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The Righteousness Fix

160 points by johnwdefeo 5y ago

sharmin123 5y ago
g5095 5y ago
"Any Self-Righteous Anonymous groups out there?" - Yes, a close reading of the christian bible will tell you that's the indented function of the church. Unfortunately there's a propensity for the opposite.
- marginalia_nu 5y ago
  In early church history, there's an interesting period of basically pious showboating. > Well, I used limit myself to living in the desert and taking a vow of silence back when I first got into Christianity and still was attached to the flesh, but now I abstain from sex, sleep on gravel and wear a shirt made of hedgehog bristles too. Eventually it become obvious this wasn't piety at all, but pride. The first Nicene council even bans men who have performed self-castration from entering the clergy.
  - g5095 5y ago
    Right on, but as the OP suggests it's easy to be self-righteous against 2nd century pious showboating as well! The only solution (again see the article) is humility. The old saying 'There but for the grace of God go I' is apt in this case. Seeing ourselves in every 'bad actor' of any kind from the dude who cuts us off at the lights to genocidal dictators is the only way to avoid it.
jrochkind1 5y ago
This really touched me, thanks for posting.
automatic6131 5y ago
>But in the case of righteousness, such a belief is almost always mistaken. Most of us, whether we be timid or bold, liberal, conservative, or (especially) some version of radical, are prone to imbibing heady infusions of the stuff. Viewing ourselves as “good,” in fact we become grievously toxic, literally intoxicated. In this poisonous state of mind we are able to write off others — often literally billions of others — without hesitation or remorse, because they are “bad.” It’s on the news every day: people addicted to righteousness are wreaking havoc, at home and abroad. And as I view this madness, I feel myself swell up with — what? You guessed it — righteous indignation! As usual, addiction becomes a closed system, feeding on itself. Best paragraph. I was guilty also.
- ultramegachurch 5y ago
  I had the same reaction. I’m an endlessly skeptical and often cynical person. Whenever I see someone confidently believe they are “right”, I instinctively trust them less. This article made me realize this is just my own flavor of righteousness. That’s not to say righteousness is inherently bad. The only reason people make decisions is because they believe they’re right. I enjoyed this article but perhaps it’s overly reductive. I don’t know what we can do to cure righteousness, and maybe that premise itself is nonsensical.
  - bluetomcat 5y ago
    "Right" is relative to one's particular situation and social surroundings. One thing could be right for a remote-working individual living in a big city, and it could at the same be wrong for country dwellers. Different types of communities function in different ways.
  - JackFr 5y ago
    My take away is that all we can hope to do is our best, and recognize that we’re all trying to do our best. No one is the villain of their own narrative.
    - titanomachy 5y ago
11thEarlOfMar 5y ago
The big challenge: How to get 2 opposing, self-righteous groups to a place they can talk and learn the fallacies each holds of the other.
- krageon 5y ago
  Drop them all into the desert and wait for them to walk back to civilisation. Shared hardship forms good bonds.
- automatic6131 5y ago
  That's too hard. Let's just build an app where they can yell to each other about how bad the other group is. Billion dollar idea.
  - pjerem 5y ago
    Check Twitter
- giraffe_lady 5y ago
  I'm not sure that's the right question. It assumes both parties only hold the views they do out of ignorance or "fallacies" whatever that means here. That's not necessarily the case at all, often groups oppose each other out of a clear-eyed understanding of the incompatibility of their values. More understanding won't resolve that conflict.
  - sonicanatidae 5y ago
    This is the best and most accurate comment here. Sometimes, idiots are actually idiots.
  - ajmurmann 5y ago
    The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt makes this nicely clear. He claims that liberals mostly value fairness and harm avoidance. More conservatives in addition also value authority, ingroup and purity. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Righteous_Mind https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Righteous_Mind). To me this rings intuitively true and strongly validates your point. To me ingroup, authority and purity are at best suspect if not actively negative, so there seem to be natural limits to how much over can get on the same page without deep, small group discussion of every topic. Edit: typo "find" -> "rings"
bbunix 5y ago
Addicts aren't bad people trying to get good, they're sick people trying to get well.
cousin_it 5y ago
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  well you've certainly converted me!
- eightysixfour 5y ago
  > It goes hand in hand with wars for religious conversion, which also weren't a thing before Christ. This isn’t close to true. Look at the timeline: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_war > The moment memes switched over from religion to politics as primary content seems to have been the French Revolution, I can't think of a time before that when people killed each other over political ideals. Uh. What?
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - jrochkind1 5y ago
    > Uh. What? I'm not sure if it's true, but I see what they mean. A distinction between killing over power, and killing over ideas. I can see the attraction of the idea that killing over ideas is a modern phenomenon, although it's probably not entirely true (in either direction -- most wars over ideas are perhaps really about power anyway... but is couching it as a war over ideas a modern phenomenon? Probably still not entirely, but there might be something to it...)
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - cousin_it 5y ago
    That timeline lists very few "religious wars" before Christ, and I think none of them were fought for religious conversion. Mostly just for territory.
- bloak 5y ago
natureboy21 5y ago
"See we’re always doing that. We're always finding a way to be one up. And by the most incredibly subtle means. So you see when you see me and you say I realize I’m always doing that tell me how do I not do that. I say why do you want to know? I’ll be better that way...yeah but why do you want to be better. You see the reason you want to be better is the reason why you aren’t." -Alan Watts circa 1965 Prophetic words.
edmcnulty101 5y ago
Competition is great, differences of opinion are great. Differences of values are great! All of this keeps the marketplace of ideas healthy! The problems comes in when people start to develop a righteousness about their ideas and demonize the 'other' and try to force their ideas upon the 'other' because they believe they know better. That's why I think states rights in America are so great, because they allow places with different values to express those values. When the federal government begins to force values upon the country en masse problems begin.
- memling 5y ago
  > When the federal government begins to force values upon the country en masse problems begin. What is your opinion about the US Civil War? I'm curious about this because it is in part an abrogation of states' rights over a question of utmost moral importance. Are there some values that are so valuable that we should make them universal by any means necessary, including a war?
  - edmcnulty101 5y ago
    Slavery is one of those things that violates the fundamental principles of the declaration of Independence: all men are created equal, life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. So of course it should have been abolished and shame on the states that fought a war to preserve it. Even in the most limited federal government has fundamental requirements.
    - memling 5y ago
