It might be. but I'm sure you Australians, even you, have your own parochial views you will want to air.

In the 1950s we were expected to memorize some things like the multiplication table. It remains a useful bit of rote learning, I before E except after C" is a useful rule, but is neither weird nor foreign nor the height of forfeiture--something to explain to a caffeine-addled heifer on codeine at one's leisure while one seizes the day.

But yes, information presented without a cohesive narrative, or historical contextualization ends up being only potentially useful. Learning how big a frog's genome is, by itself is a big SO WHAT? Learning the names of each gyrus and sulcus in a brain is not very useful unless one learns what they do and how these various parts relate to an animal's actual life.

Juvenile students generally can not supply a narrative or context themselves, at least one that is appropriate. An educated middle-aged adult can receive new information and devise a mental structure which makes sense of it. High school students have long complained about having to study literature. "What is the point of reading this stuff? What is the point of learning history? I don't care what happened 200 years ago or what a poem really means."

I'm not sure to what extent English Lit and History teachers themselves have a solid narrative in the heads which enable them to deliver facts in a meaningful (and interesting) context. College literature and history classes are offered as big chunks which may be studied completely out of sequence. The students are assigned big blocks of material to read (or skim) through; the lecturer will add information about say, Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (1621). How much understanding about depression, or melancholy, a student will depart with is doubtful -- because in several days the class will move on to another big chunk of text. Who influenced Burton and who did Burton influence? Who claimed to have benefitted from reading the Anatomy of Melancholy, back in 1621?

What is the over-arching story of the American Experience, 1620 to 2024? at 77 I feel like I have some idea, and it isn't what I was taught in high school. It isn't that what was taught was just a pack of lies. Rather, a lot of topics were left out. The Erie Canal opened in 1825. What were the political, social, and economic consequences? What was traveling on early railroads (or even ones in the early 1900s) like? How did the more sparsely settled South become so politically powerful, and stay that way into the mid-20th century?

In any case that reaction requires that your mind invariable acknowledges or absorbs the ideas and thoughts presented to you. Otherwise how can you reject them? — Benj96

I don't know whether the 'viral meme' behaves like a virus invading the body -- where the immune system has to register the agent of invasion before it can create antibodies. A novel rhino virus variety triggers a cascade of immune responses which produce the cold we suffer from. Next time, the same virus will not get very far.

I've imbibed a lot of Nazi propaganda by reading about the history of National Socialism in Germany. Reading about the history of race riots and racial discrimination in the United States has resulted in my exposure to a lot of racist ideas. Reading about the 19th century expansion of the United States across the continent has inoculated me with many ideas about the success of settler colonialism. If one reads the history of the British Empire, one will get exposed to a host of ideas about how the world can be run that give short shrift to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. A trip through the history of the Romanovs in Russia will provide one with the inside story of despotism, enlightened and otherwise.

Rather than making me MORE susceptible to Nazi, racist, imperialist, settler colonial thinking, reading about the appalling behavior has strengthened bias (antibodies) against these ideas.

I've read these various histories as a mature (old) adult which is a good thing. Perhaps I would not have developed resistance to these kinds of ideas had I encountered them in 1936 Germany, 1920 Oklahoma, or 1880 London. I did encounter the ideas of settler colonialism as a child in 1950s Minnesota (and later) and the way we conducted westward expansion seems like gold plated history. Perfectly sensible. (Yes, I am now quite aware of the genocidal nature of the expansion).

But the Nazis, the white racists, the British colonialists, and the American establishment wasn't inoculating people with bits of viral thoughts. They were all indoctrinating the populations with train loads of propaganda, education, printed and media information backed up with material force.

One can break down a global system of propaganda (to which Germans were subjected) into little darts of data. For instance, a gross drawing of a Jew in Völkischer Beobachter, or a detail about how a Jew defiled an aryan woman. Or, how a Chicago newspaper describes a black slum in 1957, describing the blacks as causative agents in their deteriorated housing.

Minnesota school children learn about the federal government hanging 38 members of the Dakota tribe in Minnesota in the largest mass execution in United States history, on December 26, 1862, following the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. It was presented as a victory for white settlers against the murderous Dakota people. One hopes this presentation has changed by 2024 in all Minnesota History classes.

