Tho I had a co-worker I have known for twelve years tell me last Thursday that he'd lost all respect for me because he'd noticed I skip "under God" during the Pledge of Allegiance. Just throwing that out there.
Ouch. Yeah, perhaps I didn't phrase it as aptly as I'd hoped, but, I've been on the "wow I just found out you're not religious and therefore you are a damned sinner" side of the equation too—it goes both ways, and I don't know a super-great solution for it.
I know which side of the equation I prefer to be on—my own beliefs/values align better with the coastal-types, and in general I prefer the faintly patronizing tone liberals take with Outsider Viewpoints to the shock/horror/loss of respect/etc that conservatives tend to take toward Outsider Viewpoints—but it's definitely an "everyone" problem to some degree or another.
re: the anger thing: there's also the aspect of like, I do think spaces for anger and radicalism are important! In the sense of like, okay, there's the stereotype of the Obnoxious Teenage Atheist who has shed his Conservative Protestant Church and Seen The Light and acts like a giant smug superior asshole about it to everyone. And, as annoying as I find Obnoxious Teenage Atheist to be, I understand being angry at the church you were raised in. A lot of the times, that anger, that smugness, the long rants on the internet, are all just some kid trying to work through grief/confusion/whatever, and I think that's valuable.
I just don't want them to still be an asshole about it ten years later.
(And, I mean, you can see this in the secular student associations popping up at colleges, or in the Effective Altruism movement to some degree—it's the outgrowth of people who were once really angry but now are kind of over it, and are trying to replace that anger by building a new community. But none of these communities seem big enough—yet, at least—to really form the whole value-system-pillar thing.)
(And of course, this is all just an example! That I am citing solely because I'm more familiar with this area; I imagine there's similar stories for other subcommunities.)
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Date: 2015-12-17 11:35 pm (UTC)Ouch. Yeah, perhaps I didn't phrase it as aptly as I'd hoped, but, I've been on the "wow I just found out you're not religious and therefore you are a damned sinner" side of the equation too—it goes both ways, and I don't know a super-great solution for it.
I know which side of the equation I prefer to be on—my own beliefs/values align better with the coastal-types, and in general I prefer the faintly patronizing tone liberals take with Outsider Viewpoints to the shock/horror/loss of respect/etc that conservatives tend to take toward Outsider Viewpoints—but it's definitely an "everyone" problem to some degree or another.
re: the anger thing: there's also the aspect of like, I do think spaces for anger and radicalism are important! In the sense of like, okay, there's the stereotype of the Obnoxious Teenage Atheist who has shed his Conservative Protestant Church and Seen The Light and acts like a giant smug superior asshole about it to everyone. And, as annoying as I find Obnoxious Teenage Atheist to be, I understand being angry at the church you were raised in. A lot of the times, that anger, that smugness, the long rants on the internet, are all just some kid trying to work through grief/confusion/whatever, and I think that's valuable.
I just don't want them to still be an asshole about it ten years later.
(And, I mean, you can see this in the secular student associations popping up at colleges, or in the Effective Altruism movement to some degree—it's the outgrowth of people who were once really angry but now are kind of over it, and are trying to replace that anger by building a new community. But none of these communities seem big enough—yet, at least—to really form the whole value-system-pillar thing.)
(And of course, this is all just an example! That I am citing solely because I'm more familiar with this area; I imagine there's similar stories for other subcommunities.)
So... now what?
Yeah, pretty much :/