What are you reading, watching and listening to? - All languages

[Raphael]

I also find it hard to reconcile the sheer scale of the Universe and our insignificant place on it with a God that cares deeply about the way we amoebas pair-bond. I think it's been a difficult bit for all Abrahamic religions for millenia: 'what is man that thou art mindful of him?' and all that.

I have thought a little about this as well. One way of thinking about this is to see God as fractal - in other words, if there is a God, then God exists on all scales, and the scale of our human existence is no more or less important (or worthy of being mindful of) than the scale of galaxies.

I'd say if you already accept the idea of an all-knowing and all-powerful God, it's not that far-fetched that this God might also have an all-encompassing range of interests.

[Raphael]

I'm currently reading Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt, by Alec Ryrie, which is, interestingly enough, a history of Western atheism (and related ideas) that is quite fair-minded despite being written by a religious believer (Church of England).

Finished it. Very interesting, although it's a bit disappointing that it mostly ends in the late 17th century, with just a few afterthoughts on 20th and 21st century atheism.

One surprising thing reported in the book is that, in 17th century England, some people apparently ended up with a quasi-unbelieving or almost-atheist stance precisely because they took their faith really seriously, a lot more than "ordinary" churchgoers did, and therefore ended up going in directions in which these "ordinary" churchgoers would not have gone.

For instance, some people who were raised as the one or other kind of Calvinists, starting out with the Calvinist doctrine of Predestination, ended up being completely convinced that they themselves couldn't possibly be among the Elect, that they themselves were certainly so wicked that they just had to be predestined to eternal damnation - and some of those whose thoughts and feelings followed that line ended up thinking that for them, there was no point in practising religion in any way, since it wouldn't save them anyway.

A fairly high number of the people who thought along those lines seem to have been women. Now, Ryrie doesn't say this, but from a modern feminist perspective, that's completely unsurprising: if you have a religious patriarchy that constantly tells women that they are weak, inferior, sinful, unworthy, worthless, and so on, some of those women will end up believing that. And some of them will end up believing it really intensely.

Another group of people whom Ryrie mentions are people who took religion so seriously that, if they were to practise religion, they first wanted to be absolutely sure that they knew exactly how to practise it properly, exactly the way God intended - and since some of them could not find any certainty about how to properly practise religion, they ended up not practising religion at all.

The one time in the book that the author's own religious bias shines through is when he describes Pascal's Wager as "a logically watertight reason to believe", which of course it isn't.

One of the most interesting parts of the book is the last subchapter of the last chapter, "From Jesus to Hitler", where Ryrie presents his own theory about why Christian observance in so many parts of the Western World collapsed in the decades and generations after World War 2: It's supposedly because the war itself was such an intense experience that for many people, Christianity as the dominant belief system was replaced with a kind of instinctive anti-nazism. To quote:

As well as being the most catastrophic war in human history, the Second World War and in particular the Nazi genocide was the defining moral event of our age, which reset our culture’s notions of good and evil. By the early twentieth century, Christianity’s only undisputed role in Western society, its raison d’étre, was to define morality. This is precisely what it failed to do in the Second World War, the modern era’s most intense moral test. It failed not only in the sense that many churches and Christians were to a degree complicit with Nazism and fascism, but in the wider sense that the global crisis revealed that Christianity’s moral priorities were wrong. It now seemed plain that cruelty, discrimination and murder were evil in a way that fornication, blasphemy and impiety were not.

Or, to rephrase the next pages in the book, after the war, instead of approaching moral questions by asking themselves, "what does my church teach about this?" or "what does the Bible tell me about this?", people often, at least subconsciously, asked themselves "What Would Hitler Do?", and then tried to do the opposite. And when the moral demands of that new paradigm were in conflict with traditional Christianity, many people either broke with Christianity outright, or at least radically reinterpreted it.

I'm not at all sure that I find this theory convincing, but it's certainly food for thought, IMO.

[hwhatting]

Or, to rephrase the next pages in the book, after the war, instead of approaching moral questions by asking themselves, "what does my church teach about this?" or "what does the Bible tell me about this?", people often, at least subconsciously, asked themselves "What Would Hitler Do?", and then tried to do the opposite. And when the moral demands of that new paradigm were in conflict with traditional Christianity, many people either broke with Christianity outright, or at least radically reinterpreted it.

I'm not at all sure that I find this theory convincing, but it's certainly food for thought, IMO.

I'm with you there in not finding that theory convincing - I mean, while I think of myself as a reasonably well-read person, I've never encountered that specific line of tought before. Quite a lot of people losing their faith because they couldn't find an answer to the question of e.g., "why did god let the holocaust happen", or because of complicity of organized churches with the Nazi regime, but not this.

