I’m reminded reading this a lot of my own angst experiences.
Maybe somewhere around 12 or 13 I discovered something fishy was going on. As a kid growing up in a secular Protestant household I never went to church and knew basically nothing about religion, and then all of a sudden my friends starting asking me how I felt about Jesus and if I went to church and what kind of Christian I was. And I was like “what’s a Christian?”. “Do you celebrate Christmas?” they’d ask. “Yes”. “Okay, then, you’re a Christian. Why don’t you come to my prayer meeting???”
Well this all sounded like a lot of nonsense to me but I didn’t really have any answers or know much of anything about religion, so it took until I was in college to really get a grasp on what was going on. In the mean time I found myself excluded from plenty of activities because I wasn’t into talking about that Jesus dude, so I mostly felt resentment towards Christianity for making me an outsider to my friends.
So eventually I stumbled my way in to figuring out what was going on and realized I was an atheist back when that was a far dirtier word. And for maybe 4 years or so I was pretty pissed off about the whole thing. Why does what I think about this matter so much to other people? Why do they want me to do this thing with them that I don’t want to do? Why are they judging me about this and why do I have to hide it? So it took a while for me to get comfortable with the reality of who I was and how others felt about it and how society worked and during all this time I was plenty angsty, knew it all, and really, really, really didn’t want any religion around.
But now things are different. I’ve come to understand that religions are mostly about ritual and community and not very much about beliefs but instead use belief as a tool for constructing community through rituals. The Solstice celebrations felt a bit icky to me but I got used to them and eventually this got me to a point where I could look religion in the eye and see it as it is so much so that I was able to become a Buddhist and join a sangha when I saw that Zen practice was the mostly likely thing to help me continue my cultivation and personal growth despite very much having dismissed it and everything else religious as not really for me.
So now that I’m out the other side I’m happy I had all that angst, because it powered thinking that eventually led me to where I am. To me now it seems like angst and resientment are the right response to have to your situation, mine, and the general scenario you describe, and it’s fortunate if we can provide someone in such a situation with an environment that holds their needs while giving them space to grow. Transhumanism and rationality were that for me, and I hope we can continue to provide such an environment to future feelers of angst.
I’m reminded reading this a lot of my own angst experiences.
Maybe somewhere around 12 or 13 I discovered something fishy was going on. As a kid growing up in a secular Protestant household I never went to church and knew basically nothing about religion, and then all of a sudden my friends starting asking me how I felt about Jesus and if I went to church and what kind of Christian I was. And I was like “what’s a Christian?”. “Do you celebrate Christmas?” they’d ask. “Yes”. “Okay, then, you’re a Christian. Why don’t you come to my prayer meeting???”
Well this all sounded like a lot of nonsense to me but I didn’t really have any answers or know much of anything about religion, so it took until I was in college to really get a grasp on what was going on. In the mean time I found myself excluded from plenty of activities because I wasn’t into talking about that Jesus dude, so I mostly felt resentment towards Christianity for making me an outsider to my friends.
So eventually I stumbled my way in to figuring out what was going on and realized I was an atheist back when that was a far dirtier word. And for maybe 4 years or so I was pretty pissed off about the whole thing. Why does what I think about this matter so much to other people? Why do they want me to do this thing with them that I don’t want to do? Why are they judging me about this and why do I have to hide it? So it took a while for me to get comfortable with the reality of who I was and how others felt about it and how society worked and during all this time I was plenty angsty, knew it all, and really, really, really didn’t want any religion around.
But now things are different. I’ve come to understand that religions are mostly about ritual and community and not very much about beliefs but instead use belief as a tool for constructing community through rituals. The Solstice celebrations felt a bit icky to me but I got used to them and eventually this got me to a point where I could look religion in the eye and see it as it is so much so that I was able to become a Buddhist and join a sangha when I saw that Zen practice was the mostly likely thing to help me continue my cultivation and personal growth despite very much having dismissed it and everything else religious as not really for me.
So now that I’m out the other side I’m happy I had all that angst, because it powered thinking that eventually led me to where I am. To me now it seems like angst and resientment are the right response to have to your situation, mine, and the general scenario you describe, and it’s fortunate if we can provide someone in such a situation with an environment that holds their needs while giving them space to grow. Transhumanism and rationality were that for me, and I hope we can continue to provide such an environment to future feelers of angst.