, and I doubt strongly that our genetic predisposition / survival instincts will ever allow us to reach any form of widespread enlightenment.
- z9e 7y agoI agree with most of this, but I think your observation on religion is exaggerated. It's a very personal thing and I think it still helps a lot of people cope, regardless of how un-cool it is these days.
- zaroth 7y agoIn the big picture, with amount of killing that has been done in the name of religion over millennia, I just find it hard to reconcile.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y agoIn terms of body count, more people have been killed in the name of science than in the name of religion.
- zaroth 7y agoWe kill with science, do we kill in the name of science? But even so, that doesn’t make all the killing in the name of religion less bad.
- xkcd-sucks 7y agoIf killing is justified by an evidence-based predictive model, it's probably killing in the name of science. This would include the Vietnam war ("Domino theory"), the atomic bombings of Japan ("it will be less costly than invading"), and anti terrorist drone bombing ("they fit our proven terrorist heuristic")
- frankling_ 7y agoI don't follow that line of reasoning at all. "Killing in the name of religion" would be to protect or spread some sort of metaphysical belief. The equivalent would be something like going to war with another country to build universities there.
- acct1771 7y agoCheck out this little country called Afghanistan. Although, not sure if any Universities specifically have been built there by the West, yet.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- frankling_ 7y agoJust as an exercise, it would be beneficial for you to make your argument explicit. You would notice that it falls apart/there is none.
- acct1771 7y agoWe (USA) do go and destroy places and institutions/governments and rebuild as benefits us, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r... or https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/12/23/the-cia-says-russia-hacked-the-u-s-election-here-are-6-things-to-learn-from-cold-war-attempts-to-change-regimes/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/12/2....
- toomanybeersies 7y agoIf not religion, then something else. Whether it's ethnic violence, like the Rwandan genocide or the Balkans; political violence, like the Vietnam war or the Great Leap Forward in China (plus the Chinese civil war); for money, such as the Belgians in the Congo.
- scythe 7y ago"Non-religious" systems of value, be it capitalism, communism, democracy, nationalism or something else, also kill people. Really it's values that people kill for, and religions are a subset of values. But we can't live without any values!
- ccalf 7y ago> Too many of the people I meet are ground down, sliding by, holding on, grappling with their identity and place in the world, somewhere on the scale of mildly scarred to full blown post traumatic, anxiety ridden, and/or profoundly lost. How do you diagnose this? Is there a checklist of signs you look for? Do they eventually tell you, etc.? Just curious, because I don't get to meet than many people all the time, so I can't collect sociological samples and reach conclusions in the way you seem to be doing.