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> taught me to honor my parents, taught me the value of tradition, morality, spirituality Those do not sound positive at all. It sounds like you were successfu

> taught me to honor my parents, taught me the value of tradition, morality, spirituality Those do not sound positive at all. It sounds like you were successfully sheltered from secular and liberal ideas by traditional and conservative parents, which matches with my preconceptions of homeschooling.

gjs278 4y ago
_dain_ 4y ago
Or equivalently, state-run schooling successfully alienated you from these important values.
- xpe 4y ago
  No, these two views are not even close to equivalent. Why? Liberalism and pluralism do not attempt to deny other ways of life or philosophies. (They may criticize them, but they do not claim to have absolute truth.) On the other hand, many dogmatic religions want to protect children from influences they cannot control or understand. Studying many different philosophies leads some to conclude relativism is correct. But I disagree, as do many philosophers and ethicists. Why? There is a simple answer that captures the essence of it: start by letting in all ways of life and worldviews into a pluralistic society. Treat this as an experiment and see which philosophies do not respect the others. It is abundantly clear that some ways of life are incompatible with pluralism -- e.g. some are authoritarian, some are unnecessarily violent, some restrict freedom of thought, etc. P.S. Homeschooling has a demonstrated connection to religious conservatives.
  - wyager 4y ago
    > many dogmatic religions want to protect children from influences they cannot control or understand. Yes, for example, the state-secular religion of the US, which is enforced in public schools, wants to protect children from influences it cannot control, such as homeschooling.
    - xpe 4y ago
      > Yes, for example, the state-secular religion of the US, which is enforced in public schools, wants to protect children from influences it cannot control, such as homeschooling. No. This seems like an attempt at a wise phrase unfortunately mechanistically generated from some recursion and word substitution. Please try to support the claim if you actually believe it. Research classical liberalism, the scientific method, liberal arts, music, pedagogy, statistics, almost any field of study; they are not dogmatic in the same way that religion is. You should read about the history of the homeschooling movement especially in the American south such as Georgia. It has been a sustained effort by conservatives to opt out of the educational system. Perhaps you have some interesting angle on how state education is somehow parallel? But I highly doubt it. I see a computer scientist's mind at work trying to find a pattern -- a meta pattern perhaps -- to claim understanding. The problem is that I don't see any evidence that the claim has been examined up close. I don't see awareness of historical or educational context. Tell me if I'm wrong. I see it very often here: Overconfidence without a grounded understanding. Consider a simpler and rational explanation (for the USA at least): State-based education is funded largely because it is in the interest of the state to educate citizens to participate in government and exist in a pluralistic society. An effective education in democracy does not shelter people from the idea of religion but instead puts it in a context so that we can live together even though we may not have the same fundamental beliefs.
      - swatcoder 4y ago
        I think what they’re railing against is an actual truth: an important role of education has always been inducting kids into a common understanding of the society they’ll be navigating as a adults. For modern western nations, that does means encouraging kids to think in terms of specific liberal, secular humanist values like universal human rights, pluralist nation-states, global interdependency, democratic government, capitalist economics, etc — and there are many communities throughout the world and throughout the US who have not actually bought into those values and instead value other, sometimes incompatible things. There is a real and legitimate tension between state education vs homeschooling (regardless of the particular politics/culture at home). I personally think too much such value fragmentation will damn us all and that a common education is necessary to keep a relatively peaceful order in what’s a constitutionally and inescapably diverse nation, but I get the complaint and worry that these other commenters are airing.
