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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32403 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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I can never shake the feeling when reading stories like this that the person in question is in fact a hardcore devotee of the religion of empiricism or humanism with all the implicit metaphysical positions that come with that relief, gazing longing at other religious traditions but too rock-solid in his own faith to ever forsake the Enlightenment pantheon.

You're probably not far from the truth here. I don't think it's easy to force oneself to believe something, and I think religious conversion is a bit like trying to change your entire culture on purpose. It often involves accepting new hierarchies and power structures, new duties, and you're coming in at the bottom of all of it. There's a surrender involved in religious conversion that I think is easier for people who have nothing else to cling to.

I do identify as a "secular humanist" at times, and I think I do have a fairly solid foundation within that tradition. The problem is, that it's a fairly iconoclastic, aniconic life path. Sure, in theory I can tell stories about Aristotle as a proto-marine biologist, Epicurus as a proto-humanist, and pretend Hypatia really was a martyr for science and reason against Christian dogmatism or something. But it's all DIY. It's all rootless. Athens without Jerusalem does have some pretty things with it - but it's all religious in nature. Without Paganism or Christianity, Athens is a pretty austere mistress.

I can find awe in some sources, like Carl Sagan's Cosmos, which has segments that do bring me to tears, and make me appreciate my place in the universe, but that kind of poetic atheism is still a poor substitute for all of the beauty found in religion. I don't think it's an accident that most of my non-religious friends are spiritual vagrants. Many of them believe in astrology, the Law of Attraction, or some kind of afterlife - things I find ridiculous, but even those things seem to be enough to ground them, and make them feel connected to something bigger than themselves.

I do identify as a "secular humanist" at times, and I think I do have a fairly solid foundation within that tradition. The problem is, that it's a fairly iconoclastic, aniconic life path.

(From the top-level)

It's superficial, but I've sometimes envied devout Christians the way I envy superfans on Tumblr. Like, sure there's a lot of weird restrictions their devotion creates, but I wish I cared as much about God or Star Wars as these people seem to.

I would say that Enlightenmentism does care this much, just about something thats not so concrete. I mean, would a normal person write stuff like this:

I was just there for warm fuzzy feelings, because they had a reliable package for eliciting a psychological state I otherwise have trouble achieving. The Hare Krishna's may be against intoxicating substances, but for a brain like mine they have a powerfully ecstatic intoxicant at the core of their practice, and I wanted to be warmed by it without getting burnt.

No, its really quite a small group that thinks like this. Even starting from the water-supply in the West, this takes years of intentionally reshaping your mind. Unfortunatly it also involves thinking that the shape of mind achieved is standard, unremarkable, characterised mainly by absences, so you dont really appreciate it.

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