Since the boggers that persist are educated and politeness is in their nature (example: Dennis Mangan), HBD blogs are not offensive or slanderous. But we have reached a point where showing interest in IQ and other differences is considered a clear sign of racist tendencies, and thanks to Google and other algorythms everybody can (and is) be profiled and identified as hidden racist or rightist, so many feign absolute ignorance and disinterest.
And they are right. From Daniel Drezner, a Jewish American and political scientist, who dared to mention too freely the issue and lost his job at the university, to Steven Hsu, a Chinese American and theoretical physicist, who was questioned (and almost blackballed) because his interest in HBD, we hear of hundreds of cases people being "Watson-ised" (like "Lynch-ed).
In fact, the racist fringe of the HBD-sphere is much less enthusiastic than before, because the facts do not favour their obsessions. Talking about IQ differences is selfdefeating for Whites, as it is becoming more than obvious that East Asians are more intelligent than everybody else except Ashkenazi Jews, and that are beating the shit off Whites in the universities and the worksite. In fact, I suspect that American White students must be terribly depressed and dispirited when competing with Asians on equal terms.
HBD today, and specially Steve Sailer, mostly write against immigration from Mexico. Having had my formative period in Latin America, I feel at home among Mexicans and like their speech, music, food, everything. The accusation that they are a burden on the American taxpayer is false and where it is true, like the cost of education, is only true because of the absurd equality imposed in America. Many Mexicans and African youngsters are unwilling to spend their days jailed in "schools" and persecuted if they dont submit voluntarily. That America builds expensive schools for them and pays much to teachers to indoctrinate them, is not their fault. An American politician dared to criticise the absurdity of spending half million dollars to teach an autistic child to turn over to the other side - and dont know where that politician is now but I have never heard another observation of such insensitivity.
I love Latin Americans and recognize they are not AngloSaxons, but I cant share Steve Sailer doctorate works on how evil they are, but if I were an American - and we all are in many ways - I should worry too. More than Steve Sailer. America is now a multiracial society and Whites are becoming a minority. It happened while America was sleeping. Having missed the historical experience of being a minority, they are unaware of what expects them. I dont think they will be persecuted like Jews were in Europe, but their society and their institutions will surely be painfully restructured. It is never good to be a minority. And it is a pity, because America is (was?) a most stable and well governed society, and it has taken up the burden (formerly held by the British) of ensuring peace and security for all. I would like White Americans and Europeans recover their self-confidence and pride. The formation of large masses of vanquished and frightened Whites as in Germany 1920 and 30, is an absolute disaster for us Jews. That is how I see it. Not that one can do much to change history.
77 comments:
Half Sigma has actually taken Steve Sailer's advice to its logical conclusion. For many years Steve has been talking about how all of the West's political troubles are really due to intra-white status competition.
Voila - "Lion of the Blogosphere" is a blog about just that.
Yet Steve Sailer keeps beating dead horses, I mean Mexican immigrants.
This summary fits almost exactly with my own views, except that I haven't spent any time in Latin America and don't feel at home among Mexicans.
But at least you like tequila?
Ok, fair enough.
You're wrong about Mexicans. They are a tremendous burden on the state in terms of costs of services provided to them as well as costs to cover their criminality and other social problems. This has been shown many times and there are statistics behind it:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/332916/why-hispanics-dont-vote-republicans-heather-mac-donald
I lived for 3 years in South America and like the culture too but those societies are dysfunctional and bringing those people to the US will make the US the same.
You are also wrong about HBD and IQ. The main problem is redistributive and affirmative action policies that hurt whites in favor of blacks and hispanics because of refusal to acknowledge the role IQ plays in life, and the belief in "education." Whites don't have a problem with Asians as you imagine. Most Asians become accountants, ophthalmologists, etc., and are not "outperforming" whites in the way you imagine. People with no linguistic and social skills can't advance very far in the US.
Another problem about IQ/HBD denial is that it encourages credentialism and the college bubble/credential tyranny, which has very bad effects on American society and life. This is done more for the benefit of women though.