Take the millions of Trump loyalists (MAGA). They are skeptical of the electoral system, the government, the science establishment, and so on. Their conservative political beliefs are strongly correlated with conservative religious belief. They didn't get this way on the basis of viral media posts or years of sustained Trump actions, speeches, and appearances. It takes a long time to achieve their state of mind.

The same thing is true of Bernie Boys, or any number of recognizable political, social, religious, or economic class groupings.

OK. I will acknowledge, affirm, and attest to the potential virality of images, words, slogans, phrases, and ideas. Social media is set up to facilitate this kind of rapid dispersion. Rapid dispersion isn't new, of course. It's just faster now with electronic media than it was before radio, television, and lately the internet.

Well... "distraction" has maintained a stable status as an effective way to disarm people. Especially if you have an underlying dogma or agenda you wish to incept slowly and gradually into the target audience. — Benj96

Absolutely, but incepting large, heavy, complicated ideas into an audience is time consuming and requires a lot of varied repetition.

The pro-palestinian campus demonstrations look like a sudden eruption. The anti-Vietnam war demonstrations also seemed to erupt out of nowhere. In both cases, there was a fairly long period of fermentation before eruption. The pulverization of Gaza (as wars go) is in the present moment, but the conflict between Israel and Palestinians is many decades long. The decision to set up tents on campus or occupy buildings in the past couple of weeks might be sort of viral. Spring is a popular time to raise a ruckus. Likely there were some actual coordinating efforts.

The Occupy Wall Street movement was viral in nature. I live in "fly over" land, so east/west coast events arrive here late. When it did arrive, it was clearly a re-enactment of televised events in New York City, The local Occupy Minneapolis City Hall Plaza was a refreshing piece of political theater, but not substantive.

"Went viral" is an annoying viral phrase. The Oxford Dictionary people add a few new words every year which went viral and got used a lot. I'm out of the loop, so I haven't often not heard these expressions often, or at all.

Did you intend to omit a negative vote?

Why do you think that the ordinary people who compose any government would be better than parents at designing and operating the schools that you are proposing?

refusing to learn would be a punishable crime — Scarecow

How can you tell whether someone is REFUSING to learn, or merely does not understand the lesson?

Schools don't do a good enough job at forcing kids to learn. — Scarecow

Schools are definitely not doing a good enough job, but FORCING people to learn something is difficult. You can lock up scholars in the little red school, but you can't make them learn grammar, spelling, reading, arithmetic, social skills, or trigonometry (which, by the way, is not a general life skill).

It's brainwashing made easy. — Scarecow

No need for your regime. Mass media has already figured out how to make brainwashing easy.

With no outside connections, kids in these institutions would be incredibly susceptible to propaganda. — Scarecow

On the other hand, a lot of propaganda comes from outside connections.

My proposal would prevent messy family dynamics. — Scarecow

It would not! Human dynamics are, by nature, messy.

Hey, I'm all in favor of education reform, and when I look at the chaotic conditions of some communities and the dismal results from some schools, a draconian regime like yours has a certain appeal.

Back in the late 1960s I worked at a Job Corps for 18-21 year old boys. We were located in a rural area. The 100 or so corpsmen lived on the "base" and spent half their time in education and half in the work-skills program. Leaving the place was difficult because we were kind of isolated and the corpsmen didn't have much (if any) money. We fed, housed, educated, and trained them. The successful ones moved from functional or absolute literacy to 6th or 7th grade reading levels in a year. The time limit on being in the corps was about 18 months.

Having control over these adolescent education-system failures enabled us to accomplish some educational goals. But the motivation to learn much of anything was missing from some corpsmen. Why? These were not children of privilege. They were children of deprivation and disadvantage. Academic (or any other kind of) success story wasn't part of their life-experience.

If it's that simple, that hearing a phrase infects my brain with a meme or idea, then I can stop this discussion in its tracks by saying, "Don't think that viral ideas are bullshit."

Still think that ideas are viral?

