The more educated, the more you're in bed with the system.
The Rockefeller education system of the West literally preaches/teaches trusting, putting faith in, in other highly educated people. To break free from this isolated silo requires turning your back on your entire belief system, and your tribe, and most of them not only can't do this, they don't want to. They want to eat that steak and they want you to stop pointing out that it's not real.
Pointing out the obvious hypocrisy of their tribal slogans (My body my right! Except with experimental vaccines, then it's "Your body, my right!) will only infuriate them, causing a flurry of strawman arguments.
It doesn't help that so many of them don't really even want to have to make choices for themselves. They appreciate the WHO, the CDC, the nazi-adjacent Fauci, any authority figure, telling them what to think. This removes that dreaded and undesirable accountability from their life. What a relief! No more thinking or guilt, because I did what the highly educated experts told me to do. So the consequences are not on me. Sorry about your autism Bobby.
It wasn't my fault.
It's awful aabout that healthy kid on the track team dropping dead from a heart attack.
At least we did everything we were told.
It's also difficult to try and rationalize to highly educated people that being educated by this system has them blinded. The rules of the educated require more faith than Christianity.
This one hit close to home. As I've mentioned before in past comments, when I was younger I had views on organized religion similar to what you had as a youth. I was what I could best describe as an Atheist zealot. I would often while drinking with my friends, get into arguments about it, particularly with one friend who was very gifted at math and science but coincidentally one of the more devout believers in our group. The arguments would get pretty heated, as myself and this particular guy (who I'm still close friends with) loved to argue.
Fast forward 20+ years, and my 10 year old son goes to Catholic school. I yanked him out of public during the covid debacle faster than you could spit. If you would have told 18 year old me that my future son would be going to Catholic school, I honestly would have been horrified. But this is an era where our "leaders" (most of which hypocritically send their kids to private and had personal tutors) thought it was a good idea to teach first graders how to read over the internet. 25+ six year olds on zoom, what an efficient medium for a learning enviornment! I gritted my teeth and figured the religious component was worth the sacrifice for in person learning. Thankfully, in the first couple weeks of him attending my mind was eased when I talked with an old acquaintance who went to a neighboring high school when we were kids who also happened to have a son at the same Catholic school. He told me that I have to look at the religious class as a "how not to be an asshole" class, which put my mind more at ease.
That was several years ago. My son still attends the Catholic school, and he loves it, and is excelling. He's definitely a believer in Catholicism, and I'm very happy for it. As for what I believe, I'm not sure anymore, but it doesn't really matter what my "beliefs" are. What I do believe is that having a morals-based belief system is probably something we shouldn't be so quick to get rid of.
As a parent, I've really come around on the curriculum, as it's more of a throwback to what our generation grew up with, more "based" if you will. As examples, they learn cursive, focus on grammar, and it's far less tech-focused, all things which I agree with. All of the kids will learn tech on their own time; it's impossible not to in this generation. My wife (who coincidentally teaches autistic children in a public district) and I would never dream of sending him back to public, or to a secular private school (I think those are somehow worse, more "woke" than public, if you will.
This is a long comment and my apologies, but I really wanted to mention something that is troubling me beyond what you highlight in western humankind seemingly needing to substitute one belief system for another. I think as the next generation moves to a more secular lifestyle, there are even more second and third order detrimental effects on top of the clear "substitute belief system" dilemma.
When I was a kid, even though I was an aforementioned a non-believer, and though I was an only-child, at holidays we would attend extremely large family gatherings, particularly on my Dad's side at my great-grandmother's house. She lived till she was 103, and her home was the focus of the extended family coming together. I had many cousins of varying ages that I would see over Christmas and Easter, naturally centered around the religious calendar.
The adults would basically throw us in the corner, and it would be up to us to get a long. We figured out how to entertain ourselves, playing pool or other games. I remember using an abacus that she had to keep score for various games that we would play. We all learned how to socialize in some manner from those events, and we had a sense of family, even though I almost never saw those cousins outside of those holidays.
After my Great-Grandma passed, Christmas got very small. It basically became a holiday that I would experience with my immediate family as my Dad grew apart from his siblings and as a result I grew apart from my cousins. As an adult now, Christmas is the same, the immediate family with nothing bringing the extended family together. This is not uncommon. Many of my friends share similar stories.
