TaterTot

So uhhh, the oldest Boomers would have been 14 at the end of the 50's. This would have been a Greatest and Silent generation thing.

And given what they lived through... well I get wanting a whiskey dispenser at work...

you all voted for it

You may not be an American, but you count like you went to one of our public schools...

I should really do something about that... later tho...

Oh, totally agree with that. I watched their performance on KEXP, and was blown away by the skill and craftsmanship they showed.

A lot of Lemmings have already tried to explain the appeal of AdP. I'm not going to pile on. Partly because I don't want to beat a dead horse. And partly because I don't "get it" either. Or more specifically, I couldn't get lost in the music the way I wanted to. And I gave it an honest shot. But here's the thing. This isn't the first time that's happened to me. It actually happens to me quite a lot.

As a weekend hobby, I like to get high and just listen. An album, a live set, whatever I can find. Any genre, any era. And why some people connect to music that does nothing for me, and vice reversa, is something I've chewed on for years. It's a massive topic and I won't pretend to have the full answer. But there's a line of research worth mentioning here. Especially given your feeling that this is all a giant joke and everyone's trolling you.

To oversimplify, we don't listen with fresh ears. We learn what music "sounds like" over our whole lives. There's a study on this. Six-month-old babies could pick apart complex Balkan rhythms just fine. By twelve months, that ability had already narrowed to the rhythms they grew up around. Adults raised on Balkan music keep both. The rest of us lose the ear for it. And this just keeps going, every new thing we hear, we hear through all those accumulated biases. Eventually you hit music so far removed from your frame of reference that it barely registers as music at all. For you, that day came. And that's okay.

But if you want to break down that wall, you can get closer. When I find music challenging, I look to its influences. Branches of the tree nearer my own roots. Then I work my way back from there. The catch is you can't go in trying to prove it's bad. For lack of a better phrase, you have to listen with sincerity.

Anyway, thanks for coming to my TED talk. Hope you keep giving new music a chance.

Very true, but they do serve different purposes.

The Ratchet Effect

You just conceded my original point. "Several valid definitions that can't be applied interchangeably" is... what contested means. All I claimed at the start was that religion doesn't necessarily require magical thinking. So if several valid definitions exist and some of them cover nonmagical traditions, then the "necessarily" is dead.

Which gets at the actual problem here. Zarkanian made a point, you swapped in your own narrower definition of religion, and then argued against that instead. That's a strawman. And "assume we meant the Christianity type" doesn't fix that, because the thread explicitly widened to "any religion, for that matter." You can't broaden the scope to every religion and then retroactively narrow the definition when the counterexamples show up.

Also, some of this is just wrong. Ethical Culture was founded by Adler as a religion, and they literally went to court to be recognized as one (Washington Ethical Society v. DC, 1957). So "doesn't call itself a religion" is an interesting claim. And you've got UU backwards. They're creedless on purpose, humanism is one of their six official sources, and a big chunk of their members are atheists. Belief in a higher power isn't "important to their identity," it's explicitly optional. That's kind of their whole thing.

Everything you've argued follows from picking a definition, applying it to someone who wasn't using it, and treating the mismatch as their mistake. That's not a disagreement about religion. It's a disagreement you manufactured. You may not like religions, but you sure debate like you're in one.

If you want to use a definition of religion that requires belief in the supernatural, go for it. But that usage isn’t universal

I said the definition is contested, so you picked your preferred one and declared it "the practical one." Practical for whom? Ethical Culture members with clergy, congregations, and 150 years of continuous practice? Defining religion as "philosophy plus magic" and then citing that definition as your evidence is just assuming your conclusion.

You're welcome to the definition. Just notice you got there by defining the counterexamples away, not by addressing them.

Sure, by one definition of religion. By another, they're literally religions. But more to the point, they were meant as tongue-in-cheek examples that intentionally missed the mark, to avoid getting pulled too deep into the linguistics debate over something I'd already conceded is so commonplace in religion that positing it is reasonable.

But I digress. For unambiguous examples, Ethical Culture, Secular Humanistic Judaism, and Unitarian Universalism are organized religions with congregations, clergy, rituals, and legal recognition, and they require no magical thinking of any kind. Beyond those, traditions like Theravāda Buddhism, Jainism, and Confucianism can be and are practiced without any supernatural belief, even if their classical forms include things like rebirth or ancestor veneration.

You could argue the first group are just philosophies whose adherents happen to gather for ceremony and ritual. But that brings us right back to my first point, which is that the definition is contested.

If you want to use a definition of religion that requires belief in the supernatural, go for it. But that usage isn't universal, and your reply to zarkanian functionally forced your definition onto them. To me, that undermines the pursuit of truth and honest dialogue.

Honestly, this is the real underrated trick. A great manager removes blockers. Their job is first and foremost to get shit off the train tracks.

I don't think the common thread is that they are "secretly gay".

But I do believe one of the most common threads is self-loathing/self-hatred and emotional repression, which they then over compensate for by forcing draconian policy on others who are more comfortable with themselves.

Drug use, infidelity, the need to justify a lifetime of privilege, over valuing the 1950's propagandized 'traditional American family', an uncountable list of problems with women, and yes, even repressed sexuality, are just some of the many root causes of their self-hatred.

I agree with your point that many people reveal latent homophobia, or at the very least a willingness to use it to disparage others, when discussing closeted LGBTQ Republican's. And that doing so is just frankly fucked up. But I don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water here. Much of their awful policies are because they are secretly something.