Comment by ssivark | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ssivark | Hacker News Reader

One of the most poignant and evocative things I've read of late. I don't want to spoil the experience if you plan to read, so just two excerpts.

> What I learned from the book is that the differences between the back and front row are more than money, marginality, jobs, and education. That is, the back row kids chose lives and educations that weren’t going to get them fancy jobs and high salaries, and they did it only partly because their schools and towns and society hedged them in. They also chose the lives that were going to keep them close to their communities, their families. I believe that, I’ve seen it. And it’s admirable.

> Looking back I had never expected to have my atheism challenged. Certainly not in the drug dens of the South Bronx, but that is what happened. Part of it was recognizing a simply utilitarian value in faith. It was a more informed scientific view of religion. The realization that what the cold secular world that science so often offers up is just that, Cold & secular. Science is not very appealing and often hard for those dealing with trauma to see what “good” it offers. [...] It became a realization that being educated and wealthy had removed me from the best evidence for the “truth” behind faith. When you shield yourself from the messy details of life it is easy to convince yourself that humans can figure it all out, that we all got it under control, or that with enough data, thinking, and computer power, we could figure it out. Maybe, just maybe, we couldn’t and can’t ever do so. Maybe there is stuff just too big and complex to understand and perhaps that is the essential truth.

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Succinctly illustrates something that is a complete blind spot for the mythical "Silicon Valley", with it's mood of techno-optimism and focus on "technology" (sic software). I'm sure reality is much more nuanced even for people with one foot in this bubble. I don't want to kickstart a cliched thread so we can all pile on SV, but I wonder how (where from) others here get such broader perspective in life. It would also be great to hear from people in very different circumstances & geography, about how they manage their intellectual interests and their human side.

I had never expected to have my atheism challenged [..] part of it was recognizing a simply utilitarian value in faith

That feels odd to me. Recognizing the value of community doesn't seem at odds with a rejection of supernatural entities. Likewise, I don't see the value of evangelizing my agnosticism to communities of different structure. Pluralism to me is an essential component of a society as large as our current one.

Maybe there is stuff just too big and complex to understand and perhaps that is the essential truth

Speaking only for myself here, but I don't need a god to acknowledge that our material and social world in complex beyond comprehension. At the same time, I also don't feel the need to have a being in my life that does comprehend all. It is enough for me to know the limits of my knowledge, and to scope my life within that context. Even more to the point, I find that the quest for "one essential truth", to the point of denouncing different conceptions of the unknown, is in itself detrimental to society.

So as to your question, I believe there is tremendous value in allowing people to be secure in their religion. It provides security, comfort and community for them. And I believe the recent surge in anti-scientific movements is in part motivated by (atheists') relentless attacks on the core tenets of other communities. Gods have always resided in the unknown, not in the unknowable. As the limits of our knowledge progresses, so have gods changed their shape. But by attacking faith on the unknowable, people have created much more animosity and defensiveness than should have been necessary.

> But by attacking faith on the unknowable, people have created much more animosity and defensiveness than should have been necessary.

You skipped over the fact, that religions hinge on explaining the unknowable, often in ways that harms certain communities and life styles. The attacks on religion have been squarely targeted at those aspects of religion. Atheists attacking a person's belief in a higher being (deists) is rather rare.

Friction is central to any change. If anything, the defensiveness and animosity is a necessary part of shifting power away from religious organizations.

> that religions hinge on explaining the unknowable

I don't think that is right. Mircea Eliade suggested that the primary function of mythology was a series of stories our lives could participate in and experience, and I think that's closer to the way religion is usually understood in most parts of the world outside the corner of Protestantism where your view holds most weight.

> often in ways that harms certain communities and life styles

My kids get to navigate three very different cultures -- traditional Indonesian society where getting married, procreating, and raising children is central to the family business economic order, the US where those are entirely separated from each other, and Germany where the recognition is you cannot have gender equality without support particularly for motherhood. I don't think you get that the conflicts between these are not merely religious but much more about the economic and social constitution of the societies, and that seeking to deprive, for example, Indonesia of their family business economic order in the name of sexual individualism or whatever harms these communities by opening them up to foreign exploitation. It's colonialism pure and simple.

Religion is an expression of culture and we assume our superiority over others culturally at great peril to both sides.

This interview is one of the most insightful things I've read in a long time. It is truly profound. I think you quoted two of the best passages in the interview.

The observation that some people in the "back row" have (to some extent) chosen to be there in order to be closer to family struck a chord with me. This isn't to suggest that it's "their fault they are poor" or anything like that. It just provides deeper insight into why they have made certain choices. Consider that the children of the "front row" suffer from disproportionately high instances of mental illness and substance abuse [1]. It appears to be because people who are in the "front row" are afraid their children will fall behind, and place enormous expectations on them. If you stay in the "back row" with your family, maybe you avoid some of these problems.

More and more I am convinced that as a society our increasing economic inequality is forcing everyone to make choices that have no good options. It needs to stop.

[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-dolphin-way/20...

> but I wonder how (where from) others here get such broader perspective in life

Not sure if that is what you were asking for exactly but for me personally reading the books of Jacques Ellul [1] was very eye-opening in terms of getting me out of the technology bubble. Maybe it's nor for everyone, and I've been reminded on this website that Ted Kaczynski (aka Unabomber) was also a fan of Ellul so probably in the eyes of that commenter Ellul's writings are invalidated by this sole fact, but for me personally his ideas managed to get me out of the positivistic view.

Ivan Illich's [2] booklet "Deschooling Society" has also had a very profound effect on me and on how I see most of today's world, which relies so heavily on education (Ellul favorably cites Illich more than once). Illich also makes very good points against most of today's development trends, like building highways, which granted has managed to become a mainstream-ish idea nowadays but back in the '70s (when the book was written) was total anatema.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Ellul

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Illich

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