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Who would have thought…? It looks like Margaret Atwood read the tea leaves (joke) correctly about the religious right when she wrote The Handmaid’s Tale for pub

Who would have thought…? It looks like Margaret Atwood read the tea leaves (joke) correctly about the religious right when she wrote The Handmaid’s Tale for publishing 39 years ago. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Handmaid's_Tale https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Handmaid's_Tale

rsynnott 2y ago
In fairness, that's 1985. Arguably the modern phenomenon of fundamentalist evangelical protestants being a big force in US politics only _really_ got going after Row v Wade; it was a much easier thing to predict in 1985, when that book was written, than in the early 70s. In the 70s, if anything, people would've been more worried about 'new religions'; this was the timeframe in which Hubbard was wiretapping the IRS and so on. I think sci-fi reflects that; 60s and 70s sci-fi, where it touches on religion as a threat at all, concentrates on cults. You start seeing fundie-christians-as-threat stuff, like Handmaid's Tale, a bit later. EDIT: However. Honourable mention to Heinlein, who did this in _1940_: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22If_This_Goes_On—%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22If_This_Goes_On—%22 (played very straight; crazy preacher becomes US president in 2012, no elections thereafter) - possibly important context is that there had been a surge in televangelism in the 1930s.
- voidmain0001 2y ago
  I listened to a radio program two days ago which was interviewing a book author that had written about why people accept conspiracy theories over documented truth. The program invited the audience to call in to offer their opinions and one caller who lived through the 50s and 60s thought it was the failure of science to deliver on its promises of a better future (flying cars, cheap food, cheap energy, robots doing our work). He said that governments and people need to get back to trusting science.
gjsman-1000 2y ago
[flagged]
- rsynnott 2y ago
  > Believe me, a Christian theocracy, even in the eyes of atheists like Richard Dawkins, would be infinitely preferable to an Islamic one. I mean, ideally, neither, please. However, the context is the US. Fundamentalist Islam is simply not a political factor in the US, at all; fundamentalist Christianity, however, very much is. It is hardly surprising that people would be more worried about one than the other.
  - gjsman-1000 2y ago
    > fundamentalist Christianity They're still wearing bikinis on the beach, 90% are on birth control, most are divorced and remarried despite scripture, and many even support abortion - just until 16 weeks or 22 weeks or some line other than just before birth. That in and of itself is not radical - almost all of Europe has 12 weeks as the deadline, and not one country allows past 22 weeks. Do you think Donald Trump is an exception to the above, despite the stereotyping about being a Christian theocrat? No.
    - rsynnott 2y ago
      No, I certainly don't think Trump is a fundamentalist Christian (or indeed any type of Christian); he has been a useful idiot for them in his Supreme Court and other judicial appointments, however, and will presumably continue to be. I don't think it's particularly likely that he'll, like, try to make executive orders on fundamentalist lines or anything, but he'll likely continue using the list of judges fed to him. > and many even support abortion - just until 16 weeks or 22 weeks or some line other than just before birth Many who? If you mean many fundamentalist evangelical protestants, I don't think you're correct. If you mean many republicans, yes, you're correct; they are mostly _not_ fundamentalists, though fundamentalists have great influence over them (this is IMO an oddity of the US two-party system; the libertarian is thrown into the same political grouping as the fundamentalist, the fascist, and the robber baron, despite none of these groups necessarily having all that much in common or liking each other very much). As someone else mentioned, see Iran, before and after. Things can change quickly, and the US does feel like it's in a rather dangerous spot these days.
lo_zamoyski 2y ago
"Handmaid's Tale" comparisons are silly. But what is perhaps even more of a problem is the inability of the proverbial fish to notice the water they swim in. To summarize: Every state is a confessional state. and Convention is not the same as normality. Here, American society is governed by liberalism. It is, quite literally, the confession of the liberal state. Liberalism is not a "neutral" position (the very idea of neutrality doesn't make sense, except in a relative sense, i.e., as common denominator among disagreeing parties). Liberalism makes positive claims. It makes moral claims. It has its own philosophical anthropology. It is underpinned by definite presuppositions about such things as the nature of knowledge and the nature of freedom, as well as presuppositions of a distinctly theologically Protestant nature that would be rejected today if they were explicitly stated. It even has its own latent hyperindividualistic eschatology, entails by its anthropology. If liberalism tolerates non-liberal views, it does so only to the degree that they conform to liberal expectation (this is visible when reading Rawls critically). And far from merely creating a space for incompatible or diverse worldviews to coexist in peace (including those that are given the name of "religion"), it demands and pressures those worldviews to concede to liberal expectations. People are pressured to accept the innovations of the liberal regime; those who refuse are harassed and chastised. So, it's more than a little embarrassing, especially in this day and age, to continue to maintain the pretense of the "enlightenment" and "neutrality" of the liberal order as if it weren't itself a confession. It is a confession like any other, and because every state must have a shared confession to even function, it receives a privileged status in the liberal state, just as any confessional state grants privileged status, by definition, to the confession of the state, however tolerant that confession may be of other confessions. Whether liberalism is the true confession, that is a separate question (I claim that it is not), but what is irritating is the hypocritical pretense of it not being a confession, as if it does not need to be defended, because it is just obviously true. It isn't obviously true, and worse, it contains well-documented contradictions and errors [0]. It is to be expected that someone who grew up in such a regime, who has no real and deep exposure to anything else, who hasn't examined his own culture's presuppositions, will naturally be predisposed and habituated to find the liberal order the natural one, the correct one, the normal one, and so on. That doesn't ipso facto mean that that liberalism or any confession is wrong, only that sensibilities can be trained and molded to normalize what is, in fact, not normative at all. [0] A nice, short, but lucid explanation of some of liberalism's most essential features and problems can be found in Feser's "Locke": https://a.co/d/ayXWIgD https://a.co/d/ayXWIgD.

