Compare/Contrast of Millennials and GIs

[JasonBlack]

What are some differences and similarities you see between GIs and Millennials?

[JasonBlack]

These are my observations. Keep in mind about 80% of them would have been dead before I got a chance to get to know them well, so the GI side of these observations will be more tentative (maybe 30 individuals I talked to at any length, with about 10 who I got to know very well). I'm interested in some of you older folks' experience here, as you would have known them for longer.

Differences:
- male-centric vs female centric
- dignified vs banal
- preference for classic styles vs preference for more casual apparel
- pro-military intervention vs non-interventionist
- nationalistic vs critical of their country
- optimism vs anxious pessimism and nihilism

Similarities:
- strong emphasis on social responsibility
- collectivistic, often aggressively so
- prone to witch hunting
- more faith in big institutions
- emphasis on building
- relatively conscientious in terms of achievement

[sbarrera]

(09-07-2022, 05:34 AM)JasonBlack Wrote: - pro-military intervention vs non-interventionist
- nationalistic vs critical of their country

Jason, you might be interested to learn about the anti-war movement among GIs in the 1930s. There's a great book about the movement called "When the Old Left Was Young" which I recommend.

https://www.google.com/search?q=when+the...+was+young

The pro-intervention/nationalist reputation came after Pearl Harbor, with the massive participation in the war. This suggests that a major crisis event could cause a shift in Millennials' attitude and reputation. Actually, the distance between the start of the last 4T and Pearl Harbor is the same as the distance between the start of this 4T and the COVID pandemic - 12 years. Perhaps there are ways in which the pandemic has changed Millennials?

[pbrower2a]

(09-07-2022, 08:19 AM)sbarrera Wrote:

(09-07-2022, 05:34 AM)JasonBlack Wrote: - pro-military intervention vs non-interventionist
- nationalistic vs critical of their country

Jason, you might be interested to learn about the anti-war movement among GIs in the 1930s. There's a great book about the movement called "When the Old Left Was Young" which I recommend.

https://www.google.com/search?q=when+the...+was+young

The pro-intervention/nationalist reputation came after Pearl Harbor, with the massive participation in the war. This suggests that a major crisis event could cause a shift in Millennials' attitude and reputation. Actually, the distance between the start of the last 4T and Pearl Harbor is the same as the distance between the start of this 4T and the COVID pandemic - 12 years. Perhaps there are ways in which the pandemic has changed Millennials?

On the whole, Millennial adults may have been in a far better state of mind than older adults in meeting the peril of COVID-19. The anti-vax crap was for X, Boomers, and the Silent. Millennial adults may have qualified last for inoculation, but once they were eligible they got it. I look at the loud-mouth deniers of the seriousness of COVID-19 and I do not see the Millennial generation. This generation trusts science more than it trusts any anti-rational rhetoric that threatens people with Hell if they fail to believe such nonsense as young-earth creationism or white supremacy. 

Now that Generation X women are now almost completely out of child-bearing age, it is Millennial adults and their Homelander "little sisters" who are most vulnerable to extremist stances on abortion, those stances that hold that a fetus has some right to be carried full term even if dead or if death is a sure thing for the mother (and orphan status for her existing children). The extreme positions against abortion are really pro-death and anti-child. 

It is hard to imagine the Millennial generation reverting to the idea that whatever happens in life is some Will of God. We have no shortage of examples of horrors from the Mongol horrors to the mistreatment of American First Peoples to the Atlantic slave trade to the Holocaust that if such things be the Will of God, then perhaps we would be better off without such a God. I would not worship a tyrant or gangster except under the prospect of such extreme distress as a red-hot poker directed at my rectum. I do not want either a Stalin or a mobster as an equivalent of a God, and I do not want my God to be a Stalin or a mobster.  

As for Pearl Harbor -- Americans were in a Crisis mode, and the fascists mistakenly believed that America was a land of cultural and political chaos. The generational model suggests that a 4T is a time in which 3T values of mindless hedonism as a salve for extreme inequality fade while 1T values begin to entrench themselves.

