/atheism/ - Atheism

>>8802

I'm against it in the sense of irrationally thinking that one's own country is the best in every way or that you should support your own country no matter what, but it's okay to love and celebrate your country.

This probably sounds really autistic, but it's a pet peeve of mine whenever people identify with their country/race/whatever by using "we", "us", etc. to talk about historical events they weren't actually a part of. Often they're consciously or subconsciously taking credit or blame for something that had nothing to do with them. Even worse is saying "you" to identify someone else with their country or race.

>>8805

>pic

B-but I just love marches ;_;

>I therefore prefer to answer like Diogenes when asked where he came from, he said, "I am a citizen of the world."

Sorry man, but that is pretentious as fuck. It's great if you like to learn about other cultures and stuff but that's not the same as being from there or being a citizen. If someone asks you where you're from just give them a straight answer.

>>8802

Stanhope said it best.

take pride in actions you did not people before you, don't take pride in being black, white, male, female ext ext take pride in accomplishments, some might come from you being raised in a very realgioid house hold and coming out gay knowing you would be looked down apon, take pride in that not the fact you could not help be born gay.

>>8827

>why can't people take pride in not just being part of their country, but their country's accomplishments?

What have you personally done to create your country's accomplishments? Are you the reincarnation of one of the founding fathers who wrote the Constitution? Did you gaze down from the clouds and decide, "I want to be born an American, or a Brazilian from Rio de Janiero, in the late 1900's but I will definitely choose not be born as an Indian." No, it's like being proud of winning the lottery. Or proud of having porcelain white skin, or growing big boobs. It's a very superficial source of pride, and it deserves to be ridiculed.

>>8824

Is he an atheist?

>>8802

Nope, I can relate more to some foreign weirdos on the web than my neighbor. We may not use the same words but we speak "the same language".

Some local pride may make some sense because you KNOW your town and you have at least a bit influence but you don't really KNOW all parts of your country and you probably have no influence.

>>8832

I for one, am involved in local politics.

>>8836

I know how that is. I get along more with Japs than with Americans.

>>8802

Loving your country isn't any less rational than loving your family

Supporting your country in bad desitions, just because it's your homeland, isn't patriotism. That's like having Stockholm syndrome from abusive parrents

>>8851

>Loving your country isn't any less rational than loving your family

That's a good point.

>Supporting your country in bad desitions, just because it's your homeland, isn't patriotism. That's like having Stockholm syndrome from abusive parrents

I think that's where nationalism gets a bad rep.

>>8849

Most of the lower cities are commuter cities, or spread-out suburb neighborhoods where inhabitants dwell privately, isolate themselves and stop trusting their neighbors. You badly need NYC with its subway system and diversity on this chart. Correlation doesn't equal causation.

Mind you I expect NYC to score about as badly as Boston. I got on a bus in my first week in lower Manhatten and some old white guy started randomly ranting at me for fifteen minutes because 'you come to my country, and you don't follow the rules and should go home.' It created quite a bus-wide commotion. I even pulled out a camera and he kept ranting while people laughed behind me, but I turned it off when he paused, before it got really good. I've never encountered that blatant racism through the years on the other coast. (Fuck NYC.)

>>8855

What rules did you break except looking foreign?

>>8855

What rules did you break except looking foreign?

No reason at all?

>>8858

Well, he was initially mad I had my knee kind of halfway accross the seat next to me. The bus was half empty though, and no one was sitting beside me. So he complained that it was against the rules, and I just put my knee down. I think he was just looking for a pretext to throw some hate speech.

He smiled and told me now you're acting like a good American and following our rules, and a lot of other shit. I'm like wtf, but whatever. Later on, I sort of put my knee back to where it was (no one was near me btw), and he glares at me for a moment, which I naturally tried to ignore, even though he didn't stop shooting daggers at me. When I glanced from the back of the bus to the front I accidentally made eye contact which triggered his fifteen minute tirade about immigrants and his shouting at me about the constitution while we crossed about 20 blocks.

I didn't reply much, and thought he'd tire of it, but he actually kept going until he got off the bus, He said a police officer should write me a ticket, insulted my IQ, appearance, and mother, said he couldn't understand when I answered him (in English) because "You need to learn to speak English or you don't belong here", and even complained to the bus driver. Everyone on the bus had to listen to his rant.

New York City is so overrated.

>>8862

I hope you get the chance to visit a city where a stranger insults you for your skin color.

>>8863

I guess my sarcasm doesn't work that well.

Anyway I know that feel.

>>8855

>"Were you born in America?"

>anon clearly has an American accent

kek

>>8859

>said he couldn't understand when I answered him (in English) because "You need to learn to speak English or you don't belong here"

I've heard about this before where racists will imagine that someone has an unintelligible accent because of how they look. People's brains can do weird things I guess. Or maybe he could understand you and was just being a dick.

>>8855

>Most of the lower cities are commuter cities, or spread-out suburb neighborhoods where inhabitants dwell privately, isolate themselves and stop trusting their neighbors.

Perhaps why they isolated themselves in the first place is because of their ethnic heterogeneity with their neighbors. Cities are built by their inhabitants, so they can greatly influence how spread out and isolated they are.