It seems to me social media algorithms are tailored to these principles of highly personalised, highly relatable and outrage or community invoking sentiments. — Benj96

Social media algorithms are designed for an audience whose mental lives are spent on the surface of a shallow pond. That put-down applies to a lot of people. Their shallow depth isn't the creation of social media -- people have been shallow for a very long time. People are not stupid, but depth takes sustained effort, which is difficult for many people. Killing saber toothed tigers, domesticating wolves, figuring out how to get agriculture started, milking cows, mining coal, greeting every "guest" who walks into a Walmart... it all keeps us busy. No time for Plato and Aristotle.

As for instant outrage, yes. Social media is very good at masturbating the masses.

You may have gotten the impression that I do not like social media (like Facebook, twitter, shitter, x, et al. Quite right. I don't.

Most of my days are filled with joy despite my position that life is inherently without meaning. — Tom Storm

Perhaps 'nihilism' [the rejection of all religious and moral principles, in the belief that life is meaningless; extreme skepticism maintaining that nothing in the world has a real existence; the doctrine of an extreme Russian revolutionary party c. 1900 which found nothing to approve of in the established social order] is a contradiction in terms.

To declare that life is meaningless is to take a position on the meaning of life. It's unavoidable. A very generously defined "normal person" can not exist without some sort of self-guidance that will amount to a moral system; he can not exist without some sort of 'meaning' developing.

Perhaps the Russian-style nihilist is possible: "I do not approve of the established social order." There is a lot for even non-nihilists to disapprove of.

Maybe you mean, "There is no external source of meaning in the world." No imagined deity, no disembodied mind, no cosmic force provides meaning. Human minds are the sole source of meaning".

As for nihilists "jumping out of bed glad to be alive" I think it is difficult to maintain the joy. I used to associate with a particular group of socialists who were something like the Russian nihilists. They had reached the point where they approved of NOTHING in capitalist society. They were not good socialists, they were bitter old men.

A problem with the term nihilist is that it is absolute and without nuance. It's like "anarchist" in that way -- when used by adolescents it has an extreme, unmodified meaning.

Whether nihilism is a good term or not, carry on with your program of joy.

I know what depression feels like. How do nihilists feel? Are there happy, productive nihilists who bounce out of bed in the morning, glad to be alive, despite the absence of meaning?

We have murdered a lot of people over the last five thousand years over religions and politics and we are still at it. — Truth Seeker

Now you have stated an opinion I don't agree with, and we were getting along so well! :smile:

There surely is a lot of disagreement over religion and politics, but when it comes to war, I think the stakes are almost always material: Who is going to have control over resources (land, water, minerals, labor, etc.)

Take, for instance, the conquest of the Eastern Roman Empire by the armies of Islam. There clearly was a religious overlay: Islam vs. Christian. There had been earlier religious overlays to the Roman expansion throughout the Mediterranean Basin, and then to the conversion of the Empire to Christianity. Power politics too. But under the religious and political overlay was the on-the-ground reality of land, and who controlled it. Land is a very material concern: Who gets to concentrate the wealth that farmers, miners, urban centers, traders, etc. create?

Some wars are murky: What was at stake in WWI? The years of stalemate in the trenches, the appalling number of dead, the static lines of battle... it's hard to see what the Central Powers vs. the Triple Entente were after. It seems like the balance of German land and population was one problem. German industry was very successful, but a lot of German soil was not great for agriculture (too much clay, too wet, to chilly...

France was in much better shape agriculturally, and was on a par with German industry. Great Britain didn't have to depend on its small island for food and markets: it had the Empire and it ruled the seas. Control of the seas enabled GB to blockade Germany, which helped starve the Germans into submission.

WWII is much clearer: The politics were crystal clear, and the material aspirations of the Nazi regime were front and center.

The rich need to downgrade their high-ecological-impact lifestyle — Truth Seeker

Absolutely. The rich -- the wealthiest people -- consume a very disproportionate share of goods. It isn't the they eat so much -- the rich are more likely to be svelte than obese. It's their consumption of materials that matter -- the 30,000 to 50,000 square foot mansions lavishly furnished, the landscaping, the cars, the planes, the yachts, the chrome, the plastic, and the petroleum it all takes.