      > Even in the most limited federal government has fundamental requirements. I guess my question is more related to how you can tell the difference between a "valuable value" like "slavery is bad" and a less-valuable value, like "going to church is a public good and should be compulsory."[0] While one can use the Declaration as a discriminator, that it's starting a civil war of its own might give us pause (and it has some problematic language of its own[1]). [0] See, e.g., the constitution of the state of Massachusetts: https://archive.org/details/addressofconvent00unse/page/n19/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/addressofconvent00unse/page/n19/... It contains this clause which permits the people to actually force church attendance! (Earlier it specifies Protestant ministry rather than Catholic.) "the people of this Commonwealth have also a right to, and do, invest their legislature with authority to enjoin upon all the subjects an attendance upon the instructions of the public teachers aforesaid at stated times and seasons, if there be any on whose instructions they can conscientiously and conveniently attend." [1] For example, "[King George] [...] has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions."
rTX5CMRXIfFG 5y ago
So many people are receiving this article very positively but am I the only one here who’s struggling to understand it? Why do the comments here make it seem as if it is impossible to be right but come off as merely being “self-righteous” because one is being engaged by someone else who is wrong and proud? Where do we draw the definition of when someone is being self-righteous? Is it possible to be self-righteous when you’re actually right or can it only happen when you’re wrong but you insist that you are right?
- jimbokun 5y ago
  Humans have a strong bias for doubling down on our current beliefs and rejecting conflicting evidence. It is crucial that we are just as harsh judging our current beliefs and subjecting them to scrutiny, as we are judging and scrutinizing beliefs with which we disagree.
- sheepdestroyer 5y ago
  We can't go far as a specie by denying that objective truth exists, and thus that in an argument there's, more often than not, someone who is less wrong. We must aim to be collectively less wrong. But that won't happen without rightly self-righteous people fighting the bad ideas. Doesn't mean they have to lack compassion for the mistaken though.
  - edmcnulty101 5y ago
    Usually both sides of arguments both have truth to them and the way to objective truth exists via trying to understand why both sides believe what they do. Athiesm seems like the objective rational truth. But why do billions of people believe in an invisible man in the sky? What is the objective truth that we can learn from that?
    - watwut 5y ago
      I think that this is fundamentally untrue. Middle between truth and lie is a lie. When you are trying to find truth purely by searching middle of what people say, you are enabling bad actors and punishing honest people.
trabant00 5y ago
That's all good and right but how is it actionable? Do we stop judging stuff as being undesirable and just accept everything? I thought about this subject quite a bit and there's really no way around conflicts. You just have to have them and try to win them. The party that is the furthest away from reality will lose eventually. Warning: the _realistic_ party will win, not the right party, the good party, the moral party, etc. You also need to accept this. Or you can put on the pacifist hat and basically accept you're going to lose every time. History is full of conflicts and only conflicts changed the world. Be them military, artistic, ideological, philosophical or whatever. If you can't survive the contact with the opposing side think what reality will do to you.
zzzeek 5y ago
I would question the author's casual belief that a so-called "righteous" attitude , where one has decided that they have more wisdom on a particular topic than some other particular group of people, necessarily means they therefore lose all their empathy for that group. This is a huge leap and I personally don't believe there is any such necessity: > Viewing ourselves as “good,” in fact we become grievously toxic, literally intoxicated. In this poisonous state of mind we are able to write off others — often literally billions of others — without hesitation or remorse, because they are “bad.” my covid-denying, chain-smoking, cancer-surviving 85 year old aunt in Florida would totally consider know-it-all, liberal (and probably "antifa"!) me to be "righteous" but I sure am worried that she's going to get covid, I worry for her health, what's happened to her mind being fully indoctrinated by FOX news. She's not written off. My other cousin who pushes ivermectin propaganda on FB, OK maybe I'm a little less empathetic there :)
- abecedarius 5y ago
  It's very common to have fellow-feeling with a family member while demonizing an outgroup they align with. So it's just not much evidence for your own sanity on its own. If one egregore is infecting millions of minds, why not two? Or more?
- GavinMcG 5y ago
  I don't see where the author said that thinking one has more wisdom necessarily means one loses empathy. I think the author's definition of righteousness is the loss of empathy. The author wouldn't seem to have a problem with an empathetic wise person being both empathetic and wise.
- deleted 5y ago
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- octopoc 5y ago
  It's easy to know what's best for yourself. It's not so easy to know what's best for your children. It's much harder to know what's best for another adult in your tribe. It's practically impossible to know what's best for someone outside your tribe. So, I would say it is very unwise to claim to know what's best for someone outside your tribe. When you're worrying about them like that, you're assuming you know what's best for them. It's not just about empathy, it's about letting people live their own lives. There's nothing inherently wrong with worrying about them but you can't change them and you shouldn't even want to IMO.
nonameiguess 5y ago
> But in the case of righteousness, such a belief is almost always mistaken. Most of us, whether we be timid or bold, liberal, conservative, or (especially) some version of radical, are prone to imbibing heady infusions of the stuff. Viewing ourselves as “good,” in fact we become grievously toxic, literally intoxicated. Something that "most" humans are prone to doesn't seem the same as addiction to me. It may produce some similar neural markers, but the number of humans subject to tolerance/dependency feedback loops that become pathological to the point of requiring medical intervention is surely small enough to not encompass "most" humans. If anything, this seems to be saying that self-righteousness is not an addiction at all, but a normal part of being a person that almost everyone experiences. If that is the case, I don't think individual virtue and discipline is up to the task of defeating where self-righteousness becomes prone to failure modes. Instead, we need systems and institutions that remain robust in the face of individual self-righteousness. Accept that a whole lot of people are going to be this way and find a way to make governments, companies, and communities that work anyway. If some collective effort relies upon the participants going against their own nature to work, it might work for some time, but it's doomed to not work for very long.
deleted 5y ago
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photochemsyn 5y ago
The tendency to link the 'addiction' tag to every undesirable human behavior is a common trend, but it's worth remembering what actual physical addiction to a substance is: a biochemical response to the introduction of a foreign substance into the body, that results in withdrawal symptoms when said foreign substance is removed. If there are no withdrawal symptoms, there is really no addiction involved. What the author of this piece calls 'addiction to righteousness' can also be described as 'obsession with outrage porn' or 'wanting to get triggered'. It's an easy fix for the addict to obtain - anyone suffering this malady can just scroll Twitter or Reddit etc. until they find something that does the trick. Then they can add their voice to the chorus of condemnation or commiseration and get the biochemical stimulus they were craving, most likely a dopamine reward. Note that the story they're reacting too doesn't even need to be true, and I always assume at least 50% of the 'anonymous personal testimonials' on social media are just fabricated stories put out for the upvotes (upvote addiction being rather similar). One way out of that trap is to 'buffer' all the social media information you get, i.e. assume everything is untrustworthy, and if only it's something you think you're really interested in, something worth spending time on, only then move it to the 'active' folder, and do some work to verify the information is actually reliable. Warning: outrage addicts might suffer some withdrawal from the dopamine release effect if they do this. Long-term mental health will likely improve, however.