  - LudwigNagasena 4y ago
    > Liberalism and pluralism do not attempt to deny other ways of life or philosophies. Isn’t that what you just did?
    - xpe 4y ago
      >> Liberalism and pluralism do not attempt to deny other ways of life or philosophies. > Isn’t that what you just did? The key is understanding what I mean by "deny". First, I'll define liberalism and pluralism as I'm using them (from Wikipedia): > Pluralism as a political philosophy is the recognition and affirmation of diversity within a political body, which is seen to permit the peaceful coexistence of different interests, convictions, and lifestyles. > Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed and equality before the law. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but they generally support individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, private property and a market economy. I'm going to abbreviate liberalism as L and pluralism as P from here on. With this said, you can see that both L and P recognize diversity and individual freedoms to a large degree. But this is not an unfettered, unbounded, nor uncritical viewpoint. Some worldviews cannot coexist together. For example, a philosophy claiming that one group is superior and therefore may inflict suffering on others is not showing respect for the ideas of P or L. So, it is clear that neither P nor L are compatible with authoritarian philosophies. If you want to say "P and L deny authoritarian philosophies" I suppose that is fair enough. But I don't think deny captures what is going on very well. P and L go to great length to allow many worldviews -- hopefully to celebrate them if possible and at least tolerate them to whatever extent possible. This is quite different than dogmatic religions, many of whom claim to have absolute truth. If you want to see a more detailed articulation of why one can accept pluralism and liberalism without resorting to moral relativism, read "Through the Moral Maze" by Robert Kane. I'd expect there are other philosophers that hold similar views. His lecture series "The Quest for Meaning" is quite good -- roughly at the level of an introductory philosophy class at the US undergraduate level, more or less.
      - 4y ago
triyambakam 4y ago
So you're saying that it's bad to have morals and a religion? That sounds very dogmatic.
- xpe 4y ago
  No, the commenter is not saying that. And you probably know that? The context is right there in the comment: > It sounds like you were successfully sheltered from secular and liberal ideas by traditional and conservative parents It is better to read the whole comment in context and reply charitably. See HN guidelines.
  - zdragnar 4y ago
    That comment blatantly implies that secularl and liberal ideas are incompatible with valuing tradition, morality and spirituality. It makes unquantified assumptions about how the person was raised and their life experiences. There's nothing charitable about it at all.
    - idle_zealot 4y ago
      > blatantly implies that secularl and liberal ideas are incompatible with valuing tradition, morality and spirituality Yes, that is what I was implying. Now I will state it more explicitly: those values are each at odds with either secularism or liberalism. > unquantified assumptions about how the person was raised I'm not entirely sure what an unquantified assumption is, but I clearly qualified that I was making a guess about the person. Making and confirming guesses about others based on what you know about them so far is normal behavior. I am by no means certain about the accuracy of my guess, but presented it as a starting point for further discussion.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - xpe 4y ago
        > Now I will state it more explicitly: those values are each at odds with either secularism or liberalism. If philosophies claiming absolute truth are imposed on a pluralist society there will be conflict. In this sense, I agree they are incompatible in some cases. However, they are not necessarily incompatible. There are religious leaders who recommend that followers live by a religious philosophy without imposing it via strict laws. A philosopher named Robert Kane describes his views which distinguish between public morality and private morality. Pluralism as a public morality is compatible to a very large extent with most private moralities. You only get incompatibilities when the private morality tramples on the rights of other private moralities. This is a useful distinction.
