[machina_ex_deus]

The real issue is that people stopped caring about whatever the justice system is going to decide.

There's a new religion of social justice, and this religion is harsher than even the old religions.

The old religions you were at least judged by an omnipotent being who could see the whole picture. This new woke religion have you judged by a dumb mob. Everyone's playing the judge and everyone's responsible to punishing everyone.

As if punishing a bad person is a virtue. And as if there's nothing wrong about lynching an innocent person.

And this is a direct result of lack of religion. The absence of religion isn't lack of oppression, it's oppression by a dumb blind mob. Religion isn't the truly primitive behavior, the truly primitive behavior is this dumb mob social justice that's spreading now.

[actualwitch]

Everything in your comment is pretty reasonable until this:

>And this is a direct result of lack of religion

You claim this like it's proven to be true. It's not. The reason for this inherent ask for social justice in my opinion has nothing to do with religion. Instead, I feel like people got disappointed in existing justice system, looking at nasty people going through life unfazed, even though it is painfully obvious they are guilty. Innocent people going to prison over dna evidence that turns out false 10+ years later. Policemen killing innocent citizens and not getting punished. If you fix the justice system, there will be no need for social justice.

[machina_ex_deus]

So the justice system built by many intelligent professionals failed, but the dumb mob justice will succeed?

It is the lack of religion, because religion is exactly what would fill this gap in the minds of people from seeing injustice. Maybe the earthly judges failed, but I don't need to be cruel and punishing because the criminal will get what's coming for him in the next life.

It doesn't even matter if this argument is true or false, and if there is another life and judgement in it. That line of thinking clearly keeps people more civilized. Here in the present, in an objectively observable way that even complete atheists could compare.

[actualwitch]

Telling people they need to hope criminals will get judged after they die is not going to work anymore.

[r00fus]

> So the justice system built by many intelligent professionals failed

Yes - clearly the justice system has been coopted and corrupted and "social justice" is one of the expected and observed outcomes (similar but different than mob justice - which is also another expected outcome when you can't rely on actual police/judiciary).

The resolution to all this is to restore faith and trust in our formal justice system - and there are folks fighting for that also.

[benj111]

>So the justice system built by many intelligent professionals failed

No it was built by people like you and me. You know those useless people in your office? They're also in the judiciary. You know that stupid policy that while it may have some uses, leads to other bad outcomes but no-one can be bothered to fix? That's also present.

[giardini]

So "We're screwed!" is what you're saying?

Is there an alternative?

[benj111]

Well it's a cultural thing. Courts need to be held to the standards they've set themselves.

Unfortunately politicians don't want to get involved, and by and large the populace don't have any dealings with the courts.

[spoiler]

Not OP and also kinda disagree with them at the surface value of the statement, but maybe not with the underlying premise.

One of the worst people I know are "religious". Some of the kindest people I know are also religious. This gave me cognitive dissonance for while about religion.

Then I realised that all the horrible people were actually communal narcissists who grab onto the lowest hanging fruit, which is performative religion. They just want to be seen as holier-than-thou, and Churches (applies to most other religious communities, I'm just trying to be brief).

Church is no longer the lowest hanging fruit, but social media is; that's their new holier-than-thou platform.

Now, back to their core premise: I don't think religion is what these people are missing, but a sense of wholesomeness and mindfulness.

Different forms of religious practices can give people this wholesomeness and mindfulness.

My preferred practice is meditation, but I'm not really that spiritual. I guess am a bit inwardly, but I doubt anybody would describe me as spiritual.

I think it's no coincidence independent religions have developed similar methods to quiet, direct and focus the mind.

Buddhism and mediation is just the closest thing to a repeatable, scientific approach that developed. Probably because there's little externalities involved.

So, I guess their intuition about lack of religious practices is correct (In my layman opinion), but I think it runs deeper (at a mental/psychological level) rather than a divine one.