Obviously their assets should be liquidated as soon as possible -- like, today.

We don't want to leave out the impact of military activities, or exploiting space with thousands of rocket launches burning fuel in the upper levels of the atmosphere.

Then there is the dominance of the automobile and the absence of effective public transit (especially in the US).

I like meat, but you are right -- I / we should switch to vegetarian / vegan diets.

In a study published this week in Environmental Research Letters, researchers found that the food system was responsible for as much as 40 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions from human activities.

This makes sense. One of our appalling practices is growing corn for alcohol to add to gasoline. That aside, animals (including ourselves) are not all that great at converting plant matter to animal protein:

Feed conversion
(feed/edible weight)
4.5 for chicken
9.4 for pork
25 for beef

When Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb (1968) the world's population was about 3.7 billion. Today world population is a little over 8 billion. True enough, we are not running out of space, and mass starvation has not ensued. 'Population' per se isn't the problem. The issue is sustainability in a rapidly warming planet. If world population were 3 billion today, and everyone was consuming goods, energy, food, transportation, and so on the way the the G7 countries are, the sustainability problem would still exist.

In 1968 global warming was not an issue, outside of a small circle of friends in climate science.

Sustainability is an emerging problem. Warming is disrupting climate, ecology, agriculture, oceans, mammal, bird, and insect populations, fresh water supplies, and on and on. Despite the pledges in numerous climate conferences, heat-trapping gases continue to rise, and warming continues, pretty much unabated.

It isn't a question of too many people. It's a question of how many people will have a chance at a decent life, and how many will suffer from intolerable heat, drought, flooding, new diseases, economic decline, crop failure, fishery collapse, etc.

Malthus didn't know about the Haber–Bosch process (around 1900), which produces nitrogen fertilizer from the air, or Norman Borlaug's 1950s-60s Green Revolution research in plant genetics -- both of which greatly increased food production in the 20th century. "Past performance does not guarantee future results" as economists say.

What do you think will ensure global cooperation instead of global annihilation? — Truth Seeker

Short answer: I don't know. That said...

World-wide free trade was thought to be helpful for global peace. A global government (League of Nations first, United Nations second) has been tried. Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) has worked so far, but living on a knife edge is a losing gamble in the long run. Global unity has been brought about through universal global threats -- but only in science fiction novels. Now that we have a real global threat (severe climate change) we see new opportunities for instability and conflict.

Over population is thought to be a threat to world peace, or long term survival, but world population before WWI was about 1.8 billion. Before WWII it was about 2.3 billion. The world's two most destructive wars, then, were way before our present (too many) 8+ billion.

We are capable of cooperation, certainly. Humans have cooperated a lot over the last 12,000 years, since the beginning of more settled communities. But we have also fought a lot. A lot of ancient hunter-gatherers died from their brains being bashed in (so says archeological evidence).

We are an intelligent species. Unfortunately, our smart cerebral cortexes are balanced by volatile limbic systems which react with the fight or flight response to real or imagined threats. We are an imaginative species, so we can see threats where they may not actually exist, everything from ghosts, evil spirits, monsters under the bed, angry gods, and so forth to little dictators with nuclear arsenals (North Korea). Given a little encouragement with propaganda, we can see threats behind every tree. And beside all that, there are real, bona fide threats.

I do not think we can expect to have peace and cooperation over the long run. Our best bet is to downgrade our weapons so that we can survive and prosper after our inevitable wars.

Depressing opinion? Depressing fact? Yes.

I worry that we will destroy ourselves and all the other species with our conflicts. — Truth Seeker

As well you should.

Speculation about nuclear war suggests that not being able to determine the facts (is that a missile, a bird, a plane, or superman...) might trigger a nuclear holocaust rather than a difference of opinion about which nuclear power is a superior society. But delusions might also be the determinative factor.

We have come fairly close to launching nuclear weapons based on facts (that were not correct).

I think that if we could work out what is fact and what is opinion, it would help us get on with each other better. — Truth Seeker

Or maybe recognize that disagreement over fact and opinion just goes with the territory.

A fact or an opinion? It just doesn't matter that much what other people think.

