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I don't understand how the socio-political stance to which I have ostensibly been subscribed my entire adult life has become so religious. It seems like there h

I don't understand how the socio-political stance to which I have ostensibly been subscribed my entire adult life has become so religious. It seems like there has been a bedrock shift from encouraging good behavior to witch-hunting bad behavior. In just a few short years, every topic of discourse has taken a similar path. From "do this good thing" to "don't do this bad thing" to "punish anyone who does this bad thing" to "punish anyone who doesn't punish people enough for doing this bad thing".

colechristensen 4y ago
I have a theory. Religion in America is majorly declining. The kinds of people who in previous generations would have been super obnoxious about Jesus things (not that he would have approved of their opinions) are now obnoxious about everything else. People blamed organized religion for how awful these kinds of folks were when actually it’s just a feature of humanity and the people just found new topics. Likewise politicians, the news, and anyone else who benefits from attention are learning more and more that this kind of religious thinking can be egged on for more attention so they (intentionally or organically) egg it on for their own benefit. The cure is for this kind of behavior to be shamed and shunned but only casually as to not give it the attention it deserves. Find the antics of the obnoxious boring instead of infuriating (like reality shows, I’m not upset they exist but I’m also not at all interested). This is just kind of an obsolete feature of humanity, at one point very valuable to group cohesiveness and order when we were still at odds with nature and quite vulnerable. Now a bunch of bored suburbanites need to find something new to be interested in than moralizing nonsense.
- kcplate 4y ago
  i’ve been saying for a while this emerging “woke” or whatever you want to call it morality is now presenting much in the same way as the moral/Religious right was in the ‘80s-90s. Their moral righteousness acts as an excuse to their actions whether right, wrong, evil, or good. Ultimately the ugly aspects always seem to emerge and distract away from whatever good aspects their moral system might have for the world. Such is the human condition I guess.
- puffoflogic 4y ago
  Ah, but you see, if this theory were right, then the US government would in effect be pushing a certain religion as a state religion and banning competing religions. And that certainly can't be right, because look, no one is even filing 1A lawsuits on this theory. So your theory must be wrong, QED.
  - iosono88 4y ago
    [dead]
- klooney 4y ago
  It's a popular theory, John McWhorter wrote a book with that thesis.
PessimalDecimal 4y ago
Assuming from context that the socio-political stance you have in mind is something like American leftism, it's always had a strong religious element to it. The recent purity spiral is a difference only of quantity but not really one of quality (in other words, not a bedrock shift from the past). Its roots are religious too, stemming from Puritanism brought to America's northeast, spreading westward to the burnt-over district [1] of western New York, and eventually the West Coast [2]. Puritan ideas like collective salvation and rooting out the bad thinkers showed up initially as literal witch hunts, and today as metaphorical witch hunts seeking to sniff out those who aren't true (enough) believers. It still takes the rough shape of Christian offshoot too, with a notion of original sin (think "White Guilt" or something related), has martyrs and saints, taboos, holidays and customs like any other religion. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burned-over_district https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burned-over_district [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Nations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Nations
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- thethimble 4y ago
  The book Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt was really interesting and relevant to your point. Haidt claims that every moral framework has a set of sacred beliefs that are not unlike religious beliefs. In other words every framework has a set of foundational axioms that have to be accepted on faith.
curun1r 4y ago
Social media. Being part of the mob that punishes and gets likes and gives people their dopamine fix. And as we know from all the other ways that humans get their dopamine fixes, they're not just going to sit by passively and wait for those situations to naturally occur. They're going to search them out with increasing urgency. It's always been like this whenever there's a moral panic. We've just used computing and the internet to do what computing and the internet do best...make something ubiquitous, universal and highly scalable.
hindsightbias 4y ago
This is a perfectly natural outcome of social media platforms and algorithms engineered largely by an ideologically orthodox population set with an extremely high congruence to the HN crowd. We are all chasing the Maxima.

colechristensen 4y ago

I have a theory. Religion in America is majorly declining. The kinds of people who in previous generations would have been super obnoxious about Jesus things (not that he would have approved of their opinions) are now obnoxious about everything else. People blamed organized religion for how awful these kinds of folks were when actually it’s just a feature of humanity and the people just found new topics. Likewise politicians, the news, and anyone else who benefits from attention are learning more and more that this kind of religious thinking can be egged on for more attention so they (intentionally or organically) egg it on for their own benefit. The cure is for this kind of behavior to be shamed and shunned but only casually as to not give it the attention it deserves. Find the antics of the obnoxious boring instead of infuriating (like reality shows, I’m not upset they exist but I’m also not at all interested). This is just kind of an obsolete feature of humanity, at one point very valuable to group cohesiveness and order when we were still at odds with nature and quite vulnerable. Now a bunch of bored suburbanites need to find something new to be interested in than moralizing nonsense.

kcplate 4y ago
i’ve been saying for a while this emerging “woke” or whatever you want to call it morality is now presenting much in the same way as the moral/Religious right was in the ‘80s-90s. Their moral righteousness acts as an excuse to their actions whether right, wrong, evil, or good. Ultimately the ugly aspects always seem to emerge and distract away from whatever good aspects their moral system might have for the world. Such is the human condition I guess.
puffoflogic 4y ago
Ah, but you see, if this theory were right, then the US government would in effect be pushing a certain religion as a state religion and banning competing religions. And that certainly can't be right, because look, no one is even filing 1A lawsuits on this theory. So your theory must be wrong, QED.
- iosono88 4y ago
  [dead]
klooney 4y ago
It's a popular theory, John McWhorter wrote a book with that thesis.

PessimalDecimal 4y ago

Assuming from context that the socio-political stance you have in mind is something like American leftism, it's always had a strong religious element to it. The recent purity spiral is a difference only of quantity but not really one of quality (in other words, not a bedrock shift from the past). Its roots are religious too, stemming from Puritanism brought to America's northeast, spreading westward to the burnt-over district [1] of western New York, and eventually the West Coast [2]. Puritan ideas like collective salvation and rooting out the bad thinkers showed up initially as literal witch hunts, and today as metaphorical witch hunts seeking to sniff out those who aren't true (enough) believers. It still takes the rough shape of Christian offshoot too, with a notion of original sin (think "White Guilt" or something related), has martyrs and saints, taboos, holidays and customs like any other religion. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burned-over_district https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burned-over_district [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Nations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Nations

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
thethimble 4y ago
The book Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt was really interesting and relevant to your point. Haidt claims that every moral framework has a set of sacred beliefs that are not unlike religious beliefs. In other words every framework has a set of foundational axioms that have to be accepted on faith.

curun1r 4y ago

Social media. Being part of the mob that punishes and gets likes and gives people their dopamine fix. And as we know from all the other ways that humans get their dopamine fixes, they're not just going to sit by passively and wait for those situations to naturally occur. They're going to search them out with increasing urgency. It's always been like this whenever there's a moral panic. We've just used computing and the internet to do what computing and the internet do best...make something ubiquitous, universal and highly scalable.

hindsightbias 4y ago

This is a perfectly natural outcome of social media platforms and algorithms engineered largely by an ideologically orthodox population set with an extremely high congruence to the HN crowd. We are all chasing the Maxima.