[Travis B.]

Or, to rephrase the next pages in the book, after the war, instead of approaching moral questions by asking themselves, "what does my church teach about this?" or "what does the Bible tell me about this?", people often, at least subconsciously, asked themselves "What Would Hitler Do?", and then tried to do the opposite. And when the moral demands of that new paradigm were in conflict with traditional Christianity, many people either broke with Christianity outright, or at least radically reinterpreted it.

I'm not at all sure that I find this theory convincing, but it's certainly food for thought, IMO.

I'm with you there in not finding that theory convincing - I mean, while I think of myself as a reasonably well-read person, I've never encountered that specific line of tought before. Quite a lot of people losing their faith because they couldn't find an answer to the question of e.g., "why did god let the holocaust happen", or because of complicity of organized churches with the Nazi regime, but not this.

I had not heard anyone even suggest that theory, whereas I had definitely heard the "why did God let the Holocaust happen?" view before myself.

[Raphael]

I'm with you there in not finding that theory convincing - I mean, while I think of myself as a reasonably well-read person, I've never encountered that specific line of tought before. Quite a lot of people losing their faith because they couldn't find an answer to the question of e.g., "why did god let the holocaust happen", or because of complicity of organized churches with the Nazi regime, but not this.

I had not heard anyone even suggest that theory, whereas I had definitely heard the "why did God let the Holocaust happen?" view before myself.

Ryrie arrives at that theory by closely examining the liberal humanistic ethical framework that, for many people, replaced Christianity in the second half of the 20th century, and concluding that it is, to a large extent, a kind of "inverse Nazism", which sees things as good that Nazis see as bad, and sees things as bad that Nazis see as good. And while the various parts of that ethical framework had, among some people, already been around before World War 2, the framework as a whole apparently only became a mass phenomenon in the decades and generations after 1945. Which is a quite neat coincidence.

[Ares Land]

He's on to something I guess.

One thing I noted is that even people that are so far right they might as well be Nazis still feel the need to paint their opponents as Nazis. There's something there that runs deep there

As for religion... I don't know. My own impression is that the Church in the 50s was a huge pain in the ass, and the 1950s-1960s increase in mobility and general upheaval allowed people to not go to church on Sundays and get away with it. At least this seems to be what happened in my family.

[hwhatting]

He's on to something I guess.

One thing I noted is that even people that are so far right they might as well be Nazis still feel the need to paint their opponents as Nazis. There's something there that runs deep there

Well, I think the idea that Nazism was so horrible that it serves as some kind of inverse guideline ("Don't do what the Nazis would do!") for many people is reasonable. I just don't think that this has anything to do with the diminished role of curches and religion.

As for religion... I don't know. My own impression is that the Church in the 50s was a huge pain in the ass, and the 1950s-1960s increase in mobility and general upheaval allowed people to not go to church on Sundays and get away with it. At least this seems to be what happened in my family.

Things like this were much more important. Traditionally, most people had a small radius of social contacts, with fixed norms enforced by community pressure, and the local church was one of the few sources of authority. Bigger mobility and the availability of increasing amounts of information and diverse opinions diminished the power of the traditional communities and authorities, and that development accelerated throughout the 20th century. In a way, the Nazis themselves were a product of that development - an alternative source of truth and authority that seemed attractive to a significant number of people at a certain time.

[zompist]

Things like this were much more important. Traditionally, most people had a small radius of social contacts, with fixed norms enforced by community pressure, and the local church was one of the few sources of authority. Bigger mobility and the availability of increasing amounts of information and diverse opinions diminished the power of the traditional communities and authorities, and that development accelerated throughout the 20th century. In a way, the Nazis themselves were a product of that development - an alternative source of truth and authority that seemed attractive to a significant number of people at a certain time.

Yeah, I think what killed the traditional church was modernity, which is a constellation of factors going back 500 years.

There's also a problem of timing— Christianity lost its hold on the average European a few generations earlier than in the US. Orwell reports that the British of his day were almost entirely irreligious, while American Christianity was still going strong in the 1950s. Indeed, a majority in the US still have a religious affiliation, though the unaffiliated have ballooned up lately.

[Ares Land]

(I apologize profusely in advance for the length of this post:)
Some time ago, I acquired E-book copies of the Library of America editions of two works by the late author Ursula K. Le Guin, The Complete Orsinia (containing the short story collection Orsinian Tales and the novel Malafrena), and Always Coming Home.

Don't apologize. That was very interesting -- I didn't know about Always Coming Home but it looks great.

