Re #1: Nuts, similar to a spoiler alert, I actually didn't think about people judging me when I go back to church, or when I attended the men's breakfast.
I'm a cowardly sinner and won't justify myself. Let God be glorified in right judgments of me. I shouldn't get the credit other folks who did keep up attendance, so I don't feel tempted to make an excuse or generate an equivalency for my online attendance.
Aaron Renn had a newsletter last month explaining how cultural power is winning arguments instead of facts and reasoning. He used a church example with Keller, bit I can't recall the issue, but Keller was leveraging power to win. He also mentioned TGC as a party holding cultural power.
I think of cultural power in reaction to Edward Hamilton's fine comment. That is, folks can love the vaccine because of the cultural power strengthens their in-group identity and so counter-facts aren't seen as creating a paradox because the facts are coming from powerless people conducting studies.
Oh no! That is funny though. My intent was not to shame people for non-attendance, but actually to express that I want them BACK, and they have dug themselves into a position that makes that harder for them. I'm glad you came back without a second thought. :).
I did see that Aaron Renn newsletter. He's probably right, which is too bad (people like me, of course, want things to advance by good argument). I do think that part of what education is supposed to do is to push people out of emotionalism, out of "follow the powerful", and into a mindset where they can and will intelligently evaluate arguments... but that isn't the education most Americans are getting right now. So it's a matter of "what will actually matter" v. what would matter in my dream world.
The amount of information we have about every aspect of COVID is vastly greater than it was a year ago, and yet from the way it's talked about (in both public and private) shows little awareness of that vast body of information. It's now an identity badge, and its resistance to being updated by new evidence is part of the point.
It's a curious form of integrity, hating COVID so much that you're willing to embrace the paradox that vaccines both work so well that anyone who refuses one is insane, but also so poorly that we'll never be safe enough to stop wearing masks. Questioning the paradox is a flag for weak faith in "The Science"; embracing it is an unusually strong signal of orthodoxy, of the sort that could never be generated by any views with a deeper sense of internal coherence.
Re #1: Nuts, similar to a spoiler alert, I actually didn't think about people judging me when I go back to church, or when I attended the men's breakfast.
I'm a cowardly sinner and won't justify myself. Let God be glorified in right judgments of me. I shouldn't get the credit other folks who did keep up attendance, so I don't feel tempted to make an excuse or generate an equivalency for my online attendance.
Aaron Renn had a newsletter last month explaining how cultural power is winning arguments instead of facts and reasoning. He used a church example with Keller, bit I can't recall the issue, but Keller was leveraging power to win. He also mentioned TGC as a party holding cultural power.
I think of cultural power in reaction to Edward Hamilton's fine comment. That is, folks can love the vaccine because of the cultural power strengthens their in-group identity and so counter-facts aren't seen as creating a paradox because the facts are coming from powerless people conducting studies.
Oh no! That is funny though. My intent was not to shame people for non-attendance, but actually to express that I want them BACK, and they have dug themselves into a position that makes that harder for them. I'm glad you came back without a second thought. :).
I did see that Aaron Renn newsletter. He's probably right, which is too bad (people like me, of course, want things to advance by good argument). I do think that part of what education is supposed to do is to push people out of emotionalism, out of "follow the powerful", and into a mindset where they can and will intelligently evaluate arguments... but that isn't the education most Americans are getting right now. So it's a matter of "what will actually matter" v. what would matter in my dream world.
The amount of information we have about every aspect of COVID is vastly greater than it was a year ago, and yet from the way it's talked about (in both public and private) shows little awareness of that vast body of information. It's now an identity badge, and its resistance to being updated by new evidence is part of the point.
It's a curious form of integrity, hating COVID so much that you're willing to embrace the paradox that vaccines both work so well that anyone who refuses one is insane, but also so poorly that we'll never be safe enough to stop wearing masks. Questioning the paradox is a flag for weak faith in "The Science"; embracing it is an unusually strong signal of orthodoxy, of the sort that could never be generated by any views with a deeper sense of internal coherence.
Great comment, thanks.