me staring at the realization that a home and children are impossible, that we live in a capitalist hellscape, and that multi billionaires are pushing agendas ruinous to the rest of us: Tithing 10% will surely fix this
i'm sure some arbitratry restrictions intepreted by a priest's read of a 2k yr old book will fix this.
Spurious non-sequitur ✔️
"The West" ✔️
Shitty agenda ✔️
You can do the math
I've met both people who have improved their mental health becoming religious and people who did the same by getting rid of religion. I think its less about religion or lack thereof, but more about freeing yourself and making your own decisions.
The premise of this image is appealing to the "Post hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy, aka: After therefore because of - mistaking a temporal relationship for a causal one.
...and if course, correlation doesn't prove causation.
Yeah... Definitely has nothing to do with the fact that everything costs more everyday while our wages stay relatively stagnant, making it harder and harder to for people to actually do anything with their lives aside from working and hustling for a meager wage.
Boomers had everything laid out for them, post-war riches and all - they could've preserved it for the future, but instead they pilfered and squandered it all, then pulled the ladder up on the new generations who they left all the mess they're still making to clean up.
As we all know, correlation always means causation.
And that's assuming we take the chart at face value, which I'm not willing to do. I bet there's no actual data behind it.
Yep, and Ice cream consumption causes shark attacks
Same. Losing my religion saved my life.
🎵 That's me in the corner 🎵
🎵 That's me in the spotlight 🎵
That song is actually about getting angry, just in case anyone didn't know.
I would say that it's not the religion itself which is helping people it is a built-in community, with support for its members and a common identity. They meet at least once a week, sometimes eat together, and sing together.
That last thing is something that I believe is not recognized as much as it should be. For all of human history, since we could bang rocks and make grunts, humans have made music together.
It is only in the past century, and especially in North america, that we have delegated music making two professionals, while we become music consumers. The number of people who actually make music of any kind has shrunk dramatically.
In other parts of the world, or even some parts of North America (like the maritimes in Canada) making music is still a recognized and valued part of life.
I was struck by this when I attended a conference for volunteers. The volunteers from Denmark, Germany, and England all sang folk songs for us. The Canadians and Americans looked at each other and tried to find anything that we all knew. We couldn't find anything.
Bingo. That's where we met people. We kids didn't give two shits about the religion, where dem girls at? Hell, first time I got to 3rd base was at a church retreat.
Seriously, people are underestimating the social value of the church. I don't want to be part of any religion, but such a structure would sure be nice for my family.
Among other insightful topics, the church thing is touched on here:
https://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about
"Church was where you made friends, met girls, networked for jobs, got social support. The poor could get food and clothes there, couples could get advice on their marriages, addicts could try to get clean."
(That's the most important article I've read that explains so much of what's happening in America. Give it a shot.)
Even if this were true, I'd rather be lonely than be in an abusive relationship.
The refusal of the religious right to acknowledge how material conditions affect humans is astounding and weird.
Material conditions? Sounds like something your kings and priests should own.
I can see why they might think that. Churches bred and centeralised community. But it can happen anywhere, in Australia, where we have very few churches, communities center around sports clubs.
IMO, materialism and modernism has changed the populous' focus away from community, shifting to the values of capital (which serves only capital) and forcing everyone into a 40 hour work week. While financial independence from a majoritively abusive male cast, a female member of each household could maintain social connections to their community and share in unpaid labour with households nearby. [To disuade docwhistle; the neo liberal solution to this is a 4 day week (not tradwives).]
There is simply no way to have societal mental health without community.
However, people who feel safe and supported by their communities are more difficult to manipulate and dominate, they are harder to proffit from as they pool their resources and keep their money within their community. As such, I do not think we will see a solution to this problem under the current system.
It's important to have a third place. Somewhere else to go besides home and work.
Religion offered that but the third place doesn't necessarily need to be a church. It could be a bar "where everybody knows your name", a coffee shop, a sports team, some kind of hobby group, or a charitable organization.
Religion fading while we still need to have a third place means a lot of grifters have moved in to fill the void. So people are getting into all kinds of weirs political groups and such just to have people to hang out with. Let's all pretend we think the world is flat so we have a reason to hang out.
Pretty sure devoting your life and family to imaginary sky wizards is a worse fate than depression.
Dito. I still have to shake off the feeling of feeling like a bad person sometimes (for nothing) but i sure feel less like shit for simply being alive.
You aren't most people.
