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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30068 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 21, 2023

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an oversimplification but this has culminated in the McMindfulness approach you see now.

Hah, I love this term! Definitely stealing it.

I absolutely agree with the Buddhism point, and it's something I want to do an effortpost on at some point.

The trouble is, traditions also lock in a bunch of stuff that genuinely does seem to be superfluous, and traditions also need to change.

I disagree with this. If you look at the Bible, for instance, every line has been pored over and it has been pruned over and over throughout the years. These texts also typically evolved in an oral setting, where multiple different versions were told and only the ones found the most impactful/useful were kept.

If you read something in a religious text and you don't understand it, odds are you're missing some context or you aren't thinking hard enough. I don't think almost anything in these texts is superfluous, it only seems that way because we moderns seem to think knowledge and wisdom can only be atomized, packaged rational 'facts,' and that fiction or stories can't carry genuinely important truth.

Ah can't claim the McMindfulness so use at will, there's an established critique around this.

I accept that there may be pearls that once the mud is cleaned off are seen as vitally relevant but there's also the epistemic authority problem of interpretation. One particular creed will take X from a story, the other Y. Is it all vital? I'm not convinced there isn't a lot of contingent dross smuggled in from time and place. Perhaps it's not easy to know so you keep it all.

I come at religion from a Jordan Peterson kind of place (pre his official conversion), ie a largely metaphoric journey through our prehistory of what is effective/insightful of the human condition. I think Christianity is vitally relevant here but also appreciate the insights of other traditions.

Has Dr. Peterson officially converted?

I was going by a podcast title a while back that seemed to suggest so, though that might have been click bait.

Must have been. Googling around about it now all I get are the same articles I've seen about him ever since his rise to fame: "Is Dr. Peterson a Christian?" "Has Jordan Peterson Converted?" And, true to Betteridge's Law of Headlines, the answer is always "I don't know" and "no" respectively.

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