[nguyenivy]

(09-07-2022, 09:40 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(09-07-2022, 08:19 AM)sbarrera Wrote:

(09-07-2022, 05:34 AM)JasonBlack Wrote: - pro-military intervention vs non-interventionist
- nationalistic vs critical of their country

Jason, you might be interested to learn about the anti-war movement among GIs in the 1930s. There's a great book about the movement called "When the Old Left Was Young" which I recommend.

https://www.google.com/search?q=when+the...+was+young

The pro-intervention/nationalist reputation came after Pearl Harbor, with the massive participation in the war. This suggests that a major crisis event could cause a shift in Millennials' attitude and reputation. Actually, the distance between the start of the last 4T and Pearl Harbor is the same as the distance between the start of this 4T and the COVID pandemic - 12 years. Perhaps there are ways in which the pandemic has changed Millennials?

On the whole, Millennial adults may have been in a far better state of mind than older adults in meeting the peril of COVID-19. The anti-vax crap was for X, Boomers, and the Silent. Millennial adults may have qualified last for inoculation, but once they were eligible they got it. I look at the loud-mouth deniers of the seriousness of COVID-19 and I do not see the Millennial generation. This generation trusts science more than it trusts any anti-rational rhetoric that threatens people with Hell if they fail to believe such nonsense as young-earth creationism or white supremacy. 

Now that Generation X women are now almost completely out of child-bearing age, it is Millennial adults and their Homelander "little sisters" who are most vulnerable to extremist stances on abortion, those stances that hold that a fetus has some right to be carried full term even if dead or if death is a sure thing for the mother (and orphan status for her existing children). The extreme positions against abortion are really pro-death and anti-child. 

It is hard to imagine the Millennial generation reverting to the idea that whatever happens in life is some Will of God. We have no shortage of examples of horrors from the Mongol horrors to the mistreatment of American First Peoples to the Atlantic slave trade to the Holocaust that if such things be the Will of God, then perhaps we would be better off without such a God. I would not worship a tyrant or gangster except under the prospect of such extreme distress as a red-hot poker directed at my rectum. I do not want either a Stalin or a mobster as an equivalent of a God, and I do not want my God to be a Stalin or a mobster.  

As for Pearl Harbor -- Americans were in a Crisis mode, and the fascists mistakenly believed that America was a land of cultural and political chaos. The generational model suggests that a 4T is a time in which 3T values of mindless hedonism as a salve for extreme inequality fade while 1T values begin to entrench themselves.

pbrower2a - your 3rd para intrigues me a bit as someone who doesn't do religion and is a Millennial.  I wonder if despite the toxic uses people in the past has used religion for, if there is still a necessity for some kind of spiritual belief system.  We still have many unanswered questions both about the universe as well as things like how a moral/values framework should operate.  These are such things different societies handle differently and have different answers to, based on culture.  Maybe it's the USA's nature that we don't have a homogenous culture and so what defines 'being American / of the USA' is more of a legal thing than anything else.  Interestingly I was thinking of something a few hours ago that is much less serious but might fit this pretty well about the difference between the US & elsewhere: we in the US have no equivalent of winning the World Cup.  We are so large a country and soccer/football isn't very popular here, so even if we won the celebration would not be like it is elsewhere in countries where football/soccer is the dominant sport and winning is part of the national pride.  Our sports have a championship every year and the teams represent cities/metro areas.  Those areas do not totally shut down when they win and not everyone cares when the team wins.  They have a parade a few days later and that's it.  What I think I'm getting at is we in the US have no narrative (or lost whatever one we had) about our purpose of life and our goals.  We just live for ourselves/families and maybe whatever causes we care about in our little corner.  Does this lack of a narrative originate from lack of spiritual belief? Something else?  Does it matter?

[Eric the Green]

(09-20-2022, 01:35 PM)nguyenivy Wrote:

(09-07-2022, 09:40 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(09-07-2022, 08:19 AM)sbarrera Wrote:

(09-07-2022, 05:34 AM)JasonBlack Wrote: - pro-military intervention vs non-interventionist
- nationalistic vs critical of their country

Jason, you might be interested to learn about the anti-war movement among GIs in the 1930s. There's a great book about the movement called "When the Old Left Was Young" which I recommend.

https://www.google.com/search?q=when+the...+was+young

The pro-intervention/nationalist reputation came after Pearl Harbor, with the massive participation in the war. This suggests that a major crisis event could cause a shift in Millennials' attitude and reputation. Actually, the distance between the start of the last 4T and Pearl Harbor is the same as the distance between the start of this 4T and the COVID pandemic - 12 years. Perhaps there are ways in which the pandemic has changed Millennials?