- martincmartin 5y ago
  Not many people these days dispute the idea that you can become addicted to gambling. https://www.economist.com/international/2022/01/01/are-video-games-really-addictive https://www.economist.com/international/2022/01/01/are-video...
- jonnycomputer 5y ago
  Nitpick. Dopamine doesn't signal a reward, and it isn't a reward in itself. In this context, the important function of dopamine is that it signals a reward prediction error.
  - zackmorris 5y ago
    Thanks for this, I never quite thought of it that way. I struggled with ADHD-like symptoms profoundly during the eras of my life when my beliefs didn't match the trajectory the world was on, mainly during the early 2000s and late 2010s. My beliefs have since changed, now that I'm able to set boundaries and not let the outside world influence my inner peace as much as it once did. But I really think there is something to the connection between negative feedback loops and ADHD/CPTSD/OCD etc. Which suggests to me that our obsession with medication is only looking at half the issue. Why are so many (generally clever, effective) people so consistently feeling like their intentions don't match outcomes? If it's not them, then what's wrong with the world or our role in it? Could we change reality instead of ourselves? Is there a difference? These are the questions I wrestle with now.
newaccount2021 5y ago
jiggyjace 5y ago
I wonder what the author's thoughts are on "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion" by Jonathan Haidt. It mentions many clear refutes backed up by history to the idea of how bad it is for humans to be "addicted to righteousness". For example, individuals have not and do not live by themselves in a vacuum as only selfish. We are also very group-ish, and it is the righteousness or norms of those groups that allow for things to get done. People have evolved to agree to social and group norms because those groups always trust each other more, thereby getting more done. On how efficient secular societies are, Haidt claims: "We don’t really know, because the first atheistic societies have only emerged in Europe in the last few decades. They are the least efficient societies ever known at turning resources (of which they have a lot) into offspring (of which they have few).” If you support secularization and the ideas of "addictions to righteousness" you have to at the very least be worried about how low birth rates are for people who believe those ideals.
- fellowniusmonk 5y ago
  Why is "efficient" defined as consuming natural resources to produce children? Why is that a measure of societal success? Who gets to determine that this is a rubric that should even be considered? Seems simplistic in the extreme. I think enlightenment thinking and the concurrent non-successionist/non-miraculous/cessationist protestant reformation that drove the new world clearly overlap heavily in the venn diagram of ideology. Are modern atheists core positions (epistemologically "different" "new atheism" fizzled quite quickly) not of the same ilk as our historical humanist/agnostic/deist societies?
  - jimbokun 5y ago
    > Why is that a measure of societal success? Any judgement about ultimate value is just as arbitrary. It's one of the most basic and most intractable problems in philosophy.
- riskable 5y ago
  The big assumption here is that increasing birthrates (above replacement level) is somehow the ideal outcome of a society. What if the ideal outcome is that humans populations shrink to 1/100th their current size and most "work" gets done by machines? Wouldn't that be vastly more efficient?
ARandomerDude 5y ago
> AS A SOBER ADDICT... I wish we would drop this terminology and self-consciousness. While I understand the term is intended as a self-reminder that it's easy to slip back into addictive patterns of behavior, the perpetual self-description of "addict" surely cannot be healthy for the person or society. The addict-for-life mentality is similar to the seed of cancel culture. Once you do $BAD_THING, you're a ${BAD_THING}er your whole life. There's no forgetting, no ultimate forgiveness, only eternal sorrow and penance.
- giraffe_lady 5y ago
  This is a common outsider's view of the sober-for-life perspective I think. It's not about sin or penance or precluding forgiveness. It's just an individual's personal acknowledgement that the same pains, proclivities and weaknesses that led them into addiction are still present in them. It may not even be true necessarily, but it's still a useful view for a lot of people with addiction in their past. It's just lower risk to assume you're permanently vulnerable and so never use the drug again.
- lgas 5y ago
  I think there is a lot of similar language/perspectives etc in the recovery world -- as a prominent example, many years ago I was dismayed when a friend of mine joined AA to discover that one of the steps was admitting to being powerless over your addiction -- I was certain at the time that this was exactly the opposite of what a healthy approach would be, to wit, repeating the mantra that you can and do have control, and fostering that belief. However in the many years since I have had more exposure to AA and other recovery programs and I've discovered that while there are other programs (such as SMART recovery) that take drastically different approaches, in practice AA is really the only program with a significant success rate. I known people that entered a recovery program, "got better", and moved on with their lives successfully and I know people that first got started with AA 25+ years ago and still attend meetings at least weekly today. Not to gatekeep addiction but I think the people from this first group are not "real" addicts in some sense, and for those people you are probably right and continuous self-labeling would be harmful. But for the people from that second group, I think it's true -- there's literally no hope that they will ever live a happy health life outside of a program that keeps their focus on their addiction/recovery every day. Any significant loss of focus will result in an immediate and precipitous downward spiral. For these people "sober addict" isn't something that's damaging their self perception, it's something that's improving it, because they're comparing it to the only other option they have which is "active addict".
csours 5y ago
Social Media rewards polarized, highly motivated points of view. This isn't a "both sides" thing, it's a human nature thing. These highly polarized posts never change anyone's minds. They only make people more motivated. It can be good to be more motivated, but the cost is driving a wedge between people who are differently motivated. So how can tech solve this? I have no idea, but people can help by having conversations with a few points in mind: 1. You can't change their mind. If your goal is to change someone's mind, you've set yourself up for failure. Facts don't change minds, yelling certainly does not. 2. You must listen. Try to hear principles that you share. Ask questions about what motivates them. 3. Speaking from shared principles and sharing personal stories can help build common ground. The problem? These things DON'T SCALE. I don't think this works except on a 1x1 or small group level. I really don't know how tech can address this.
- jimbokun 5y ago
  I think it has to be a change to the culture. Many of us have been shocked at the sudden rejection of Classical Liberalism. Preference for free exchange of ideas, objectivity, debate, judging arguments without regard to who is making the argument. I think those of us who were engaged in that intellectual world, never realized that most people are not invested in these values. So now that everyone has the capability to broadcast their ideas to the entire world, and consume ideas from anywhere in the world, the marketplace of ideas reflect the tribalism that was already there, but not as evident because "The Elite" controlled the discourse in the past. Trump of course understood all of this intuitively. He almost exclusively debates people, not ideas, and many people responded positively and enthusiastically to that style of discourse.
  - csours 5y ago
    I agree. Kids are growing up with this stuff. I can only hope that helps them build mental defenses; but I don't expect it to happen automatically. I think it will take a lot of effort from a lot of people.
    - esyir 5y ago
claytongulick 5y ago
This post has amazing timing. I just spent hours yesterday involved in the vaccination discussion thread, which is rare for me. Cause for a bit of self-reflection.
