Jonathan Haidt: “The Age of Outrage”

https://www.city-journal.org/html/age-outrage-15608.html

by rblion • 7 years ago

11 13 7 years ago

He drew on the moral resources of the American civil religion to activate our shared identity and values: “When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note.” And: “I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’”

Martin Luther King Jr famously appealed to the Bible and founding documents of America as the basis for civil rights. Now that those two have been trashed by current society, to what broadly agreed upon standard will the civil rights reformers of today appeal?

baggy_trough• 7 years ago

"Shut up, because we're in control now."

dawg-• 7 years ago

Similarly, in the words of Beto O'Rourke after he proposed mandatory firearm confiscation during a recent debate: "Americans will follow the law."

tlb2• 7 years ago

I think both documents will continue to inspire people for a long time.

But you don't need old documents to inspire a movement. Greta Thunberg is doing fine without.

frittig• 7 years ago

Greta is fine at preaching to the choir. I highly doubt that there were people who did not agree with her, but then after listening to her speech, agreed with her.

klyrs2• 7 years ago

I grew up identifying as an atheist and an anarchist. I'm dismayed by, essentially, widespread adoption of my base philosophy. It seems that a culture of nihilism is on the rise.

In this framing, I rephrase your question: how can we leverage nihilism to engender compassion, personal and societal growth?

krapp3• 7 years ago

If you believe nihilism necessarily follows from anarchy or atheism, I'm assume you were never actually paying attention to the philosophy of either.

magwa101• 7 years ago

Many of those who are atheist/non religious follow the bible most closely because they are ignorant of it's forming of our societal mores.

krapp3• 7 years ago

No one is ignorant of the role of the Bible in forming societal values - certainly not atheists, non-Christians or the non-religious.

Atheists and the non-religious follow the Bible because it does offer useful moral and ethical teachings (along with many other religious and non-religious texts.) and because many modern (primarily American Southern) Christians have adopted a literalist interpretation of the Bible, and it's easier to ridicule such people by pointing out how little coherence and sense the Bible actually has when read from that perspective.

Where atheists, non-Christians and the non-religious disagree with Christians is in the insistence of the latter that the Bible is the only valid source of morality, that it is perfect, inerrant and immutable (in other words, that Biblical morality cannot evolve as societies progress, despite the fact that it does) and that morality presupposes Christian theism (the oft-repeated but utterly false narrative that atheism is nihilism and atheists are incapable of morality.)

Jonathan Haidt: “The Age of Outrage”

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