These family gatherings helped foster social skills, and promote the idea of family. Church if attended, similarly promotes social skills and promotes the idea community. When I speak to younger people now, I am blown away by the awkwardness of the typical Gen-Zer. I think we tend to blame social media and phone addiction as the culprits for this and rightly so, but I think the lack of organized religion bringing people together in person is surely helping contribute.
Last night, I went on a date with my wife. We went to the restaurant at the local college that their culinary program provides. We've done it a few times; it's interesting, the menu is always changing, the food is quality, and it's priced very reasonably given the mostly free labor. It's a change of pace from the places we normally go to. I saw that they had an "Oktoberfest" menu and thought it would be a nice evening. Unfortunately I didn't do enough research. I would have discovered it was a buffet, and they were sitting 8-tops so we would be sitting with strangers. Whatever, it was fine, despite most everyone there being fairly geriatric. We made good conversation with an older couple. I'm just not a fan of buffets as I appreciate good service when going out to eat, but I digress.
Then this younger late-20s guy sat down, and when he did, he bumped the table pretty badly, for which he apologized many times. He managed to hammer the table every time he got up and sat down after that, and would profusely apologize every time. The guy was a walking stereotype. When he talked he would do awkward stuff with his hands, made poor eye contact, and his voice quivered. He went to the culinary school several years back, and then got a job in the kitchen in a hospital, then quit during covid (presumably because he was scared, but i don't know.) He then got another job in a hospital kitchen, and then later moved to house-keeping. He still lived with his parents, he was gay (not that there's anything wrong with that), and he had never been in a relationship in his whole life, and he said that he had pretty much given up on finding anyone. He was pitiful. I was talking about him with my wife after, to which she rightly pointed out that I needed to give him more credit for going to something solo like that and putting himself out there. She was correct. And we did manage to get all of that out of him as he obliged in conversation, but he just seemed so helpless.
He really bummed me out. It just seems like so many younger people are that helpless and looking for people to help them, or the government to take care of them, or they checked out of the dating scene or even checked out of life altogether. I think these things are all intertwined somehow, and the powers that be want it that way. They want us to not have a sense of family or sense of community. They want us to work remote and kids to never fly the nest. It's just way easier to get us to fall in line.
As I raise my own son, I'm starting to realize that the most important tenet that he can learn isn't an academic foundation, but a social one. The few in the youngest generation that have the ability to socialize, to think critically, to handle pressure, will be the ones who succeed. I'm not sure what I need to do in addition to what I am already doing as a parent to help him achieve these skills, but it is going to be my biggest priority.
It's odd, but Catholic school is now counterculture what art school was probably like 50 years ago in a way. I follow a guy on Twitter who argues you should brainwash your kids lest society do it for you. Seems like you're better off with old school religious values than what's out there now.
Lots of like minded people here. Need to be careful about that.
I too have similar views/experiences. I grew up nominally Catholic in the northeast US but became and remain pretty adamantly against organized religion once my brain started to function a bit. That said, I can’t help but notice how delightful my Evangelical Christian neighbor’s kids are. Their behavior and the ease with which they move through life stands in stark contrast to some other friend’s kids (affluent, NE urban people) who are riddled with anxiety, constantly glued to screens, and basically run their households.
And all of THAT said, let’s not lose sight of the authoritarianism of the Christian right. Sure, our views aligned during the pandemic, but if you don’t think that these people want to control your lives in ways that may be even worse than coerced pharmaceutical interventions, I’m afraid I disagree. I see it nearly every day when I pass the picketers outside a local abortion clinic.
Societies/groups of people need common narratives to function as a unit. I think that’s just a feature of human nature. It gets very hard to maintain a common narrative as societies get large and diverse. It would be nice if we could find a set of common narratives, not based on unverifiable supernatural events, that worked both inter and intra group. We’re in a transition period as a species as we seek that next set of narratives.
The more educated, the more you're in bed with the system.
The Rockefeller education system of the West literally preaches/teaches trusting, putting faith in, in other highly educated people. To break free from this isolated silo requires turning your back on your entire belief system, and your tribe, and most of them not only can't do this, they don't want to. They want to eat that steak and they want you to stop pointing out that it's not real.
