Are Safe Spaces for Religious Millennials Justified?

[AspieMillennial]

(10-17-2021, 11:50 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(10-17-2021, 09:03 AM)AspieMillennial Wrote:

(08-13-2021, 12:45 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(08-12-2021, 05:30 PM)AspieMillennial Wrote:

(08-11-2021, 06:33 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: There is enough blame to go around among religions (especially Christianity) and atheism. 

Christianity is basically materialist; seeing a battle between spirit and matter, God and Devil. It is also authoritarian and socially conservative, meaning the faithful are deserving and the infidels are to be converted or killed. To say "only bad things get attributed to Christians and all the good things to atheists" makes me wonder what planet or nation you live in, Aspie.

I understand that Germans in the Nazi era belonged to an ancestry that was Christian for about 1000 years. But the Nazis were as Aspie says social darwinists and had gone over to materialism. The Nazis were the ultimate social conservatives, but authoritarian, exclusivist Christianity did not prevent this but paved the way for it. Atheists can believe in ethics, but I agree with Aspie that morality is dimmed by materialist atheism, for even though atheists can still have good ethics and believe in principles, the culture that materialism has spawned over the last 3 centuries is increasingly immoral, and moral relativism is not a sufficient basis for ethics.

Neither atheists nor Christians/Muslims have to be authoritarian social conservatives. That is the main problem with both of them. We need to question authority, not submit to it routinely and blindly, and to value all people and all beings, not to pit religious or racial/ethnic groups against each other and conceive and establish superiority of one over the other, or to conceive of Nature as only something material to be conquered and used for our own devices.

I would say a full and ethical life requires going beyond seeing ourselves and other beings as a "bunch of random cells created randomly", OR seeing our group as spiritual and/or virtuous and other beings as material and/or unworthy. Just how one conceives of divinity does not have to be the traditional, exoteric, authoritarian Christian or Muslim way, or the way of denial. To be spiritual but not religious is a step beyond both.

I see Christianity as anti materialist. The materialist position says there is no soul, no divine, no objective morals, no supernatural, no afterlife. Christianity says all of them exist. Christian ancestry does not mean Christian values. Jesus would not approve of their behavior.

One part of Christianity is anti-materialist -- the part that denies the reality of the eternity of a depraved and corrupt world beginning with the Roman Empire. Pragmatic concerns have never prevented Christians from relying upon the highly-material reality of church buildings, the collection plate, Bibles, church literature, and (in some cases) television. To deal with the emergency that is COVID-19, the Pope told Catholics to stay at home and participate in the Mass through EWTN, cable TV, and a television. Catholic Churches and Catholic events were not to become super-spreaders. 

Pure materialism is inhuman. Pure anti-materialism (idealism) is unreal. Apologies to Charles Sanders Peirce.

I don't like the current reality so I reject it for my own ideals. I also reject much of generational theory. Generational theory demands that I be this archetype like the normies are. I reject this and refuse to follow the mainstream demands.

Some realities are beyond my control. Weather is obvious. Very soon I will need to have shelter or adequate clothing to avoid frostbite, or go elsewhere. I cannot expect to do anything that violates the strictures of physical law. Conventions such as law and language are real.

Nothing is eternal. Institutions are obvious enough, and the most corrupt and depraved ones are extremely vulnerable to internal rot, especially when those become aggressive. Nazi Germany is one of the most obvious examples of that pattern. Maybe the Roman Empire would have lasted longer had it emancipated slaves, promoted mass education, eschewed militarism, and avoided despotism.

Ideals have their value, but reality serves as a test. Those with perverse ideals, especially those that do grave harm to others for highly-concentrated indulgence, typically find legal and material reality turning against them, as is the case with pedophiles and thieves. People can call all sorts of sleazy objectives 'ideals', including living some Good Life that depends upon economic exploitation and destruction of the civil rights and liberties of those who become subjects. Aristocratic ways have become at best parodies (think of successful film stars) and are often comparative novelties. Great family fortunes can fade over time. Anderson Cooper, a descendant of Cornelius Vanderbilt, says that there is no longer a Vanderbilt fortune, and that he lives on his pay from being a media personality.

...You no as I do that we share positions on the autistic spectrum. We both must live lies to survive in our system. We must often conform to expectations that are contrary to our nature. When we are honest we can say or write unsettling things. Maybe our overall society needs to accept that some unsettling things are vital. As such we both need to express ourselves rationality or to create some entertaining fantasy as a diversion from the troublesome reality that most of us know without being crazy about it. We also need some morality. In general, Lawrence Kohlberg offers a hierarchy of potential criteria for discerning Right from Wrong:



This relates to the question of whether a compounding pharmacist has an inherent right to create a sure cure for a horrific disease (the specific case is cancer) and price a man out of getting it for his wife who will surely die a horrible death without it. (OK, that makes an unlikely scenario). Preconventional morality isn't very high, and it gets little support. Wild animals and small children usually operate on this level (stage 2), and adults don't get away with predatory behavior unless extremely cunning or under protection. The perception that one will not be caught (so you took two half-dollars from your parents' coin collection and traded them in for a soda) is something to suppress because it it is an extremely-bad habit. Crude self interest (2) is fine for people who live as hermits or lone castaways, but it is not good for forming and maintaining complex societies and organizations that make life more satisfying.