Friendships are built on common grounds so when people with different customs, philosophies and even appearances are trying to become friends it can be more difficult. It can be rather easy to insult someone unintentionally when not knowing their customs. Just to illustrate one plausible event: a kid meets a Muslim and he want to be their friends so they draw him a picture of Muhammad.

Anyway ethnocentrism is a complicated phenomena with many competing theories atm but here's an interesting one:

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~axe/research/AxHamm_Ethno.pdf

>blatant racism

Did he mention race? There is a difference between xenophobia and racism. Unless he said your race are [x] he wasn't necessarily racist. From the video he just looks like an idiot, don't let moron like this get to you.

And before you ask yes I have been insulted for my skin color and am on a daily basis for being white.

>"whitey's responsible for all the ills in society"

>"whtiey's so dumb he doesn't even see what an asshole he is"

etc, etc

>>8835

Yes a very strong one, mocks Jews, Mudlims and Jebusfags a lot, yo should check him out he is britty gub.

>ethical status of nationalism

>atheist board

>secular ethics are arbitrary

>>8874

>secular ethics are arbitrary

>I have never studied philosophy outside theology

>>8870

>I've heard about this before where racists will imagine that someone has an unintelligible accent because of how they look. People's brains can do weird things I guess. Or maybe he could understand you and was just being a dick.

I'm pretty sure he was just being a dick, and he wanted to mock my perceived foreignness. I raised my voice repeated a certain short answer three times, and he still just grinned and said he still couldn't understand me, because I wasn't speaking English clearly, and said I needed to learn English.

>did he mention race? (Or was it xenophobia?)

It was obvious he had a superiority complex when he mocked my English and then tried to lecture me about the Constitution and following "our rules," as if being white made him automatically more learned in US history.

I don't know if he thought I was an Asian immigrant, or an Asian-American. I think he would hate both, and would have behaved with the exact same prejudice no matter what I answered.

I'm biracial though, and he wouldn't have easily been able to figure out my ancestry unless I told him. (And why would I do that?)

Actually his confusion isn't unusual, as there aren't many mixed kids, and whites tend to automatically presume someone who is mixed is pure Asian. (It's not surprising when many Americans have trouble telling groups of Asians apart too, even though the languages have distinct sounds and patterns.

The very worst ones assume anyone who looks Asian must be an immigrant with limited English. I had a white professor who gave me some instructions in art class one time, and I nodded when she expected a verbal answer. I saw her face when the lightbulb went off in her head.

From then on every time she spoke to me she would talk slowly, with slight pauses, hand gestures, and a fake smile, but only to me, as though she had decided I was probably a new Asian ESL student she needed to be courteous to. She even did roll call daily, and my name sounds very American. It's usually obvious who hasn't gotten out enough.

>>8849

Just noticed Rural South Dakota is at the top. People can trust their neighbors because they hardly have any neighbors. As you go up the chart the cities become ridiculously laid back.

I think this diagram is far simplistic to be credible, because of the wide variance in the demographics and local mentalities accross the US. My Christian tea party relatives are paranoid about black gangs in houston, and Los Angeles has mexican gangs, bums, and helicopters everywhere. Obviously Seattle would be a more relaxed alternative, and it has a different ethnic mix there too.

Then you have outliers like rich Silicon Valley which is full of Asian engineers, but even with the graffiti, there isn't the same fear of "Indian gangs" there. Affluent Silicon Valley scores about as well as Boulder, even though it is a much less diverse college city. Maybe the liberal professors at the University of Boulder are especially good at instilling trust and tolerance.

It might be a more fair comparison if it controled the demographics much better. At the very least it should control for the size and density of cities. No one trusts their neighbors enough to leave their apartment unlocked in a large city anywhere. You'd need to compare for crime too.

Comparing Los Angeles to San Diego which is a third of its size, San Diego fares better because the environment is more pleasent and people don't have to be at each others' throats so often. They have the time to be friendlier.

Then the chart jumps to vastly different regions where people might actually distrust their neighbors more due to greater racism. It is too broad, and seriously if we are including the whole country then Los Angeles needs to be matched with NYC. Then you'd have two instantly recognizable Metropolitan areas of similar size that are separated by thousands of miles.

>>8878

I think you have some bias such that you assume every such transgression is racism. Not that it's your fault as that's what taught by this society.

He can have a superiority complex over being American. There's nothing that stands out that he was a particularly racist douchenozzle and not an overly patriotic xenophobic douchenozzle.

>>8881

Before we jump to conclusions on no data here's the study, it was conducted by a very "progressive" researcher who held back the results for a few years because he had trouble coming to grips with it.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x/abstract

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Putnam#Diversity_and_trust_within_communities

Though I would like to see how these other dimensions correlate. It may be that laid back attitude is really key, however that may be in part due to shared culture minimizing conflict. I don't believe it has to do with skin color as much as cultural clashes. I for one don't put up with religious culture but am happy to see atheists of all colors and sizes. Likewise religious people don't like me much either but like their own.