JackFr 5y ago
Funny - as I read, I wanted to disagree with the author (and I guess I do to some extent) but I can’t find fault with his conclusion. I think the world could be a better place if we all could adopt a small sense of humility and assume the good intentions of others.
jondeval 5y ago
There seems to be a few speculative discussions around what the author identifies as a toxic addiction to righteousness and the spread of Christianity. When considering that this phenomenon touches the whole of humanity I can't help but wonder if Christianity has been an enabler, or has in fact acted as a massive check and moderating force against some of these darker impulses that are embedded deep inside of each of us. Having read and enjoyed the article, it seems to me that the topic is very closely related to what a practicing Christian would call the sin of pride. There are some nuances to the definition and it's worth a refresher on the details of the teaching. A good primer can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PvcynQD-ag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PvcynQD-ag Also, Jesus himself has some quite direct words on this topic: https://www.bible.com/bible/compare/LUK.18.10-14 https://www.bible.com/bible/compare/LUK.18.10-14
lbriner 5y ago
Well the Catholic church have been teaching that pride is the most deadly (and original) of sins for many years so no news there really. The hard part is always the conclusion: "as we seek, in fellowship with others, to abandon our control-based mentality" This assumes it is ever possible for me to accept that "truth" is probably somewhere in between me and others (or God if you would prefer something more absolute). Unfortunately we know from history that peace is impossible because the world is full of people with completely different motivations and ideals. Some of these have a middle ground but many don't.
ericmcer 5y ago
Does the author want us to just be spineless bags of jelly, waiting for death? He cuts down the idea of "fixing ourselves" and says righteousness is a dangerous addiction. Of course you can't "fix yourself", there is no point to any of this, but you have to believe something while you are here, you have to have some righteousness or you will be run over.
- 323 5y ago
  Righteousness caused 1000 years of war in Europe - our religion is right, no, our religion is right. This was ended by the Peace of Westphalia, when nations decided that there is no right religion, and that everybody loses if they fight righteousness wars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westphalian_sovereignty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westphalian_sovereignty But then a different kind of righteousness appeared, we are the righteousness people (nazi), or we are the righteousness kind of leadership (communism vs capitalism).
- tanseydavid 5y ago
  I do not think the author was being quite so black-and-white, all-or-none about it. Terms can be tricky with this subject. My interpretation is this: * "righteousness" is the goal/ideal * "self-righteousness" is the trap that is so easy to fall into (the addiction) The problem is that this distinction is rarely made, IOW the word "righteous" gets all the negative connotation of "self-righteous" and confuses people who really pay attention to words.
bloopbloop10000 5y ago
I don't like this idea that feelings of righteous indignation need to be moderated like some kind of proverbial addictive substance. If you believe things, you will feel righteousness when they are (or are perceived to be) challenged. The better question is: why do we believe what we believe? And why have these beliefs done so much harm?
- jimbokun 5y ago
  Righteous indignation can lead to dismissing data conflicting with your current beliefs, and wishing harm on those who disagree with your beliefs. That is why humility and tolerance are important.
  - bloopbloop10000 5y ago
    Yes — belief can be a nasty thing. But it also drives progress. We "believe" that living entities deserve to be treated with some level of decency, etc. Sure it's possible to hedge our bets with humility and tolerance, but it comes at the cost of the potential upsides. Our beliefs have led to some horrific outcomes over the past several hundred years. What interests me personally isn't how to believe less in order to avoid risk, it's how to believe in such a way that the resulting actions will improve our lives.
cwoolfe 5y ago
This is the natural consequence of killing God, as Nietzsche observed. Without an objective basis, there's no objective truth about what's valuable, right, or good. But we desperately want to be right, so we ignore what God says is right and invent our own version. "For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness." - The apostle Paul's letter to Rome. (ESV Bible, Romans 10:4) The good news: "Jesus Christ has already accomplished the purpose for which the law was given. As a result, all who believe in him are made right with God." (NLT Bible, Romans 10:5) Seriously look at this guy. He opposes the self-righteous religious people, powerfully helps people in need, has zero pride, was so humble he was willing to die for a crime he didn't even commit. Not even good guy Greg would go that far. Bible says what I have to do to be right is just point to Jesus and agree that he's a better man than I'll ever be.
- xibalba 5y ago
  Of course, belief in "God" also requires the belief in the supernatural and random acts of magic. In other words, the opposite of science and rationality. Belief in "God"/Jesus Christ (as a supernatural being) is not "objective", in itself, since there isn't any empirical evidence (funny how the claims of witnessing supernatural events have steadily declined as the ability to easily capture and widely share information has increased).
  - jimbokun 5y ago
    Yes but hopefully you can still appreciate much of the wisdom of Jesus' teachings even if you disagree about the theology.
- welshwelsh 5y ago
  But was there ever an objective basis? No two believers could ever agree on what God wants, even back when Jesus was alive. Because God is nothing but an invention of man, what God thinks is merely a reflection of what each individual person thinks. Even if you go off a text like the Bible, there is no objective interpretation of what it means. >has zero pride, was so humble Jesus literally claimed to be the son of God. That's about as arrogant as you can get.
danschumann 5y ago
I find for me, looking at feelings wheel, "valued" is the emotion I feel regarding addiction. If an activity makes me feel valued, I come back and back and back. This is true also if the activity makes me feel inferior sometimes ( such as losing a game ). Addictive activities also have an infuriating component ( whereby I want to control more than I can control ). They also have a thankful component (relief after winning a hard game).
Nimitz14 5y ago
Nice, but I wish this article were longer and the author would have elaborated his thoughts more.
calebm 5y ago
There's an interesting bible verse that I've never heard quoted in churches: "BE NOT OVERLY RIGHTEOUS, and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself? Be not overly wicked, neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time? It is good that you should take hold of this, and from that withhold not your hand, for the one who fears God shall come out from both of them." (Ecclesiastes 7:16-18).
- prionassembly 5y ago
  Kipling has this If you can wait and not be tired by waiting Or being lied about, don't deal in lies Or being hated, don't give way to hating And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise.
  - hammock 5y ago
TimTheTinker 5y ago
Just a small nitpick, but it's important to my theological ears: TA conflates "righteousness" and "self-righteousness", which are two different things. Not that anyone is righteous on their own -- no one is. But that doesn't mean righteousness isn't a real concept that can be understood apart from self-righteousness. In fact, Martin Luther's discovery that no one is righteous on their own, and the notion of an alien or imputed righteousness granted by God to those who repent and trust in Jesus (as St Paul explains it in the book of Romans) was a key moment in the lead-up to the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s.
leroy_masochist 5y ago
If the author thought we had a cultural crisis of righteousness when he wrote this (circa the George W. Bush presidency), would be interesting to check in with him now.
bobthechef 5y ago

