Self-control secrets of the Puritan masters
wyclif.substack.com
wyclif.substack.com
The highlight of my early 20s was embracing the hedonism treadmill as a rejection of "imposed morals", only to spend countless hours trying tons of self help books and listening to podcasts about discipline and grit and motivation and positive thinking, etc.
At some point, no matter which path you take, you'll find good secular justification for limiting your exposure to toxic people in life and limiting your swearing to improve your vocabulary and avoiding processed food, short term hookups, sleeping well, helping others, meditating, saying affirmations, thinking positively(using faith to counteract "rational evidence" that something will fail or wont work) and so on.
You're following so many rules (self developed through experience and knowledge) that it gives you more appreciation for how the different religions were themselves using heuristics developed over thousands of years of trial and error to give you an optimal set of rules that would more than likely produce the best outcome for your life, given the environmental constraints and lack of scientific knowledge at the time. It was not simply "sky daddy made rulebook"
Therefore the heuristics turned into rule book will inevitably become harmful eventually.
Also keep in mind that the rulebooks did not produce anything close to any ideal personal outcome. They always produced the ideal societal outcome that would preserve the existing structure of society. If said structure meant you were inherently harmed, your personal ideal was subordinated to that.
Watching our politics speed-run the 60s-80s again reminds me of this every day. Hopefully we hit the 90s soon, those were pretty rad.
Basically the concept you may notice if you are in HCOL blue urban elite circles..
Well to do left of center people who espouse discouragement of / being against many traditional concepts (monogamy, two parent households, kids after marriage, strict discipline, follow the law, being drug-free, going to college for a career, etc) .. but largely actually follow it and is how they / their parents got where they are.
And either way they have the means to not be effected by the negative effects of this non-traditionalism.
However if you are middle/lower class and follow the same non-traditional path, the personal costs to you & your offspring of frequent drug use, being a single parent, etc are almost insurmountable and are some of the leading causes of generational poverty.
That is - it is easy to say "hard work doesn't pay off, do drugs, break the law, and free love" when you are going from an elite (fully paid for by parents) university campus to start your career & live in NYC/SF/LA/Boston (with college & parents helping you with job connections, and parents helping underwrite your housing until you get on your feet). For them the worst cost of failure is moving back with mom&dad to their comfortable leafy suburb.
I know lots of liberal elites, and don't know any who are actually against two parent households, kids after marriage, following the law, being drug-free, going to college for a career, etc
This is a ridiculous assertion.
But I know many of these same people who believe in not judging those who do not follow all of these ideals, and want systems in place that support, say, single mothers or whatever.
This is very different.
And yes, as these people age/mature it usually morphs more into - we should be much more supportive with systems in place to help single mothers, etc.
Unfortunately there's limits to what the state can do to replace family, and there are good reasons to encourage people to not fall for the same pitfalls that trap them into cycles of poverty, no matter how much the state does to make that poverty less painful.
> The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable.
> ...
> If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, or that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served. But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion.
[0] https://archive.org/stream/G.K.ChestertonTheThing/G.K.Cheste...
See: dietary laws, circumcision, restrictions on what materials your clothes may be made out of, rules for what hair you're allowed to cut, and when you should or shouldn't cover your head, etc. etc.
(And before people jump in with "maybe there was a specific reason for the dietary laws, e.g. pork was unhealthy," that doesn't explain why you'd have peoples living side-by-side with opposing dietary laws.)
Take cigarettes for instance. We know they’re unhealthy. There are also still millions (hundreds?) smoking them every day.
People give up and fall into habits unless there is strong reinforcement. If you get a parasite and have no way to get rid of it (because of lack of modern medicine) because you ate pork, not like you’re going to stop eating pork necessarily any more. Especially if it’s cheap in your area.
If there is another group of people who manages to not have those issues because they don’t eat pork - they’re going to keep not eating it after seeing that too!