wussboy 4y ago
I'm as atheist as they come, and I value liberalism and secularism extremely. But I also acknowledge that not all humans are like me and that not everyone has a liberal mindset. They did a study once and when conservatives were asked to think like liberals they were able to do so quite effectively. Unfortunately, liberals were not able to think like conservatives at all. This makes me cautious before recommending liberalism and secularism to all. May I recommend Haidt's The Righteous Mind? It snapped me out of my "only liberalism/secularism is right" mindset.
- jonemi 4y ago
  I'd be interested in reading more about this study. Are you able to find a link to it?
- xpe 4y ago
  > They did a study once and when conservatives were asked to think like liberals they were able to do so quite effectively. Unfortunately, liberals were not able to think like conservatives at all. This makes me cautious before recommending liberalism and secularism to all. Can you spell out your logic? When I think about the relative merits of forms of government, I consider a large range of factors: human nature, philosophy, morality, ethics, technology, and more.
wyager 4y ago
> It sounds like you were successfully sheltered from secular and liberal ideas If your utility function is "optimize for the life outcomes of my children", experimental evidence suggests this is a good thing. If your utility function is "optimize for outcomes that are in accord with my state-secular religious beliefs at the expense of my child's life outcomes", it's not.
- anon291 4y ago
  One can say the same thing about public and private schooled kids -- sheltered from traditional and conservative ideas.
  - xpe 4y ago
    This is a false claim of equivalence: very different things are happening. A liberal education does not 'shelter' students from religion -- instead, they are more likely to learn about it critically, perhaps in comparison with various faiths and histories. Personally I can say that I've learned a much greater depth about religion and spirituality outside of formal religious contacts. Perhaps something about the organizational setup of religious-based and funded programs is counterproductive for skeptical minds who might otherwise be curious.
    - OJFord 4y ago
      I'm very confused about the meaning of 'liberal' in this thread - it's quite overloaded anyway, but is it also like 'conservative' in having quite a different (or at least more specific) meaning in the US vs. UK (and especially vs. capital-C 'Conservative' party)? But also it seems to be assumed contradictorily to imply each secular and not?
      - anon291 4y ago
        Yeah, he brought up religion for no particular reason. To be clear, when I say 'traditional' ideas, I mean those ideas that have captured the secular zeitgeist of generations before us. For example, the idea that the family is the foundational element of society today has religious connotations, but only because it is carried over from Roman times. The Romans achieved this conclusion through secular means. It's now associated with religion because the Catholic church basically is the current implementation of the late Roman empire's value system.
Banana699 4y ago
I'm atheist and I value those things as well. I plan to die without ever making my beliefs public for fear of upsetting my religious family. Atheism does seem to come with a built-in rebellious "Fuck God, Fuck Jesus, Fuck Mohamed... Neither A King Nor A God" initial phase. But as that cools down a bit, you realize that religion is really optimal on many many things. Even if it got those things purely by chance or by stealing them from older traditions (because hey, every religion was once the edgy new heresy on the block that simultaneously invalidates older wisdom while secretly stealing the best parts), and even if it got a lot of other things wrong, horribly wrong. Secularism is good for politics, because religions are a dime a dozen and any choice of which one should be the dominant is irrational and arbitrary. It was never meant to be a catch all "No religion plz" rule. Liberalism, unless you define it as anything other than the good old "Live And Let Live" of Mill and Locke, is not in obvious contradiction with any of the traditional values GP states. ------- Most importantly, Tradition is about Family. Family is important. This