rsynnott 2y ago

In fairness, that's 1985. Arguably the modern phenomenon of fundamentalist evangelical protestants being a big force in US politics only _really_ got going after Row v Wade; it was a much easier thing to predict in 1985, when that book was written, than in the early 70s. In the 70s, if anything, people would've been more worried about 'new religions'; this was the timeframe in which Hubbard was wiretapping the IRS and so on. I think sci-fi reflects that; 60s and 70s sci-fi, where it touches on religion as a threat at all, concentrates on cults. You start seeing fundie-christians-as-threat stuff, like Handmaid's Tale, a bit later. EDIT: However. Honourable mention to Heinlein, who did this in _1940_: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22If_This_Goes_On—%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22If_This_Goes_On—%22 (played very straight; crazy preacher becomes US president in 2012, no elections thereafter) - possibly important context is that there had been a surge in televangelism in the 1930s.

voidmain0001 2y ago
I listened to a radio program two days ago which was interviewing a book author that had written about why people accept conspiracy theories over documented truth. The program invited the audience to call in to offer their opinions and one caller who lived through the 50s and 60s thought it was the failure of science to deliver on its promises of a better future (flying cars, cheap food, cheap energy, robots doing our work). He said that governments and people need to get back to trusting science.

gjsman-1000 2y ago

[flagged]

rsynnott 2y ago
> Believe me, a Christian theocracy, even in the eyes of atheists like Richard Dawkins, would be infinitely preferable to an Islamic one. I mean, ideally, neither, please. However, the context is the US. Fundamentalist Islam is simply not a political factor in the US, at all; fundamentalist Christianity, however, very much is. It is hardly surprising that people would be more worried about one than the other.
- gjsman-1000 2y ago
  > fundamentalist Christianity They're still wearing bikinis on the beach, 90% are on birth control, most are divorced and remarried despite scripture, and many even support abortion - just until 16 weeks or 22 weeks or some line other than just before birth. That in and of itself is not radical - almost all of Europe has 12 weeks as the deadline, and not one country allows past 22 weeks. Do you think Donald Trump is an exception to the above, despite the stereotyping about being a Christian theocrat? No.
  - rsynnott 2y ago
    No, I certainly don't think Trump is a fundamentalist Christian (or indeed any type of Christian); he has been a useful idiot for them in his Supreme Court and other judicial appointments, however, and will presumably continue to be. I don't think it's particularly likely that he'll, like, try to make executive orders on fundamentalist lines or anything, but he'll likely continue using the list of judges fed to him. > and many even support abortion - just until 16 weeks or 22 weeks or some line other than just before birth Many who? If you mean many fundamentalist evangelical protestants, I don't think you're correct. If you mean many republicans, yes, you're correct; they are mostly _not_ fundamentalists, though fundamentalists have great influence over them (this is IMO an oddity of the US two-party system; the libertarian is thrown into the same political grouping as the fundamentalist, the fascist, and the robber baron, despite none of these groups necessarily having all that much in common or liking each other very much). As someone else mentioned, see Iran, before and after. Things can change quickly, and the US does feel like it's in a rather dangerous spot these days.

lo_zamoyski 2y ago

"Handmaid's Tale" comparisons are silly. But what is perhaps even more of a problem is the inability of the proverbial fish to notice the water they swim in. To summarize: Every state is a confessional state. and Convention is not the same as normality. Here, American society is governed by liberalism. It is, quite literally, the confession of the liberal state. Liberalism is not a "neutral" position (the very idea of neutrality doesn't make sense, except in a relative sense, i.e., as common denominator among disagreeing parties). Liberalism makes positive claims. It makes moral claims. It has its own philosophical anthropology. It is underpinned by definite presuppositions about such things as the nature of knowledge and the nature of freedom, as well as presuppositions of a distinctly theologically Protestant nature that would be rejected today if they were explicitly stated. It even has its own latent hyperindividualistic eschatology, entails by its anthropology. If liberalism tolerates non-liberal views, it does so only to the degree that they conform to liberal expectation (this is visible when reading Rawls critically). And far from merely creating a space for incompatible or diverse worldviews to coexist in peace (including those that are given the name of "religion"), it demands and pressures those worldviews to concede to liberal expectations. People are pressured to accept the innovations of the liberal regime; those who refuse are harassed and chastised. So, it's more than a little embarrassing, especially in this day and age, to continue to maintain the pretense of the "enlightenment" and "neutrality" of the liberal order as if it weren't itself a confession. It is a confession like any other, and because every state must have a shared confession to even function, it receives a privileged status in the liberal state, just as any confessional state grants privileged status, by definition, to the confession of the state, however tolerant that confession may be of other confessions. Whether liberalism is the true confession, that is a separate question (I claim that it is not), but what is irritating is the hypocritical pretense of it not being a confession, as if it does not need to be defended, because it is just obviously true. It isn't obviously true, and worse, it contains well-documented contradictions and errors [0]. It is to be expected that someone who grew up in such a regime, who has no real and deep exposure to anything else, who hasn't examined his own culture's presuppositions, will naturally be predisposed and habituated to find the liberal order the natural one, the correct one, the normal one, and so on. That doesn't ipso facto mean that that liberalism or any confession is wrong, only that sensibilities can be trained and molded to normalize what is, in fact, not normative at all. [0] A nice, short, but lucid explanation of some of liberalism's most essential features and problems can be found in Feser's "Locke": https://a.co/d/ayXWIgD https://a.co/d/ayXWIgD.