It's very much the same idea as "don't start ripping out and refactoring 'legacy' code on your first day on the job." You may actually have inherited a completely garbage code base, but you may also simply not understand the constraints that dictated the architecture you've been given. Once you understand those constraints, refactor away!
With regards to your example: Dietary laws may well be outdated, but modern Jews may also argue that setting themselves apart is still a very worthwhile reason to avoid pork—it's probably part of the reason why they managed to remain a separate culture even without a proper homeland, and remaining a distinct culture is valuable to them.
Some traditions are based on superstition, but certainly not all of them.
Your local Crossfit gym and book club, I promise you, are not adequate replacements for traditional recurring weekly gatherings, where it's normal (and expected!) to share what's on your mind, what's troubling you, what you are grieving over, what you are celebrating, etc. I've found that the quality of discourse here is much higher than the standard, "Did you watch Succession last week?", surface-level discourse at many of these alleged replacements.
And then, like you mentioned, they embark on a decades-long quest, only to end up at more or less the place they would've ended up otherwise. Or they find themselves completely lost and wayward.
I don't have a prescription here, but complete rejection of something seems almost as dull and narrow-minded as total dogmatic acceptance of it.
Unless you're cherry picking rules from the set, the outcome would be far from best.
My point is that thousands of years of trial and error may include some valuable insight but also some pretty outdated approaches.
I can see the rationale for taking tradition as a baseline and tweaking it to better fit modern times. That's what every generation has done. The direction many of us are heading, however, is to assume that tradition is all bogus and we can do better today with just the scientific method.
I hope if the replication crisis in psychology has taught us anything it's that science applied to people is still in its infancy and we are not yet at a place where we can entirely discard the wisdom of our ancestors.
On the contrary; top level comment said "rules that would more than likely produce the best outcome for your life". I disagreed.
There are certainly better ways to live than the ones handed down to us over millennia, and I think we ought to fine-tune what we've been given and learn from other cultures' traditions. But discarding everything our ancestors have given us because we think we know better is sheer arrogance.
Looks like we agree that the top level comment is wrong about "optimal set of rules that would more than likely produce the best outcome for your life", i.e. looks like you're also saying that these rules are not optimal and you're open to improving them.
I'm not sure why are you mentioning "discarding everything" in this context.
Encouraging people to try meditation with no other qualifications is a bit dangerous too - the original purpose of meditation is to become a monk, which is the opposite of having a family.
Monks become monks first and then they perfect their meditations. Monks become monks because the community recognizes someone who can be formed and taught, not because a man has perfected his meditative chops and now the monks all want him.
Meditation, for as long as I can trace back, is for everyone: who speaks in Psalms 63, a monk? Only King David? Every faithful and observant Jew ponders the works and laws of the LORD while he lies in bed, so thus do Christians.
The Church often encourages devotions for the laity which facilitate meditation. The Rosary and Eucharistic Adoration are 100% meditative, contemplative activities; no monks are required. In fact the Rosary is a "poor man's Breviary" where meditation upon a few fixed concepts replace active recitation of many, many words and disparate prayers.
The next time you see someone praying a Rosary with their family, are you going to tell them to stop, because they're not a monk? That's the height of weird - it's every Catholic father's duty to lead their family in a daily Rosary, and everybody meditates.
https://vividness.live/theravada-reinvents-meditation
It was invented to disconnect you from your desires and sense pleasures - not just in a therapy way but so you won't accidentally enjoy food or sex or any of those non-monk things.
Milder forms and "mindfulness" are modern inventions and it's actually rather surprising they turned out to be beneficial.
If you just sit there and do vipassana cold for days it can easily make you depressed or in some people leads to psychotic breaks.
Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us."
- Ecclesiastes 1:9-10, KJV
It's just that godhood is not evenly distributed yet.
But then he promised never to do it again with a rainbow.
And one of the consequences of global warming is?
I find this suggestion very hard to square with the prominence of Predestination in Puritan theology.