is the single biggest understatement I made in a long long time. The cheapness of the Fast-and-Furious style "muh family" sentiments hides the radicalism of this shattering realization : the only force in this entire universe that is invested in your success without any direct expectation of something in return is your family. I'm a techno-primitivist, I believe political units should be extremely small, extremely numerous, with an emphasis on blood ties as the ultimate guarantee of group cohesion and loyalty. I have a burning hatred for and deep distrust of any political unit with more than 1000 persons. There is no way to make a social organization of >1000 persons consistently fair, the rules are always arbitrary and ad hoc, a few assholes always play the meta-game and find ways around them, and somebody is always oppressed and bullied and consistently given the shorter end without a way to be heard. Family is different, affinity for genetic similarity is deeply hardwired into your lowest level circuits, very few assholes can find their way around the rules evolution built. Every single social organization is a prisoner's dilemma come alive, why cooperate with that stranger you're never going to see again? The answers are always arbitrary and subject to abuse and evasion : Because God, Because Emperor, Because CEO, Because General. Family is the only social unit where the rules stem from your very being : Because Evolution, the very factory that built you, that encoded your love and respect for your own flesh and blood as deep inside as it encoded your liver and kidneys. In another, and better, universe, we never built nations or states or parliaments or public school systems, every family is an autonomous unit under the leadership of its bread winner, and federations of families handle cross-cutting concerns in a way that leaves as much power to the families as possible.
TobyTheDog123 4y ago
Tradition, morality, spirituality, and honoring your parents don't sound positive?
- idle_zealot 4y ago
  Correct, they don't sound positive at all to me. Placing inherent value in tradition impedes progress. All tradition should be examined critically. Traditions that continue to provide value should be kept, harmless traditions are unimportant, and harmful traditions should be stopped. Valuing morality means something completely different to everyone, and as such is close to a meaningless statement. Morality is a web of biologically-borne and cultural-imparted values. By definition each person values their personal morality. That said, usually when people in the US publicly declare the importance of morality, it's code for Christian (usually Protestant) teachings, which are themselves a mixed bag of commonly-held values like community and giving and some heinous views on various marginalized groups, depending on who you ask. As you may be able to guess, I do not value spirituality. I view any time spent seriously contemplating the supernatural past early developmental years as indicative of a loose grasp on reality. Honor is something that people earn through their actions. If parents act honorably then they should be treated as such. If they fail to earn their child's respect then they are not entitled to it. The fact that they spawned a child is worthy of little to no honor. The manner in which they provide for and nurture the child may be deserving of honor, or it may not be. I do not view respect of one's parents as inherently good, and blind respect or honor of anyone or anything is certainly bad. The common thread here is that these values all indicate to me an abdication of critical thought. Blind trust in tradition, an assumption of universal morality, belief in the supernatural, and unquestioning adherence to authority figures. Am I certain that these describe OP? No, but it's definitely what this collection of values sounds like to me in the context of his post.
dang 4y ago
Please don't take HN threads into ideological flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
judah 4y ago
Author here. I'll do my best to charitably respond, even though your reply was less than charitable. It's true there is some sheltering with homeschooling. But it's not airtight or longlasting. Homeschooled kids, especially teens, will get exposed to outside influences. I'm nearly 40 years old now, and I can look back confidently and say that homeschooling helped create the environment in which I could critically evaluate ideas, including secular and liberal ones.