160 points by johnwdefeo 5y ago

"Any Self-Righteous Anonymous groups out there?" - Yes, a close reading of the christian bible will tell you that's the indented function of the church. Unfortunately there's a propensity for the opposite.

marginalia_nu 5y ago
In early church history, there's an interesting period of basically pious showboating. > Well, I used limit myself to living in the desert and taking a vow of silence back when I first got into Christianity and still was attached to the flesh, but now I abstain from sex, sleep on gravel and wear a shirt made of hedgehog bristles too. Eventually it become obvious this wasn't piety at all, but pride. The first Nicene council even bans men who have performed self-castration from entering the clergy.
- g5095 5y ago
  Right on, but as the OP suggests it's easy to be self-righteous against 2nd century pious showboating as well! The only solution (again see the article) is humility. The old saying 'There but for the grace of God go I' is apt in this case. Seeing ourselves in every 'bad actor' of any kind from the dude who cuts us off at the lights to genocidal dictators is the only way to avoid it.

jrochkind1 5y ago

This really touched me, thanks for posting.

automatic6131 5y ago

ultramegachurch 5y ago
I had the same reaction. I’m an endlessly skeptical and often cynical person. Whenever I see someone confidently believe they are “right”, I instinctively trust them less. This article made me realize this is just my own flavor of righteousness. That’s not to say righteousness is inherently bad. The only reason people make decisions is because they believe they’re right. I enjoyed this article but perhaps it’s overly reductive. I don’t know what we can do to cure righteousness, and maybe that premise itself is nonsensical.
- bluetomcat 5y ago
  "Right" is relative to one's particular situation and social surroundings. One thing could be right for a remote-working individual living in a big city, and it could at the same be wrong for country dwellers. Different types of communities function in different ways.
- JackFr 5y ago
  My take away is that all we can hope to do is our best, and recognize that we’re all trying to do our best. No one is the villain of their own narrative.
  - titanomachy 5y ago

11thEarlOfMar 5y ago

The big challenge: How to get 2 opposing, self-righteous groups to a place they can talk and learn the fallacies each holds of the other.

krageon 5y ago
Drop them all into the desert and wait for them to walk back to civilisation. Shared hardship forms good bonds.
automatic6131 5y ago
That's too hard. Let's just build an app where they can yell to each other about how bad the other group is. Billion dollar idea.
- pjerem 5y ago
  Check Twitter
giraffe_lady 5y ago
I'm not sure that's the right question. It assumes both parties only hold the views they do out of ignorance or "fallacies" whatever that means here. That's not necessarily the case at all, often groups oppose each other out of a clear-eyed understanding of the incompatibility of their values. More understanding won't resolve that conflict.
- sonicanatidae 5y ago
  This is the best and most accurate comment here. Sometimes, idiots are actually idiots.
- ajmurmann 5y ago
  The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt makes this nicely clear. He claims that liberals mostly value fairness and harm avoidance. More conservatives in addition also value authority, ingroup and purity. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Righteous_Mind https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Righteous_Mind). To me this rings intuitively true and strongly validates your point. To me ingroup, authority and purity are at best suspect if not actively negative, so there seem to be natural limits to how much over can get on the same page without deep, small group discussion of every topic. Edit: typo "find" -> "rings"

bbunix 5y ago

Addicts aren't bad people trying to get good, they're sick people trying to get well.

cousin_it 5y ago

bryanrasmussen 5y ago
well you've certainly converted me!
eightysixfour 5y ago
> It goes hand in hand with wars for religious conversion, which also weren't a thing before Christ. This isn’t close to true. Look at the timeline: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_war > The moment memes switched over from religion to politics as primary content seems to have been the French Revolution, I can't think of a time before that when people killed each other over political ideals. Uh. What?
- deleted 5y ago
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- jrochkind1 5y ago
  > Uh. What? I'm not sure if it's true, but I see what they mean. A distinction between killing over power, and killing over ideas. I can see the attraction of the idea that killing over ideas is a modern phenomenon, although it's probably not entirely true (in either direction -- most wars over ideas are perhaps really about power anyway... but is couching it as a war over ideas a modern phenomenon? Probably still not entirely, but there might be something to it...)
- deleted 5y ago
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- cousin_it 5y ago
  That timeline lists very few "religious wars" before Christ, and I think none of them were fought for religious conversion. Mostly just for territory.
bloak 5y ago

natureboy21 5y ago

"See we’re always doing that. We're always finding a way to be one up. And by the most incredibly subtle means. So you see when you see me and you say I realize I’m always doing that tell me how do I not do that. I say why do you want to know? I’ll be better that way...yeah but why do you want to be better. You see the reason you want to be better is the reason why you aren’t." -Alan Watts circa 1965 Prophetic words.

edmcnulty101 5y ago

Competition is great, differences of opinion are great. Differences of values are great! All of this keeps the marketplace of ideas healthy! The problems comes in when people start to develop a righteousness about their ideas and demonize the 'other' and try to force their ideas upon the 'other' because they believe they know better. That's why I think states rights in America are so great, because they allow places with different values to express those values. When the federal government begins to force values upon the country en masse problems begin.

memling 5y ago
> When the federal government begins to force values upon the country en masse problems begin. What is your opinion about the US Civil War? I'm curious about this because it is in part an abrogation of states' rights over a question of utmost moral importance. Are there some values that are so valuable that we should make them universal by any means necessary, including a war?
- edmcnulty101 5y ago
  Slavery is one of those things that violates the fundamental principles of the declaration of Independence: all men are created equal, life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. So of course it should have been abolished and shame on the states that fought a war to preserve it. Even in the most limited federal government has fundamental requirements.
  - memling 5y ago
    > Even in the most limited federal government has fundamental requirements. I guess my question is more related to how you can tell the difference between a "valuable value" like "slavery is bad" and a less-valuable value, like "going to church is a public good and should be compulsory."[0] While one can use the Declaration as a discriminator, that it's starting a civil war of its own might give us pause (and it has some problematic language of its own[1]). [0] See, e.g., the constitution of the state of Massachusetts: https://archive.org/details/addressofconvent00unse/page/n19/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/addressofconvent00unse/page/n19/... It contains this clause which permits the people to actually force church attendance! (Earlier it specifies Protestant ministry rather than Catholic.) "the people of this Commonwealth have also a right to, and do, invest their legislature with authority to enjoin upon all the subjects an attendance upon the instructions of the public teachers aforesaid at stated times and seasons, if there be any on whose instructions they can conscientiously and conveniently attend." [1] For example, "[King George] [...] has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions."