The Mexicans as burden thing is wrong. You can't do your accounting on such a short term basis. Maybe the 1st years they were off the boat, the Jews were a negative - the cost of sending Jonas Salk to public school, etc. Not that the Mexicans will ever produce a Salk, but they are for the most part good people and will eventually make useful Americans, as useful as the Sicilians and Southern Italians (which they resemble in many ways) became eventually.
K
If they are a burden, the fault lies with the state for throwing benefits in their direction - they came here expecting no benefits, only work. A lot of the benefit money gets recycled back into the hands of white people anyway, it does not linger in their communities.
K
Did you read the link I posted? It doesn't matter if many are good people. The criminality, illegitimacy, illiteracy, approach black rates. And Hispanics have been here for decades, in New Mexico and California. It's not like they don't have a record. They've never improved, and never will, they will always be a burden. J is wrong.
Many have noticed for a long time that an American-style republic doesn't work in Latin America. What happens when you bring Latin America to the US? Letting in the Mexicans and South Americans will be the end of America.
PS and in retrospect I don't see how anyone can make an objective case that letting in Eastern European Jews, Sicilians, or Irish, has been good in the long run for the US. The US would have been a much better, richer, country with a purely NW and N European population. But, that argument aside, the Mexicans are not Sicilians or Irish. And they've been in the US already for decades, with no improvement.
It's quite possible that the U.S. would have better off if purely made up of NW Europeans, but that was an impossibility from the start. There have been Africans, Native Americans, Hispanics (in the Southwest in former Mexican territory) and even a few Sephardic Jews in what is now the U.S. since the 17th century. There is also the issue of the giant border with Mexico that would still pose a problem. All that said, I don't like the current trends and agree that immigration of all kinds has become a problem for the U.S. on top of its problems of feminism, political correctness and credentialism.
I've been to Ukraine which is 100% white and trust me, it's no paradise. Being all white doesn't guaranty anything.
It would have been nice if the US was 100% English but from the day they got here the English were not really interested in working and brought in African slaves to do all the real work. In the Caribbean, they brought in even more. Then they brought in successive immigrant groups of which the Mexicans are only the latest.
K
What does Ukraine have to do with anything?
The Mexicans and others from the third world are indeed "the latest" but it's clear that America can't survive them.
I repeat that Mexicans are no AngloSaxons and their massive presence in America will certainly change the country, in your words, it means the end of America as you knew it.
Change is painful and dangerous, and in general White Americans will feel less at home in a mixed-race America where they are a minority.
But massive emigration to America has largely stopped, so we are talking about the Latino population already in America. It seems to me too late to build a tall wall.
The change is negative because it involves increased corruption, decline in educational attainment and culture of intellect, and settling into a long period of squabbling for government spoils on ethno-racial lines. I'm Jewish, and my ancestors were not welcomed to the U.S. with open arms 100 years ago. Yet I don't think it's possible to say with a straight face that America in 1900 was a worse place to live than what's coming.
Ukraine is relevant because some people seem to think that all of America's problems stem from minorities and that if America was 100% white Christian it would be a paradise. Ukraine nowadays is 100% white Christian and it ain't no paradise.
K
It's clear that America can't survive them.
Oh, nonsense. America will survive. Maybe it will be more like Brazil or Mexico, maybe it will be a less safe society, more corrupt and violent, etc. but it's not the end. The white elites live very well in Latin America.
K
I too think so. But it is different. Brasil has a large German community and they are well adapted and happy. They are just as tolerant and carnival-loving as the rest of the Brazilians.
I am not advising nor promoting the Brazilian solution for America. I just think that change is happening and it is unavoidable. Just as Southern Evangelical religion changed itself in Texas and became a tremendous success in Latin America (there are more active Protestants than active Catholics, I think), America will find the synthesis. BTW, Buenos Aires suburbs are full of small Evangelical communities, they learn Hebrew and are pro-Israel. Their enthusiasm and faith makes me a bit uneasy. I think there is an impressive effort in Latin America to acquire middle class American values of decency, hard work, sobriety, mutual help. Things will work out well.