On the whole, Millennial adults may have been in a far better state of mind than older adults in meeting the peril of COVID-19. The anti-vax crap was for X, Boomers, and the Silent. Millennial adults may have qualified last for inoculation, but once they were eligible they got it. I look at the loud-mouth deniers of the seriousness of COVID-19 and I do not see the Millennial generation. This generation trusts science more than it trusts any anti-rational rhetoric that threatens people with Hell if they fail to believe such nonsense as young-earth creationism or white supremacy. 

Now that Generation X women are now almost completely out of child-bearing age, it is Millennial adults and their Homelander "little sisters" who are most vulnerable to extremist stances on abortion, those stances that hold that a fetus has some right to be carried full term even if dead or if death is a sure thing for the mother (and orphan status for her existing children). The extreme positions against abortion are really pro-death and anti-child. 

It is hard to imagine the Millennial generation reverting to the idea that whatever happens in life is some Will of God. We have no shortage of examples of horrors from the Mongol horrors to the mistreatment of American First Peoples to the Atlantic slave trade to the Holocaust that if such things be the Will of God, then perhaps we would be better off without such a God. I would not worship a tyrant or gangster except under the prospect of such extreme distress as a red-hot poker directed at my rectum. I do not want either a Stalin or a mobster as an equivalent of a God, and I do not want my God to be a Stalin or a mobster.  

As for Pearl Harbor -- Americans were in a Crisis mode, and the fascists mistakenly believed that America was a land of cultural and political chaos. The generational model suggests that a 4T is a time in which 3T values of mindless hedonism as a salve for extreme inequality fade while 1T values begin to entrench themselves.

pbrower2a - your 3rd para intrigues me a bit as someone who doesn't do religion and is a Millennial.  I wonder if despite the toxic uses people in the past has used religion for, if there is still a necessity for some kind of spiritual belief system.  We still have many unanswered questions both about the universe as well as things like how a moral/values framework should operate.  These are such things different societies handle differently and have different answers to, based on culture.  Maybe it's the USA's nature that we don't have a homogenous culture and so what defines 'being American / of the USA' is more of a legal thing than anything else.  Interestingly I was thinking of something a few hours ago that is much less serious but might fit this pretty well about the difference between the US & elsewhere: we in the US have no equivalent of winning the World Cup.  We are so large a country and soccer/football isn't very popular here, so even if we won the celebration would not be like it is elsewhere in countries where football/soccer is the dominant sport and winning is part of the national pride.  Our sports have a championship every year and the teams represent cities/metro areas.  Those areas do not totally shut down when they win and not everyone cares when the team wins.  They have a parade a few days later and that's it.  What I think I'm getting at is we in the US have no narrative (or lost whatever one we had) about our purpose of life and our goals.  We just live for ourselves/families and maybe whatever causes we care about in our little corner.  Does this lack of a narrative originate from lack of spiritual belief? Something else?  Does it matter?

I have ideas on this, FWIW. From the point of view that spiritual beliefs matter.

Alan Watts answered this question




The projective of USA's religious narrative stems from that in Europe, which got Christianity imposed upon it from the Roman Empire that included the western Middle East (including Palestine).

The Renaissance encouraged the explorers, who imported European culture to America. In that era questions were going on about the Christian myth. The scientific revolution that resulted from this new inquiry mostly happened in Europe in the sixteenth century, and then colonists like Ben Franklin brought it over to the USA and further developed it. So in the USA, Christianity soon competed with the developing scientific narrative, which increasingly removed the spiritual element. But the scientific narrative that created this notion that there is no God and no spirit, or at least none currently operating, but that instead the world operates mechanically, has no ability to understand life or how any ethics or life purpose is possible other than to dominate stupid nature and destroy it.