gjs278 4y ago

_dain_ 4y ago

Or equivalently, state-run schooling successfully alienated you from these important values.

xpe 4y ago
No, these two views are not even close to equivalent. Why? Liberalism and pluralism do not attempt to deny other ways of life or philosophies. (They may criticize them, but they do not claim to have absolute truth.) On the other hand, many dogmatic religions want to protect children from influences they cannot control or understand. Studying many different philosophies leads some to conclude relativism is correct. But I disagree, as do many philosophers and ethicists. Why? There is a simple answer that captures the essence of it: start by letting in all ways of life and worldviews into a pluralistic society. Treat this as an experiment and see which philosophies do not respect the others. It is abundantly clear that some ways of life are incompatible with pluralism -- e.g. some are authoritarian, some are unnecessarily violent, some restrict freedom of thought, etc. P.S. Homeschooling has a demonstrated connection to religious conservatives.
- wyager 4y ago
  > many dogmatic religions want to protect children from influences they cannot control or understand. Yes, for example, the state-secular religion of the US, which is enforced in public schools, wants to protect children from influences it cannot control, such as homeschooling.
  - xpe 4y ago
    > Yes, for example, the state-secular religion of the US, which is enforced in public schools, wants to protect children from influences it cannot control, such as homeschooling. No. This seems like an attempt at a wise phrase unfortunately mechanistically generated from some recursion and word substitution. Please try to support the claim if you actually believe it. Research classical liberalism, the scientific method, liberal arts, music, pedagogy, statistics, almost any field of study; they are not dogmatic in the same way that religion is. You should read about the history of the homeschooling movement especially in the American south such as Georgia. It has been a sustained effort by conservatives to opt out of the educational system. Perhaps you have some interesting angle on how state education is somehow parallel? But I highly doubt it. I see a computer scientist's mind at work trying to find a pattern -- a meta pattern perhaps -- to claim understanding. The problem is that I don't see any evidence that the claim has been examined up close. I don't see awareness of historical or educational context. Tell me if I'm wrong. I see it very often here: Overconfidence without a grounded understanding. Consider a simpler and rational explanation (for the USA at least): State-based education is funded largely because it is in the interest of the state to educate citizens to participate in government and exist in a pluralistic society. An effective education in democracy does not shelter people from the idea of religion but instead puts it in a context so that we can live together even though we may not have the same fundamental beliefs.
    - swatcoder 4y ago
      I think what they’re railing against is an actual truth: an important role of education has always been inducting kids into a common understanding of the society they’ll be navigating as a adults. For modern western nations, that does means encouraging kids to think in terms of specific liberal, secular humanist values like universal human rights, pluralist nation-states, global interdependency, democratic government, capitalist economics, etc — and there are many communities throughout the world and throughout the US who have not actually bought into those values and instead value other, sometimes incompatible things. There is a real and legitimate tension between state education vs homeschooling (regardless of the particular politics/culture at home). I personally think too much such value fragmentation will damn us all and that a common education is necessary to keep a relatively peaceful order in what’s a constitutionally and inescapably diverse nation, but I get the complaint and worry that these other commenters are airing.
- LudwigNagasena 4y ago
  > Liberalism and pluralism do not attempt to deny other ways of life or philosophies. Isn’t that what you just did?
  - xpe 4y ago
    >> Liberalism and pluralism do not attempt to deny other ways of life or philosophies. > Isn’t that what you just did? The key is understanding what I mean by "deny". First, I'll define liberalism and pluralism as I'm using them (from Wikipedia): > Pluralism as a political philosophy is the recognition and affirmation of diversity within a political body, which is seen to permit the peaceful coexistence of different interests, convictions, and lifestyles. > Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed and equality before the law. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but they generally support individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, private property and a market economy. I'm going to abbreviate liberalism as L and pluralism as P from here on. With this said, you can see that both L and P recognize diversity and individual freedoms to a large degree. But this is not an unfettered, unbounded, nor uncritical viewpoint. Some worldviews cannot coexist together. For example, a philosophy claiming that one group is superior and therefore may inflict suffering on others is not showing respect for the ideas of P or L. So, it is clear that neither P nor L are compatible with authoritarian philosophies. If you want to say "P and L deny authoritarian philosophies" I suppose that is fair enough. But I don't think deny captures what is going on very well. P and L go to great length to allow many worldviews -- hopefully to celebrate them if possible and at least tolerate them to whatever extent possible. This is quite different than dogmatic religions, many of whom claim to have absolute truth. If you want to see a more detailed articulation of why one can accept pluralism and liberalism without resorting to moral relativism, read "Through the Moral Maze" by Robert Kane. I'd expect there are other philosophers that hold similar views. His lecture series "The Quest for Meaning" is quite good -- roughly at the level of an introductory philosophy class at the US undergraduate level, more or less.
    - 4y ago

triyambakam 4y ago

So you're saying that it's bad to have morals and a religion? That sounds very dogmatic.