Things will work out well.
Naive faith. It's impossible to predict the future with certainty, but you're pinning an awful lot on rise of Evangelicalism in Latin America. There are plenty of low-class Evangelicals in the U.S. who preach abstinence before marriage, sobriety and thrift but who live up to none of it.
The white elite will always live well; but it is the white middle and working class in the USA that has been shafted, and will be shafted even more. As in Europe. And beyond a certain point, they won't stand for it.
This point seems to continuously escape the attention of liberals, optimists, and sundry commentators.
This is why history repeats itself.
Anon.
Re: education, it is obvious that the only way that a massive amount of proles with an IQ of 90 can be integrated productively into a society like America's is through what you're suggesting-a feudal setup, where education for the peasants stops with basic literacy and arithmetics. Of course, this implies more-once they're done being educated, they need to be set up with menial labor for life, an alternate legal system, a steady abode, etc. The middle class will shrink to craftsmen guilds, etc. So you've reinvented the Middle Ages. A bit of thought makes the Jews' role in such a society and long term outcomes obvious.
America isn't Latin America, and American white elites don't have the cultural resources to deal with a multiracial society. It's too late now to adopt a Latin solution, racial minorities are already politically mobilized in the US in a way they can never be in South America.
When I say America won't survive this I don't mean it will stop existing as a place called "America." There is still a place called "Portugal," it just isn't what it was 500 years ago.
Ukraine has nothing to do with this. America's problems are indeed caused mostly by nonwhite minorities, not by Ukrainians. Just because Ukraine is a basketcase, doesn't mean America should let in 1 million Sudanese or Mexican Indians. That makes no sense. That said, the Irish caused a lot of problems too, and it was not good for American to let so many of them in.
Ukraine is, however, a safer and more civilized place than Brazil or Mexico.
America should probably let in all the Boers, but it won't happen.
Politicized racial minorities are and will always continue to be puppets dancing on the strings of the small white elite. It is amazing how inexpensive their leaders are.
You are right that the new America will be worse than 1950s America-much worse. On the other hand, 1950s America was much worse than 1850s America by many parameters, and let's not even bring up the decline from 1750...
So you've reinvented the Middle Ages. A bit of thought makes the Jews' role in such a society and long term outcomes obvious.
Not necessarily. The Gentiles here observe no prohibition against lending at interest. There will be no need for the majority of Jews to be involved in small potatoes moneylending. The Jewish community is likely to melt into the other communities over time. The question is which ones? Part of the future white minority elite is and has always been very hostile to Jews.
There is no way the Jewish community is going to disappear. Some will miscegenate, as indeed they are doing now, but most will not, and the survivalist and pro-natalist aspects of Judaism will ensure that any losses are made up.
The question really is whether whites will survive, as anybody who tries to even reasonably advocate for white identity and survival (in the same way that other ethnics are encouraged to advocate for themselves) is immediately labelled a Nazi, and suffers all sorts of sanction and discrimination.
Anon.
It's impossible to predict with certainty, Anon. Perhaps what I should have written is that a large proportion of the descendants of today's non-Orthodox American Jewish community is likely to melt into other communities over time. Non-Orthodox Ashkenazi Jews still represent a large majority of the U.S. Jewish population, and I was thinking about them. I also wouldn't use the loaded term "miscegenation" to describe Jewish intermarriage in all circumstances. In population genetics terms, Ashkenazim are a lot closer to some populations than to others.
I meant that they would end up doing the aristocracy's high-IQ dirty work, and get thrown to the wolves when times got bad/
I think that the difference in the US vs. the last Dark Ages is that now Jews are allowed to be in the aristocracy and less likely to throw their landsmen overboard. Still (the mythology notwithstanding) only 1% of the population can be in "the 1%" and they can't all be Jews, and Jews are more than 1% of the population, so some Jews are clearly less than aristocrats and life for them won't be as good as it was in the old days when America had a middle class society.