A great book I would recommend is "The Mind Illuminated" by John Yates. It covers briefly what I outlined earlier, but with a historic lense, and it also covers the colourful history of meditation and Buddhism (also briefly).

It's not so much about mediation history, but more a manual on how to meditate (written by a neuroscientists who had this same intuition about religious practices I describe above, but he explores it through his expertise as a neuroscientist, and eventually landed on mediation as the "best" practice for the mind).

There's also some spirituality in it, but if you're anti-spiritual, you can gloss over them.

Back on the topic of this thread:

I think all these witch-craft style trends we had in the past are signs of weak, idle and chaotic minds. This isn't to say every progressive person is like this (I consider myself progressive), but some are, and they paint what should be a great movement into something bad.

And let me be clear, those same weak and disregulated minds are not exclusive to the latest woke movement, they are equally as present in the opposite side, but that side just had a much smaller stage currently. That's probably because we, people as a collective, realise that being progressive is good, so we have been more tolerant of the bullshit from one side than we are from the other.

Ideally, we should be progressive without the bullshit. But alas, human nature is flawed, so we have to endure socially fad after fad in the hopes that one day we will finally learn a lesson.

Edit: wanted to add, I in no way mean to say that being spiritual or believing in a higher power is bad. If it works for some: great for them! I just think it's less "robust" if that makes sense? I'm not quite sure how better to describe it; I'd have to sit and think about better formulating it

[actualwitch]

What you describe in this comment, I would not call religion. I think the better descriptor would be "spiritual practices", and these are closer to shaman rituals of old, in my opinion. I agree, these practices including meditation and practicing awareness are very useful tools. I would even add psychedelics to the list as it can be a massive boon in self-reflection. Unfortunately nowadays in an eye of common public, everything tangential to anything woke has became tainted as undesirable so many people turn to more classic religion that is more about judging people.

> I think all these witch-craft style trends we had in the past are signs of weak, idle and chaotic minds

Can't say that I agree. I think it is more of a consequence of social media having a hard cap on empathy you can feel to a string of letters on the screen in your hands. A lot of people simply don't realize the kind of effect their actions can have on other people, all of that multiplied by mob mentality. Worse yet, social media companies are incentivized to provoke this effect because it is clearly visible in their a/b tests - angry people generate more content. I think the real solution here is in changing social media to me more empathetic, but alas I can't see it happening easily.

[spoiler]

Sorry, I meant to write witch-trials/hunts! It must've autocorrected. Thank you for spotting that and calling it out!

And to tie into your reply: the mentality you described is exactly the same one thay current social media mobs share with the "hunt the witches" mobs.

Also, my comment could use some more general word smithing, but it's too late to edit now. I think we agree both that what I described isn't religion, and I meant to say that religion itself isn't the missing bit, but some of the tools that were commonly present in religions. Meditation (and likewise psychedelics) being my favourite tool, personally.

I also agree with your observations on social media making this worse for the reasons you outlined.

[Kbelicius]

> The old religions you were at least judged by an omnipotent being who could see the whole picture.

That is no different than the dumb mob considering that "gods judgment" always needs to be interpreted. Some mobs do that differently than other mobs but they are all mobs in the end.

[tablespoon]

>> The old religions you were at least judged by an omnipotent being who could see the whole picture.

> That is no different than the dumb mob considering that "gods judgment" always needs to be interpreted.

I don't think you got the point. The idea is that a truly wronged party (and their allies) can still feel like justice will be done if the system doesn't work, without doing anything, because in the end God will do it.

If that's not understood, then the allies will feel justified going after the (potentially falsely) accused extra-judicially or otherwise tilting the playing field in a way that results in more innocents get punished so it's felt to guilty people get away.

[psychoslave]

>The old religions you were at least judged by an omnipotent being who could see the whole picture

Unless you believe some deity ever really went in person at all these trials, you do realize that this is a complete indoctrinated perspective, don’t you? In all cases, this is only humans judging humans.