[rotting bones]

Or, to rephrase the next pages in the book, after the war, instead of approaching moral questions by asking themselves, "what does my church teach about this?" or "what does the Bible tell me about this?", people often, at least subconsciously, asked themselves "What Would Hitler Do?", and then tried to do the opposite. And when the moral demands of that new paradigm were in conflict with traditional Christianity, many people either broke with Christianity outright, or at least radically reinterpreted it.

I'm not at all sure that I find this theory convincing, but it's certainly food for thought, IMO.

Although I don't agree that there is an agreement on what "liberal values" are, I would be much more sympathetic to this idea if he had said that pre-1945 ethics was a lot more inspired by classical philosophy, which upholds laying down your life for your country as one of the highest moral virtues ("virtue" as in literally "manliness" in the masculine gender). Post-1945 ethics was more shaped by recent thinkers like Bertrand Russell because there was a sense that the classical tradition was no longer applicable in the face of modern technology.

Regarding Christianity, I find the idea that "Western civilization" is shaped by it in any domain besides propaganda to be totally illusory. To be perfectly honest, I'm not clear on the idea that Christianity teaches identifiable values. For example, a lot of people feel like Christianity teaches that murder is wrong. This would be a lot more believable if the churches weren't still at it, committing genocide against Palestinians. Does Christianity support the murder of Palestinians since the bible supports the genocide of Canaanites? I don't know, and it's not clear to me that anyone does.

[rotting bones]

Note that I wasn't able to watch any more episodes yet.

I really liked the show, but I wouldn't say it's leftist.

My reading of "radical leftist vibes" is derived from White's Metahistory, which identifies radical leftist history with a tendency towards extreme reduction to material processes. I thought I detected such tendencies in Wednesday's dialogue.

Wednesday rejects cultural norms, which can go either way; she also kind of hates people, which is antithetical to leftism (but not unknown among leftists). But there's a character arc though, so that's probaby not her final position.

I'm not sure why, but it's a very common trope to depict teenage girls as misanthropes. It could be a sexist trope about menstruation.

Either way, I consider leftism to be a systemic position, not a moral one. It feels judgmental of me to not consider Wednesday a leftist because of personal moral failings. I would be hesitant to let Satan lead the revolution, not because of his personal failings, but only because he'd be an a position to betray it.

(It's true that the show picks up on the anti-Pilgrim vibes from the second movie, and that could be considered an anticolonialist or anti-religious position...

As for the second movie, that wasn't about pilgrims per se. If you watch the sequence before the "revolution", the movie went to great lengths to depict it as being caused by widespread social alienation. Wednesday, of course, led it because of personal animosity against Sarah Miller and the camp organizers.

but it's not deep; it's just For The Marginalized in the same vague no-politics way the X-Men are. That's still better than conformism, but I don't think people are very good at drawing out the implications.)

Doesn't Deadpool say that X-Men was a metaphor for racism in the 60's?

Of course, I don't know if Wednesday Addams being leftist makes the Addams Family leftist. I think they were going for a feminist so scary, she literally came from a haunted house.

[zompist]

I'm not sure why, but it's a very common trope to depict teenage girls as misanthropes.

Is it? To me it seems rare enough that examples are striking (e.g. Ghost World). But maybe I'm out of touch.

Doesn't Deadpool say that X-Men was a metaphor for racism in the 60's?

I dunno about Deadpool, but the thing about the X-Men is that they represent anyone who feels oppressed: Blacks, Jews, sexual minorities, heavy metal fans, whatever.

Of course, I don't know if Wednesday Addams being leftist makes the Addams Family leftist. I think they were going for a feminist so scary, she literally came from a haunted house.

As I noted in my review, Christina Ricci liked this portrayal of Wednesday because she saw it as ultra-feminist: Wednesday doesn't take crap from anyone and does what she wants.

[rotting bones]

Is it? To me it seems rare enough that examples are striking (e.g. Ghost World). But maybe I'm out of touch.

No, I'm not aware of a citation for this, and I'm out of time to start searching now.

I dunno about Deadpool, but the thing about the X-Men is that they represent anyone who feels oppressed: Blacks, Jews, sexual minorities, heavy metal fans, whatever.

https://www.history.com/news/stan-lee-x ... nspiration

As I noted in my review, Christina Ricci liked this portrayal of Wednesday because she saw it as ultra-feminist: Wednesday doesn't take crap from anyone and does what she wants.

A woman trying this would probably run up against the establishment sooner or later. It would be in her self-interest to support a leftist revolution.

[Man in Space]

There’s this band called Green Druid, and I’m listening to the song “Rebirth” off of their S/T.

[Raphael]

Regarding Christianity, I find the idea that "Western civilization" is shaped by it in any domain besides propaganda to be totally illusory. To be perfectly honest, I'm not clear on the idea that Christianity teaches identifiable values.