Just heard that they are closing one of the runways at the DC airport to commercial (proletarian) traffic because so many of Obama's wealthy supporters are flying in to Washington for the inauguration on their private jets. Meanwhile Obama is "painting public schools" - even Mao didn't pretend to be a housepainter.
K
The sad thing is that the decline of the American middle class and high proles could have been prevented with the right combination of immigration restriction and economic protectionism.
Jews aren't the only high-IQ people around to do "high-IQ dirty work." As K has said, Jews are also found among the ruling elite. It is in fact a tenet of the WN's that Jews are the dominant faction of the ruling elite.
The real elite doesn't have any non-assimilated Jews.
It's not surprising that traditional Jews don't figure in the elite, but it doesn't protect them. The gentile Jew-haters don't make a distinction between Orthodox Jews and secular Jews, and the Orthodox will suffer from the backlash for the perceived sins of their secular brethren whether or not they do any "dirty work." Likewise, the elite status of the secular Jews won't protect them. Race hatred spares no one.
A good example of this can be found in the comments to Sailer's post "Conquistador-American and Slavetrader-American near a deal over immigration." Read the comments from 1/16/13 at 11:09 A.M. and 11:16 A.M. The anonymous author (both posts are stylistically the same) clearly believes that Jews control everything and advocates action against all Jews, not just secular Jews.
Some guy typing in his mother's basement controls the fate of Jews in America?
K
No, but he's a good exemplar of a type of thinking that is more common than most would suspect. He's not even the most vicious or nasty of the commenters on Sailer's site, much less a place like St*rmf&?t. I wish we could do away with hypocrisy about race and ethnicity in America and have open discussions. Believe it or not, Jews would at least benefit from knowing who their enemies are rather than having to guess.
a type of thinking that is more common than most would suspect.
Whatever percentage of the public shares his opinion is minute. The current crop of antisemite is far from being a viable political movement.
A certain fellow you might have heard of named A. Hitler didn't seem politically viable in 1923 either. Things can change.
A. Hitler didn't seem politically viable in 1923 either.
Antisemitism had broad support in pre-Hitler Europe centuries before AH could exploit it.
American antisemites have no such electoral base or history to leverage. While not impossible, the odds an American Hitler will emerge are only slightly better than the Jedi religion's chances are of becoming the UK's majority religion.
You are right, but for different reasons than you imagine.
Islam is almost certain to become the UK's majority religion, very soon, and it doesn't brook rivals.
Jedi will be SOL in the UK.
As an aside, I don't fancy the chances of Judaism and Christianity there either.
Just ask the Copts.
Anon.
You are right, but for different reasons than you imagine.
Islam is almost certain to become the UK's majority religion, very soon, and it doesn't brook rivals.
Jedi will be SOL in the UK.
As an aside, I don't fancy the chances of Judaism and Christianity there either.
Just ask the Copts.
Anon.
Islam is 3% in Britain...
Closer to 5% - today.
What % of the babies being born? What % in London or Leeds? What % of people who actually attend a church or mosque? Why is Mohammed the #3 most popular baby name in the UK?
K
Mohammed is so popular not due to sheer numbers but because a disproportionate number of Muslims choose it.
It is true that a large Muslim community exists, but very large numbers of Africans and Indians are also present.
So Islam is not going to take over anything in UK. Numbers are clear.
About Mexicans profiting I side with J.
Medical services they benefit of are extremely expensive. But the services are very small.
Offering very little services by developed world standards - something like 38th place by WHO - for triple the cost of number one is not a Mexican immigrants induced problem. It's not the Mexicans taking the money and bankrupting the country.
Same with education. It's not the Mexicans taking the enormous amounts of money thrown through that pit.
But the fact that they recolonizing North America is true. After a long decline indigenous life forms are taking back the land. Of course they are already mixed with life forms from the Old World.
