Thoughts on conservatism
Thoughts on conservatism
Cougardoodle The police started harassing [the unarmed woman who rescued her kids during the Ulvade School Massacre] and the community joined in.
For conservatives it seems clear that obeying their perceived social order is more important than saving their children.
This jives with Whilelm Reich's seminal works on the conservative mindset, which concludes it's primarily driven by anxiety based on fear of not having rigid social roles.
I am assuming the book being referred to is The Mass Psychology of Fascism by Wilhelm Reich.
African_Farmer Honestly this explains a lot. The need for religion, religious virtue-signalling, performative patriotism, rules for thee not for me, beliefs that the rich and powerful "deserve" their wealth and power.
All because they believe in hierarchies and that people should stay in their place, unless it's them personally moving up the hierarchy.
Curious_Fox4595 They need those hierarchies so much. There's some interesting stuff out there discussing how the power differential of the vertical system of Christianity forms the basis of how they think everything should work. It doesn't matter if the rules make sense or cause harm, they need to be followed, not questioned, or heaven forbid, changed. They come down from a higher power, which means you obey, and you like it.
I was just reading this reddit thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/1diqlb8/376_unreal/l95mlsf/?context=3
Cougardoodle The police started harassing [the unarmed woman who rescued her kids during the Ulvade School Massacre] and the community joined in.
For conservatives it seems clear that obeying their perceived social order is more important than saving their children.
This jives with Whilelm Reich's seminal works on the conservative mindset, which concludes it's primarily driven by anxiety based on fear of not having rigid social roles.
I am assuming the book being referred to is The Mass Psychology of Fascism by Wilhelm Reich.
African_Farmer Honestly this explains a lot. The need for religion, religious virtue-signalling, performative patriotism, rules for thee not for me, beliefs that the rich and powerful "deserve" their wealth and power.
All because they believe in hierarchies and that people should stay in their place, unless it's them personally moving up the hierarchy.
Curious_Fox4595 They need those hierarchies so much. There's some interesting stuff out there discussing how the power differential of the vertical system of Christianity forms the basis of how they think everything should work. It doesn't matter if the rules make sense or cause harm, they need to be followed, not questioned, or heaven forbid, changed. They come down from a higher power, which means you obey, and you like it.
St Paul writing to the Galatians: Gal 3:28
The Beatitudes: Mat 5:5
The story of the rich young man: Mat 19:30 and Mat 20:16
Jesus washing his disciples' feet: John 13:5
I don't see how Christianity and hierarchy can actually be reconciled. (The answer of course is that Christianity is actually the religion of the Roman Empire, not the New Testament.)
I wrote in my response to Kozlik's questions about how this fundamental reliance on hierarchy is in direct conflict with the New Testament, e.g.:
St Paul writing to the Galatians: Gal 3:28
The Beatitudes: Mat 5:5
The story of the rich young man: Mat 19:30 and Mat 20:16
Jesus washing his disciples' feet: John 13:5
I don't see how Christianity and hierarchy can actually be reconciled. (The answer of course is that Christianity is actually the religion of the Roman Empire, not the New Testament.)
The Bible is strange, because certain passages do preach values of equality and fairness among all. Yet other passages glorify obedience to hierarchies (most commonly patriarchal, women obeying men).
Modern-day Christians, especially ones in the United States, especially ones who are "loud and proud" about being Christian (which ironically is also frowned upon in the Bible if I recall correctly) worship Supply Side Jesus.
I think New Testament is not all it's cracked up to be. Women on Ovarit sometimes handwave away criticisms of the Bible if it's based on quoting OT because "that's OT" but there are similarly sexist passages in the NT (scroll down for the NT passages). Then they sometimes handwave that away because "it's Timothy, he doesn't count!" or whoever that one super sexist guy is in the NT.
The Bible is strange, because certain passages do preach values of equality and fairness among all. Yet other passages glorify obedience to hierarchies (most commonly patriarchal, women obeying men).
Modern-day Christians, especially ones in the United States, especially ones who are "loud and proud" about being Christian (which ironically is also frowned upon in the Bible if I recall correctly) worship Supply Side Jesus.
Yeah, I'm not talking about sexism here, just pointing out that the New Testament, and Jesus's actions as described therein, conflict with conservatives' fundamental reliance on the immutability of hierarchy, and I can't personally figure out why that doesn't register with Christian conservatives. (As I said, the actual answer to this riddle is that the Christianity we experience today is the religion of the Roman Empire, which aligns pretty neatly with what conservatives want from a religion.)
NYT article "your religious values are not American values" discussion thread on r/atheism: https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/1dvx0dc/your_religious_values_are_not_american_values/
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