>>8883

I don't assume every transgression is racism, but I don't discount the possibility, and I give more weight to the possibility people are more racist when I visit a new place. I don't think he was xenophobic. I've encountered xenophobia in Japan. If he were xenophobic he wouldn't have been a beligerent bully, and would have avoided me.

Xenopbia is the fear in someone's eyes. It was in the Japanese woman who quietly stood up in an empty train and moved to a different seat when I sat at a seat 20 feet away. It's the expression of certain old guys who pretend not to hear you when you ask for directions, the woman who sees you at 5 am and tries to walk on the other side of the train station only you happen to be going that way so she suddenly turns and goes out of her way to walks on the side you were at giving the widest possible gap. It's in the face of the guys who refused me rooms in Osaka or Okinawa and/or pretended not to understand my Japanese, the guy who flipped out when I entered a restaurant at noon to ask for something "because we are closed, and I don't speak English" (an excuse), the nervous voice of a nightclub worker, the cops who watched me through the security cameras and came to tell me not to eat a snack too close to a train station. It is the fear when a blind school girl trips over my foot at a train station and figures out from your accent that she's knocked over foreigner, (did the foreigner trip me on purpose? Is there an ulterior motive?)

Xenophobia doesn't have to be racist either. It's usually obvious when it occurs too, unless you live in denial. I don't personally encounter that look of fear much where I live either, unless I accidentally walk too close to a stranger on an empty street at night which is understandable and universal.

>>8885

Japanese xenophobia is distinct, I've been to Japan and not allowed in a few restaurants in Narita. I was a sad gaijin but hey the conveyor belt restaurant was more than happy to earn my money.

Xenophobia can manifest itself in a group hostility to foreigners as well. Xenophobia in its strictest sense is perceiving someone foreign or alien as a threat. It's a matter of fight or flight. Though this guy is a moron to perceive that being the situation. While cultured Japanese xenophobes just don't let me in their restaurant politely.

>>8838

>I for one, am involved in local politics.

Ha! If anything, you've probably made things worse.

>>8893

How could you know that? My peers and co-workers will agree that I am doing a decent job.

>>8824

mexifag here. Nationalism indeed sucks no matter what perspective you are looking it from. it's an artificial, immoral and irrational mechanism to unite people at some unspecified geopolitical neighborhood. The same people working happily together for the alleged superiority of their western culture or country will bash on each other as soon as you start narrowing the scope, say at the level of states, counties, etc. This is not to say that people are not allowed to agree on some subjects and disagree in others, but that in the case of nationalistic sentiment the disagreement is silly and predictable.

Of course the world is full of problems and confrontations and it is natural to support the societal structures you are included in, since by definition those are the ones that include you, but it is completely irrational to develop a sense of sacredness or superiority for a family, religion, race, ethnicity, language, customs or political entity out of fear that if they go away you will go with them. Fucking grow an intellect and be critical to the belongings and traits you simply happened to be born with, because failing to do so will not help us solve the problems at the biggest societal scale we all know to have in common so far: the world society.

I am not a migrant by the way. I live in my homeland and always have, and so have my family as far as I can tell.

>>8849

>Nationalism doesn't have to involve pride

well then we are discussing a topic for which we have divergent definitions. we should agree on the definitions first

>>8908

>it's an artificial,

Good, nature doesn't do a great job with things.

>immoral

Entirely subjective.

>and irrational mechanism

It can be quite rational, like having a door to your house on a national level. Actually even better as it keeps undesirables out for miles.

>Of course the world is full of problems and confrontations and it is natural to support the societal structures you are included in, since by definition those are the ones that include you, but it is completely irrational to develop a sense of sacredness or superiority for a family, religion, race, ethnicity, language, customs or political entity out of fear that if they go away you will go with them.

No argument here. Except for customs and religious status since there are "good" and "bad" people from all ethnicities speaking all sorts of languages. If it's customary to develop science and the migrants are anti-science there is reason to keep them out. Same with religions, if we've achieved state wide atheism we shouldn't muddle society with religious assholes.

>traits you simply happened to be born with

Just because no one can be faulted for being born with a certain trait doesn't mean you shouldn't prefer one trait over another. In fact I guarantee you do it, just look at mate selection. You wouldn't pick a girl with Down Syndrome given the other options. That's something she's born with but you still don't want the risk for your progeny not to mention she probably wouldst have anything for you to talk about. People's traits make them who they are and if their traits do make them less skilled or sick those aren't desirable in a society with a focus on production. It's a non-sequitur argument to bring up fault. It doesn't matter, either they are able to do the work or not and that's a reflection of their physical traits. The problem with racism is that it has to do with arbitrary traits.

>well then we are discussing a topic for which we have divergent definitions. we should agree on the definitions first

None of the strict definitions involve pride.

Nationalism is a belief or political ideology that involves an individual identifying with, or becoming attached to, one's nation.

The strong belief that the interests of a particular nation-state are of primary importance. Also, the belief that a people who share a common language, history, and culture should constitute an independent nation, free of foreign domination.

loyalty and devotion to a nation; especially : a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups

>>8802

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>>10000

Check out Mr. No Fun Allowed here