Hacker News Reader

Comment by monero-xmr | Hacker News Reader

I genuinely see politics as a new religion. Blind faith, ignoring logic, heresy if you disagree, excommunication, various forms of worship. Both sides

View on HN

Pretty bad faith interpretation of both politics and religion. I'd encourage you to consider looking into political theory & religion to broaden your perspective (speaking as a nonreligious person).

Speaking for myself I stopped thinking of religion as being just like kooky nonsense when I got to know some religious people and understood what it was their religion meant to them, and understood that they were using it to do things like figure out what life meant, how they should respond to it, and how they should treat others that I was also doing, even if I wasn't using religion to do it.

Similarly I think dismissing politics as "both sides are kooky" is missing a lot of nuance, "both" being part of it (politics is fractal like any other human endeavor). Speaking for myself again politics started making a lot more sense to me after learning more about political theory and history, as I understood the context better.

I am religious and a practicing adherent. I am focusing on the negative aspects of faith and institutions which in the current political environment are quite apt. Try and be an academic and be a public supporter of Republicans. The cold shoulders are ice cold

I suspect the reception would not be ice cold at institutions such as Liberty University?

This is my exact point - you have to join the institutions that support your political religion. As if 2 political parties can possibly encompass the entire range of reasons, and any supporter of one side is moral and just and the other is evil and immoral.

Maybe ask why people are giving you a cold shoulder and what it was you said that bothered and why them instead of writing it off as "academia is against me?" Just a thought, do with it what you will.

Academic institutions are 95 / 5 democrat to republican. I am neither an academic nor a supporter of either of those parties (I am an independent). I’m debating the pushback here that politics is dissimilar to a religion as I believe currently it is.

So you aren't actually speaking from experience then, this is an allegory for how you feel you would be treated in academia (if you were also a different person)...?

Maybe it would more helpful if we spoke about our experiences and not hypotheticals we invent? Because we're surely going to be wrong about the latter.

To claim that you can only speak and debate about lived experiences is erroneous and naïve. Otherwise HN comments would be a desert. I apparently struck a nerve with you - I suggest you pray to your political party and give your weekly tithe.

I'm actually also a registered independent, but I don't see any reason to believe the fable you've invented about the Republican academic. When it comes to matters of lived experience we should prefer to discuss actual experiences, yes.

Please avoid putting words in my mouth (as well as needless swipes like calling me naive and implying I'm some sort of party cultist), as I never said "all debate must be centered around lived experience," I was making a suggestion for this conversation.

There's a BIG difference between being too lazy or stupid to question political sources of power and being threatened with criminal penalties for being smart enough to do so with religion. Not to mention, you usually don't vote in your clergy.

People are subject to criminal penalties (and other kinds of violence) for political reasons, and for refusing to participate in politics. Voting can be seen as a ritual similar to other religious rituals, and not participating is a crime in some countries.

In some un-free countries such as North Korea the purpose of voting is co-opted to mean something completely different: the ritualized political humiliation of the population. By forcing you to vote in an "election" that everyone knows to be a fraud, you're forced to humiliate yourself and by extension delegitimize all voting processes everywhere.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com