That being said, of all the Western Churches, it was the Puritans (specifically John Winthrop) who had the intelligence and courage to secure the Massachusetts Charter from King Charles I, providing both the intellectual and legal basis for liberty from the Continental monarchies.
Self-knowledge is really the core of a good life, and I'll happily die on that hill.
I've been battling a few addictions recently. None so severe that they impacted my health or relationships in any major way, and so I lived with these habits very functionally for most of my adult life.
It's incredible the kind of grip a habit can have on you. Despite how much I tried to change, that grip only grew tighter. It wasn't until I joined a 12 step program and met people who were like me that I started the process of unwinding. Making conscience every thought that led to my negative behaviors was the first step. The next giant hurdle was de-identifying with those thoughts and behaviors, which for me was probably the hardest part.
Probably the best tool for me right now is like the quote says, to just really examine your thoughts and honestly tell yourself why you're having the craving/urge. If you can really be honest about it and recognize your addiction is only going to make the situation worse, I find you can start to "dampen" the craving. It suddenly isn't as appealing.
It's not easy though, for every time I can successfully introspect and tell myself an honest, hard truth, there's 10 times I tell a self-lie and let myself believe it simply because to know otherwise would be too big a burden to bear in that moment
I didn't last long in the 12 step program, maybe it's not exactly for me. But a lot of what's talked about in this article is also part of 12 step: self-awareness, daily journaling and gratitude, spiritualizing others, having a community to go through the process with, etc. Even though I didn't continue with it, the few meetings I attended were honestly life changing and I highly recommend anyone who thinks they may have an addiction problem (pro tip: if you arent sure but a specific behavior came to mind, you probably do) to try one out. There's plenty for all kinds of addictions, turns out you're not alone
The Reformers sought to change many aspects of the "old religion," but a basic asceticism was not among them.
"puritanism" and thats a wide term isn't overly specific. the mayflower lot were "the Leiden congregation" or something similar. You can see the range of opinion here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Dissenters#/media/File...
Also, as the colonies that were founded on religion were based on social regulation, by people reporting, or falling out with others for not following convention.
in short, its more playground than useable self discipline example.
Note, to front-run the typical knee-jerk reaction: I do not believe the religious are in some way actually oppressed, but that those most on the left who scream of oppression everywhere are extremely comfortable with making snide remarks on religion (and class, provided its white people).
Ironically this runs up against the preferences of the people the left wishes to keep inside their political tent - they are almost universally more religious on average than white people.
Aren't they? Sure, western religious oppression is not violent and nothing compared to what happens in say Iran. But there are many circles where coming out as religious is a terrible idea and religious people feel it and end up self-suppressing and hiding their identity. Who wants to be known as the Christian when the world has decided they are idiots at best or villains at worst? You never quite know when it's safe to open up and when you could face sudden social exclusion, bullying, internet mobs, career impacts, etc.
If this comment were under my real name I'm not sure I'd have dared type it with the way the winds are blowing. Even with anonymity, it's giving me pause whether it's really a good idea.
Christians do; many quite vocally, even aggressively. Thus the pushback.
There is opposition about certain specific religions, which come from the fact those religions were, and often still are, hostile towards other people. An example would be Catholic homophobia and misogyny.
tl;dr in the western world the “oppression against religion” is actually opposition against social pathologies promoted by certain religions
I would argue the idea that in the US religion is in any way actually oppressed is more vibes than reality. But vibes matter for votes if your party is the one seen to be against religion.
Remember that one of the two major US parties is basically the pro-theocracy party. The SCOTUS appointees by the former guy follow with that theme, of trying to impose a specific religions morality upon the nation, etc. So I think it's hard to say.
Then again, there are western countries where women cannot control what parts of their body they reveal in government jobs. They have to show their hair-- Muslim women cannot wear a hijab. The problem is when discussions about religion come up people don't think about the experiences of most of the other religions in the world, they default to whatever branches of Christianity exist around them.