>As if punishing a bad person is a virtue. And as if there's nothing wrong about lynching an innocent person.

There is no need to essentialize a person for some bad behavior — did this person actually engaged in this behavior or not.

Letting a person engage in bad behavior without acting to prevent reiteration and hardening along this path is probably no more virtue.

Note that "punishment" is one way to try to bring people to more behavioral changes, but not necessarily the most efficient, nor the less ethically sketchy, and definitely not the only one.

> And this is a direct result of lack of religion. The absence of religion isn't lack of oppression, it's oppression by a dumb blind mob.

I am not especially acquainted with USA justice system, but lack of interference by religion into judiciary system is certainly not the description I would tag over the thin knowledge I have of it. Or do people stopped to swear on bible there and dropped the "in god we trust" motto?

Neither religions nor crowds are 100% sure receipt to oppression, but certainly both can be instrumentalized to achieve oppression. Just like self-proclaimed smart elites.

[jb1991]

I believe the parent is using the word “religion” in a different way than you seem to realize, and in a much more general way, similar to how this concept is for example used in archaeological histories of human kind, i.e. the Sapiens book. Religion, in this sense, is not specifically referring to some specific practice of spiritual beliefs, but rather a more general shared abstract perspective among a group of people. Similar with the word “omnipotent“. Though I think this metaphor or definition may be lost on some readers.

[psychoslave]

Thanks for this feedback.

I am not sure I get the proper perspective after it, but it is still nice to have a feedback like that.

To my mind religion on a broad view includes practices like animism, for sure. So I would tend to believe I get your point.

On the other hand, a statement like "The old religions you were at least judged by an omnipotent being who could see the whole picture" seems to precise to match a broad sense of religions. Animism for example doesn’t imply that such a powerful entity exists and judges everything you do.

Actually, apart from Abrahamic ones, which religion out there would fit such a restrictive set of beliefs where there is an omniscient omnipotent being so concerned of judging human individuals?

[jb1991]

I interpreted it differently, as the "religion of the justice system" where a single "judge" oversees the whole picture, hearing from both sides, to make a proper judgement that is ideally objective and based in the "religion" of law. "Omnipotent" doesn't mean a God, necessarily; indeed one of its main definitions is "having great power and influence", which applies to a court justice.

[psychoslave]

Interesting perspective, thank you for sharing it.

[olalonde]

> And this is a direct result of lack of religion. The absence of religion isn't lack of oppression, it's oppression by a dumb blind mob. Religion isn't the truly primitive behavior, the truly primitive behavior is this dumb mob social justice that's spreading now.

Nah, they're both truly primitive. China doesn't have this "dumb mob social justice" phenomenon and is largely irreligious. Irrationality isn't inevitable.

[gallopingcomp]

China has Internet mobs and flame wars too (across many of the same range of issues and sides), but this is usually suppressed by widespread censorship that simply shuts down all discourse.

I would even argue that the mentalities behind the worst performative excesses of social justice culture are even more present in China, by virtue of it being less democratic in practice but more democratic on paper. It’s just harder to accidentally form a mob, or at least that’s the perception.

(And when they do occur you don’t hear about them much. High-profile nationalistic riots and ethnic riots had taken place, offline, at least in the recent past.)

And a lot of religion, spirituality and superstitions, anything from Buddhism to Taoism to folk religion/superstitions to evangelical Christianity. And religious cults too. Yes, even among the educated elite.

It’s just that you don’t often hear about them, because image is everything, and _Jia-chou bu-neng wai yang_.

(Source: grew up there.)

Irrationality is in practice inevitable, because lack of information and motivated reasoning. Complete freedom and moral relativism won’t stop it. Cultural relativism won’t stop it. Authoritarianism won’t stop it. Humans are flawed. It’s better if we all got used to that concept, and both (1) thought more about what we know and how we know it, and (2) try to mitigate the impact of this. How this might work in practice, I do not have a clear idea, but growth driven by engagement metrics needs to die.

