MayorofOysterville
No bio...
User ID: 3800
MayorofOysterville
1d ago
Yeah the nones are tricky. I still suspect they are a psyop by the liberals to raise the number of secular people but I nevertheless think they are a useful category. Someone who will tick the box Christian when given the choice between Christian and Atheist but none when that is presented is definitely not a standard believer but neither are they a capital A secular Atheist as the term is. I feel most "disorganized religious practice" is too disparate and ironically disorganized to accurately measure via polling and statistics without something like in depth interviews.
MayorofOysterville
1d ago
Well white is honestly probably the hardest as they don't tolerate autists very well. East Asians in Asia are pretty tolerant of Autism well as much as can be said for anyone (IDK about Japan with their insane etiquette situation. You could probably find a nice Vietnamese girl in a year or two if you went there.
MayorofOysterville
1d ago
Yes I agree with all that. I probably should have been more specific. I just meant that a lot of the talk of teenage brides is not actually trad for Northern Europe.
MayorofOysterville
2d ago
Most Western Democracies aren't electing either far left or far right extremists mostly the policies stay the same. Wasn't Biden a steady moderate elected by a skittish electorate? It didn't seem to have much effect even if he wasn't demonized the way Trump or Obama were.
MayorofOysterville
2d ago
Are those women not settling down leaving a number of men who want to? Or are they just part of the urbanite endless casual dating scene?
MayorofOysterville
2d ago
I've wondered about this. I'm not sure if I'll live long enough to see the whole effects. Even post 1965 homosexuality only became fully normalized like 15 years ago.
MayorofOysterville
2d ago
Look a single dude straight in the eye and say "Yeah she's banged 6-12 dudes prior to you, but I'm sure that she won't ever be thinking about any of them or comparing your performance and YOU'RE the one she's going to stick with" with a straight face.
Ok but this is entirely normal in Western culture and has been since like the 70s so about 50 years now. And it's not just her that's expected to have 6-12 previous partners it's you as well. If you don't well that's probably part of it but the vast majority of men in modern Western society would not be at all phased by a body count of 6 and thinking they would be shows you as an extreme outlier. I realize modern Western culture is also an extreme outlier but nevertheless that's the culture you live in.
Now it's actually not that hard to marry a virgin in the US you just need to sincerely convert to one of the dozens of conservative religious denominations that enforce this many of which have more women than men. The other way is to ingratiate yourself into a more conservative nonwestern culture and try for marriage there. But acting like a body count of 6 is some damning thing when that is what is culturally expected of modern secular women is not going to get you very far. Modern secular women and men are expected to have several previous relationships and flings from high school and college that's the cultural expected norm. It's totally fair to not like that but understand you are like a Saudi woman searching for a sensitive feminist hipster plenty of those exist but you are going to have to go out of your cultural comfort zone to find them.
MayorofOysterville
2d ago
Serious question. Would ever consider an arranged marriage in India or dating a Filipina overseas, in order to find a match?
MayorofOysterville
2d ago
I appreciate this post. Too many people view the past as something like Saudi Arabia and don't realize how much freedom and independence women had in Northern Europe historically or how late the marriage ages were there. Settling down in your 30s was just what sensible middle class people did to have a good life. Just like going to university or putting money into a 401k today. At least in Northern Europe it wasn't girls getting married at 15 to much older men.
That list is basically for dating middle class girls off the apps. Become a line cook and you'll see plenty of the bottom 50% get laid and have the chance to date working class girls yourself lol. Marriage hasn't collapsed for the bottom 50% because they can't get laid but because they don't participate in any social institution these days. Ala the Fishtown of Bowling Alone. I feel like this whole world is invisible to the programmers and engineers on the Motte chasing girlbosses on the apps.
It's not a problem that can be fixed with self improvement. But it's a pretty easy problem to solve, for any non-obese, non-insane, white guy 45 and under, just outsource. Open FilipinaCupid.com or go study some bullshit continuing education course in Manila and you'll have dozens of eligible pretty slim women falling over you. Yes there will be pure gold diggers and green card hunters but also don't discount the natural attraction being wealthy and high status induces is women.
MayorofOysterville
2d ago
Not Western Buddhism as practiced in America no it isn't. Scripture will only get you so far, Paul discourages marriage in his letters yet to say American Christianity is against marriage and procreation would be foolish. Not all Christian denominations were against Gay marriage in the culture war either but the overwhelming perspective of secularish young people is that Christianity has a lot of nonsensical rules about sex and Buddhism doesn't. I don't think Buddhism is going to hugely boom up. But it's definitely an advantage as you get a lot less pushback being a Buddhist in certain circles than a Christian and it's easier to syncretize with modern progressive values.