At the time it seemed reasonable to wonder why Denmark needed upgraded F-16s. Given an aggressive Russia, it makes more sense.

Some years ago it seemed like Ukraine could not withstand a sustained Russian attack. It's not clear whether--over the long run--they can, without a significant and reliable increase in military assistance. How likely that is... The EU and NATO are not unitary bodies, but are made up of individual countries with varying perspectives on all sorts of topics. How long the EU, NATO, and the US can maintain unity isn't entirely clear.

Whether I (we) am (are) willing or not makes no difference, because we operate within a system which decidedly increases some people's opportunities at our collective expense. Society's goods (material and cultural) are not fairly and evenly distributed -- and they never have been.

Most of the time I accept the status quo with a measure of equanimity because some of the advantaged people (some artists, performers, surgeons, etc.) share their good fortune with everyone by the way they live their lives. On the other hand, some of the advantaged people are plugs in the bowels of grace, and it it would be a good thing if they disappeared. Most advantaged people are in between the extremes.

Then there are the disadvantaged people. A good share of those who did not receive advantages live (lived) exemplary lives and we can be grateful for their existence. Some of the disadvantages wouldn't have done anything good had they been showered with cash. It just isn't in them to do great things.

Life is not fair. I don't like it, but that's the way it is.

My belief in some level of consciousness among the various species is that brains evolved their capacities over geologic time scales, and our brains are only a recent iteration. Perception, memory, organized behavior, "thinking"*** and so forth are present in both birds and bees and in us--at levels more or less appropriate to the species. Except for us -- we have way too much brain function which we need to defend ourselves from excessive abilities.

Do the various species possess consciousness? It seems to be difficult to explain consciousness in ourselves (how it works, where it is located, and so on), so it will be difficult to explain how the dog laying at my feet is conscious, or the squirrels cleaning out the fire feeder, or the crows collecting in the trees... possess consciousness. Maybe it isn't explainable by us, paragons of animals, and if so our inability to explain it doesn't deprive us of consciousness. I think but I can't witness myself producing thought from many billions of neurons.

I'm late to this discussion, so somebody has probably said this already.

*** A science fiction writer spoke these words through a character: "You have to stay alert! In the jungle, everybody is thinking." 'Everybody' being all the predator and prey species.

Perhaps he should have stuck with tent making.

Well, sure; we aren't supposed to 'keep score" such that 5 good deeds allows a couple more bad deeds.

The most decent people I've known tended to fret over every minor infraction — Vera Mont

Yes. The most corrupt behave abominably. But fretting over trivial infractions (and confusing etiquette with morality) isn't healthy either. Endless fretting can exhaust people, and hobble their ability to focus on the basics of loving their neighbors.

Paul says a lot of things I don't much like. I like the idea that one's good deeds should outnumber one's bad deeds. That is something we flawed creatures can manage.

Whether by official definitions of sin, or my own expectations for moral behavior, I'm a sinner. I have sinned. Just guessing, but all 8 billion of us fail to meet either an official standard of goodness or our own, whatever that may be. We are flawed creatures who try to be good most of the time, except when we are not.

Norman Greenbaum's contribution to sin or sinlessness was published in 1969, his only hit "Spirit In The Sky.

Never been a sinner, I never sinned
I got a friend in Jesus
So you know that when I die
He's gonna set me up
with the spirit in the sky — Greenbaum

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZQxH_8raCI

I love the song, and I like his assertion that he is sinless and never sinned. It belongs to a period of Hippiedom in which this sort of deep positive self-regard could pass without deep frowns and raised eyebrows, at least among the Hippie peers.

Such a statement would definitely not fly in the Protestant / Catholic milieu in which I was raised, in which we are rotten to the core with sin, a view which is not altogether helpful.

Do you believe most people generally trend towards wisdom/ lack of delusion with age and experience? Or is this you referring to your specific case. — Benj96

I believe people are more alike than they are different. We are all subjected to competing influences as children -- on into adulthood -- that become determining factors as we age. Times and circumstances change for individuals and different influences come to the foreground. An individual may push towards greater wisdom (aka, a wider, more perceptive perspective) or one's delusions may become exaggerated.

