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Churches satisfied our need for tribe that seems to be a need of a large majority of humans. Churches weren't just about teaching values to aspire to, but also

Churches satisfied our need for tribe that seems to be a need of a large majority of humans. Churches weren't just about teaching values to aspire to, but also providing a ready made community that was stable and provided tribal activities in person. If you intend to turn anywhere, you need to understand what was without the cynicism of non-majority experiences of system breakdowns. Online communities don't do that job well. Worse, online communities are not stable and people are inclined to be more hateful. Humans need both sides of our nature satisfied. We are tribal but we must also have outlets for individual time, activities, and a achievement. We need to own things on our own too.

ethbr0 4y ago
> providing a ready made community that was stable and provided tribal activities in person Exactly! I'd also phrase it as "a consistent, nationally-shared narrative" (consistent, at least in a normal distribution sense). We have effectively excluded god as a unifying cultural force in the West, on both liberal and conservative sides (pop-political "god" is no substitute for an apolitical, moral god). And when our societies have subsequently fractured and cast around for any replacement unifying force, we've been puzzled about what's happening... It may indeed be that religion (or national religion, in the cases of DPRK, China, and Russia) is the worst unifying force, except for all the others.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  You paint a picture in which religion swept everyone up in its "unification", but this has hardly ever been true. Even in the societies that show the most "unification" around a given religion, there have always been alternatives, and there have always been non-believers. Every human religion has fractured into subsets and schisms (even Buddhism! even Catholicism!). The idea that it's a unifier comes mostly from those who benefit from widespread acceptance of that idea.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    Religion as a force for cultural homogenization doesn't require a single religion. A Catholic society with a pluralism of sects and opinions is still more homogeneous than a non-Catholic, more individually-independent alternative. Even a Catholic / Anglican split society is more homogeneous in the sense of grand bargains being feasible, in the sense that there are fewer, discrete, and more hierarchical power centers who can bargain with each other. One of the great failures of cultural liberalism in the 1960s to effect more change was an inability to organize into coherent, unified, large groups of voters that could function and bargain within a democracy. If every asshole gets an opinion, it's hard to arrive at a "nobody is happy, but everyone is optimally least-sad" bargain.
  - bendbro 4y ago
    Totally agree. Religion is bad because it is about control. It forces everyone to do one thing. That is not unification.

ethbr0 4y ago

> providing a ready made community that was stable and provided tribal activities in person Exactly! I'd also phrase it as "a consistent, nationally-shared narrative" (consistent, at least in a normal distribution sense). We have effectively excluded god as a unifying cultural force in the West, on both liberal and conservative sides (pop-political "god" is no substitute for an apolitical, moral god). And when our societies have subsequently fractured and cast around for any replacement unifying force, we've been puzzled about what's happening... It may indeed be that religion (or national religion, in the cases of DPRK, China, and Russia) is the worst unifying force, except for all the others.

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
You paint a picture in which religion swept everyone up in its "unification", but this has hardly ever been true. Even in the societies that show the most "unification" around a given religion, there have always been alternatives, and there have always been non-believers. Every human religion has fractured into subsets and schisms (even Buddhism! even Catholicism!). The idea that it's a unifier comes mostly from those who benefit from widespread acceptance of that idea.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  Religion as a force for cultural homogenization doesn't require a single religion. A Catholic society with a pluralism of sects and opinions is still more homogeneous than a non-Catholic, more individually-independent alternative. Even a Catholic / Anglican split society is more homogeneous in the sense of grand bargains being feasible, in the sense that there are fewer, discrete, and more hierarchical power centers who can bargain with each other. One of the great failures of cultural liberalism in the 1960s to effect more change was an inability to organize into coherent, unified, large groups of voters that could function and bargain within a democracy. If every asshole gets an opinion, it's hard to arrive at a "nobody is happy, but everyone is optimally least-sad" bargain.
- bendbro 4y ago
  Totally agree. Religion is bad because it is about control. It forces everyone to do one thing. That is not unification.