6 ms·

It's weird because America is at once the home of the free, but also the home of a hardcore set of puritans who love to get control of the moral compass and enf

It's weird because America is at once the home of the free, but also the home of a hardcore set of puritans who love to get control of the moral compass and enforce it on everyone else. It comes in waves. The last wave was in the 80s. But this wave is larger and more totalizing. Control of the internet and AI output is the ultimate hall monitor tool.

techdragon 4y ago
America has “Puritan Roots”, while long removed and tempered by centuries of immigration, westward expansion into territory of other cultures both native and similarly imperial (the French and Spanish territories of the new world) … but somehow you can still see the Puritans influence, reverberating down through time in the minds of each generation of waspy Protestants… it even got monetised in the form of purity preaching baptist and Christian megachurches with the fostering of a “everyone is a sinner, give money to much church to assuage your guilt” mindset being lucrative to a charismatic few… The short version… what do you expect from a country founded by the Puritans, the only people who looked at the repressed tight laced morality of Victorian England and said “harlots, degenerates”… they were pushed out of English society for being killjoys and too prudish… for Victorian England
- chanandler_bong 4y ago
  The Victorian Era started in about 1820, 200 years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.
- thenewwazoo 4y ago
  The peer comment to this one gets it right. The Puritans predated the Victorians by a couple hundred years. That'd be like saying the Victorians were reacting to the degeneracy of Fox News. My recollection (vague as it is now after decades since taking classes) is that the Calvinists and Puritans decided to leave northern Europe (remember there were more than just Brits sending boats) after being denied authority to impose their mores on the rest of society. As ever, they wanted to control those who didn't subscribe to their values.
  - namaria 4y ago
    That's quite simplistic. There was a lot of persecution and bad blood behind the decision to migrate overseas because of religious beliefs in the 17th century. Saying it was just a bunch of frustrated control freaks doesn't even come close to capturing it.
  - christkv 4y ago
    The British civil war and the then rejection of Cromwell and what they stod for was probably a significant factor in so many puritans leaving for the American colonies.
  - qwytw 4y ago
    There were two strains of "Puritans" in England. The Pilgrims believed that the Church of England was unredeemable and preferred to establish their own community somewhere else where they wouldn't be persecuted anymore. They (well some of them) first moved to the Netherlands and later to America. Non-separatist Puritans who remained in England or moved to Massachusetts wanted to "reform" the Church of England instead of establishing their own. They later won the civil war and established a religious dictatorship (well obviously that's grossly oversimplified and there were many other groups besides the puritans which took part in that)... The Plymouth colony was established by the separatists/Pilgrims while most non-separatist Puritans went to New England. The ones in Plymouth were a bit more tolerant (e.g. they didn't hang Quakers like the Puritans in Massachusetts did, only fined then and stripped them of their civil rights, so I guess that's something...)
- politician 4y ago
  While the original Puritanism is gone, it left behind a set of tools and tactics and strategies that "in" groups can deploy to bludgeon "out" groups. That's why we see revivals of behaviors that look suspiciously Puritanical - it was simply very good at its job.
- reader5000 4y ago
  The ai censorship is of the modern "social justice" form, which does not find roots in "waspy Protestants".
- namaria 4y ago
  On the subject of American Christians, I find ironic that one of the reasons of the splintering of western Christianity, namely the sales of indulgence, is one of the main driving forces of modern Christianity. I also lament the poverty of philosophical debate when American refute preposterous positions held by these post modern Christians and think they have refuted the whole of human religion as bunk. All the while calling themselves Atheist with capital A. I mean, if you don't believe in something, why define your self as the opposite of that? Non existing things don't have opposites.
  - freedomben 4y ago
    > I also lament the poverty of philosophical debate when American refute preposterous positions held by these post modern Christians and think they have refuted the whole of human religion as bunk. All the while calling themselves Atheist with capital A. Can you give a name or an example? I read a lot of athiest stuff and I've never encountered that (from a respected source at least, not from random people on facebook). Sure a lot of the writing focuses on modern Christianity, but that's a population thing and nobody I know of pretends like there isn't religion outside of that (in fact many of them specifically mention that they're going to focus mostly on Christianity but that there are plenty of other things out there). It would be largely a waste of time debunking Zeus and Jupiter in the 21st century