xpe 4y ago
No, the commenter is not saying that. And you probably know that? The context is right there in the comment: > It sounds like you were successfully sheltered from secular and liberal ideas by traditional and conservative parents It is better to read the whole comment in context and reply charitably. See HN guidelines.
- zdragnar 4y ago
  That comment blatantly implies that secularl and liberal ideas are incompatible with valuing tradition, morality and spirituality. It makes unquantified assumptions about how the person was raised and their life experiences. There's nothing charitable about it at all.
  - idle_zealot 4y ago
    > blatantly implies that secularl and liberal ideas are incompatible with valuing tradition, morality and spirituality Yes, that is what I was implying. Now I will state it more explicitly: those values are each at odds with either secularism or liberalism. > unquantified assumptions about how the person was raised I'm not entirely sure what an unquantified assumption is, but I clearly qualified that I was making a guess about the person. Making and confirming guesses about others based on what you know about them so far is normal behavior. I am by no means certain about the accuracy of my guess, but presented it as a starting point for further discussion.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - xpe 4y ago
      > Now I will state it more explicitly: those values are each at odds with either secularism or liberalism. If philosophies claiming absolute truth are imposed on a pluralist society there will be conflict. In this sense, I agree they are incompatible in some cases. However, they are not necessarily incompatible. There are religious leaders who recommend that followers live by a religious philosophy without imposing it via strict laws. A philosopher named Robert Kane describes his views which distinguish between public morality and private morality. Pluralism as a public morality is compatible to a very large extent with most private moralities. You only get incompatibilities when the private morality tramples on the rights of other private moralities. This is a useful distinction.

wussboy 4y ago

I'm as atheist as they come, and I value liberalism and secularism extremely. But I also acknowledge that not all humans are like me and that not everyone has a liberal mindset. They did a study once and when conservatives were asked to think like liberals they were able to do so quite effectively. Unfortunately, liberals were not able to think like conservatives at all. This makes me cautious before recommending liberalism and secularism to all. May I recommend Haidt's The Righteous Mind? It snapped me out of my "only liberalism/secularism is right" mindset.

jonemi 4y ago
I'd be interested in reading more about this study. Are you able to find a link to it?
xpe 4y ago
> They did a study once and when conservatives were asked to think like liberals they were able to do so quite effectively. Unfortunately, liberals were not able to think like conservatives at all. This makes me cautious before recommending liberalism and secularism to all. Can you spell out your logic? When I think about the relative merits of forms of government, I consider a large range of factors: human nature, philosophy, morality, ethics, technology, and more.

wyager 4y ago

> It sounds like you were successfully sheltered from secular and liberal ideas If your utility function is "optimize for the life outcomes of my children", experimental evidence suggests this is a good thing. If your utility function is "optimize for outcomes that are in accord with my state-secular religious beliefs at the expense of my child's life outcomes", it's not.

anon291 4y ago
One can say the same thing about public and private schooled kids -- sheltered from traditional and conservative ideas.
- xpe 4y ago
  This is a false claim of equivalence: very different things are happening. A liberal education does not 'shelter' students from religion -- instead, they are more likely to learn about it critically, perhaps in comparison with various faiths and histories. Personally I can say that I've learned a much greater depth about religion and spirituality outside of formal religious contacts. Perhaps something about the organizational setup of religious-based and funded programs is counterproductive for skeptical minds who might otherwise be curious.
  - OJFord 4y ago
    I'm very confused about the meaning of 'liberal' in this thread - it's quite overloaded anyway, but is it also like 'conservative' in having quite a different (or at least more specific) meaning in the US vs. UK (and especially vs. capital-C 'Conservative' party)? But also it seems to be assumed contradictorily to imply each secular and not?
    - anon291 4y ago
      Yeah, he brought up religion for no particular reason. To be clear, when I say 'traditional' ideas, I mean those ideas that have captured the secular zeitgeist of generations before us. For example, the idea that the family is the foundational element of society today has religious connotations, but only because it is carried over from Roman times. The Romans achieved this conclusion through secular means. It's now associated with religion because the Catholic church basically is the current implementation of the late Roman empire's value system.

