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the basic protestant outlook is that your (personal) salvation is predetermined Totally OT, but I wanted to point out that predestination is most closely assoc

• frig 18y ago
  Yeah, but cf your copy of The Protestant Work Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism to see this argument brought out in full; I'll also handwave and point out that in general, even when the nitty-gritty specifics of belief systems are the stuff wars are fought over, it's surprisingly common for second-order attudinal-and-behavioral consequences of a particular group's outlook to thoroughly permeate the broader society it's found in. That's a fancy way of saying that, eg., even though the predestination thing is a mainly Calvinist outlook, the knock-on effects of that belief -- working hard but hoping for some 'answer from above' to arrive in the form of earthly success -- have pretty much permeated the deep subconscious of the American outlook. You can see it manifest all the time, with people attributing success to innate characteristics -- eg, smarts or talent or whatnot -- and not to the work and training that developed those characteristics; this is a more-rational take on the same basic idea (earthly success == sign of grace, not earthly success == mix of lucky breaks and hard effort).