So these two narratives still compete for allegiance, but in these times new narratives are being developed, sometimes called new age or holistic or those that take account of eastern philosophy or western esoteric thought as well as science. And science itself in some cases has moved toward a view that includes spirit and consciousness, stimulated by ecological systems theories or quantum theory and alternatives to Darwinian and neo-darwinian evolution, and other theories that integrate science and spirit. It does matter, but these trends are the only source of a worldview which can serve us in the future. The older two myths are bankrupt, but they still compete in the culture wars (which are not discussed in this Alan Watts video from the early 2T era).

The question is whether most Millennials have just reverted to the fully automatic model, as many who supervise wikipedia have for example, or in rural and southern counties to the old-religious ceramic model, or will Millennials increasingly recover the quest for this new worldview that Boomers and their Silent and a few GI mentors brought into our culture in the Awakening (which itself dovetails with the previous turn-of-the-20th-century Awakening that the GIs largely forgot about).

And there's the conspiracy theory narratives, also developing since the onset of the 2T, which pbrower mentioned. I don't know if Millennials are entirely free of this kind of narrative, as Brower suggests, but it is a wrong and debilitating turn that some spiritually-inclined people, whether from the old age or the new, are subject to and must be eliminated. But the vaccuum of a real valid worldview that can satisfy us, that nguyenivy mentions, leaves us open to this mental corruption.

The most important lesson, by Alan Watts: https://youtu.be/CVpj7WWC-nw

[sbarrera]

(09-20-2022, 03:18 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(09-20-2022, 01:35 PM)nguyenivy Wrote:

(09-07-2022, 09:40 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(09-07-2022, 08:19 AM)sbarrera Wrote:

(09-07-2022, 05:34 AM)JasonBlack Wrote: - pro-military intervention vs non-interventionist
- nationalistic vs critical of their country

Jason, you might be interested to learn about the anti-war movement among GIs in the 1930s. There's a great book about the movement called "When the Old Left Was Young" which I recommend.

https://www.google.com/search?q=when+the...+was+young

The pro-intervention/nationalist reputation came after Pearl Harbor, with the massive participation in the war. This suggests that a major crisis event could cause a shift in Millennials' attitude and reputation. Actually, the distance between the start of the last 4T and Pearl Harbor is the same as the distance between the start of this 4T and the COVID pandemic - 12 years. Perhaps there are ways in which the pandemic has changed Millennials?

On the whole, Millennial adults may have been in a far better state of mind than older adults in meeting the peril of COVID-19. The anti-vax crap was for X, Boomers, and the Silent. Millennial adults may have qualified last for inoculation, but once they were eligible they got it. I look at the loud-mouth deniers of the seriousness of COVID-19 and I do not see the Millennial generation. This generation trusts science more than it trusts any anti-rational rhetoric that threatens people with Hell if they fail to believe such nonsense as young-earth creationism or white supremacy. 

Now that Generation X women are now almost completely out of child-bearing age, it is Millennial adults and their Homelander "little sisters" who are most vulnerable to extremist stances on abortion, those stances that hold that a fetus has some right to be carried full term even if dead or if death is a sure thing for the mother (and orphan status for her existing children). The extreme positions against abortion are really pro-death and anti-child. 

It is hard to imagine the Millennial generation reverting to the idea that whatever happens in life is some Will of God. We have no shortage of examples of horrors from the Mongol horrors to the mistreatment of American First Peoples to the Atlantic slave trade to the Holocaust that if such things be the Will of God, then perhaps we would be better off without such a God. I would not worship a tyrant or gangster except under the prospect of such extreme distress as a red-hot poker directed at my rectum. I do not want either a Stalin or a mobster as an equivalent of a God, and I do not want my God to be a Stalin or a mobster.  