Banana699 4y ago

I'm atheist and I value those things as well. I plan to die without ever making my beliefs public for fear of upsetting my religious family. Atheism does seem to come with a built-in rebellious "Fuck God, Fuck Jesus, Fuck Mohamed... Neither A King Nor A God" initial phase. But as that cools down a bit, you realize that religion is really optimal on many many things. Even if it got those things purely by chance or by stealing them from older traditions (because hey, every religion was once the edgy new heresy on the block that simultaneously invalidates older wisdom while secretly stealing the best parts), and even if it got a lot of other things wrong, horribly wrong. Secularism is good for politics, because religions are a dime a dozen and any choice of which one should be the dominant is irrational and arbitrary. It was never meant to be a catch all "No religion plz" rule. Liberalism, unless you define it as anything other than the good old "Live And Let Live" of Mill and Locke, is not in obvious contradiction with any of the traditional values GP states. ------- Most importantly, Tradition is about Family. Family is important. This is the single biggest understatement I made in a long long time. The cheapness of the Fast-and-Furious style "muh family" sentiments hides the radicalism of this shattering realization : the only force in this entire universe that is invested in your success without any direct expectation of something in return is your family. I'm a techno-primitivist, I believe political units should be extremely small, extremely numerous, with an emphasis on blood ties as the ultimate guarantee of group cohesion and loyalty. I have a burning hatred for and deep distrust of any political unit with more than 1000 persons. There is no way to make a social organization of >1000 persons consistently fair, the rules are always arbitrary and ad hoc, a few assholes always play the meta-game and find ways around them, and somebody is always oppressed and bullied and consistently given the shorter end without a way to be heard. Family is different, affinity for genetic similarity is deeply hardwired into your lowest level circuits, very few assholes can find their way around the rules evolution built. Every single social organization is a prisoner's dilemma come alive, why cooperate with that stranger you're never going to see again? The answers are always arbitrary and subject to abuse and evasion : Because God, Because Emperor, Because CEO, Because General. Family is the only social unit where the rules stem from your very being : Because Evolution, the very factory that built you, that encoded your love and respect for your own flesh and blood as deep inside as it encoded your liver and kidneys. In another, and better, universe, we never built nations or states or parliaments or public school systems, every family is an autonomous unit under the leadership of its bread winner, and federations of families handle cross-cutting concerns in a way that leaves as much power to the families as possible.

TobyTheDog123 4y ago

Tradition, morality, spirituality, and honoring your parents don't sound positive?

idle_zealot 4y ago
Correct, they don't sound positive at all to me. Placing inherent value in tradition impedes progress. All tradition should be examined critically. Traditions that continue to provide value should be kept, harmless traditions are unimportant, and harmful traditions should be stopped. Valuing morality means something completely different to everyone, and as such is close to a meaningless statement. Morality is a web of biologically-borne and cultural-imparted values. By definition each person values their personal morality. That said, usually when people in the US publicly declare the importance of morality, it's code for Christian (usually Protestant) teachings, which are themselves a mixed bag of commonly-held values like community and giving and some heinous views on various marginalized groups, depending on who you ask. As you may be able to guess, I do not value spirituality. I view any time spent seriously contemplating the supernatural past early developmental years as indicative of a loose grasp on reality. Honor is something that people earn through their actions. If parents act honorably then they should be treated as such. If they fail to earn their child's respect then they are not entitled to it. The fact that they spawned a child is worthy of little to no honor. The manner in which they provide for and nurture the child may be deserving of honor, or it may not be. I do not view respect of one's parents as inherently good, and blind respect or honor of anyone or anything is certainly bad. The common thread here is that these values all indicate to me an abdication of critical thought. Blind trust in tradition, an assumption of universal morality, belief in the supernatural, and unquestioning adherence to authority figures. Am I certain that these describe OP? No, but it's definitely what this collection of values sounds like to me in the context of his post.

dang 4y ago

Please don't take HN threads into ideological flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

judah 4y ago

Author here. I'll do my best to charitably respond, even though your reply was less than charitable. It's true there is some sheltering with homeschooling. But it's not airtight or longlasting. Homeschooled kids, especially teens, will get exposed to outside influences. I'm nearly 40 years old now, and I can look back confidently and say that homeschooling helped create the environment in which I could critically evaluate ideas, including secular and liberal ones.