Pointing out the obvious hypocrisy of their tribal slogans (My body my right! Except with experimental vaccines, then it's "Your body, my right!) will only infuriate them, causing a flurry of strawman arguments.
It doesn't help that so many of them don't really even want to have to make choices for themselves. They appreciate the WHO, the CDC, the nazi-adjacent Fauci, any authority figure, telling them what to think. This removes that dreaded and undesirable accountability from their life. What a relief! No more thinking or guilt, because I did what the highly educated experts told me to do. So the consequences are not on me. Sorry about your autism Bobby.
It wasn't my fault.
It's awful aabout that healthy kid on the track team dropping dead from a heart attack.
At least we did everything we were told.
It's also difficult to try and rationalize to highly educated people that being educated by this system has them blinded. The rules of the educated require more faith than Christianity.
Well said, Gino. People would often rather be wrong (to catastrophic effect) with the crowd, than risk using their own judgment.
This article nails it on so many levels. Thanks Chris.
thanks Jeff -- appreciate that!
This one hit close to home. As I've mentioned before in past comments, when I was younger I had views on organized religion similar to what you had as a youth. I was what I could best describe as an Atheist zealot. I would often while drinking with my friends, get into arguments about it, particularly with one friend who was very gifted at math and science but coincidentally one of the more devout believers in our group. The arguments would get pretty heated, as myself and this particular guy (who I'm still close friends with) loved to argue.
Fast forward 20+ years, and my 10 year old son goes to Catholic school. I yanked him out of public during the covid debacle faster than you could spit. If you would have told 18 year old me that my future son would be going to Catholic school, I honestly would have been horrified. But this is an era where our "leaders" (most of which hypocritically send their kids to private and had personal tutors) thought it was a good idea to teach first graders how to read over the internet. 25+ six year olds on zoom, what an efficient medium for a learning enviornment! I gritted my teeth and figured the religious component was worth the sacrifice for in person learning. Thankfully, in the first couple weeks of him attending my mind was eased when I talked with an old acquaintance who went to a neighboring high school when we were kids who also happened to have a son at the same Catholic school. He told me that I have to look at the religious class as a "how not to be an asshole" class, which put my mind more at ease.
That was several years ago. My son still attends the Catholic school, and he loves it, and is excelling. He's definitely a believer in Catholicism, and I'm very happy for it. As for what I believe, I'm not sure anymore, but it doesn't really matter what my "beliefs" are. What I do believe is that having a morals-based belief system is probably something we shouldn't be so quick to get rid of.
As a parent, I've really come around on the curriculum, as it's more of a throwback to what our generation grew up with, more "based" if you will. As examples, they learn cursive, focus on grammar, and it's far less tech-focused, all things which I agree with. All of the kids will learn tech on their own time; it's impossible not to in this generation. My wife (who coincidentally teaches autistic children in a public district) and I would never dream of sending him back to public, or to a secular private school (I think those are somehow worse, more "woke" than public, if you will.
This is a long comment and my apologies, but I really wanted to mention something that is troubling me beyond what you highlight in western humankind seemingly needing to substitute one belief system for another. I think as the next generation moves to a more secular lifestyle, there are even more second and third order detrimental effects on top of the clear "substitute belief system" dilemma.
When I was a kid, even though I was an aforementioned a non-believer, and though I was an only-child, at holidays we would attend extremely large family gatherings, particularly on my Dad's side at my great-grandmother's house. She lived till she was 103, and her home was the focus of the extended family coming together. I had many cousins of varying ages that I would see over Christmas and Easter, naturally centered around the religious calendar.
The adults would basically throw us in the corner, and it would be up to us to get a long. We figured out how to entertain ourselves, playing pool or other games. I remember using an abacus that she had to keep score for various games that we would play. We all learned how to socialize in some manner from those events, and we had a sense of family, even though I almost never saw those cousins outside of those holidays.
After my Great-Grandma passed, Christmas got very small. It basically became a holiday that I would experience with my immediate family as my Dad grew apart from his siblings and as a result I grew apart from my cousins. As an adult now, Christmas is the same, the immediate family with nothing bringing the extended family together. This is not uncommon. Many of my friends share similar stories.