    - namaria 4y ago
      It comes down to the strawman fallacy. If a specific claim is made that can be refuted, that's science. If you just hand wave away huge chunks of philosophy and literature based on a specific claim that someone made, or that you stand up for the purpose of discussion, then you are impoverishing human culture. Maybe you should read ancient Greek mythology before saying 'Zeus is bunk'. Is there a specific claim about reality you are referring to? Or are you saying all of ancient Greek texts about Zeus have zero philosophical value?
      - freedomben 4y ago
        Who said ancient Greek texts about Zeus have zero philosophical value? I didn't, and I doubt anyone except you did, so it's quite ironic that you say: > It comes down to the strawman fallacy Most atheists are scientists. People talk about what they know. If you're mad because they don't talk about Greek mythology (which is a pretty different subject), are you mad that they don't discuss the correct way to make a ham and cheese omelette as well? Also, would still like a name/example that we can evaluate your claims against.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- BoxOfRain 4y ago
  The Puritan influence on America is really fascinating in my opinion, it's strange to think how the sociopolitical trauma of the English Reformation echoes to this day completely removed from its original context; modern England (the whole UK actually) is now a very secular country in practice with minimal church attendance. It wasn't the Victorians who pushed them out though rather it was quite a bit earlier, it was the post-Restoration requirement in 1660 for English clergy to swear Anglican oaths which the Puritans really took issue with. They actually did suffer social disadvantages for being outside of the Church of England and were often suspected of disloyalty by other English people though not without reason since the most famous Puritan Oliver Cromwell had literally overthrown the government and imposed a moralistic religious republic in recent memory.
noelsusman 4y ago
Control of government and the courts is way more powerful at imposing your moral compass on everyone else than control of the Internet and AI output. We have a very recent example of this happening in a way that was several orders magnitude more impactful than a chat bot censoring some of its output, and it didn't come from the woke mob. My point is I agree that Americans love to impose their moral compass on each other any way they can, but I disagree that it comes in waves. It's a constant force coming from all sides.
IMTDb 4y ago
> is at once the home of the free That's just marketing; no one in their right minds considers the US to be "the land of the free" that it pretends to be. And all objective measures of "freedom" give it an "above average" score - at best. Saying something very loud and very often does not make it true.
- solveit 4y ago
  Eh, it depends. The USA does have some of the most stringent protections for speech in the world.
  - FooBarWidget 4y ago
    And yet it also has Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. Furthermore, people have the freedom to talk about a great many things, but apparently not the freedom to enjoy actual beneficial policy changes. What use is freedom of speech then other than as an excuse to show off moral superiority? Many in the US also do not enjoy freedom of movement, as many places are dangerous, especially during certain times and for certain population groups. I'd say that the oversimplified understanding of what freedom means, and the insistance that that one definition of freedom is the only valid form of freedom, also does a lot of damage.
    - krapp 4y ago
      I mean sure, we live under an all-seeing panopticon, our police kill us with impunity, our media is a propaganda engine that manufactures popular consent through false narratives and drives addiction to consumerism, our social media is basically MKULTRA, our healthcare and educational systems are grifts whose primary purpose is to bleed the poor over a lifetime of crushing debt, our lives are owned and controlled by billionaires and corporations while we ourselves own nothing (not even our own identities), and our government is wholly corrupt, bloodthirsty, incapable of governance and utterly insulated from the will of the public, to the point that the only political revolutions allowed to gain any traction are those which support the status quo of capitalism, white supremacy and imperialism. But we have guns! So many guns!
    - deleted 4y ago
mikrotikker 4y ago
Its purely risk avoidance by a corporation because they are worried about being cancelled or sued by the woke mob.

