My wife keeps it freezing in my house. I’m not powerless to turn it up, but it’s just not worth the button up button down battle. Instead I just got an alpaca blanket I use all summer. Power rests in knowing how to navigate the system, even for the downtrodden and oppressed.
Sorry for the trauma dump.
Which incidentally is a good point. I was obtuse…
Huh, that’s interesting. I always thought power was just like controlling or destroying the system.
There is an irony of AC freezing one to death instead of relieving one of heat.
I understand your argument to be that shared religious experience guarantees that citizems can coordinate activities in ways that are mutually beneficial.
I am not persuaded because within western societies there doesn’t seem to be a strongly positive correlation between religious attendance and reported qualify of life.
One of the other recent research reports that struck me was on charitable giving. Religious observers gave more to charity but excluding giving to their denominational religious charities they give slighty less. This suggests that affiliation is good at strengthening in-groups but not at producing better outcomes for all in a pluralist society.
That is why we might need civic responsibility. Its not necessarily instead of civic religions. It can involve them but there are in America people of many faiths and none.
You mentioned Britian and Europe. Churchill speech was not a vision for Britiain outside Europe. He spoke of his hopes for a continuing alliance with the (free) French republic. Churchill enemy was Nazism not Europe. Brexit has certainly not been a straightforward benefit for Britain. At the time of the referendum there was a small majority in favour of leaving. That has now disappeared and a majority in this country regret Britain’s retreat into isolation. You might want to consider that lesson.
I’d have to see the study. That they gave to their own charitable organizations doesn’t mean the charity didn’t leave that organization.
The point was in its reference to common values shared by Brits that united them.
It spoke of Britain as the unconquered island, repeated use of “this island,” “our island home.” Reference to Napolean and his failure. Reference to British stubborness and the sea the protects them. The navy portrayed not as a military division but as a national institution. Understated calm “wars are not won by evacuation.” Empahsis on duty, discipline, service, fidelity, perserverence, resolve. All classes are equally British (“Capital and Labor have case aside their interets, rights, and customs and put them into the common stock.”). References to beaches, landing grounds, fields, streets, hills, island, empire, fleet. That is, the sacred grounds and insitutions of ancestory. Profound British understatment, “At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do” after fully and honestly laying out the tragedy unfolding and the consequences of defeat.
“Every morn brought forth a noble chance, and every chance brought forth a noble knight” referencing Knights of the Round Table.
His was a speech to Brits in the language of Brits as a unified call to protect what was holy, their ancient island home, fiercely protected without boast by resolve and by duty to the last man standing.
I’m not suggesting that regret from mistaken decisions doesn’t set in, but I am saying that British national identity played a role in its Brexit decision.
It seems to apply everywhere but the mid-east currently. I’m not sure what to make of it, because I’m in that camp Rorty sees himself in also.
It seems to me that the “values” are being lost in the fight.
As i have often been seen saying, you need to state your goals first. No discussion about policy, or even interpretation of some event, is going to be “good faith” in the true sense without knowing where somewhere is going with it, not where they’re coming from. Imo.
For this reason, “Western values” seem to have not changed, but been ignored. The value of civil discourse has almost entirely given way on the left, and its nearly there on the right as one example. The value of "safety’ seems to be have been given up in service of lambasting one another, instead of actually trying to achieve safety (which is not determined by actual harm, let’s remember).
I guess the best things to preserve from the Enlightenment civil religion are things like:
But is the third one really a value? I mean, Aaron Burr shot Hamilton in a duel. Maybe respect for opposing views isn’t really a thing. One could argue that there’s no point in faking it. Even if the result is social breakdown and revolution, should you stand by your point of view?
I don’t think of the Enlightenment as civil religion, and in a way, I think the thought that it is is part of the problem. I think of the Enlightenment (and I do buy into its ideology by and large) is just the basis of secularism, the belief that all value can be derived through human reason and the like.
Civil religion would not just be the codification of those beliefs and a general acceptance of them, but it would be an imbedded way of life rooted in a common mythology filled with an origin story, a shared sense of direction, struggle, triumph, failure, rebuilding, heroes, and villans. There has to be rites, holy days, song, common gatherings.
On the 4th of July, we raise a flag, we sing the national anthem, our heroes and important folk walk down the street in a processional, we eat American fare (burgers and apple pie), and we dress in our colors. If done right, we feel a sense of unity, pride, and emotion.
That’s what I mean by civil religion. Without that, we fracture.