These family gatherings helped foster social skills, and promote the idea of family. Church if attended, similarly promotes social skills and promotes the idea community. When I speak to younger people now, I am blown away by the awkwardness of the typical Gen-Zer. I think we tend to blame social media and phone addiction as the culprits for this and rightly so, but I think the lack of organized religion bringing people together in person is surely helping contribute.
Last night, I went on a date with my wife. We went to the restaurant at the local college that their culinary program provides. We've done it a few times; it's interesting, the menu is always changing, the food is quality, and it's priced very reasonably given the mostly free labor. It's a change of pace from the places we normally go to. I saw that they had an "Oktoberfest" menu and thought it would be a nice evening. Unfortunately I didn't do enough research. I would have discovered it was a buffet, and they were sitting 8-tops so we would be sitting with strangers. Whatever, it was fine, despite most everyone there being fairly geriatric. We made good conversation with an older couple. I'm just not a fan of buffets as I appreciate good service when going out to eat, but I digress.
Then this younger late-20s guy sat down, and when he did, he bumped the table pretty badly, for which he apologized many times. He managed to hammer the table every time he got up and sat down after that, and would profusely apologize every time. The guy was a walking stereotype. When he talked he would do awkward stuff with his hands, made poor eye contact, and his voice quivered. He went to the culinary school several years back, and then got a job in the kitchen in a hospital, then quit during covid (presumably because he was scared, but i don't know.) He then got another job in a hospital kitchen, and then later moved to house-keeping. He still lived with his parents, he was gay (not that there's anything wrong with that), and he had never been in a relationship in his whole life, and he said that he had pretty much given up on finding anyone. He was pitiful. I was talking about him with my wife after, to which she rightly pointed out that I needed to give him more credit for going to something solo like that and putting himself out there. She was correct. And we did manage to get all of that out of him as he obliged in conversation, but he just seemed so helpless.
He really bummed me out. It just seems like so many younger people are that helpless and looking for people to help them, or the government to take care of them, or they checked out of the dating scene or even checked out of life altogether. I think these things are all intertwined somehow, and the powers that be want it that way. They want us to not have a sense of family or sense of community. They want us to work remote and kids to never fly the nest. It's just way easier to get us to fall in line.
As I raise my own son, I'm starting to realize that the most important tenet that he can learn isn't an academic foundation, but a social one. The few in the youngest generation that have the ability to socialize, to think critically, to handle pressure, will be the ones who succeed. I'm not sure what I need to do in addition to what I am already doing as a parent to help him achieve these skills, but it is going to be my biggest priority.
It's odd, but Catholic school is now counterculture what art school was probably like 50 years ago in a way. I follow a guy on Twitter who argues you should brainwash your kids lest society do it for you. Seems like you're better off with old school religious values than what's out there now.
Lots of like minded people here. Need to be careful about that.
I too have similar views/experiences. I grew up nominally Catholic in the northeast US but became and remain pretty adamantly against organized religion once my brain started to function a bit. That said, I can’t help but notice how delightful my Evangelical Christian neighbor’s kids are. Their behavior and the ease with which they move through life stands in stark contrast to some other friend’s kids (affluent, NE urban people) who are riddled with anxiety, constantly glued to screens, and basically run their households.
And all of THAT said, let’s not lose sight of the authoritarianism of the Christian right. Sure, our views aligned during the pandemic, but if you don’t think that these people want to control your lives in ways that may be even worse than coerced pharmaceutical interventions, I’m afraid I disagree. I see it nearly every day when I pass the picketers outside a local abortion clinic.
Societies/groups of people need common narratives to function as a unit. I think that’s just a feature of human nature. It gets very hard to maintain a common narrative as societies get large and diverse. It would be nice if we could find a set of common narratives, not based on unverifiable supernatural events, that worked both inter and intra group. We’re in a transition period as a species as we seek that next set of narratives.
That's fair -- if I see it, I would similarly object that that too. But at least in my recent personal experience, no one is doing that.
And I don't think picketing outside an abortion clinic is remotely the same as state-coerced pharmaceutical injections. I wrote about that here: https://www.chrisliss.com/p/where-abortion-laws-differ-from-vaccine
But point taken that people tend to want to impose their worldviews on others. Wrote about that too: https://www.chrisliss.com/p/belief