Leftism
Our goal is to be the one stop shop for leftism here at lemmy.world! We welcome anyone with beliefs ranging from SocDemocracy to Anarchism to post, discuss, and interact with our community. We are a democratic community, and as such, welcome metaposts that seek to amend the rules through consensus. Post articles, videos, questions, analysis and more. As long as it's leftist, it's welcome here!
Rules:
- Absolutely no fascism, right wing extremism, genocide denial, etc.
- Unconditional support of authoritarians will not be tolerated
- Good faith discussion about ideologies is encouraged, but no sectarianism
- No brocialism/sexism
- No ableism
- No TERFs/ anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric
- No racism
- No trolling
- No insults, dunking, or personal attacks
- No posting of misinformation, disinformation, or fake news
- Mods have final say
Posting Expectations:
- Comics/memes/shitposts/propaganda are only allowed on weekends
- Try to avoid liberalism unless discussing electoral politics. Even then, try to focus on tactical agreement towards leftist goals
- Only one meta post seeking consensus per person per day
- Posts about a particular ideology are ok, but remember the rules above
- Remember that there is no “right way” to implement leftist theory. This rule does not prevent academic criticism.
- Try to avoid extremely sensitive topics unless approaching them with appropriate care for intersectionality. Use your best judgement, and be prepared to provide respectable sources when having these discussions. Wikipedia is not an acceptable source in these cases.
- Post titles must be meaningful and relevant, except on weekends
Sister Communities:
!abolition@slrpnk.net !antiwork@lemmy.world !antitrumpalliance@lemmy.world !breadtube@lemmy.world !climate@slrpnk.net !fuckcars@lemmy.world !iwwunion@lemmy.ml !leftymemes@lemmy.dbzer0.com !leftymusic@lemmy.world !privacy@lemmy.world !socialistra@midwest.social !solarpunk@slrpnk.net Solarpunk memes !therightcantmeme@midwest.social !thepoliceproblem@lemmy.world !vuvuzelaiphone@lemmy.world !workingclasscalendar@lemmy.world !workreform@lemmy.world
view the rest of the comments
The concept of civil/civic religion is I think what you're referring to there.
But yeah I think the idea of religion as this negative external influence doesn't address how it functions as a social system, like it doesn't explain very much.
I'm not sure what your last sentence means. Belief as a bare concept isn't the problem. The problem is when people get together and start reinforcing beliefs that are based in nothing but "faith".
Religion is bad because it teaches that faith is equivalent to or superior to knowledge. Just by the very act of institutionalizing faith-based beliefs, let alone all of the religions that DIRECTLY say faith is superior.
It's just that this knowledge/faith dichotomy isn't something that exists in our cognition, its an analytical framework to categorize, but in real life our minds don't operate like this. What's happening with both "knowledge" and "faith" beliefs in practice insofar as they impact human behavior isn't that different. "Faith" as religions define it is basically a social behavior that has a rational basis, ie "knowledge" can rationally describe why people practice "faith." The Marxian understanding of it is directly rooted to material conditions as well, as in the character faith embodies is contingent on material conditions.
A belief we could conceptualize as a civil religious one might be something like the "sovereign individual," and we could look at the Declaration of Independence as a foundational religious text.
Yes, it's not a dichotomy, that's why people so easily fall victim to using it inappropriately. It's why I said it's part of human experience (somewhere in this thread anyways).
No one can know everything. No one can answer an endless sequence of, "why?"'s. Everyone uses faith.
It's just some of us try to keep faith away from childish imaginations and moreso, "I think therefore I am.".