[machina_ex_deus]

Don't get me started on China's social credit. I'll pick the mob justice over an unintelligent oppressive dictatorship. Communism is a whole religion of its own, and it's even more oppressive and pervasive than other religions, and it fosters corruption.

[olalonde]

Oh boy... How about Hong Kong?

[verisimi]

Law is a control mechanism.

The legal system is nothing to do with justice - it is a general accepted arbitration mechanism but god knows why - there is nothing good about it. In fact there is lots that is bad about it - not least the fact that the governance system can decide what is legal or illegal, but will of course never hold itself to those standards. And then it can do things like mandate insurance payments under threat of revoke your 'license to trade'. Or pass laws to retrospectively tax people for what was legal at the time. All in the name of keeping people safe or something..

The only winners in the system are the governance system that receives fines, and the legal personnel (eg lawyers) that charge fees to use their 'special license' to help their clients navigate the artificial terrain that they know something about.

Duels to serve 'justice', when your honour has been besmirched, is a better system. It is quicker and cheaper, does involve gaslighting everyone into believing in some archaic nonsense, you directly address the cause of your complaint. It would also help crystallise whether this is something one is prepared to die for, or whether it is better to pass.

[chaosbolt]

Exactly, people need religion, so they will stick to the first thing that comes up, ritualize it then prosecute you in its name.

This is why I laugh when I read that like 50% of people in X country are atheists, are you kidding me? My guess would be less than 1% of people are really irreligious, it's a difficult state of mind to be in, but it's also so peaceful when you know you know nothing.

[qikInNdOutReply]

Its a synthetic religion, alright, but it wouldnt have spread that much, if people were happy with the old religions.

At the core is the same mechanism working in other religions. Get the sexual different to provide matrimonial contract security (aka a proto law version), which now is replaced with a provide social security. I suspect, this is one of the reasons of record numbers of men dropping out of working society. When you goto work for nothing directly related to you, why work at all..

But at least it allows those enslaved for contract security, to remain free otherwise. And it is not as repressive when it comes to new things.

I still vividly remember the demonization of video games and all things new by evanglical religions. No fiction allowed by those, who life in fiction.

TL,DR; Yes, it is a religion, but of all the religions its the least worst.

[zirgs]

Old religions at least have forgiveness. You can confess your sins and repent.

This new religion doesn't have anything like that.

[actualwitch]

Actually really good point. In times of old if you sinned, all you had to do to get your sins washed away was to go to confess, maybe make some donation. Now instead of that when nasty shit gets leaked, you can make a public apology, maybe make a charitable donation to some noble cause. But then people see you formulaic ass post, donation to a friend's charity and not a hint of change in behavior, and they tell you to fuck off with that fake shit. But if you actually understand your mistake, make a genuine apology, and correct your behaviour, people will forgive you. There are many examples of that.

[qikInNdOutReply]

Did they have that? Guess, some shizophrenic mother performing exorcisms on her daughter needs mercy every day. Did not felt very accepting though of artists and others who pushed the boundaries. Well at least there were books to read, endless versions of the bible - until just the ecyclopaedia becomes a mental save haven. Your dream might have been somebody elses nightmare?

[largepeepee]

I am far more afraid of this synthetic religion.

Old religions were already on the decline for decades as information became mainstream.

Once the initial purpose was done, this lynch mob religion seems to be have continuted with malicious intent of stepping on others without the need for reason, just a target is enough, no need for any process.

At least old religions had the excuse of being ignorant in ancient times, what does the current one have?

Immature bloodlust for anyone considered "others".

[akomtu]

Religions revolve around the concept of spirit - the absolute truth that's behind everything. Interpretations of that truth vary, but this cornerstone concept remains the same. DEI is anti-christianism in this regard: it tells people to obsess with their body and emotions, and skillfully divides them into isolated camps.