>Ironically this runs up against the preferences of the people the left wishes to keep inside their political tent - they are almost universally more religious on average than white people.
Yes. And while I generally support the democrats more, I as a minority feel they are going to run into big problems if they continue the way they do. Allowing the anti-religious sentiments will push away a lot of people that currently make up their base. Whether you like religion or not, it's a bad strategy.
But societally, religion has been used to keep people down for millennia. It continues to drastically fuck up our political environment, like the recent attempts of prohibiting basic medical care. Religion's proper place is that of personal belief system, not as a Schelling point to rally around for oppressing others. Until its malevolent societal power has been neutered, it's not terribly surprising that many of those of us on the receiving end will overreact.
Also for what it's worth, the rabid atheist seems to be a less frequent real-world occurrence than the religious person who won't stop mentioning the concept of god.
What will people do with themselves when there’s not a single group of people left that can be blindly hated and scapegoated for everything? I mean they might have to self-examine and look at how they can improve their lives instead of blaming strangers.
It was an age in which modern capitalism and banking was invented, religious tolerance was practiced and everyone was spending money like "the great Gatsby" on paintings and exotic food. It was a remarkably "un-Puritan" age. What was preached was rarely practiced. There's a reason why Puritans sought a new home.
Just like today, 99.99% did the latter. Trusting the narrative of the hour, conforming to the hivemind, etc. That's people for you.
And all this fine discipline and self-control was guided by this broken perspective.
Like a fine Lamborghini driven into a tree by a drunk. Don't blame the Lamborghini, blame the drunk.
"Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure." (Phil 2:12-13)
There was an article here on HN about a spying app that lets your church community make sure you're not watching porn. So bizarre. Either you believe in what you're doing or you don't.
Suppose instead of a app where a church community can see whether the person who has installed the application has viewed pornography, you instead consider someone who has suffered from alcoholism and is trying to stay away from alcohol, and wishes to be held accountable to others for their decisions.
(Now, of course, one difference between these scenarios is that alcoholism is like, a medical condition? but the analogy is about the type of intervention, not saying that the two scenarios exactly correspond.)
What one might call a "revealed preference" might not be a preference that the person who has it, endorses.
Suppose someone is finding that they keep distracting themself with some diversion (perhaps a videogame) when the course of action they endorse for themself is to complete some other task first. They might turn to their friend, hand them the (e.g.) video game console or whatever, and tell their friend to hold on to it until they've demonstrated to the friend that they've accomplished the task.
Of course, if someone doesn't choose such an arrangement, and it is foisted on them by others, then that can be more questionable,
but the general mechanism of using others, and the judgement of others, to guide one's actions towards what one wants one's future actions to be like, is legitimate, and can be useful.
This article was interesting enough but I couldn’t find any of the cited texts online. Is anyone aware or examples that you can actually access?
The Puritan method of avoiding temptation by invading neighboring communities that did not share their austere and guilt-riddled lifestyle choice, driving them from their homes, taking them prisoner, and/or outright murder in the name of their self-proclaimed righteousness.
There’s a reason they got chased out of wherever they showed up…history should rightfully remember them as a bunch of self-important no-fun assclowns.
> If life coaches make their living by pushing us to do what we know we ought to, for a Puritan, the whole community of brethren was the coach.
Has this person even heard of "The Scarlet Letter"? Or know anything about Puritans using stocks, whips or brands on sinners? Or mutilating them by cutting off ears or boring holes in their tongues.
When I think of "life coach" I don't envision someone branding me or cutting off an ear if I don't meet this weeks "life goal"
They also had a significantly higher view of pastoral care, one that I wish had not been lost in our modern age. I try to read the Reformed Pastor at least once every few years as a reminder (contrary to popular belief, this has nothing to do with reformed theology).