As for Pearl Harbor -- Americans were in a Crisis mode, and the fascists mistakenly believed that America was a land of cultural and political chaos. The generational model suggests that a 4T is a time in which 3T values of mindless hedonism as a salve for extreme inequality fade while 1T values begin to entrench themselves.

pbrower2a - your 3rd para intrigues me a bit as someone who doesn't do religion and is a Millennial.  I wonder if despite the toxic uses people in the past has used religion for, if there is still a necessity for some kind of spiritual belief system.  We still have many unanswered questions both about the universe as well as things like how a moral/values framework should operate.  These are such things different societies handle differently and have different answers to, based on culture.  Maybe it's the USA's nature that we don't have a homogenous culture and so what defines 'being American / of the USA' is more of a legal thing than anything else.  Interestingly I was thinking of something a few hours ago that is much less serious but might fit this pretty well about the difference between the US & elsewhere: we in the US have no equivalent of winning the World Cup.  We are so large a country and soccer/football isn't very popular here, so even if we won the celebration would not be like it is elsewhere in countries where football/soccer is the dominant sport and winning is part of the national pride.  Our sports have a championship every year and the teams represent cities/metro areas.  Those areas do not totally shut down when they win and not everyone cares when the team wins.  They have a parade a few days later and that's it.  What I think I'm getting at is we in the US have no narrative (or lost whatever one we had) about our purpose of life and our goals.  We just live for ourselves/families and maybe whatever causes we care about in our little corner.  Does this lack of a narrative originate from lack of spiritual belief? Something else?  Does it matter?

I have ideas on this, FWIW. From the point of view that spiritual beliefs matter.

Alan Watts answered this question




The projective of USA's religious narrative stems from that in Europe, which got Christianity imposed upon it from the Roman Empire that included the western Middle East (including Palestine).

The Renaissance encouraged the explorers, who imported European culture to America. In that era questions were going on about the Christian myth. The scientific revolution that resulted from this new inquiry mostly happened in Europe in the sixteenth century, and then colonists like Ben Franklin brought it over to the USA and further developed it. So in the USA, Christianity soon competed with the developing scientific narrative, which increasingly removed the spiritual element. But the scientific narrative that created this notion that there is no God and no spirit, or at least none currently operating, but that instead the world operates mechanically, has no ability to understand life or how any ethics or life purpose is possible other than to dominate stupid nature and destroy it.

So these two narratives still compete for allegiance, but in these times new narratives are being developed, sometimes called new age or holistic or those that take account of eastern philosophy or western esoteric thought as well as science. And science itself in some cases has moved toward a view that includes spirit and consciousness, stimulated by ecological systems theories or quantum theory and alternatives to Darwinian and neo-darwinian evolution, and other theories that integrate science and spirit. It does matter, but these trends are the only source of a worldview which can serve us in the future. The older two myths are bankrupt, but they still compete in the culture wars (which are not discussed in this Alan Watts video from the early 2T era).

The question is whether most Millennials have just reverted to the fully automatic model, as many who supervise wikipedia have for example, or in rural and southern counties to the old-religious ceramic model, or will Millennials increasingly recover the quest for this new worldview that Boomers and their Silent and a few GI mentors brought into our culture in the Awakening (which itself dovetails with the previous turn-of-the-20th-century Awakening that the GIs largely forgot about).

And there's the conspiracy theory narratives, also developing since the onset of the 2T, which pbrower mentioned. I don't know if Millennials are entirely free of this kind of narrative, as Brower suggests, but it is a wrong and debilitating turn that some spiritually-inclined people, whether from the old age or the new, are subject to and must be eliminated. But the vaccuum of a real valid worldview that can satisfy us, that nguyenivy mentions, leaves us open to this mental corruption.

The most important lesson, by Alan Watts: https://youtu.be/CVpj7WWC-nw

Alan Watts is great stuff; a spiritualist from the worldly GI Generation. You might call him the godfather of New Age. Or like John the Baptist coming before Jesus of Nazareth, a herald of the Awakening. I think most of his speeches were being made in the 1T, but they definitely speak to the 2T.

Eric, I think you are spot on with the description of the different spiritual perspectives or narratives and how they influence the thinking of different segments of society. I think a big problem in our society is the rift between religion and science - neither dares face the existence of the other openly and frankly, each tries to stick to its own bailiwick. But then you end up with this irrevocable split between the religious fundamentalists and the hard core atheist materialists. Instead spirituality should be thought of as something which can be explored as science; that is more of the Buddhist and even New Age approach. Unfortunately New Age religion lost its luster after the Awakening and is dismissed by most of society. And yet conspiracy theories like you mentioned still hold traction. It's sad.

nguyenivy, I think your instinct that some kind of spiritual belief system is needed is correct and I hope you explore some ideas. Eric has steered you towards Alan Watts. I personally have learned alot from the works of Amit Goswami, a quantum physicist who studies consciousness as the fundamental ground of reality. Here's where to start with Goswami:

https://www.amazon.com/Self-Aware-Univer...0874777984

[Eric the Green]

I think I got to meet Goswami, I had a friend who connected with him. Well recommended.

