This is the part of the spectrum I associate, mostly directly, with “secularism,” and with related forms of “disenchantment.” And it’s the type I associate with a more watery and domesticated humanism that I don’t like so much—a type that says something like: “Enough with this cosmic stuff—it’s gone dead. But let’s enjoy a nice afternoon, and our tea, before it gets cold.” Here I think of a talk I heard at an atheist club in undergrad, in which the speaker suggested that in the place of the orienting meaning that religion provides, maybe atheism could promote an activity like ultimate frisbee, which is fun and creates community.
Can you see the difference from Sagan and Kushner and Yudkowsky—and indeed, from Lovecraft? I like tea and frisbee fine. But some kind of existential intensity is getting lost, here. There is some un-relating to the whole story; some blinkering of the attention.
This was definitely something that bothered me about early 2010s Secularism, and fed into why I worked on Secular Solstice.
One of my interesting takeaways from the experience, was that I tried to port Secular Solstice over to the broader masses (outside the rationalist sphere). For a few years I ran it as a large event that was designed to be approachable by other mainstream humanists. This basically didn’t work, despite a fair amount of effort advertising it and trying not to be alienating.
I had a similar experience at Sunday Assembly (a “secular church” group).
It’s hard to disentangle “what did The People want?” from “was Ray actually skilled at giving to them?”. But, it seems like either
a) most people don’t actually want existential intensity
b) they do, but, there’s some narrow target of what flavor of it, and what kind of art or community it comes packaged in.
The latter isn’t too surprising. But my vague sense is that people mostly want frisbee and tea. I guess this isn’t that surprising either, there’s some kind of horror that’s related to a nerd staring at the media that is actually popular and realizing “it’s not bad [by nerd standards] by mistake. The people really did want Transformers 3.”
I guess “most people aren’t trying to be priests or shamans” is also not that surprising a take.
(In the process of writing this comment I got a bit confused about my thesis and changed my mind a few times and I’m now leaving the comment up as a reflection of whatever-I-was-thinking today)
I do kind of share the sense that people mostly just want frisbee and tea, but I am still confused about it. Wasn’t religion a huge deal for people for most of history? I could see a world where they were mostly just going through the motions, but the amount of awe I feel going into European churches feels like some evidence against this. And it’s hard for me to imagine that people were kind of just mindlessly sitting there through e.g., Gregorian chanting in candlelight, but maybe I am typical minding too hard. It really seems like these rituals, the architecture, all of it, was built to instill the sort of existential intensity that taking God seriously requires, and I have to imagine that this was at least somewhat real for most people?
And I do wonder whether the shift towards frisbee and tea has more to do more with a lack of options as compelling as cathedrals (on this axis at least), rather than the people’s lack of wanting it? Like, I don’t think I would get as much out of cathedrals as I expect some of these people did, because I’m not religious, but if something of that intensity existed which fit with my belief system I feel like I’d be so into it.
the amount of awe I feel going into European churches feels like some evidence against this.
This sounds to me like selection bias. Most people did not build churches. And I suspect you do not feel awestruck in every church. I suspect that you remember the new most awesome ones, built by exceptional people who felt exceptionally religious.
It really seems like these rituals, the architecture, all of it, was built to instill the sort of existential intensity that taking God seriously requires, and I have to imagine that this was at least somewhat real for most people?
It may have been built for that purpose. This does not mean that most people felt the existential intensity. It is conceivable that many people felt “wow, the church sure is rich and powerful; I’d better obey” whereas many others felt nothing and stayed quiet about it.
(Vague shower thought, not standing strongly behind it)
Maybe it is the case that most people as individuals “just want frisbee and tea” but once religion (or rather the very broad class of ~”social practices” some subset/projection of which we round up to “religion”) evolved and lowered the activation energy of people’s hive switch, they became more inclined to appreciate the beauty of Cathedrals and Gregorian chants, etc.