Ok. But how do you do that without becoming un-American? If we really treated July 4 like a religious holiday, we couldn’t sit around complaining that the system is f’d up.
Nobody points out that God is an asshole at a Christmas party. At least they’re not supposed to.
I think there’s more suffering going on due to disparities of wealth because I don’t think “assuming basic needs are met” is true. There’s a sense in which they are, in that we all wake up the next day, but I still see suffering people everywhere and know that if we cared about them they’d suffer less than they do. And those who don’t wake up don’t exactly have a say.
I want to disagree with where the problem begins. But I’m not sure if my disagreement there matters all that much in light of everyone else’s comments.
Where I want to agree is in the notion of a civil religion.
There I want to disagree with the old totems, heroes, and so forth, and try to build something better than we happen to have landed in. The Western/American symbols have become unattractive to me in light of reality. I don’t want to hurt my fellows around me, but the myths are now absolutely ugly to me in light of what I know.
I agree it’s a perverse outgrowth.
I have other thoughts about colonialism continued, but I see you’re already under attack and wanted to note where I agree.
I think “respect” for people’s views simply means you cannot enact a rights-violation due to someone’s views. You can protest all you want.
I personally do not respect other’s views for which they have no good basis. However, I also do not respect indoctrinated views, which is not the person’s doing.
I still, and always will, ensure to the best of my ability, those people’s rights to have and disseminate their views. It doesn’t matter to me until a rights violation has happened, and I think that’s correct.
The complaint would be that Christ is missing from Christmas, not that Christ is a dipshit. Similarly, we complain about America in practice, not its ideology. If you do think its ideology is stupid, you’d be unAmerican, just as if you think Christian ideology is stupid, you’d be unchristian.
You’re missing the American positivity bias.
The progressive liberal tradition should be commended for its open invitation to non Anglo-Saxons to the party and in hearing their voice and allowing their participation, but should be questioned for their degradation of the Anglo-Saxon tradition and for their own self-loathing when they are part of that ancestry.
An interesting observation. Moreover, I would add that I have never encountered any serious works examining (or justifying) naive realism, nor have I encountered any works/beliefs/ideologies that justify ordinary human desires, the thirst for wealth and the benefits it brings, including the joy of consumption.
It’s surprising, but philosophy and religion in general are constantly engaged in critiquing everything simple, ordinary, and self-evident. Where is the evidence for the “goodness” of our philistine way of life?
What’s even more interesting is that proving the truth of “ordinary” life, compared to that declared by religions, is a hundred times easier empirically. Why hasn’t anyone done this before?
Yes 
Was it actually a success? I’m not so sure about that. I’d rather say that it was a failure, in light of how we still are. It’s not self-loathing to want to know the truth about oneself and the world. It’s the only way to make genuine progress.
The problem I see with the tradition is that it doesn’t really reconcile its history, but instead relegates inconvenient facts to “the past” through a myth of progress. Were that somehow true then perhaps the myth would be worth it, but here we still are living with that past in the now. The myth of progress becomes something of an eternal apology to never address the inequalities which are a direct result of the development of actually existing liberal states.
Which isn’t to say “give up” or anything like that. Progress can still happen in a piece-meal way. But it won’t be the liberal tradition which pushes us forward with its myth of progress. Progress doesn’t just happen because we live in the right kind of social arrangement, it happens because people demand it and force it upon the state. All progress in the liberal state has come from common people coming together to struggle against those who deprive them of their dignity.
This is the sort of myth that I see as much more conducive to a real progress: one which asks us to struggle towards it. And to question our received myths so that we may know whether or not we are just telling ourselves that we are living a good life, or that we actually are.
Naturally this means being knowledgeable in the myths, though with a critical rather than reverent viewpoint.
I found you one: Cyrenaics - Wikipedia
You could also argue that Utilitarianism is pretty hedonistic, particularly Bentham’s version that weighed pleasure, but less so Mills that considered the higher forms of happiness.
Weirdly enough, the best version of this I’ve seen came from Ben Shapiro of all people.
Basically says he believes in, and supports, the American ‘project’ and dream etc… but that it is not living up to it and that means we need to be trying to fix it, not destroy it.
One can support positive change without shame, particularly the intellectualized sort of shame, not arising from some personal failing, but from the idea of inherited guilt.
You describe the worst sort of atheism, born into inherited sin, but without a means for salvation.
Why is it weird coming from him?