You can also see it through the lenses that Hispanics are now in the middle of a demographic and cultural counter attack in North America. In early 1800s it was clear that Hispanics were in poll position on the continent. The Anglos went through an explosion and it was clear in early 1900s that the continent belonged to them.
But then again in early 2000s....
For the coming decades we can say clearly that North America is becoming a hispanic ( indian/european) dominated continent. Plus a large Euro-African community.
Some 3 mil mexican/hispanic birth versus 2 mil anglo ( whatever that means). And the Anglo number will necessarily decrease because they are much older, so number of potential mothers gets smaller. Plus some of the reducing number of Anglo mothers will choose different origin partners, like the President's mother did.
Compare this with early 1900 when you got 100 mil Anglos in rapid increase versus a rather stagnating 14 mil Mexicans.
It seems the period of Anglo domination on the whole of Americas , from pole to pole, is coming to an end. How events will unfold is of course completely unpredictable.
The only thing certain is that the age of complete Anglo domination - they formed the majority and were the only ones having cities and industry, as force multipliers - is over.
Now about speculations.
The Eastern Cost of North America will remain Anglo dominated. A sort of oversized Quebec. There are an order of magnitude more Anglos then French speaking North Americans, so their share and importance is going to be clearly an order of magnitude larger.
But the continents from pole to pole are reverting to the natural order of being a Hispanic area, with large Anglo and French areas.
" History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme."
Seems Twain was a smart man.
The speed and magnitude of the changes are staggering.
100 years ago Anglos ( US/Canadian, but it would be enough to mention only US) represented over 50% of the population on the continents ( depending on what you count US only or US/Canada, varies a little).
Had all industry and banking, and were urbanized. So it was their show.
Now they give birth to around 2 mil babies out of.... 16 million.
And the others got in the industrial age also, so gradients of economic power per capita are different.
I came back in order to give some data about the magnitude of the changes. It is not only about California or Texas.
And to give some consistence to the affirmation that the future of the Anglo community is that of an oversized Quebec on the Eastern coast of North America. I drew the conclusion from demographic data and evolutions.
Now over to you, J,K and B.
The subject is of great interest to me so any input would be welcomed.
Raw numbers mean nothing. In many Latin societies, a few thousand elite whites have 99% of the wealth and rule over millions of mestizos.
America has always needed a pliable low cost labor force. For a brief few decades post WWI, labor had the upper hand and was able to close the gates and improve their relative position (unfortunately for the Jews those decades coincided with the Holocaust and cost the lives of untold # of Jews) but starting in the mid-60s, capital regained the upper hand and the borders re-opened (too late for the Jews). Imagine an alternate universe where we could have traded 6 million 90 IQ Latinos for 6 million 115 IQ Ashkenazim.
Obama just made a big show of bowing to Latinos at the inauguration. Sotomayor swore in Biden. Latino preacher gave invocation, threw in a few lines in Spanish.
This can all still turn out OK if we insist on the immigrants assimilating and learning English. Eventually they will melt into the pot with enough stirring. If we turn our society into a bilingual society ala Belgium or Quebec, trouble will follow.
K
The East Coast has more Hispanics (Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, etc.) than most of the middle.
Brown cock will conquer the USA. This is how civilization ends, not with war, but with brown cock.
That's not how it has worked out anywhere in Latin America. There, white cocks rule over teeming masses of brown and black cocks. Why should things turn out differently in the U.S.?
I was not thinking in racial terms. As a confrontation between large related subgroups of a civilization. Between Hispania and England. The human raw materials each used was according to needs and availability. I think east coast hispanics will be assimilated. Anyway the idea was that the complete domination of the Americas by the british social cultural machinery is very close to an end. Future for medium term will be similar to1800 then to 1900. In 1800 some 3 mil anglos were an important part of the around 25 mil pop of the continents.
About eventual assimilation. English hatred against the papists I believe is over in the US. And catholic euros like Arnold are rather the natural leaders of the hispanic group. It is not race related.