We hold ourselves individually responsible for what happens to us (it's in our cultural DNA). To some extent, we are responsible. But one of the benefits of the wider perspective is recognizing where we were, and were not, the prime movers in our life history, and that's just the way it is.

So no, there's nothing special about my specific case. I am grateful things didn't turn out as badly as they might have.

The Trolley Problem is a question of the 'greatest good for the greatest number of people". Somebody is going to die, one way or another. It's interesting, but it's been done to death.

Stick with your original post and don't change it anymore.

"Your money or your life"

You probably have never heard of Jack Benny; too bad if you haven't, great if you have. He was first popular on radio, then later television. Here's the punchline of a radio comedy skit about having to make an existential choice:

I should have clarified. The people in this situation aren’t attacking you but you are still forced to choose between killing them or sacrificing yourself. — Captain Homicide

Wait a minute. You've 'clarified' the matter out of existence. IF they are not attacking you, then there is no justification for an attack in self-defense. What the hell are they doing?

A man was just convicted of second degree murder in Minnesota. There had been an altercation at a river park in Wisconsin, Names were called, threats were made. The convicted person (a guy in his 50s) fell into the water, and when he stood up he brandished a knife, which he proceeded to use to kill one of the people who had been yelling at him.

The judge noted that the convicted man could have -- and should have -- left the scene of the conflict when he climbed out of the river -- nobody was stopping him from departing. Nobody was threatening his existence, however abusive the verbiage being tossed around might have been. It was homicide, not self-defense.

Exactly.

The reason why "self-defense" in the moment of imminent or ensuing harm is acceptable is that the central nervous system does not allow reflection at the moment of crisis. Instead, physical resources are marshaled and directed against the threat. We either survive or we are dead. If we had time to carefully sort out the moral implications and then act, we probably were not existentially threatened.

If you can flee, you should flee.

Needless to say, provoking an attack so that self-defense can be invoked is immoral.

I've had to resort to memory aids even in areas where I used to be articulate — Vera Mont

One Art
Elizabeth Bishop 1911 – 1979

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Certainly related, but not the same.

Having spent days... months... years... in a state of delusion or deep misinformation about all sorts of things -- all of which seemed perfectly clear and sensible at the time -- it seems that most people are, at times, incapable of distinguishing shit from shinola [a fine brand of smelly brown shoe polish].

Over time, IF we are persistent and studious, we can reduce the amount of delusion and misinformation on which we were operating, say 10 years ago. In other words, rear-view vision is better than forward-facing vision.

The delusion de jour is that I am less deluded in my old age than I was in youth or middle age. One piece of evidence is that I don't seem to be struggling against "reality" as much as I used to. Not nearly as much. Age and the ever-closer proximity of death eliminates many of the issues that concerned us in the past. Numerous options are closed now, and over which one might have dithered in the past.

Nature isn't "the peaceable kingdom", but it isn't entirely "red in tooth and claw" either. Take a lion and a herd of grazers. The grazers can tell if the lion is stalking them or not. If not, they graze on. If yes, they take evasive action, collectively. Lions have limitations, they don't want to get kicked in the head, so they look for a the lame, the halt, the old, and go after them.

Many animals live in status systems. The top chicken gets to peck at the choice kernel first, on down to the lowest chicken who is lucky not to get pecked to death. The top cow goes through the barn door first; a challenger might try to go through the door first, in which case, the top cow and challenger right get stuck in the doorway.

Many animals also communicate with scent. They may not "design" the scent, but they take the initiative in marking territory. Tall male dogs try to piss higher up on the tree than everybody else, the better to establish 'place'. Please don't leap to any semblance you may see in human male behavior.

It all amounts to a reasonably decent arrangement.

BTW, I'm not finding this thread very interesting.

Certainly there are many meaningful and meaning-giving endeavors which we can undertake. But for better or for worse, we are made by our relationships with other people -- parents and siblings first, then peers, teachers, neighbors, gangs, acquaintances, partners, lovers, etc. There's nothing simple or guaranteed about any relationship. Living in relationship with others can be hard -- maybe impossible with some people.