Oh, I did actually meet and talk with Alan Watts too. He spent a month or two as scholar in residence at San Jose State in 1968 where I was a student. He actually came to my dorm for a small seminar. I don't think his well-attended lectures there were recorded. Boy, that was a heady atmosphere! I had picked up some of his books from my parents' bookshelf and from the college bookstore in the 2 years just before then. But I still get to hear his recordings every week on our local non-profit station (on which I had a program for a while too). My parents knew him too since they were pioneers at KPFA, the first public station, and he broadcast there. Watts lived in Marin County CA for most of his years as an author. He has lots of these on youtube too, and other websites. Most recordings of his lectures are early 2T vintage, but some recordings of his earlier talks also exist.

[pbrower2a]

(09-20-2022, 01:35 PM)nguyenivy Wrote:

(09-07-2022, 09:40 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(09-07-2022, 08:19 AM)sbarrera Wrote:

(09-07-2022, 05:34 AM)JasonBlack Wrote: - pro-military intervention vs non-interventionist
- nationalistic vs critical of their country

Jason, you might be interested to learn about the anti-war movement among GIs in the 1930s. There's a great book about the movement called "When the Old Left Was Young" which I recommend.

https://www.google.com/search?q=when+the...+was+young

The pro-intervention/nationalist reputation came after Pearl Harbor, with the massive participation in the war. This suggests that a major crisis event could cause a shift in Millennials' attitude and reputation. Actually, the distance between the start of the last 4T and Pearl Harbor is the same as the distance between the start of this 4T and the COVID pandemic - 12 years. Perhaps there are ways in which the pandemic has changed Millennials?

On the whole, Millennial adults may have been in a far better state of mind than older adults in meeting the peril of COVID-19. The anti-vax crap was for X, Boomers, and the Silent. Millennial adults may have qualified last for inoculation, but once they were eligible they got it. I look at the loud-mouth deniers of the seriousness of COVID-19 and I do not see the Millennial generation. This generation trusts science more than it trusts any anti-rational rhetoric that threatens people with Hell if they fail to believe such nonsense as young-earth creationism or white supremacy. 

Now that Generation X women are now almost completely out of child-bearing age, it is Millennial adults and their Homelander "little sisters" who are most vulnerable to extremist stances on abortion, those stances that hold that a fetus has some right to be carried full term even if dead or if death is a sure thing for the mother (and orphan status for her existing children). The extreme positions against abortion are really pro-death and anti-child. 

It is hard to imagine the Millennial generation reverting to the idea that whatever happens in life is some Will of God. We have no shortage of examples of horrors from the Mongol horrors to the mistreatment of American First Peoples to the Atlantic slave trade to the Holocaust that if such things be the Will of God, then perhaps we would be better off without such a God. I would not worship a tyrant or gangster except under the prospect of such extreme distress as a red-hot poker directed at my rectum. I do not want either a Stalin or a mobster as an equivalent of a God, and I do not want my God to be a Stalin or a mobster.  

As for Pearl Harbor -- Americans were in a Crisis mode, and the fascists mistakenly believed that America was a land of cultural and political chaos. The generational model suggests that a 4T is a time in which 3T values of mindless hedonism as a salve for extreme inequality fade while 1T values begin to entrench themselves.