rTX5CMRXIfFG 5y ago

So many people are receiving this article very positively but am I the only one here who’s struggling to understand it? Why do the comments here make it seem as if it is impossible to be right but come off as merely being “self-righteous” because one is being engaged by someone else who is wrong and proud? Where do we draw the definition of when someone is being self-righteous? Is it possible to be self-righteous when you’re actually right or can it only happen when you’re wrong but you insist that you are right?

jimbokun 5y ago
Humans have a strong bias for doubling down on our current beliefs and rejecting conflicting evidence. It is crucial that we are just as harsh judging our current beliefs and subjecting them to scrutiny, as we are judging and scrutinizing beliefs with which we disagree.
sheepdestroyer 5y ago
We can't go far as a specie by denying that objective truth exists, and thus that in an argument there's, more often than not, someone who is less wrong. We must aim to be collectively less wrong. But that won't happen without rightly self-righteous people fighting the bad ideas. Doesn't mean they have to lack compassion for the mistaken though.
- edmcnulty101 5y ago
  Usually both sides of arguments both have truth to them and the way to objective truth exists via trying to understand why both sides believe what they do. Athiesm seems like the objective rational truth. But why do billions of people believe in an invisible man in the sky? What is the objective truth that we can learn from that?
  - watwut 5y ago
    I think that this is fundamentally untrue. Middle between truth and lie is a lie. When you are trying to find truth purely by searching middle of what people say, you are enabling bad actors and punishing honest people.

trabant00 5y ago

That's all good and right but how is it actionable? Do we stop judging stuff as being undesirable and just accept everything? I thought about this subject quite a bit and there's really no way around conflicts. You just have to have them and try to win them. The party that is the furthest away from reality will lose eventually. Warning: the _realistic_ party will win, not the right party, the good party, the moral party, etc. You also need to accept this. Or you can put on the pacifist hat and basically accept you're going to lose every time. History is full of conflicts and only conflicts changed the world. Be them military, artistic, ideological, philosophical or whatever. If you can't survive the contact with the opposing side think what reality will do to you.

zzzeek 5y ago

I would question the author's casual belief that a so-called "righteous" attitude , where one has decided that they have more wisdom on a particular topic than some other particular group of people, necessarily means they therefore lose all their empathy for that group. This is a huge leap and I personally don't believe there is any such necessity: > Viewing ourselves as “good,” in fact we become grievously toxic, literally intoxicated. In this poisonous state of mind we are able to write off others — often literally billions of others — without hesitation or remorse, because they are “bad.” my covid-denying, chain-smoking, cancer-surviving 85 year old aunt in Florida would totally consider know-it-all, liberal (and probably "antifa"!) me to be "righteous" but I sure am worried that she's going to get covid, I worry for her health, what's happened to her mind being fully indoctrinated by FOX news. She's not written off. My other cousin who pushes ivermectin propaganda on FB, OK maybe I'm a little less empathetic there :)

abecedarius 5y ago
It's very common to have fellow-feeling with a family member while demonizing an outgroup they align with. So it's just not much evidence for your own sanity on its own. If one egregore is infecting millions of minds, why not two? Or more?
GavinMcG 5y ago
I don't see where the author said that thinking one has more wisdom necessarily means one loses empathy. I think the author's definition of righteousness is the loss of empathy. The author wouldn't seem to have a problem with an empathetic wise person being both empathetic and wise.
deleted 5y ago
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octopoc 5y ago
It's easy to know what's best for yourself. It's not so easy to know what's best for your children. It's much harder to know what's best for another adult in your tribe. It's practically impossible to know what's best for someone outside your tribe. So, I would say it is very unwise to claim to know what's best for someone outside your tribe. When you're worrying about them like that, you're assuming you know what's best for them. It's not just about empathy, it's about letting people live their own lives. There's nothing inherently wrong with worrying about them but you can't change them and you shouldn't even want to IMO.

nonameiguess 5y ago

> But in the case of righteousness, such a belief is almost always mistaken. Most of us, whether we be timid or bold, liberal, conservative, or (especially) some version of radical, are prone to imbibing heady infusions of the stuff. Viewing ourselves as “good,” in fact we become grievously toxic, literally intoxicated. Something that "most" humans are prone to doesn't seem the same as addiction to me. It may produce some similar neural markers, but the number of humans subject to tolerance/dependency feedback loops that become pathological to the point of requiring medical intervention is surely small enough to not encompass "most" humans. If anything, this seems to be saying that self-righteousness is not an addiction at all, but a normal part of being a person that almost everyone experiences. If that is the case, I don't think individual virtue and discipline is up to the task of defeating where self-righteousness becomes prone to failure modes. Instead, we need systems and institutions that remain robust in the face of individual self-righteousness. Accept that a whole lot of people are going to be this way and find a way to make governments, companies, and communities that work anyway. If some collective effort relies upon the participants going against their own nature to work, it might work for some time, but it's doomed to not work for very long.

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photochemsyn 5y ago

The tendency to link the 'addiction' tag to every undesirable human behavior is a common trend, but it's worth remembering what actual physical addiction to a substance is: a biochemical response to the introduction of a foreign substance into the body, that results in withdrawal symptoms when said foreign substance is removed. If there are no withdrawal symptoms, there is really no addiction involved. What the author of this piece calls 'addiction to righteousness' can also be described as 'obsession with outrage porn' or 'wanting to get triggered'. It's an easy fix for the addict to obtain - anyone suffering this malady can just scroll Twitter or Reddit etc. until they find something that does the trick. Then they can add their voice to the chorus of condemnation or commiseration and get the biochemical stimulus they were craving, most likely a dopamine reward. Note that the story they're reacting too doesn't even need to be true, and I always assume at least 50% of the 'anonymous personal testimonials' on social media are just fabricated stories put out for the upvotes (upvote addiction being rather similar). One way out of that trap is to 'buffer' all the social media information you get, i.e. assume everything is untrustworthy, and if only it's something you think you're really interested in, something worth spending time on, only then move it to the 'active' folder, and do some work to verify the information is actually reliable. Warning: outrage addicts might suffer some withdrawal from the dopamine release effect if they do this. Long-term mental health will likely improve, however.

