[hi-im-mi-ih]

I'll venture a guess: We've been talking about rights for so long, as a nation, that we forgot to discuss responsibility.

The major media and political narratives are focusing on the rights of women, the rights of trans folks, the rights of minorities, and the rights of immigrants. They are all well and good, but we should equally talk about the responsibility of our well-represented young white males to bear up under some responsibility and push themselves to improve their country. Responsibility to provide and protect is a very masculine idea, and if we fed ourselves an equal diet of responsibility as we do rights & freedoms, the young men of today might be a lot more energetic and engaged.

I also venture that it has something to do with the sharp rise in atheism. Christianity espouses responsibility. Carry your cross and accept suffering without malice. Atheism says that the world is meaningless, we were created from entropy. One of those belief systems might work better for getting young guys out of the house!

[mitchty]

> I also venture that it has something to do with the sharp rise in atheism. Christianity espouses responsibility. Carry your cross and accept suffering without malice. Atheism says that the world is meaningless, we were created from entropy. One of those belief systems might work better for getting young guys out of the house!

Build up atheist straw men much? You know what you know if I tell you I am an atheist? You only know I lack belief in deities (likely yours, whatever they may be, but no different than another deist in that they lack believe in all the other dieties as you, but they believe in N that you don't). Thats it, it doesn't tell you anything about what I find meaningless or meaningful, or that we believe we were created from entropy. That is pure projection on your part, and entirely without merit.

[hi-im-mi-ih]

Sure it has merit to say that, generally speaking, Christianity espouses responsibility and atheism does not. Where are the tracts of Atheist values and dogma that carry a deep message of responsibility? Point me to _any_ symbolic representation of central atheist values - There is nothing. To be atheist is to be not associated with any belief system, and without any coherence among atheists, I can't say anything about atheists in general, but I certainly cannot say that they all think the world has a deep meaning that they're directly involved in.

So basically you're saying that as an atheist I have no idea what you're up to... Right, because you're not up to _anything_ that other atheists are up to. You're a heterogeneous mix of feelings and ideas that are mostly based in Western values but are held together loosely. I can look at a devout Christian and know that he's guided by his faith to taking up hard tasks and completing them diligently as part of his commitment to his faith.

[mitchty]

> Sure it has merit to say that, generally speaking, Christianity espouses responsibility and atheism does not.

How can a lack of belief espouse anything? Atheism isn't a religion. The rest of your post seems to lack that fundamental understanding.

> I certainly cannot say that they all think the world has a deep meaning that they're directly involved in.

You also can't claim the converse, as noted atheism is a lack in belief systems, not a belief system unto itself. You're attacking straw men versions of atheists. Its like asking how many amps a battery has, or how many miles of work you can get from a gallon of gas. Without context the statements make no coherent sense.

[hi-im-mi-ih]

I know you don't understand me but I'm basically saying that there is a religion that espouses responsibility, that has ancient relevance to the human race.

Then there is atheism which basically means follow nothing, do what you wish, which might mean that you're a great person nonetheless.

[mitchty]

Atheism is a category. Aka those without diety is the literal definition.

Just as it would be wrong of me to say "All deists believe in the same god, that is why they don't take belief in different dieties seriously", its wrong to attach belief in responsibiliity to a category like atheism.

An example of the disparate groups that qualify as atheists: - Antitheists - Nihilists - Some Agnostics - Some Buddhists - Some Stoics

Etc....

How you arrive at "atheism which basically means follow nothing" being attached to a category is beyond my ability to understand.

[hi-im-mi-ih]

Oh my god dude... it's simple, you believe in responsibility or you do not believe in it.

[sctb]

This is stepping into the territory of ideological battle. Could you please pull back?

[mitchty]

My bad, I've been trying to elucidate that atheism is a category and not a belief system unto itself in this subthread. Though poorly it would seem. If anyone has ideas of how one could better engage in that endeavour in the future I'm all ears.

I'll stop posting on such things here in general, just annoying when at category has things attached to it that are mostly non sequitur. Like saying auto mechanics don't believe in running or something, its a weird thing to do.

[thisiszilff]

The improvements that our country needs are broad structural improvements that prepare us for where we are and where we're going. The idea of "bear your cross and accept suffering without malice" makes sense, but it also tends towards championing individuals as both causes of their problems and the ones capable of solving them. It IS a great philosophy when there is some meaning to your suffering, when your cross is something you want to carry, but these days that philosophy ends up sounding like "shut up and get a job" in an rapdily changing era where we have to rethink our basic societal organization and our attitudes towards work. It's an attitude that reinforces ones adherence to the status quo rather than recognizing that what worked for our parents doesn't necessarily work for us.

[hi-im-mi-ih]

Well the problem is that you think you somehow know how to adjust the status quo correctly in order to properly set up your nation for the rest of the 21st century. But the reality is that you have no idea, probably because you're a programmer, but also because you have not borne up the responsibility of acquiring deep knowledge of policy, government, social science and everything else required to make those calls. You say we need broad structural improvements - and what are those, exactly? And how are they going to provide a utopia to us that is better than the one we currently have, where most people can work their way into a mid to high paying career and raise their families in almost complete safety for decades and decades to come?

The truth is that it's easy to say something needs improvement, but it's not easy to take the 10 years studying the problem to deeply understand the solution, and even a partial understanding of possible workable solutions is something neither of us have, because we're spending our week nights wasting time in one way or another instead of paying sharp, _sharp_ attention to the studies and data collected now and in the past to broaden and deepen our insights.

Also you mention that my advice boils down to "shut up and get a job" which is really fantastic advice for most people, because even getting a job carrying 2x4s up scaffolding all day would be so damn tough and tiring that you'd come out of it healthier, persistent, and basically a terminator capable of any hard, physical labour. A good skill! And that skill carries with it an appreciation of the physically gentle computer work we all do, thus making your future tech career more enjoyable.

I think I've made a pretty good counter argument here but feel free to rebuke it.

[thisiszilff]

I don't know, that's why the point is relevant. Were I to know then that would be my cross to bear and I could work towards that. I don't know where you live, but where I live I'm seeing a steady decline in quality of life and increased mental health problems in youth mainly related to anxiety about their future. A high paying career isn't a question of simply working hard for them, not is it available to all them. Many of them live with the risk of dipping into poverty at any moment and their safety nets have been chipped away over the years to be ineffective. They don't see a clear path to home ownership and many of them are straddled with debt for a degree that they now find out isn't particularly useful. They are in all cases set up to have worse lives than their parents. Aside from that they live with the looming specter of environmental disaster and political structures unable to effectively deal with the problems of the future. It isn't a question of wanting to change things so much as recognizing that things cannot continue as they've been. I'm not saying people shouldn't be getting jobs and pursuing economic stability, but that we have to be willing to rethink those systems to be sustainable.

[hi-im-mi-ih]

Situation is bad, what to do? Work to change it. Criticism without means to enact improvements is meaningless. Then let these weak men suffer and wither. Harder working men will prevail

[thisiszilff]

You would think that we might one day get past this whole "strong vs weak" rhetoric, but therein lies the problem: we exit from the state of nature only to recreate those same conditions in a slightly more civil form.