Yes Evangelical churches are growing in a large part because they are scooping up converts from the collapsing mainline denominations. Religion as whole in the US is still declining, but the Evangelicals do present an interesting data point as the rest of US mirrors the secularization of Europe and Evangelicals don't It's possible that the Evangelicals stop the tide or even reverse it. My guess is they'll hold steady they have a high fertility rate but a high defection rate of the youth and secular culture has a strong pull. They are also massively less influential than they were in the 80s and 00s and they'd have to work pretty hard to get that power back.
Yes you aren't now, but if current trends hold (always a big if) TradCaths are going to be so wildy out of step with society morally and socially that I expect the gap to widen. In 200 years I don't see the West being more sexually conservative given that we've been liberalizing since the enlightenment. There's a lot of stuff grandfathered in but when todays Zoomers are grandparents I think it will be a lot harder for practicing Catholics to mesh into society.
MayorofOysterville
3d ago
Only if they can hold enough of those kids. Mainstream religion is collapsing in America. On a long enough timeline that might lead to a society of tradcaths and Hasidics. But at the moment those are niche communities. The "mainstream" religious don't appear to be sustainable.
MayorofOysterville
3d ago
During the Bush administration it was pretty close to at least being co-equal, but by that time it's foundations were crumbling at it could never last and indeed didn't.
MayorofOysterville
3d ago
This strikes me as a just so story and maybe a bit limited to engineering. I don't think marketing or law departments work like that. In many marketing departments these days it's a majority hot women at least on the less senior levels.
The Catholic church cares and a bunch of traditional Christian churches and systems of morality care. A lot of Churches forbid masturbation and have shame circles where men confess to masturbating and try not to do it. I don't think the Catholics go that far but masturbation is still considered a sin.
Also while in traditional cultures the bride might not care if the groom is a virgin. She will care if he's a known womanizer because she wants him to be faithful to her after the wedding.
MayorofOysterville
3d ago
I think America particularly will become more and more secular. I think that the TradCath community will grow but will end up like the Amish or Hasidics. I think the majority will be secularish. Axial age religions are not they only religious framework and Science can replace a lot of what pre-axial religions are very mechanistic and less concerned with morality. Sumerian religion barely had an afterlife and in that sense was rather athiestic. China was morally guided by philosophy more than religion for thousands of years. I don't think a retvrn to societies centered on moralistic religions promising eternal bliss is a given. The intense religiosity of the Middle Ages and Early Modern period seem to be something of an outlier.
I could see a kind of Progressivism as a unifying philosophy combined with many different faiths ala Confucianism. We can see this a little bit with woke people today they don't care what religion you are as long as your beliefs are subservient to woke tenants.
MayorofOysterville
3d ago
Not being against the Gays is one of the more salient points. Christianity being seen as anti-Gay has significantly harmed it's worth as a moral philosophy to modern western people. Also why the texts of Christianity are very anti materialist it tends not to be seen that way in the US.
MayorofOysterville
3d ago
Hey I appreciate your response I was pretty disappointed when my effort post didn't show up forever so glad to know you at least saw it!. For what it's worth I think despite all the time it gets holocaust education in the West is pretty bad and pretty much any thinking person is going to have them based in the high school curriculum version of it we get taught. I spend a fair amount of time on /r/askhistorians and the amount of liberals with massive doubts about the holocaust is pretty telling. Well not doubts exactly they tepidly come in writing paragraphs of disclaimers about how they believe the official story but there are massive gaps where the tory they've been told makes no sense. Most true deniers start here as well and they are almost always arguing against the version they were taught in high school. IE the camps separated out of all context and a lot of myths thrown in combined with strawman version of Nazi ideology.
Most teachers are unwilling/incapable and probably just a little scared to actually explain Nazi ideology and goals and the Eastern Front is severely undertaught and without either of those the Holocaust narrative taught doesn't actually add up. and there are tons and tons of "Good Liberals" with those same doubts they are just to scared to voice them for fear of being labeled a denier. I actually think one of the reasons people get so hysterical when the Holocaust gets even slightly questioned is because many of them can't counter skeptical arguments at all so they are just running off pure emotion.
Do you really think shoving all the gays back in the closet and teaching masturbation is evil will fix everything? I get that's low hanging fruit but that's what a return to Christianity also implies, the wages of sin are death. If so what do you actually think we should do about the gays? I feel like we have enough Scientific and psychological knowledge about them and their are millions of them just in the US so what are we gonna do? I think that a quiet return to Christianity works a lot better when you have secular society for your gay sons to fade into
In addition to mindfulness centering outside oneself distrust of materialism and all that good stuff. It seems a some sort of neo-Confucian philosophy without the anachronistic rules of Christianity would work much better. Of course if you believe Christianity is true well than that's that. But every religion says the same thing about it. A Muslim might say the same you just haven't come back to God yet. Actually that's why English speaking Muslims tend to call converts reverts. They've finally abandoned the sinful world and returned to the true faith.
More options
Context Copy link