martincmartin 5y ago
Not many people these days dispute the idea that you can become addicted to gambling. https://www.economist.com/international/2022/01/01/are-video-games-really-addictive https://www.economist.com/international/2022/01/01/are-video...
jonnycomputer 5y ago
Nitpick. Dopamine doesn't signal a reward, and it isn't a reward in itself. In this context, the important function of dopamine is that it signals a reward prediction error.
- zackmorris 5y ago
  Thanks for this, I never quite thought of it that way. I struggled with ADHD-like symptoms profoundly during the eras of my life when my beliefs didn't match the trajectory the world was on, mainly during the early 2000s and late 2010s. My beliefs have since changed, now that I'm able to set boundaries and not let the outside world influence my inner peace as much as it once did. But I really think there is something to the connection between negative feedback loops and ADHD/CPTSD/OCD etc. Which suggests to me that our obsession with medication is only looking at half the issue. Why are so many (generally clever, effective) people so consistently feeling like their intentions don't match outcomes? If it's not them, then what's wrong with the world or our role in it? Could we change reality instead of ourselves? Is there a difference? These are the questions I wrestle with now.

newaccount2021 5y ago

jiggyjace 5y ago

I wonder what the author's thoughts are on "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion" by Jonathan Haidt. It mentions many clear refutes backed up by history to the idea of how bad it is for humans to be "addicted to righteousness". For example, individuals have not and do not live by themselves in a vacuum as only selfish. We are also very group-ish, and it is the righteousness or norms of those groups that allow for things to get done. People have evolved to agree to social and group norms because those groups always trust each other more, thereby getting more done. On how efficient secular societies are, Haidt claims: "We don’t really know, because the first atheistic societies have only emerged in Europe in the last few decades. They are the least efficient societies ever known at turning resources (of which they have a lot) into offspring (of which they have few).” If you support secularization and the ideas of "addictions to righteousness" you have to at the very least be worried about how low birth rates are for people who believe those ideals.

fellowniusmonk 5y ago
Why is "efficient" defined as consuming natural resources to produce children? Why is that a measure of societal success? Who gets to determine that this is a rubric that should even be considered? Seems simplistic in the extreme. I think enlightenment thinking and the concurrent non-successionist/non-miraculous/cessationist protestant reformation that drove the new world clearly overlap heavily in the venn diagram of ideology. Are modern atheists core positions (epistemologically "different" "new atheism" fizzled quite quickly) not of the same ilk as our historical humanist/agnostic/deist societies?
- jimbokun 5y ago
  > Why is that a measure of societal success? Any judgement about ultimate value is just as arbitrary. It's one of the most basic and most intractable problems in philosophy.
riskable 5y ago
The big assumption here is that increasing birthrates (above replacement level) is somehow the ideal outcome of a society. What if the ideal outcome is that humans populations shrink to 1/100th their current size and most "work" gets done by machines? Wouldn't that be vastly more efficient?

ARandomerDude 5y ago

> AS A SOBER ADDICT... I wish we would drop this terminology and self-consciousness. While I understand the term is intended as a self-reminder that it's easy to slip back into addictive patterns of behavior, the perpetual self-description of "addict" surely cannot be healthy for the person or society. The addict-for-life mentality is similar to the seed of cancel culture. Once you do $BAD_THING, you're a ${BAD_THING}er your whole life. There's no forgetting, no ultimate forgiveness, only eternal sorrow and penance.

giraffe_lady 5y ago
This is a common outsider's view of the sober-for-life perspective I think. It's not about sin or penance or precluding forgiveness. It's just an individual's personal acknowledgement that the same pains, proclivities and weaknesses that led them into addiction are still present in them. It may not even be true necessarily, but it's still a useful view for a lot of people with addiction in their past. It's just lower risk to assume you're permanently vulnerable and so never use the drug again.
lgas 5y ago
I think there is a lot of similar language/perspectives etc in the recovery world -- as a prominent example, many years ago I was dismayed when a friend of mine joined AA to discover that one of the steps was admitting to being powerless over your addiction -- I was certain at the time that this was exactly the opposite of what a healthy approach would be, to wit, repeating the mantra that you can and do have control, and fostering that belief. However in the many years since I have had more exposure to AA and other recovery programs and I've discovered that while there are other programs (such as SMART recovery) that take drastically different approaches, in practice AA is really the only program with a significant success rate. I known people that entered a recovery program, "got better", and moved on with their lives successfully and I know people that first got started with AA 25+ years ago and still attend meetings at least weekly today. Not to gatekeep addiction but I think the people from this first group are not "real" addicts in some sense, and for those people you are probably right and continuous self-labeling would be harmful. But for the people from that second group, I think it's true -- there's literally no hope that they will ever live a happy health life outside of a program that keeps their focus on their addiction/recovery every day. Any significant loss of focus will result in an immediate and precipitous downward spiral. For these people "sober addict" isn't something that's damaging their self perception, it's something that's improving it, because they're comparing it to the only other option they have which is "active addict".

csours 5y ago

Social Media rewards polarized, highly motivated points of view. This isn't a "both sides" thing, it's a human nature thing. These highly polarized posts never change anyone's minds. They only make people more motivated. It can be good to be more motivated, but the cost is driving a wedge between people who are differently motivated. So how can tech solve this? I have no idea, but people can help by having conversations with a few points in mind: 1. You can't change their mind. If your goal is to change someone's mind, you've set yourself up for failure. Facts don't change minds, yelling certainly does not. 2. You must listen. Try to hear principles that you share. Ask questions about what motivates them. 3. Speaking from shared principles and sharing personal stories can help build common ground. The problem? These things DON'T SCALE. I don't think this works except on a 1x1 or small group level. I really don't know how tech can address this.

jimbokun 5y ago
I think it has to be a change to the culture. Many of us have been shocked at the sudden rejection of Classical Liberalism. Preference for free exchange of ideas, objectivity, debate, judging arguments without regard to who is making the argument. I think those of us who were engaged in that intellectual world, never realized that most people are not invested in these values. So now that everyone has the capability to broadcast their ideas to the entire world, and consume ideas from anywhere in the world, the marketplace of ideas reflect the tribalism that was already there, but not as evident because "The Elite" controlled the discourse in the past. Trump of course understood all of this intuitively. He almost exclusively debates people, not ideas, and many people responded positively and enthusiastically to that style of discourse.
- csours 5y ago
  I agree. Kids are growing up with this stuff. I can only hope that helps them build mental defenses; but I don't expect it to happen automatically. I think it will take a lot of effort from a lot of people.
  - esyir 5y ago

claytongulick 5y ago

This post has amazing timing. I just spent hours yesterday involved in the vaccination discussion thread, which is rare for me. Cause for a bit of self-reflection.

