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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30430 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 8, 2023

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You want the core fundamental concept? It's religious morality vs oversocialized morality.

The moral code of our society is so demanding that no one can think, feel and act in a completely moral way. For example, we are not supposed to hate anyone, yet almost everyone hates somebody at some time or other, whether he admits it to himself or not. Some people are so highly socialized that the attempt to think, feel and act morally imposes a severe burden on them. In order to avoid feelings of guilt, they continually have to deceive themselves about their own motives and find moral explanations for feelings and actions that in reality have a non-moral origin. We use the term “oversocialized” to describe such people. [2]

Oversocialization can lead to low self-esteem, a sense of powerlessness, defeatism, guilt, etc. One of the most important means by which our society socializes children is by making them feel ashamed of behavior or speech that is contrary to society’s expectations. If this is overdone, or if a particular child is especially susceptible to such feelings, he ends by feeling ashamed of HIMSELF. Moreover the thought and the behavior of the oversocialized person are more restricted by society’s expectations than are those of the lightly socialized person. The majority of people engage in a significant amount of naughty behavior. They lie, they commit petty thefts, they break traffic laws, they goof off at work, they hate someone, they say spiteful things or they use some underhanded trick to get ahead of the other guy. The oversocialized person cannot do these things, or if he does do them he generates in himself a sense of shame and self-hatred. The oversocialized person cannot even experience, without guilt, thoughts or feelings that are contrary to the accepted morality; he cannot think “unclean” thoughts. And socialization is not just a matter of morality; we are socialized to conform to many norms of behavior that do not fall under the heading of morality. Thus the oversocialized person is kept on a psychological leash and spends his life running on rails that society has laid down for him. In many oversocialized people this results in a sense of constraint and powerlessness that can be a severe hardship. We suggest that oversocialization is among the more serious cruelties that human beings inflict on one another.

I'm not sure why it's "versus" religious morality. Isn't Christian morality pretty open about nobody measuring up?

Yeah, christian morality and wokism are on the same side here. Their opposite would for example be old-school liberalism, where thoughts and speech cannot be ‘unclean’ or ‘hateful’. Christians and wokes agree on the necessity of controlling all thoughts towards their non-hateful, radically egalitarian vision and oppose free speech.

Yes, that's the difference. In Christian theology, if you screw up, it's (mostly) not a big deal because Jesus. Besides, God's justice will be realized in the end, so you can sleep easy knowing that the burden of fixing all the world's problems isn't on you.

But I don't think Christianity considers it not a big deal in itself (hence hell), it's just able to be accepted because of Christ.

hell is not justice. infinite punishment for finite wrongdoing can not be just. no one should be sleeping easy because they think people they don't like are going to hell.

Infinite punishment for offenses against an infinite God.

If anything, the punishment of hell would fall short, due to different classes of infinity? (I think, I'm not that knowledgeable about infinites.)

Not all Christian denominations believe in an eternal hell, though admittedly most of the denominations that don't are heterodox compared to mainstream Christianity i.e. the Mormons.

everyone should go to heaven. we should have been born in heaven.

in reality, i don't have a good reason to believe that i am going anywhere except the grave when i die. i think this afterlife stuff is wishful thinking at best, but cynically its deceitful manipulation.

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