Raw conformity (stage 3) allows one to go along with the crowd. Of course someone leads the crowd on, whether that crowd is the Girl Scouts of America or the infamous Bund Deutscher Mädel, the only permitted organization for girls in the Third Reich. Going along in the Girl Scouts is innocuous. IN the Nazi parody it was good for pushing the ideology of the Party and even recruiting girls to grow up to be monstrous guards in the camps. To be sure, blind rebellion is itself risky. Stage 4 implies obedience in the assumption that disobedience tears at a good society (thus ratting out a black person who drinks from a "WHITES ONLY" fountain in "Kukluxistan" is a good idea) but personal loyalties matter.

At the Social Contract position (Stage 5) one has some advanced ability to discern right from wrong and the reliability of those in power to act morally. This is the position at which one can protest gross injustice, perhaps by showing that it fails to serve law and order (that segregation rips at the assumption of freedom and democracy, persecution of ethnic or religious minorities is unconscionable, or the denial of basic dignity to pariahs is ultimately dangerous to us all).

Here is my scenario: I have been threatened with gay-bashing. The problem isn't that someone thinks that I am gay, as morally-mature people draw no conclusions about the validity of my existence even if they misjudge me on that. I wasn't going to do something nasty to someone I think is gay for being gay. The problem is that someone thinks that it beating people up for being gay is acceptable because they see gays as dangerous perverts. At this point I can formulate arguments for gay rights. Maybe if people recognize that LGBT people are peers (a woman who shares the same attitudes toward men as I do would be a lesbian) and merit equal protection under the law and a community standard that accepts homosexuality that is not a personal choice. So long as it precludes pedophile behavior and sexual exploitation (which I cannot accept when such is heterosexual) I can live with it. Acceptance of LGBT rights makes the world safer, and a safer world is a better world.

So I can tailor an appeal on Law and Order to people who may not quite accept my reasoning on basic human rights, but even at that, Law and Order is essential to making basic human rights possible. The question is who determines what laws are statutes and which ones are to be enforced.  I prefer that the police go after drug dealers and not after flagrant homosexuals. I can't excuse heroin and cocaine but I must accept homosexuality. Attacks on homosexuals are thus inexcusable and rightly subject to police repression and to official prosecution. People who might have free-floating anger must be convinced that attacking homosexuals is unacceptable and intolerable. We do not need people being made pariahs without them having done something inexcusable. Laws can establish the patterns toward which we conform lest we get burned by the legal system and penal administration.

Stage 6 is for people who are as adept at making moral judgments as Fritz Kreisler was at playing a violin. This is the realm of jurisprudence and moral prophecy at its best. It is parallel to Abraham Maslow's "self-actualization", and people at this level have clearly attained transcendence. (Neither of us, as Aspies, can ever approach self-actualization. We have terrible gaps of personality that we must at best synthesize because such does not come naturally).

Level 1 is for the psychopath. It is primitive and animalistic, and it usually leads to prison or the gallows. Level 2 allows one to see oneself as Master over victims less cunning than oneself. At best it serves the sell-out, and at worst a criminal fairly good at deflecting attention from himself or getting away from the scene of the crime. Mobsters are generally at this level, as were pirates and are serial killers, rapists, and thieves. Maybe they evade judgment for some time, as was so with a Ted Bundy, John Dillinger, or Osama bin Laden.  Level 3 ensures that one is no better or worse than the crowd or clique. At the worst the group might be a genocidal gang, and going along allows the very worst in human conduct. If one follows a leader at this moral level mindlessly (as such people demand) one might be following a Charles Manson or Adolf Hitler. Level 3 cannot judge, and it is amenable to the appeal of fakes and frauds. That is where I see the Trump cult.

At Level 4 one is no better than the formal structure. One can become an enforcer of the cruelties built into the system such as segregation and religious bigotry. When the formal structure of society improves, so does the result of recognizing the validity of law and order.  Level 4 can accept that there are good reasons for not using illicit drugs or participating in scams. It is also perfect in the service of the old KGB or the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission.

Level 5 is risky. If one's thoughts are mostly benign and one has some self-restraint and intellectual one can operate here. This is where one decides the distinction between Good and Evil and can make that distinction stick if in authority. One can explain what one believes it and formulate it as law and principle. If one is smart and conventional, then one can operate at this level as a political leader, judge, police chief, diplomat, journalist, or college professor.  It can still be pragmatic and not quite be stuck in some ivory tower. Mikhail Gorbachev and Angela Merkel seem to operate at this level. American Presidents? Gerald Ford and Barack Obama fit. For high-visibility divines one might find Billy Graham and Fulton Sheen.

Level 6 is that of the Prophet and Saint. Human nature craves this, but it is far easier to come up with counterfeit prophets and saints than with real ones. Cranks and crooks often exploit people as fakes here. For the fakes it is best that most people operate around Level 3, willing to follow but incapable of making moral judgments. I can see Abraham Lincoln or Mohandas Gandhi at this level.

True we have to fit in to some extent but why bother hanging around people who disrespect your beliefs or what you think? Many of them are very hostile and don't seem worth the bother. If you're at work or a place you need to get along then fine but why not form your own spaces that help you?

I've read the hierarchy of morality. Conventional morality is harder for me to grasp than the higher forms or lower forms. Maybe this is why secularism makes no sense to me.