I’m in my mid 20s, and an atheist. I remember back in 2014, when I was an edgy little shit, I thought once people lost religion, as per the trend, people would be nicer to each other and science would rule the day. Probably a naive thought.

Yet, it feels like nothing is sacred anymore. Everywhere you look it’s just people trying to get their slice of the pie, ethics be damned. Everything feels like it’s going badly. I’ve just graduated and the job market is full of time wasting rituals. It just feels like people have lost touch with decency and community. No one has any pride in what they do.

Correlation != causation of course, and so the decline in religion may not be the cause. Still I wonder if for a certain segment of the population, those that seem to thrive and filter to the top of our wonderful society, the fear of damnation was check on their base impulses.

Or if perhaps this is a part of the process, perhaps the reasonable people have all left the churches leaving an ever growing concentration of barbarous individuals holding the reins of that decrepit institution.

Or it’s just the lack of community that religion once forced upon us, to see and be civil, if not caring for those in our immediate geographic community that hold differing opinions from us. A moderating influence if you will.

  • oceanAEnglish
    2·
    15 hours ago

    Here are some brief thoughts on this :)

    Thanks for defining and explaining. Based on your last paragraph you seem to have an interest in traditions/religions/or philosophies of life. I recently TA-ed for an undergraduate course which discussed what it means to have a good life. The course went through various religious and philosophical traditions pushing students to question what they value.

    It seems like your interest in these values for your self as well as hope to see change in the world.

    I would personally recommend you read through traditions and see what is interesting or affects your personal values :)

    Some content you may enjoy include:

    If it adds anything, I personally went from culturally Christian, to radically Christian and maybe somewhat conservative, to being open to eastern religions in undergrad and becoming Buddhist.

    That stage of radically challenging my Christianity really made me a better person. It made me more able to challenge my beliefs and see values as important not something to be enforced.

    Finally, I want to comment on reading various traditions though as you appear to be more interested in values and the separate you may not find this important. I personally find it harmful to just randomly mix traditions. There certainly are living examples of common and uncommon traditions that frequently mix but I firmly believe the modern day hippie who randomly mixes values and cosmologies creates a weaker system for themselves then if they stuck to the one most applicable. That said, in China it was and is rare for common practitioners to see going to the Buddhist temple one day then the Dalits shrine the other an issue.