In other words, people’s ability to want/appreciate/[see value/beauty in X] depends largely on the social structure they are embedded in, the framework they adopt to make sense of the world etc. (The selection pressures that led to religion didn’t entirely reduce to “somebody wanting something”, so at least that part is not question-begging [I think].)
But my vague sense is that people mostly want frisbee and tea. I guess this isn’t that surprising either, there’s some kind of horror that’s related to a nerd staring at the media that is actually popular and realizing “it’s not bad [by nerd standards] by mistake. The people really did want Transformers 3.”
I did not understand this. Could I get you to please explain it again?
(It is worth noting that I am a nerd who enjoyed Transformers 3...)
This was definitely something that bothered me about early 2010s Secularism, and fed into why I worked on Secular Solstice.
One of my interesting takeaways from the experience, was that I tried to port Secular Solstice over to the broader masses (outside the rationalist sphere). For a few years I ran it as a large event that was designed to be approachable by other mainstream humanists. This basically didn’t work, despite a fair amount of effort advertising it and trying not to be alienating.
I had a similar experience at Sunday Assembly (a “secular church” group).
It’s hard to disentangle “what did The People want?” from “was Ray actually skilled at giving to them?”. But, it seems like either
a) most people don’t actually want existential intensity
b) they do, but, there’s some narrow target of what flavor of it, and what kind of art or community it comes packaged in.
The latter isn’t too surprising. But my vague sense is that people mostly want frisbee and tea. I guess this isn’t that surprising either, there’s some kind of horror that’s related to a nerd staring at the media that is actually popular and realizing “it’s not bad [by nerd standards] by mistake. The people really did want Transformers 3.”
I guess “most people aren’t trying to be priests or shamans” is also not that surprising a take.
(In the process of writing this comment I got a bit confused about my thesis and changed my mind a few times and I’m now leaving the comment up as a reflection of whatever-I-was-thinking today)
I do kind of share the sense that people mostly just want frisbee and tea, but I am still confused about it. Wasn’t religion a huge deal for people for most of history? I could see a world where they were mostly just going through the motions, but the amount of awe I feel going into European churches feels like some evidence against this. And it’s hard for me to imagine that people were kind of just mindlessly sitting there through e.g., Gregorian chanting in candlelight, but maybe I am typical minding too hard. It really seems like these rituals, the architecture, all of it, was built to instill the sort of existential intensity that taking God seriously requires, and I have to imagine that this was at least somewhat real for most people?
And I do wonder whether the shift towards frisbee and tea has more to do more with a lack of options as compelling as cathedrals (on this axis at least), rather than the people’s lack of wanting it? Like, I don’t think I would get as much out of cathedrals as I expect some of these people did, because I’m not religious, but if something of that intensity existed which fit with my belief system I feel like I’d be so into it.
This sounds to me like selection bias. Most people did not build churches. And I suspect you do not feel awestruck in every church. I suspect that you remember the new most awesome ones, built by exceptional people who felt exceptionally religious.
It may have been built for that purpose. This does not mean that most people felt the existential intensity. It is conceivable that many people felt “wow, the church sure is rich and powerful; I’d better obey” whereas many others felt nothing and stayed quiet about it.
(Vague shower thought, not standing strongly behind it)
Maybe it is the case that most people as individuals “just want frisbee and tea” but once religion (or rather the very broad class of ~”social practices” some subset/projection of which we round up to “religion”) evolved and lowered the activation energy of people’s hive switch, they became more inclined to appreciate the beauty of Cathedrals and Gregorian chants, etc.
In other words, people’s ability to want/appreciate/[see value/beauty in X] depends largely on the social structure they are embedded in, the framework they adopt to make sense of the world etc. (The selection pressures that led to religion didn’t entirely reduce to “somebody wanting something”, so at least that part is not question-begging [I think].)
I did not understand this. Could I get you to please explain it again?
(It is worth noting that I am a nerd who enjoyed Transformers 3...)