The Puerto Ricans of New York have not assimilated in 100 years. Why would the others?
The identity of the opposing forces is very hard to define. And it has changed during the last 500 years. Very old and extremely complex conflict.
I can not see a difference between a ... theoretically?? Anglo like Arnold and a Hispanic like Vicente Fox. They are both from the catholic area. And Arnie's ancestors would have made better Hispanics. Austrians migrating to a different province of the Empire. And learning Spanish like Carol V in the process. The Pope himself is a native speaker of German. And yet we know in what team he plays. Not the Baptist one for sure. An Austrian moving to the Americas to lead the locals is something quite normal.
White industrial workers in North America have become redundant just like it happened in England. Just like Jamaican plantation workers before them ,their importance decreases according to their economic importance.( mentioned importance not political power, that defined the share of the pie each of them took). Had their moment under the Sun for some 100-150 years. It is over. But it another issue.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Colonization_of_the_Americas_1750.PNG
Vicente Fox is not moving to Iowa to work in a meatpacking plant-he's got Mexico locked down nicely, along with the rest of his social class. He is not typical of the immigrants being discussed.
Russians are out of picture completely, French got to keep a small piece.
And the others Hispanics ( whatever that means , complex identity) and Anglos ( same complexity, but the racist behavior not moderated by a large universal church/religion valid before in the sectarian protestant sector tends to obscure it) got to fight it out.
Frontier moves back and forth. That is not something strange or unexpected.
An interesting angle is the return of the protestant racist splinters of North America back or closer to the main body of Christianity. Which is universal. For example they got eliminated completely from the Supreme Court.
So you can have Afro-Americans there, from a Catholic background. Universalism.
I tried to explain, it is a much more complex issue.
It has also a Catholic angle. It is about a very complex identity of the large groups disputing North America.
Elizabeth did not fight Aztecs for power in North Atlantic, and then on the American soil - was the extension. She fought Carol V who was a native German speaker.
Princess Poniatowska speaking from Mexico about reconquista is a descendent of Prince Poniatowski who died protecting Napoleon's escape. She is not in North America to work in a meat processing facility.
I mentioned Fox to underline that he is a legitimate leader just like Arnie or Jeb Bush are for the Hispanic community. The only ones detached from the levers of power are the Protestant sectarian groups. Irish Catholics are not to be considered as hostile to the current trend. Neither are German ones. Or American born ones of Anglo background like Jeb, which went back to the Universal Church.
It is Catholic Church, native forms of life - mixed or not, universal values etc all in one moving North. The wounds created in the body of Christianity by Luther and different German or British rulers are healing in North America. That is also an aspect of Reconquista, and not the least important one.
The white women will succumb to the virility of the Latin lothario, brown cock will change the future, unfortunately the issue of the wombs will be unable to sustain civilization, this is how civilization ends.
???
Latin means usually European or largely European in general, even in the Americas. Not that it matters too much, but just to set the record right.
The racist approach specific to the Protestant splinters from N America is something quite unusual for human behavior. Closer to Nazis then any other human social structures. Ideological twins we might say.
Dead as the Nazi ideology I believe. No need to mention a dead ideology in our case.
Latino is not synonymous with Catholic anymore, not that a lot of the natives were ever really more than superficially Catholic - you still worshipped the corn goddess but you called her the Virgin Mary. The hot new religion now among the Hispanics both here and back home is Pentecostal (evangelical Protestant).
K
I noticed the same trend in Europe.
Elites going catholic and proles going to the misticism of the evangelists. I suppose singing, jumping and crying about Jesus is very attractive for them.
We have no way of knowing how it will unfold.
Complex identities.
I do not even know how to call a Pentecostal Spanish speaker from Latin America. Moved to the US.
How do you call an Israeli - Jewish origin, converted - Pentecostal ? Question for you J.
That is why the human changes in the Americas are of great interest.
How do you call an Israeli - Jewish origin, converted - Pentecostal ?
An idiot?
