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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   1898 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 4, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Are their any non-religious organizations whose members take vows oaths of celibacy, a la the Night's Watch or the Maesters from ASOIAF?

(I'm pretty sure the answer is "no," but I'd like to double-check my bases so I can be more certain in replying as such the next time someone "advises" me to "go join the Night's Watch" or similar.)

(Edited per @FiveHourMarathon's fine pedantry.)

Nothing permanent, as the whole concept of a vow is illogical for a non religious organization.

It is often difficult to distinguish a vow from an oath. A vow is an oath, but an oath is only a vow if the divine being is the recipient of the promise and is not merely a witness.

TIL. However, I assume Capital_Room is among those who don't care about the distinction.

I, too, don't really care about the distinction. Absent possible divine punishment, the concept of a promise of celibacy or chastity is kind of ridiculous. It fails often enough with the possibility of divine punishment!

This isn't just limited to celibacy: without divine witness, a promise is just a promise. "Words are wind" to stick with the GRRM theme of the thread.

a promise is just a promise

This is an annoying thing to read; an aggravating sentiment to encounter. It seems not alright for a promise to be "just a promise". Yet it's something that very many take to be obvious and true - but then why have promises at all? Promises should be a foundational social institution, not a nonsensical rhetorical flourish like the by-now codifiedly useless literally/"literally" distinction. Breaking a promise should be a big deal.

That vows are impossible in secular society and that someone can say a thing like "just a promise" without getting tarred and feathered is a serious failing of modernity.

...it's always been that way, hasn't it?

...it's always been that way, hasn't it?

I don't think so. My Eastoid mind has been blown several times by how much of the Western system relied / relies on an honor system, and then blown even more by how it was actually working until recently.

I just caught myself paying in full at the self-service, honor-based work cafeteria. This is not a major insight, but I had to think of your post.

Those vegetable stands that farmers put up at the side of the road, as though they were thinking "Would someone do such a thing? Just take stuff without paying for it?", were one of the most beautiful things I've seen when I was in Bavaria.

We have flower fields just like that. You go in, pick flowers, then pay at a piggy bank. Seems idyllic, right? They felt the need to put up a security camera.

There's a farmer's store, integrated into the farm building itself, in the next village. Used to be you'd walk in through the open door, take what you like, calculate the sum you need to pay, then put it into a piggy bank and walk out again with your goods. They recently had to install an electronic lock that only opens to valid debit cards.

These things are fragile. All it takes is one flagrant defector, and they cease to be viable.

Unmanned vegetable stands have become rare. The only ones I still see regularly are for potatoes.

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