techdragon 4y ago

America has “Puritan Roots”, while long removed and tempered by centuries of immigration, westward expansion into territory of other cultures both native and similarly imperial (the French and Spanish territories of the new world) … but somehow you can still see the Puritans influence, reverberating down through time in the minds of each generation of waspy Protestants… it even got monetised in the form of purity preaching baptist and Christian megachurches with the fostering of a “everyone is a sinner, give money to much church to assuage your guilt” mindset being lucrative to a charismatic few… The short version… what do you expect from a country founded by the Puritans, the only people who looked at the repressed tight laced morality of Victorian England and said “harlots, degenerates”… they were pushed out of English society for being killjoys and too prudish… for Victorian England

chanandler_bong 4y ago
The Victorian Era started in about 1820, 200 years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.
thenewwazoo 4y ago
The peer comment to this one gets it right. The Puritans predated the Victorians by a couple hundred years. That'd be like saying the Victorians were reacting to the degeneracy of Fox News. My recollection (vague as it is now after decades since taking classes) is that the Calvinists and Puritans decided to leave northern Europe (remember there were more than just Brits sending boats) after being denied authority to impose their mores on the rest of society. As ever, they wanted to control those who didn't subscribe to their values.
- namaria 4y ago
  That's quite simplistic. There was a lot of persecution and bad blood behind the decision to migrate overseas because of religious beliefs in the 17th century. Saying it was just a bunch of frustrated control freaks doesn't even come close to capturing it.
- christkv 4y ago
  The British civil war and the then rejection of Cromwell and what they stod for was probably a significant factor in so many puritans leaving for the American colonies.
- qwytw 4y ago
  There were two strains of "Puritans" in England. The Pilgrims believed that the Church of England was unredeemable and preferred to establish their own community somewhere else where they wouldn't be persecuted anymore. They (well some of them) first moved to the Netherlands and later to America. Non-separatist Puritans who remained in England or moved to Massachusetts wanted to "reform" the Church of England instead of establishing their own. They later won the civil war and established a religious dictatorship (well obviously that's grossly oversimplified and there were many other groups besides the puritans which took part in that)... The Plymouth colony was established by the separatists/Pilgrims while most non-separatist Puritans went to New England. The ones in Plymouth were a bit more tolerant (e.g. they didn't hang Quakers like the Puritans in Massachusetts did, only fined then and stripped them of their civil rights, so I guess that's something...)
politician 4y ago
While the original Puritanism is gone, it left behind a set of tools and tactics and strategies that "in" groups can deploy to bludgeon "out" groups. That's why we see revivals of behaviors that look suspiciously Puritanical - it was simply very good at its job.
reader5000 4y ago
The ai censorship is of the modern "social justice" form, which does not find roots in "waspy Protestants".
namaria 4y ago
On the subject of American Christians, I find ironic that one of the reasons of the splintering of western Christianity, namely the sales of indulgence, is one of the main driving forces of modern Christianity. I also lament the poverty of philosophical debate when American refute preposterous positions held by these post modern Christians and think they have refuted the whole of human religion as bunk. All the while calling themselves Atheist with capital A. I mean, if you don't believe in something, why define your self as the opposite of that? Non existing things don't have opposites.
- freedomben 4y ago
  > I also lament the poverty of philosophical debate when American refute preposterous positions held by these post modern Christians and think they have refuted the whole of human religion as bunk. All the while calling themselves Atheist with capital A. Can you give a name or an example? I read a lot of athiest stuff and I've never encountered that (from a respected source at least, not from random people on facebook). Sure a lot of the writing focuses on modern Christianity, but that's a population thing and nobody I know of pretends like there isn't religion outside of that (in fact many of them specifically mention that they're going to focus mostly on Christianity but that there are plenty of other things out there). It would be largely a waste of time debunking Zeus and Jupiter in the 21st century
  - namaria 4y ago
    It comes down to the strawman fallacy. If a specific claim is made that can be refuted, that's science. If you just hand wave away huge chunks of philosophy and literature based on a specific claim that someone made, or that you stand up for the purpose of discussion, then you are impoverishing human culture. Maybe you should read ancient Greek mythology before saying 'Zeus is bunk'. Is there a specific claim about reality you are referring to? Or are you saying all of ancient Greek texts about Zeus have zero philosophical value?
    - freedomben 4y ago
      Who said ancient Greek texts about Zeus have zero philosophical value? I didn't, and I doubt anyone except you did, so it's quite ironic that you say: > It comes down to the strawman fallacy Most atheists are scientists. People talk about what they know. If you're mad because they don't talk about Greek mythology (which is a pretty different subject), are you mad that they don't discuss the correct way to make a ham and cheese omelette as well? Also, would still like a name/example that we can evaluate your claims against.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
BoxOfRain 4y ago
The Puritan influence on America is really fascinating in my opinion, it's strange to think how the sociopolitical trauma of the English Reformation echoes to this day completely removed from its original context; modern England (the whole UK actually) is now a very secular country in practice with minimal church attendance. It wasn't the Victorians who pushed them out though rather it was quite a bit earlier, it was the post-Restoration requirement in 1660 for English clergy to swear Anglican oaths which the Puritans really took issue with. They actually did suffer social disadvantages for being outside of the Church of England and were often suspected of disloyalty by other English people though not without reason since the most famous Puritan Oliver Cromwell had literally overthrown the government and imposed a moralistic religious republic in recent memory.

noelsusman 4y ago

Control of government and the courts is way more powerful at imposing your moral compass on everyone else than control of the Internet and AI output. We have a very recent example of this happening in a way that was several orders magnitude more impactful than a chat bot censoring some of its output, and it didn't come from the woke mob. My point is I agree that Americans love to impose their moral compass on each other any way they can, but I disagree that it comes in waves. It's a constant force coming from all sides.

IMTDb 4y ago

> is at once the home of the free That's just marketing; no one in their right minds considers the US to be "the land of the free" that it pretends to be. And all objective measures of "freedom" give it an "above average" score - at best. Saying something very loud and very often does not make it true.

solveit 4y ago
Eh, it depends. The USA does have some of the most stringent protections for speech in the world.
- FooBarWidget 4y ago
  And yet it also has Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. Furthermore, people have the freedom to talk about a great many things, but apparently not the freedom to enjoy actual beneficial policy changes. What use is freedom of speech then other than as an excuse to show off moral superiority? Many in the US also do not enjoy freedom of movement, as many places are dangerous, especially during certain times and for certain population groups. I'd say that the oversimplified understanding of what freedom means, and the insistance that that one definition of freedom is the only valid form of freedom, also does a lot of damage.
  - krapp 4y ago
    I mean sure, we live under an all-seeing panopticon, our police kill us with impunity, our media is a propaganda engine that manufactures popular consent through false narratives and drives addiction to consumerism, our social media is basically MKULTRA, our healthcare and educational systems are grifts whose primary purpose is to bleed the poor over a lifetime of crushing debt, our lives are owned and controlled by billionaires and corporations while we ourselves own nothing (not even our own identities), and our government is wholly corrupt, bloodthirsty, incapable of governance and utterly insulated from the will of the public, to the point that the only political revolutions allowed to gain any traction are those which support the status quo of capitalism, white supremacy and imperialism. But we have guns! So many guns!
  - deleted 4y ago

mikrotikker 4y ago

Its purely risk avoidance by a corporation because they are worried about being cancelled or sued by the woke mob.