K
In US parlance, Latino is really a euphemism for brown Mestizos. Nobody really gives a damn about white Spaniards.
K
Idiot? K, I know you really like MIT, I have a friend who's a PhD in math from MIT, a Jew, who's considering converting to evangelical Christianity. It's a vital religion with joy and a real community.
I kid, I kid. I have the same respect for fanatics of all religions.
Seriously, though, maybe if your friend was a Martian, it would be a good idea, but given what has happened in the last 2,000 years and especially in the last century, I think this is a bad idea and a betrayal of his fathers (maybe that is the point?) I know of another vital religion that has joy and a real community. It's true that you won't find it at your local reform Temple but B could tell you about it or your friend could spend Shabbos at Chabad.
K
Chabad is a joyful experience only for those who wish to become Orthodox. But if they do so, and Orthodoxy/Lubavitch is a bad fit for them, then it creates misery for them rather than joy. I'm not a fan of low-church evangelicalism, but I can at least see why someone who is not suited for Judaism might prefer it over Lubavitch. If I were to convert (which I won't), I would prefer the liturgical Christian faiths. Judaism does not suit me, but I wouldn't be seeking a joyful experience. Rather, I prefer the dignity and decorum of the liturgical services as well as the worldviews of those faiths that are more comfortable with science than all forms of Judaism but Reform and Conservative.
Reform Judaism is Lutheranism without Luther and Jesus so you should be as comfortable in a Reform Temple as you would be in a Lutheran Church. They even have pipe organs and choirs.
K
No, they used to have pipe organs and choirs, but they have largely replaced the classical Reform mode with touchy feely hippy music. The services now lack a contemplative dignified atmosphere, but the low churches have followed the same trend to keep the younger generation involved. It's a sign of cultural decline that I lament, but I am nearly alone in this.
I don't know what Reform Temple you are talking about. I've been to several in the Northeast and they all have organs and choirs and no hippies with guitars, except maybe at a separate alternative service for the young folks. The average age of the attendees at Fri. night services is maybe 80 (not counting the family and friends of that week's bar mitzvah boy/girl), so they're really not big on the counterculture.
K
There are a few Reform synagogues in large cities that have kept up the traditional Reform service with organ and choir accompaniment. Philadelphia might have one of those, but I am neither near that city nor very familiar with its congregations. In other places, Reform synagogues usually have one modified "classical Reform" Friday night service per month. The other Friday night services are more contemporary, and the attendees are younger. Saturday morning services are usually more traditional Reform but are not well-attended unless there is a Bar/Bat Mitzvah. Some smaller Reform congregations, such as the one closest to where I live, don't have enough members to justify holding regular Saturday services. Of course, this is all moot for me because I'm not a believer and work late most Fridays and also work many weekends.
Also, the average attendee at Reform services has been old for at least the last 20-30 years. I noticed the same thing when I used to attend occasionally back in the '80's and early '90s. The 80 year-old attendees of today were the 50-60 year-old skippers of 20-30 years ago. I guess they don't have anything better to do anymore, and the services have the benefit of being free at the door. I doubt the congregations would ever turn away non-members from regular weekly services.
I always found talking to old people educational-especially reading between the lines to figure out what decisions they regretted making and then not making those decisions.
Were there any common threads of wisdom from the elders?
Yeah-invest in family, community and religion, not centralized structures and concepts like career, money, prestige and consumption. Don't believe the Man, especially his implicit arguments (those not stated explicitly.)
I get the feeling that they were religious elders and so perhaps biased towards faith. Also that you might be projecting your values onto them. I don't object to investing in family and community; however, unless one is independently wealthy, that's difficult to do without a good career and income.
No, quite the opposite-I told you, regrets are more informative.
Was it the lack of religious belief itself that they regretted or missing the opportunity for some downstream effect of retaining religious practice like a larger family or lack of guilt over disappointing religious forebears? I suspect it's more the latter.
They were not explicit, you had to read between the lines. In general, they regretted having spent their lives and potential on bullshit.
Post a Comment