Adam Richard @adamrichard@qoto.org

The common view of religion that I perceive people to have troubles me.

The way I think people commonly view religion is as follows: an establishment or institution that prescribes beliefs and traditions for people's lives and afterlives. I've noticed this view both in religious and non-religious people.

To me, religion means thinking about my life and afterlife. In other words, my religion is my own and is unique. I might have been influenced by things other people have said but I don't accept their body of beliefs as a package, I accept or reject individual ideas.

In other words, all 4 possibilities exist: religious traditionalists, non-religious traditionalists, religious freethinkers, and non-religious freethinkers.

Controlling other people through religion vs. practicing your own religion individually seems to be the important distinction for me. I think those who try to control other people's beliefs or lives are actually rebelling against God, even if they might say they have God on their side. For example:

* Discriminating against LGBTQIA+ people goes against my religion
* Trying to make your children believe your religious beliefs goes against my religion
* Sexism (expecting people to fulfill certain roles based on their gender) goes against my religion
* Sex negativity (e.g. treating marriage as holier than other consensual sexual relationships or situationships) goes against my religion
* Expecting people, such as your family, to participate in traditions (e.g. expecting them to attend church) goes against my religion
* Collecting offerings to maintain church infrastructure / services goes against my religion (whereas donating money to help others is part of my religion)

Rejecting religious traditions doesn't mean my religion is less important to me than other people's religion is to them. Indeed, many of my religious beliefs are increasingly important to me in our current world. For example:
* Repenting (changing your life) is part of my religion
* Forgiving people who repent (and maybe even when they don't - still thinking about that one) is part of my religion
* Being humble is part of my religion
* Associating with people who don't believe the things you do, and who do things you consider wrong, and who society says is supposed to be your enemy, is part of my religion
* Treating morality as very important or absolute, rather than merely a social contract, is part of my religion
* Enabling minorities / disadvantaged people is part of my religion
* Protecting nature and the rights of animals is part of my religion
* Non-violent resistance to oppressive regimes or to those who wield power unjustly (e.g. boycotting oppressive corporations or opposing oppressive laws) is part of my religion

You're allowed to say my religion is incorrect or evil or nonsense. But you're not allowed to ascribe beliefs to me that I don't believe just because you heard that someone else (or yourself) who's religious believes them. (That actually happened a couple philosophy nights ago.) I care about the ethics I do because of, not in spite of, my religion. Of course, caring about the above ethics doesn't mean I always do them; I've made many mistakes.

I'm not saying these things to try to make you believe in religion but to try to promote understanding among all of us and especially between religious and non-religious people. I'm not meaning this post to be offensive to anyone and I'm sorry if it is (I know several of my posts from the past that I look back on seem offensive to me now, even to myself, so I won't be surprised if this one is too, but I tried).

At our latest philosophy night, I asked whether capitalism had instilled in us any ideas or mindsets that we accept without having questioned them. This is a question I was wondering about because I often hear people say that capitalism is the cause of the world's problems. Even though I consider myself a capitalist, I agree with them about many problems that they call capitalism, and I also want to root out any unquestioned beliefs or mindsets I may have in order to discard them if I realize I have no reason to hold them other than being trained to hold them. We didn't come up with a list of such beliefs at philosophy night but I've decided to try to brainstorm such a list of my own, so here it is. Please feel free to give suggestions to add to the list or feedback on the list. Do you think these ideas are good, bad or neither, and why?

* Get resources for myself (this is evolutionary and may be the primary source of the capitalist mindset, but gone haywire under industrialized society?).
* A person's success in life is determined by their wealth or salary (or signs of wealth, such as a bigger house or car or certain brands etc.).
* To get resources or to solve problems, go shopping (as opposed to making something, borrowing something, trying to figure out a solution, etc.),
* I have to go shopping and buy presents for the people in my life. If I don't, they'll think I don't care about them, or that I'm cold, etc.
* If I think of a good idea or an idea for a business or make something such as a book or work of art, then its value is what others are willing to trade for it. I should market it in order to make it well-known and popular.
* I need services which are provided by companies, and I pay for those services either with money or by consenting to ads or both.
* If I have a lot of free time, find a job or do something to be productive, i.e. do something that produces value.
* If I still have free time, buy entertainment products or services.
* If I have money, invest it to ensure that I'll have money to meet my needs in the future, since needs require money to meet. If I have a lot of money, protect it.
* Collect entertaining products or services to ensure I'll continue to be entertained or have access to them in the future (e.g. collections of all the best movies or books or games or shoes or collectible toys or artwork).
* As I gain wealth, increase my quality of life by replacing my things with newer, better things or things that look newer or better.
* Land is a resource. If I own it I should make use of it in the way that maximizes the wealth I get from it. If I don't own land then I can get resources by paying someone who does.
* If someone has done a favour for me, then I owe them a favour, and vice-versa.

Gatto, the famous educator who quit teaching to condemn the school system and won awards, made an important distinction between "networking" and "community" in his writings. A network is an impersonal resource, whereas a community is more personal, like a group of friends. For example, you have your professional network of people who are useful to you to do your job or to make income, vs your community of friends who you enjoy spending time with.

Although intended as a criticism of school (which is clearly a network, not a community), this distinction can also inform our idea of friendship in an important way. Gatto wrote before the days of Facebook, but his distinction was prophetic. Facebook is very obviously a network, not a community. No offense to any of you, but I don't count Facebook friends as friends - and I think everybody knows that. (How could anybody really have hundreds of friends?) Some of my Facebook friends are real friends, but even in that case, interacting with them on Facebook doesn't count as interacting as a community in my mind. When I send a friend request it's usually an indication that I'd like to *become* friends, and my friends list is friends + acquaintances, which is another word for "potential friends". The internet is a way to make plans to hang out in person, which is the legitimate community where friendships develop. Communicating solely online would usually be called "acquaintances" or "networking" in my view.

I have several close friends and have had many others throughout my life, with whom I spend time doing common interests together by choice. This is why school is a network, not a community - students aren't there by choice. The same is true of your workplace network, and is why I rarely become friends with co-workers. The friends I had as a child were not kids from a school math club or something like that, they were friends who I invited to my house and who invited me to their house in an unstructured way.

This is important because I think many people have lost community and replaced it with networks. Networks aren't bad, they have many uses. I prefer online banking rather than old fashioned bank tellers because I want my banking to be impersonal and automated and with as little human interaction as possible (precisely because my bank is not my community). Networks can even be useful to try to find new friends, but they can't replace community. When I was a child I specifically avoided joining clubs and groups in order to have free time after school during which I hung out with my friends in an unstructured way. As an adult I've joined tons of clubs and groups but I still see friendship the way I saw it as a child. Not that I intend to stop going to groups or clubs, but I want to prioritize hanging out with friends in less official ways, like I used to do as a child. For example, I prefer having friends over for board games rather than going to a board game event that costs $3 - it's less structured. (Pathetically, the $3 event is only popular *because* it costs $3 - if they made it free, nobody would show up!) A lot of people say they don't have time for hanging out because they have lots of events going on, and that's the opposite of my priorities - I go to official, structured events only if I have nothing better to do.

I don't know how to express precisely the feature of modern society that's caused our communities to be replaced with networks. If I said "capitalism" a lot of people could relate, but it wouldn't be exactly accurate: yard sales are also capitalism, but they feel more community-like and I have no problem with them. It's more like people want something from people. I shouldn't have to subscribe to newsletters or see things that are Recommended for Me or Suggested for Me just to hang out with my friends. That stuff is so prevalent I can barely even read a book without being subjected to it, for crying out loud.