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I think we agree that many pro-social structures exist in poor and socially rigid societies. However these come at the expense of many liberties (i.e. religiou

by danans 5y ago

I think we agree that many pro-social structures exist in poor and socially rigid societies. However these come at the expense of many liberties (i.e. religious) that are held as important in the more developed world. It's not clear that loss of such personal liberties would be an improvement in developed societies, even if it reduced the nominal divorce rate.

zozbot234 5y ago
Liberties have always come paired with obligations to one's surrounding community, so there would be nothing new in this. We have a name for pure liberty or "liberation" shorn of any checks or obligations towards others: we call it licence, and every increase in licence is ultimately a step towards bondage and tyranny.
- danans 5y ago
  Those obligations are strong and operational in many places where religion isn't the center of civic life. There is nothing wrong with religion as a framework for teaching people about their social obligations, but it's hardly the only way to achieve that.
rayiner 5y ago
I agree there is a trade off, but let’s explore this a bit further. Who decides how much they value religious liberty compared to lower divorce rates? Decisions about these trade offs tend to be imposed from the top, by the elites. 2/3s of Americans still disagree with the Supreme Court ruling banning school prayer. When there is a trade off, who should get to make the decisions about where to strike the balance?
- danans 5y ago
  > Who decides how much they value religious liberty compared to lower divorce rates? > When there is a trade off, who should get to make the decisions about where to strike the balance? Of course the Supreme Court when concerning anything involving the government making an establishment of any religion. The US isn't Saudi Arabia. As much as it's any American's right to practice the religion of their choosing, it's not in any religion's right to deny any individual - even in their religion - their individual liberties, or to impose their religion upon a person of another or no religion.
- jacobolus 5y ago
  In many places “low divorce rate” is a euphemism for widespread sexual assault, domestic violence, and total lack of women’s individual rights. You get young women handed off from father to husband as effectively chattel. Women have no choice but to put up with that when they don’t have any viable social/economic alternatives, but it’s overall pretty unpleasant and oppressive. A significant proportion of people in the US seem to pine for the days when homosexuality was taboo and illegal, women could be beaten or raped by their husbands (and children by their fathers) and it was treated as no one else’s business, non-white people were kept out of the neighborhood and interracial marriage was frowned on if not illegal, pre-marital sex was encouraged for men but made women into “sluts”, middle/high school students received no education about basic human biology/anatomy, rape victims were forced to deliver their rapists’ babies, most professional jobs were reserved for white men, etc. But hey, low divorce rates!
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    Do you seriously think that this is a good description of how the upper-middle class in the West behaves? Because by and large, that's what we're talking about in this thread wrt. low divorce rates. The notion that social anomie, abuse and violence is a simply unescapable "fact" about late modern societies is baseless. You're describing pervasive dysfunction, not a "new normal".
    - watwut 5y ago
      > You're describing pervasive dysfunction, not a "new normal". New normal can easily be pervasive dysfunction. When dysfunction becomes pervasive, it is also perceived as normal by people inside that society. > The notion that social anomie, abuse and violence is a simply unescapable "fact" about late modern societies is baseless. These were not so much anomies as taboo to talk about if it is happening to you. They were seen as private issues that should have stayed private and if you did talked about it, you was the bad one. Nevertheless, some statistics are available - for example domestic murders. Those went down. Some anonymous statistics. People who went through it in the past and did talked about it, their children remembering and talking about it later. The way domestic violence is portrayed in media - whether it is shown as something justifiable and ok or not. When I was child, there was no domestic violence around me. Then I grew into adult and people started to talk more openly in front of me. Turned out, there was in fact domestic violence among adults I knew as child ... except I was protected from it.

by danans 5y ago

zozbot234 5y ago

Liberties have always come paired with obligations to one's surrounding community, so there would be nothing new in this. We have a name for pure liberty or "liberation" shorn of any checks or obligations towards others: we call it licence, and every increase in licence is ultimately a step towards bondage and tyranny.

danans 5y ago
Those obligations are strong and operational in many places where religion isn't the center of civic life. There is nothing wrong with religion as a framework for teaching people about their social obligations, but it's hardly the only way to achieve that.

rayiner 5y ago

I agree there is a trade off, but let’s explore this a bit further. Who decides how much they value religious liberty compared to lower divorce rates? Decisions about these trade offs tend to be imposed from the top, by the elites. 2/3s of Americans still disagree with the Supreme Court ruling banning school prayer. When there is a trade off, who should get to make the decisions about where to strike the balance?

danans 5y ago
> Who decides how much they value religious liberty compared to lower divorce rates? > When there is a trade off, who should get to make the decisions about where to strike the balance? Of course the Supreme Court when concerning anything involving the government making an establishment of any religion. The US isn't Saudi Arabia. As much as it's any American's right to practice the religion of their choosing, it's not in any religion's right to deny any individual - even in their religion - their individual liberties, or to impose their religion upon a person of another or no religion.
jacobolus 5y ago
In many places “low divorce rate” is a euphemism for widespread sexual assault, domestic violence, and total lack of women’s individual rights. You get young women handed off from father to husband as effectively chattel. Women have no choice but to put up with that when they don’t have any viable social/economic alternatives, but it’s overall pretty unpleasant and oppressive. A significant proportion of people in the US seem to pine for the days when homosexuality was taboo and illegal, women could be beaten or raped by their husbands (and children by their fathers) and it was treated as no one else’s business, non-white people were kept out of the neighborhood and interracial marriage was frowned on if not illegal, pre-marital sex was encouraged for men but made women into “sluts”, middle/high school students received no education about basic human biology/anatomy, rape victims were forced to deliver their rapists’ babies, most professional jobs were reserved for white men, etc. But hey, low divorce rates!
- zozbot234 5y ago
  Do you seriously think that this is a good description of how the upper-middle class in the West behaves? Because by and large, that's what we're talking about in this thread wrt. low divorce rates. The notion that social anomie, abuse and violence is a simply unescapable "fact" about late modern societies is baseless. You're describing pervasive dysfunction, not a "new normal".
  - watwut 5y ago
    > You're describing pervasive dysfunction, not a "new normal". New normal can easily be pervasive dysfunction. When dysfunction becomes pervasive, it is also perceived as normal by people inside that society. > The notion that social anomie, abuse and violence is a simply unescapable "fact" about late modern societies is baseless. These were not so much anomies as taboo to talk about if it is happening to you. They were seen as private issues that should have stayed private and if you did talked about it, you was the bad one. Nevertheless, some statistics are available - for example domestic murders. Those went down. Some anonymous statistics. People who went through it in the past and did talked about it, their children remembering and talking about it later. The way domestic violence is portrayed in media - whether it is shown as something justifiable and ok or not. When I was child, there was no domestic violence around me. Then I grew into adult and people started to talk more openly in front of me. Turned out, there was in fact domestic violence among adults I knew as child ... except I was protected from it.