On the one hand, you could spend the rest of your long life sorting out just some of the issues tangled up in the theology and history of Judaism and Christianity -- and it would be quite interesting, but it won't in itself make you a better person.

On the other hand, you could try to apply the summation provided by Jesus: Love one another as I have loved you. (John 13:34) Doing this will make you a better person, whatever else you decide to do in your life.

You have a scholarly bent, and that is a good thing--don't lose it. But when you are looking for meaning in this life, you will find it in your relationships with other people. There's no contradiction here. Practice good scholarship with your books and practice loving kindness with your neighbors.

I hold that it does, but you have track it down like anything else to discover what the essence of religion is. — Astrophel

And what is the essence of religion, which I assume you have tracked down?

You must begin and end with the world. — Astrophel

I totally agree. This world is all we know, and all we can know, however much we rattle on about God, heaven, hell, etc.

I guess all who want to be more critical, and dubious about the set of norms, tend to be against the Church. — javi2541997

And, sometimes, the church is against members who deviate too far from the tenets of the faith.

These days, people are usually not thrown out of main stream churches for disagreements over theology. Back in the 1980s, two theologians studied what active church members in Minnesota actually claim to believe. The results were sometimes very surprising. About 7% of active church participants did not believe in the resurrection, for instance. Were the study, Faith and Ferment, repeated today, it is likely that the results would show decline in belief in basic tenets, like the resurrection,

And, as it happens, nobody is going to get drummed out of a mainline church for not believing this or that tenet.

In the same way, mainline churches are more accepting of homosexuality than they used to be. They may not approve, but they won't stone their gay members. They just won't marry or ordain them (which is the situation in the Methodist Church. The Methodists are splitting the denomination over the issue of homosexuality, letting the least tolerant congregations leave (there is a substantial monetary penalty for leaving, however).

Conservative churches (like Southern Baptists, tend not to be as tolerant as Lutherans or Anglicans. African churches tend to be more conservative than North American congregations.

I am not even baptised. — javi2541997

Do you think you would benefit by being baptized? In mainline theology, Baptism provides for the erasure of original sin, something cooked up by the early church. Baptism doesn't make you a church member, it makes you part of the body of Christ. It's all very mystical, but you do get wet.

The main problem I have with "spirituality" among the people I have talked with who claim to be "spiritual rather than religious" is that when pressed for details, they are unable to explain -- even generally - what spirituality means to them. I think what a lot of them are doing is "dodging". They don't want to say they are atheists, which has a bitter flavor to them, so they just say they are "spiritual".

There was a popular comedy show in Minneapolis a few decades back titled "Being Atheist Means Never Having to Say You're Lutheran". The title might have been the best part of the show, for all I know. Minnesota is the land of Lutherans.

Do you feel the same? — javi2541997

I'm not spiritual. What I have is a very conflicted relationship with religion, church, and God, who I am fairly certain does not exist.

I like formal religious ceremony; I like the music of the church; I like the social connection which belonging to a congregation can provide; BUT I don't believe in the creed. The first sentence is tolerable: "We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen..." But then it gets into the dicier matter of Jesus' divinity, death, resurrection, and co-existence with God: "For us men and for our salvation He came down from heaven. By the power of the Holy Spirit He was born of the Virgin Mary and became man." And "On the third day He rose again, in fulfillment of the Scriptures. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and His kingdom will have no end.".

Unitarians (something like your non-theistic Quakers) do not believe in the Trinity; there may or may not be God. Jesus was an ordinary man. The Holy Ghost doesn't figure into it at all. No virgin birth, no resurrection, no kingdom. There aren't many unitarians here, but I probably belong more with them than Lutherans or Methodists.

Aside from theology, millions of contemporary people have had very unpleasant experiences with The Church over homosexuality, divorce, abortion, and various other issues. So have I.

Former church members who are now "spiritual" are probably trying to preserve a memory of what they once had in their hands. I can understand that. Their children don't have a memory of church membership, and for some or many of their children, "spirituality" will fade out.

Your situation, Javi, isn't the same as the former church members. Your spirituality appears to be 'de novo'. I wish you every success in developing your own spirituality.