JackFr 5y ago

Funny - as I read, I wanted to disagree with the author (and I guess I do to some extent) but I can’t find fault with his conclusion. I think the world could be a better place if we all could adopt a small sense of humility and assume the good intentions of others.

jondeval 5y ago

There seems to be a few speculative discussions around what the author identifies as a toxic addiction to righteousness and the spread of Christianity. When considering that this phenomenon touches the whole of humanity I can't help but wonder if Christianity has been an enabler, or has in fact acted as a massive check and moderating force against some of these darker impulses that are embedded deep inside of each of us. Having read and enjoyed the article, it seems to me that the topic is very closely related to what a practicing Christian would call the sin of pride. There are some nuances to the definition and it's worth a refresher on the details of the teaching. A good primer can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PvcynQD-ag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PvcynQD-ag Also, Jesus himself has some quite direct words on this topic: https://www.bible.com/bible/compare/LUK.18.10-14 https://www.bible.com/bible/compare/LUK.18.10-14

lbriner 5y ago

Well the Catholic church have been teaching that pride is the most deadly (and original) of sins for many years so no news there really. The hard part is always the conclusion: "as we seek, in fellowship with others, to abandon our control-based mentality" This assumes it is ever possible for me to accept that "truth" is probably somewhere in between me and others (or God if you would prefer something more absolute). Unfortunately we know from history that peace is impossible because the world is full of people with completely different motivations and ideals. Some of these have a middle ground but many don't.

ericmcer 5y ago

Does the author want us to just be spineless bags of jelly, waiting for death? He cuts down the idea of "fixing ourselves" and says righteousness is a dangerous addiction. Of course you can't "fix yourself", there is no point to any of this, but you have to believe something while you are here, you have to have some righteousness or you will be run over.

323 5y ago
Righteousness caused 1000 years of war in Europe - our religion is right, no, our religion is right. This was ended by the Peace of Westphalia, when nations decided that there is no right religion, and that everybody loses if they fight righteousness wars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westphalian_sovereignty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westphalian_sovereignty But then a different kind of righteousness appeared, we are the righteousness people (nazi), or we are the righteousness kind of leadership (communism vs capitalism).
tanseydavid 5y ago
I do not think the author was being quite so black-and-white, all-or-none about it. Terms can be tricky with this subject. My interpretation is this: * "righteousness" is the goal/ideal * "self-righteousness" is the trap that is so easy to fall into (the addiction) The problem is that this distinction is rarely made, IOW the word "righteous" gets all the negative connotation of "self-righteous" and confuses people who really pay attention to words.

bloopbloop10000 5y ago

I don't like this idea that feelings of righteous indignation need to be moderated like some kind of proverbial addictive substance. If you believe things, you will feel righteousness when they are (or are perceived to be) challenged. The better question is: why do we believe what we believe? And why have these beliefs done so much harm?

jimbokun 5y ago
Righteous indignation can lead to dismissing data conflicting with your current beliefs, and wishing harm on those who disagree with your beliefs. That is why humility and tolerance are important.
- bloopbloop10000 5y ago
  Yes — belief can be a nasty thing. But it also drives progress. We "believe" that living entities deserve to be treated with some level of decency, etc. Sure it's possible to hedge our bets with humility and tolerance, but it comes at the cost of the potential upsides. Our beliefs have led to some horrific outcomes over the past several hundred years. What interests me personally isn't how to believe less in order to avoid risk, it's how to believe in such a way that the resulting actions will improve our lives.

cwoolfe 5y ago

This is the natural consequence of killing God, as Nietzsche observed. Without an objective basis, there's no objective truth about what's valuable, right, or good. But we desperately want to be right, so we ignore what God says is right and invent our own version. "For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness." - The apostle Paul's letter to Rome. (ESV Bible, Romans 10:4) The good news: "Jesus Christ has already accomplished the purpose for which the law was given. As a result, all who believe in him are made right with God." (NLT Bible, Romans 10:5) Seriously look at this guy. He opposes the self-righteous religious people, powerfully helps people in need, has zero pride, was so humble he was willing to die for a crime he didn't even commit. Not even good guy Greg would go that far. Bible says what I have to do to be right is just point to Jesus and agree that he's a better man than I'll ever be.

xibalba 5y ago
Of course, belief in "God" also requires the belief in the supernatural and random acts of magic. In other words, the opposite of science and rationality. Belief in "God"/Jesus Christ (as a supernatural being) is not "objective", in itself, since there isn't any empirical evidence (funny how the claims of witnessing supernatural events have steadily declined as the ability to easily capture and widely share information has increased).
- jimbokun 5y ago
  Yes but hopefully you can still appreciate much of the wisdom of Jesus' teachings even if you disagree about the theology.
welshwelsh 5y ago
But was there ever an objective basis? No two believers could ever agree on what God wants, even back when Jesus was alive. Because God is nothing but an invention of man, what God thinks is merely a reflection of what each individual person thinks. Even if you go off a text like the Bible, there is no objective interpretation of what it means. >has zero pride, was so humble Jesus literally claimed to be the son of God. That's about as arrogant as you can get.

danschumann 5y ago

I find for me, looking at feelings wheel, "valued" is the emotion I feel regarding addiction. If an activity makes me feel valued, I come back and back and back. This is true also if the activity makes me feel inferior sometimes ( such as losing a game ). Addictive activities also have an infuriating component ( whereby I want to control more than I can control ). They also have a thankful component (relief after winning a hard game).

Nimitz14 5y ago

Nice, but I wish this article were longer and the author would have elaborated his thoughts more.

calebm 5y ago

There's an interesting bible verse that I've never heard quoted in churches: "BE NOT OVERLY RIGHTEOUS, and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself? Be not overly wicked, neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time? It is good that you should take hold of this, and from that withhold not your hand, for the one who fears God shall come out from both of them." (Ecclesiastes 7:16-18).

prionassembly 5y ago
Kipling has this If you can wait and not be tired by waiting Or being lied about, don't deal in lies Or being hated, don't give way to hating And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise.
- hammock 5y ago

TimTheTinker 5y ago

Just a small nitpick, but it's important to my theological ears: TA conflates "righteousness" and "self-righteousness", which are two different things. Not that anyone is righteous on their own -- no one is. But that doesn't mean righteousness isn't a real concept that can be understood apart from self-righteousness. In fact, Martin Luther's discovery that no one is righteous on their own, and the notion of an alien or imputed righteousness granted by God to those who repent and trust in Jesus (as St Paul explains it in the book of Romans) was a key moment in the lead-up to the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s.

leroy_masochist 5y ago

If the author thought we had a cultural crisis of righteousness when he wrote this (circa the George W. Bush presidency), would be interesting to check in with him now.

bobthechef 5y ago