Oh, of course Christianity teaches all kinds of values. Whether anyone has ever lived according to them is a different question.

I think you're falling into a false binary between societies being completely in the thrall of a religion's teachings, and not shaped by them at all (except when it comes to propaganda). I'd say there's a lot of space between these poles. For instance, in most of medieval and early modern Europe, the rhythm of daily life, of weekly life, and of yearly life was pretty much entirely prescribed by Christian liturgy. That's not just a matter of propaganda, IMO, though of course it doesn't tell us much about deeper values, either.

From what I've read on world history, I've generally got the impression that basically all major religions were and are usually a lot more effective at enforcing dress codes, dietary laws, rules about when to celebrate which holidays or festivals in which ways, ritual liturgies, and stuff like that, than at enforcing fundamental ethical values about how people should treat their fellow human beings.

A religion might convince an abusive scumbag to stop eating beans. It is less likely to convince an abusive scumbag to stop being an abusive scumbag.

[rotting bones]

A religion might convince an abusive scumbag to stop eating beans. It is less likely to convince an abusive scumbag to stop being an abusive scumbag.

External values are also obtained by cherrypicking the source material. Then abusive assholes use those as Get Out of Jail Free cards. Sometimes they even fool themselves: "Christianity is so good and innocent, I must become a monster to protect it!"

Either way, I see this less as "values" than a source of magic spells that compel fools to trust you. Did you know that Casanova was trained as an abbe? I've never read anything else quite like his Story of My Life.

[zompist]

From what I've read on world history, I've generally got the impression that basically all major religions were and are usually a lot more effective at enforcing dress codes, dietary laws, rules about when to celebrate which holidays or festivals in which ways, ritual liturgies, and stuff like that, than at enforcing fundamental ethical values about how people should treat their fellow human beings.

How could you possibly know that?

Is your observation that all humans behave about the same? That could be because
-- religions are ineffective at instilling virtue
-- religions are equally effective at instilling virtue (i.e., humans are terrible but religion improves them)
-- religions are equally effective at reducing virtue (i.e., humans are wonderful but religion degrades them)
-- your idea of virtue differs from theirs

Or perhaps your observation is wrong. Graeber & Wengrow, in The Dawn of Everything, make the case that Native American society was far more benign than European: leaders were less despotic, people were less greedy, there were no beggars because people helped each other out. So perhaps Christianity made Europeans worse. Or of course something else about European society, like a couple thousand years of unquestioned hierarchical rule.

I do think cultures differ, not so much in general benignity, as in what sort of abuses they tolerate. Orwell has some interesting observations along these lines-- e.g. he describes England as a place where judges could be aggressively callous and the homeless were continuously hassled, but a judge or a newspaper editor could not be simply bought, as they could in France.

[Raphael]

I don't really disagree with you, zompist. I did use the phrase "got the impression", rather than "know". And no, I don't think that different cultures are really all the same. Your point about Native American societies is well taken. That said, I've read all kinds of texts about the history of various places, and also journalistic reports about different places in our time and the recent past, and some patterns of cruelty and abuse seem to repeat themselves.

It's not that I'd think that nothing can be done about that; for instance, I'm relatively sure that societies that openly talk about abuses and cruelty are more likely to have at least some success at reducing such things than societies that generally sweep such things under a rug.

To restate my original point, my impression - again, it's an impression - is that there have been times and places where people consistently abstained from beef, or from pork, or from wearing clothes their society disapproved of, but I don't think I've ever heard of any Old World society where people were consistently compassionate towards each other.

[Ares Land]

I don't think any religion, belief system or ethical system is going to turn sociopaths into good people. It has been claimed that human beings are naturally evil and need religion to behave ethically, but I think this is a very old-fashioned view that's easily disproved.
There are a lot of atheists around and they don't go about eating human hearts as XIXth century moralist feared.

What they do provide is some framework for analysing and discussing moral issues. Human beings, unless they're sociopaths (and these are a tiny minority) know they shouldn't act as scumbags. Not being a scumbag raises a lot of questions though and raises difficult question: why are some people abusive when we know they shouldn't? is doing X wrong even though I don't understand why it's wrong? why am I doing wrong when I know very well I shouldn't? what should happen if people act wrong anyway?

[Raphael]

I don't think any religion, belief system or ethical system is going to turn sociopaths into good people. It has been claimed that human beings are naturally evil and need religion to behave ethically, but I think this is a very old-fashioned view that's easily disproved.
There are a lot of atheists around and they don't go about eating human hearts as XIXth century moralist feared.

No disagreement. I might post a short blog post on that matter in the not-too-distant future.