Like the police chief, you are comically shocked--SHOCKED!--to find contradictions, inconsistencies, and hypocrisy in the institutions and practice of religion.



In what context are humans NOT contradictory, inconsistent, and hypocritical?

Now try to name one step along this road which was not bitterly opposed by the Christian religion. The emancipation of women; birth control; the abolition of slavery; universal free education; inoculation against diseases which cripple children; the universal franchise. Every modern development which has tended to reduce the sum total of human misery, and increase the general balance of health, happiness and prosperity, has been fought on the beaches and in the streets by one section or another of the Christian church. — alan1000

Sometimes liberation was sponsored by Christians, sometimes Christians were opposed to liberation movements at different times and in different places. Your blanket condemnation of Christianity overlooks a hell of a lot of historical complexity.

Which Christians opposed Jenner's smallpox vaccination in 1791, or the polio vaccination in the 1950s? Are you proposing that anti vaxxers are all Christians? (Some of them are.).

Apparently you think that Christendom has been an entirely religious playground for the last 2000 years? Are you not aware that there were other powerful institutions operating along side the church from St. Peter on down to 2024? Food for thought: Christianity was as strongly influenced by the Roman Empire as the Empire was influenced by the church -- maybe more so. It was corrupted from the get go.

Anyone familiar with the history of Christianity is aware of both its egregious failures and its shining successes. The church is a human institution and as Kant said, "nothing straight was ever built with the crooked timber of mankind."

The Abrahamic religions are essentially exclusive and intolerant. — Ciceronianus

This is a feature that many faithful are loath to claim. Fundamentalists (whatever faith) not only claim it, they get high on it.

Relatively conservative and liberal values slosh back and forth in the bucket of mainstream American Christian politics. Sometimes some Protestants have been liberal, same for Catholics. There have been progressive Protestants and progressive Catholics; there are more often conservative Protestants and Catholics.

A lot of people have left the church; I suspect many of them took their politics with them. If they were liberal Catholics, they are now liberal ex-Catholics, and visa versa.

But it isn't the mainstream where the danger of Christian Nationalism lies: It's in the extremely conservative branches of Christian political behavior.

The Church hatches a few liberation-oriented movements every now and then. One thinks of liberation theology in South America. Or the Catholic Worker Movement in the United States (it's tiny). Even mainstream Protestants can lay a progressive egg or two and hatch a little progressive flock.

Still, as a group (and it's a big group) American Christians do not buck the system.

The pope seems to be having difficulty running his own shop, never mind the U.S. But Christian Nationalism is a real and present danger. Its main feature is its irrationality. A complaint I heard yesterday: Palm Sunday was not listed on a bank calendar -- proof that the state is trying to suppress Christianity. Other themes: White people are under threat. Liberals are a threat. The deep state is a threat. Woke is a threat. Law and order are falling apart. Children are disobedient. Story time with drag queens is a threat.

Really, just about anything / everything. It's difficult to argue with people who are receiving these crazy bat signals. A lot of Nazi dogma was irrational too -- complete nonsense -- but it tied into inchoate prejudices of various kinds. White Christian nationalism likewise taps into discontents that arise from various sources (like the stresses of scientific rationalism on traditional beliefs; increased economic insecurity; social disruption; unwanted social change, etc. etc. etc.) Right-wing propagandists fan the flames of discontent.

Your 1913 book is a reminder that this kind of conspiratorial thinking is not a new phenomenon in American culture, and it isn't so small and weak that it amounts to only a curiosity. The KKK of the 19th century is gone, but new versions have sprung up: different leaders, different followers, different centers of activity, the same bat-shit kind of thinking.

"Mind the gap!"

Biblical studies are fascinating, partly because there is a critical gap between the content of the New Testament and the events which may have inspired the various authors that cannot now be illuminated, if it ever could have been. This isn't a significant barrier for most believers, while being catnip for scholars.

The real Jesus may not be represented in the Gospels (all sorts of biographical pieces are missing) and that's not a barrier to most believers either, because each believer conjures up the Jesus they need. Believers do the same thing for God.

In all, an excellent thread for Holy Week.