Interestingly, many descendants of these Puritans are still just as willing to impose their own religious beliefs on the rest of humanity. Although some details of the religion are vastly different, its rough shape is still the same (humanity can be remade and perfected, everyone must join in this endeavor or we're all lost, rejection of hierarchy, etc.) I'd wager this is even the source of many of the moral conceipts we see in America's foreign policy. Every farflung tribe on Earth must organize a government the way we organize ours. Every society must tolerate the same beliefs that we do, and also not tolerate the same things that we do not.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/patriotism-and-the-puritan... is an essay on a related topic.
> not... something everyone does
Yeah.
That being said, I think you're ascribing to intent what is attributable to worldview: people of that sort see history in terms of the advancement of the Gospel, the ongoing Communist revolution, or the progress of industrialization, and they communicate it as such.
I misspoke, what I meant was, this isn't the inevitable course of history; the past is prologue and not destiny. I believe one of the reasons this pattern repeats is the idea that it is "natural" and inevitable, and while it is literally true that it is natural - everything is - that doesn't mean it is "human nature" in the sense that it is inescapable. Cancer is natural, that doesn't mean we have to accept it.
> That being said, I think you're ascribing to intent what is attributable to worldview: people of that sort see history in terms of the advancement of the Gospel, the ongoing Communist revolution, or the progress of industrialization, and they communicate it as such.
I agree, I was personifying larger-than-human phenomena, so while I find intent to be a useful metaphor it it isn't literally true. The thing I want to communicate with this metaphor is that there are choices and an agenda involved, motivated reasoning.
Your examples are good, I think a particularly illustrative one is "the white man's burden"; the idea that white people must bear the "burden" of the Atlantic slave trade and colonialism more broadly is patently absurd, very clearly working backwards from the premises that colonialism is good, actually, and good for the colonized at that, to find an intellectual justification for behavior that was obviously deeply immoral and incompatible with their stated beliefs. This is just going so far out on a limb that it's really easy to see the game they're playing, but in all of these examples we've cited, it's a repackaging of political realism to match the aesthetics of that society and time in history.
Someplace I see this in our time is in the rhetoric of Jordan Peterson, an obvious chauvinist who's created an intellectual framework for why the patriarchy is good, actually. If you peer past his showmanship and undeniable charisma, you see the that same kernel of political realism; "the strong do what they may, and the weak suffer what they must." So for him in particular it's like, oh isn't it so terrible that the lower class is destitute, but what's much more important than their conditions are that we need steep hierarchies, and wouldn't you know it, I've got some misrepresentations of lobster biology to justify this as natural and inevitable. Peterson is far more artful than Kipling, and he does a better job of keeping the quiet part quiet, but it's a repackaging of the same ideas.
Surely they did what was only right and necessary. Put their faith in good authorities and sensible arguments.
Just like us.
Let us all remember everyone as only their worst things, and learn nothing from their best eh?
After the Puritans founded Plymouth Bay colony, they let William Rogers (if I have his name correct) leave when he disagreed with them, and he went and founded Rhode Island... where he eventually excommunicated his own wife (so maybe he just had issues getting on with folks).
So I'm not sure what episodes of violently attacking neighbors you're speaking of.
Additionally, according to American feminist history researcher Mardi Keyes in a lecture I heard years ago, Puritan New England was the first society in the world where legally women had the full right to bring divorce suites in cases of abuse, infidelity, or neglect; 50% of the cases were brought by women (she said if you look of the court records one can see this evidence) and it was the closeness of their communities that enabled neighbors and friends to provide testimonial evidence, which often enabled women to leave dreadful marriages. This stands in stark contrast to the pejorative caricaturing of Puritans as anti-women.
Skeuomorphism at least looked attractive if incredibly gaudy, this is just terrible.
Or, do a basic google search on Puritans and their punishments ...
(I read the whole article assuming that the images were real historical images, until I saw the last image, which was obviously generated.)
I feel somewhat decieved. If you’re going to use fake images, why not go all the way and generate the whole article text as well?