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> Civilizations and cultures across time and space all stress that what really makes people happy rarely involves material well being

Well, the texts that survive those cultures stress that. But historically reading and writing were highly controlled political activities. So you should probably consider the political motivation behind those texts. The good life for a peasant farmer in the dark ages would almost certainly involve the accumulation of modest surpluses to be traded for quality of life enhancing material goods. But you can bet your cart horse on the fact that the texts which were being produced by the state - and delivered to the farmer in mandatory weekly Mass - strongly encouraged the redirection of that surplus to the state in the form of tithe or similar in exchange for ‘spiritual access’.

Given that the core religious and philosophical teachings of most of the "great works" over the last 5k years still stand in marked opposition to the interests of the state, and of power and wealth, I'd have to seriously doubt your explanation here.

It's easy to see that the interests of the state (which for Christendom was often coterminal and indistinguishable with the church) would want people to accept their lot, and be accepting of whatever inequities existed at that time and place. But I think you do human philosophy a disservice to suggest that people are incapable of thinking outside of that particular sort of box.

Even with Buddhism, the tradition most easily accused of encouraging people to just accept the way things are, it's actual practitioners and believers have fairly sophisticated explanations of why that's not actually their position at all.

Written statement and actual non-public statement are very different for all those religions you mention. If religion is opposing politics it’s only because it wants to be political power on their own…

Yes. It is like the a corporation puts out it's mission statement. That goal of the document is not to be accurate but to further the interests of the company

And the idealized quakers you're pointing to are essentially a dead religion. There are like 300k quakers globally and 80% of those practice a christianity indistinguishable from the evangelical mainstream of wherever they live (half are in africa). I would be surprised if silent meetings survive another generation, there are already very very few of them.

Quakers succeeded enough in certain ways that their values became mainstream, and they didn't differentiate enough from the surrounding culture to remain separate from it or powerful within it. Our liberal culture owes a lot to the quakers, I have incredible respect for their foundational beliefs, I used to be one, but they don't have much to offer us now.

They could be certifiably extinct, and they would still be an example we could learn from. The Stoics haven't really been much of a thing for a few thousand years, and over the last decade or so a new group of people have been enjoying that philosophy. The notion that faith != practice is a small but valuable contribution that at least branch of the Quakers have left in the world, and whether they continue to exist as a group, that's a valuable thing for all of us.

Also, I'd slightly dispute the "indistinguishable from the evangelical mainstream of wherever they live". There are branches of the Quaker tree that are evangelical, but for the one found in (at least) the mid-Atlantic and Pacific NW, evangelical Christianity is about the last thing I'd compare them to. Protestant mainline, sure.

Personally I don't really relate to the idea that you can pick through the bones of religions to make your own amalgamation. In the case of stoicism sure they're enjoying it but is it doing anything? Are they experiencing life in ways different from and better than they would without it? Is it improving the world according to their own values? For that matter, would it even be recognizable to the classical stoics? It wasn't taught by a living practitioner integrated into that life, how sure are we that it translated.

But anyway if you are going to do this, I don't think you should do it with religions that still do have living practitioners however few. If you value what the quakers are doing go be a quaker, see what the experience has to offer. Or at least wait until its carcass is cold before you harvest its carrion. Trying to extract value from a spiritual tradition you're not willing to live is ghoulish.

Protestantism in general has focused for centuries on what a person does during their life rather than what they believe (in contrast to Catholicism, which tends to focus more on the latter). The Quakers merely took that one step further (they are, after all, a branch of the Protestant subtree of Christianity) by acknowledging that a person could be good without believing (all or even any of) the things that Quakers believe.

It is not picking through or over the bones of Quakerism to grapple with and/or be inspired by this idea.

As for Stoicism, I am not sure that it is required to do anything other than, maybe, bring greater peace and understanding into the lives of those considering its values.

> Protestantism in general has focused for centuries on what a person does during their life rather than what they believe (in contrast to Catholicism, which tends to focus more on the latter)

no no no no no. some progressive protestant faiths perhaps, but the central tenet of most Christian and most Protestants faiths is faith, salvation comes through accepting Jesus Christ as your savior and repenting sin, for which you will be forgiven. It is a topic of debate among theologians as to what that says about works/acts but they don't generally depart from the idea that starting now you get a clean a slate, or as clean as anyone can.

It’s a bit more nuanced, watch this video in spare time https://youtu.be/tzLS4O7YaUg

> Trying to extract value from a spiritual tradition you're not willing to live is ghoulish.

I don't understand this sentiment at all. Identifying positive aspects in existing religions is perfectly fine (I'd even argue there is some amount of virtue to it). How is it possibly ghoulish to see good in other cultures/religions and bring that into your practice? One example that comes to mind are religions where consumption of meat is eschewed. If you find that the rationale that Jainism provides for a vegan lifestyle resonates with you, why can't you incorporate that into your life for those reasons?

Identifying, sure, why not, it's good to expose yourself to ideas.

Again though, and I think this is enough information to understand my position, I simply reject the notion that you can build anything worthwhile by picking and choosing bits you like from the collection of religions spread before you.

They are traditions whose fullness is only experienced as part of a community of other practitioners. By trying to extract an appealing bit and apply it to your own life outside of that context and separated from that practice, you're doing an entirely different thing and imo not what you think you're doing. I simply don't think this practice is worthwhile, valuable, or worthy of respect.

If you don't want to eat meat then don't eat meat. If a jain convinces you not to then that's as good a way to find out as any other. Does that begin to convince you that we are all part of an eternal cycle made up of different substances? Maybe you should convert to jainism!

I don't want to assume anything about you and I'm not really. But I often see this amalgamated spirituality concept coming from non-religious people. The idea that you can take the parts you like from anywhere, leaving the parts you disagree with. I simply don't think you can come out of this with anything meaningful, and in fact I think it's a trap. You'll think you've found wisdom when all you're doing is laundering your beliefs & preferences through the hard-won ancient traditions of the world.

There is courage necessary to commit to a path without possibly being able to understand it or even begin to know where it will lead. When you build your own religion you trade that in for mistaken confidence, and the feeling that you know what all the parts do and why they're there. You're not supposed to know why they're there! You're supposed to just live it.

All religions consist of a blend of faith & practice (there's that Quaker title again). In some, faith is ascendant over practice, and in others practice is considered more important than faith. If you lean toward the practice side of things, then presumably picking practices from different traditions would be less of an issue, so I would tend to conclude that for you, faith is the primary component of religious affiliation.

It is certainly true that feeding at the buffet of world religions isn't the same as being a committed member of a particular religious community. But that doesn't mean that you don't get some value from it, and potentially different value than that found by the more committed members.

I personally take great inspiration from Hesse's Siddhartha, the titular character of which explores a variety of spiritual and religious traditions, finds them all lacking and ends up being most inpired by a river ferry man. But that doesn't mean that the character gained nothing from his experiences with Buddhism, Jainism, ascetism and more.

Choosing and picking parts that you like and building chimera out of it is literally ghoulish. You don’t evolve something this way, you are willy-nilly feeding on something.

amish != quaker, right? so I don't disagree with your comment about Quakers but I don't get what it has to do with the Amish?

See the last paragraph of the parent of my comment. It wasn't about the Amish in particular, but "spiritual ideals" in general.

You missed whole point that not all people are spiritual or are atheists

Amish people slavishly follow a fucking book written 500 years ago in a language they don't even speak.

What self actualisation can one get from that?

I don't know, can artists get actualization from art when they're reduced to "prompt engineers"?