pbrower2a - your 3rd para intrigues me a bit as someone who doesn't do religion and is a Millennial.  I wonder if despite the toxic uses people in the past has used religion for, if there is still a necessity for some kind of spiritual belief system.  We still have many unanswered questions both about the universe as well as things like how a moral/values framework should operate.  These are such things different societies handle differently and have different answers to, based on culture.  Maybe it's the USA's nature that we don't have a homogenous culture and so what defines 'being American / of the USA' is more of a legal thing than anything else.  Interestingly I was thinking of something a few hours ago that is much less serious but might fit this pretty well about the difference between the US & elsewhere: we in the US have no equivalent of winning the World Cup.  We are so large a country and soccer/football isn't very popular here, so even if we won the celebration would not be like it is elsewhere in countries where football/soccer is the dominant sport and winning is part of the national pride.  Our sports have a championship every year and the teams represent cities/metro areas.  Those areas do not totally shut down when they win and not everyone cares when the team wins.  They have a parade a few days later and that's it.  What I think I'm getting at is we in the US have no narrative (or lost whatever one we had) about our purpose of life and our goals.  We just live for ourselves/families and maybe whatever causes we care about in our little corner.  Does this lack of a narrative originate from lack of spiritual belief? Something else?  Does it matter?

I don't do religion because Ii have yet to find the right match. I am tempted to believe that if religion helps people cope with some of the unavoidable realities of life such as sickness, death, and bereavement, then so be it. I find religion to have at best hijacked moral imperatives (don't get me wrong -- if someone must adopt a religious faith that successfully compels one to give up drugs or alcohol, then I am in no position to condemn such. I have known people who could have greatly improved the quality of their lives by becoming members of the LDS Church, the most demanding of all Christian bodies that does not mess one up. If that is what it takes to give up tobacco, booze, or perhaps adultery, then so be it. 

If there is a God, then that God set forth the mathematical and physical laws and the logical dialectic that allows the Universe to make sense and allow our existence as Humanity. The best case for "God" is that the universe makes sense. Even so I recognize the huge flaws of human (really anti-human) history. As one expression I suggest the question 

Why did God not convert the Germans to Judaism (which would have solved many of their problems and at most cost them pork and shellfish) instead of allowing German leadership to annihilate the Jews, who on the whole had done nothing wrong? 

I ask this as someone of much German ancestry. I have argued with neo-Nazis on the Web, and in one case I told the creep that if I had to choose between being a Jew or being a Nazi like that creep I would choose Judaism because such would cause me to make no ethical compromises or abandon my culture. That would be cheap and easy in contrast to accepting the unadulterated depravity that is Nazism. 

The Germans had Jesus in their Bibles, but I am satisfied that instead of crucifying Jesus they would have driven Him into a gas chamber for a dose of Zyklon-B. I recall a drama involving the prosecution of major Nazi war criminals. Some of the investigators and interrogators and guards were Jews. They got creeped out when the Nazis sang Christmas carols. The Jews accepted that their American co-workers could sing Christmas carols without creating any trouble. Nazis? How dare they consider themselves Christians!  

The great rationale for religion is that it improves the Believer. For a religion that would solve problems if everyone followed it I suggest the Quakers. For them there is no room for war or slavery. Quakers were harsh about sexual deviancy*, but I could live with that. Quakers may not have been aggressive enough in proselytizing to save the world.

*Gay is OK, but it is just not my way. To those who mess with children -- damn you!

[JasonBlack]

(09-07-2022, 09:40 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: It is hard to imagine the Millennial generation reverting to the idea that whatever happens in life is some Will of God. We have no shortage of examples of horrors from the Mongol horrors to the mistreatment of American First Peoples to the Atlantic slave trade to the Holocaust that if such things be the Will of God, then perhaps we would be better off without such a God. I would not worship a tyrant or gangster except under the prospect of such extreme distress as a red-hot poker directed at my rectum. I do not want either a Stalin or a mobster as an equivalent of a God, and I do not want my God to be a Stalin or a mobster.  

This is true of me even as a lifelong right wing Christian. The Civic tendency to be more outer-world driven is strong in me, and many of my friends have referred to me as a "philosopher who admires Christian values" more so than an actual believer (I'm never sure whether to take this as a compliment or a criticism. Most likely it's a little bit of both). When I was younger, religion wasn't something I thought much about, but as I grow older, I see more and more the sense of pragmatism that old fashioned Christian values can have, both on an individual level and a more communal level. It's a topic I regularly bring up, but I rarely bring up particularly moralistic points, and almost never anything "spiritual". Christianity to me is useful largely as a set of practical principles for living a good, balanced life or running a functional society.