How tenuous are social clubs and religions now?
Posted: Wed Jan 03, 2024 11:21 pm
A handful of decades ago, social clubs like the Elks, Eagles, the Odd Fellows and Rebekahs, etc. were thriving. Business-networking clubs like Rotary, Kiwanis and Civitan were hard to join in many areas because they were "full." Organized religions flourished as a way to socialize with neighbors and local communities. Each was an important contributor to the societal fabric.
Not only has the information age exposed religions, especially Mormonism, for its mistruths and quarter-truths (can't say with a straight face that many things Mormon even amount to half-truths anymore), but also been a cause for an unraveling of that social fabric. It is tattered and frayed. People meet others with like interests on the internet. Out my window on Thursday evenings in the summer I can observe cosplay of knights with their wooden broadswords and damsels, not so much in distress but in fancy late middle ages garb. I was staying at a hotel in Denver two years ago when a teenage furries convention was taking place. Neither appeals to me, but they now find each other with ease on the internet and then meet in real life settings.
We do not have as much civil discourse and courtesies as before. Growing up, I had strong political views, but that did not prevent me or others from hanging out together with those that came from households that held different views just as strongly as I did mine.
In recent years, I've been hit up several times with more frequency and vigor to join this or that club, even a country club that needs all the new dues payers that it can get to keep the golf course, tennis courts, pool, clubhouse and even the restaurant open and cared for properly. I don't even attend the local monthly dinners of members of my profession. I used to in order to get continuing ed credits to keep my license up-to-date and active, but now, I just stream podcasts while driving and fulfill the credit requirements of my licensing.
Life is becoming more cold and more brutish even as good quality food and medical care make it not so short anymore.
As their numbers drop, I do see that many of the remaining members of these diminishing clubs and organizations, including Mormonism, are becoming more adamant in their support for the organization to which they have long belonged. For example, when TBMs try to re-convert me and I mention the Joseph Smith Papers, I have heard on a handful of occasions that the TBM has read all of that and nothing in those volumes troubles him or her. When I ask how long it took to read it through, it quickly becomes evident from their answer that they have not but at most cracked open the first chapter of one volume. Two of them were surprised when I explained that the JSP spanned more than one volume. Obviously someone from the pulpit at their meeting house chapel had made such a claim--to have read through the JSP in its entirety and proclaimed it was a nothing burger for criticism of "the church."
I am curious if those of human vintage like me have observed these or similar trends and developments.
I am also curious of what you think of those that have dug their heels of allegiance to the organization in deeper in the face of membership attrition and inactivity postulate to be the psychological phenomenon going on. Is it an illustration of the fallacy of sunken costs (i.e., they've devoted so much of their lives to the organization that they must turn their heads and not look at the facts, hoping like Pascal's Wager that there might be some post-life reward)? Is it to yet have a club to belong to? What else might it be.
Not only has the information age exposed religions, especially Mormonism, for its mistruths and quarter-truths (can't say with a straight face that many things Mormon even amount to half-truths anymore), but also been a cause for an unraveling of that social fabric. It is tattered and frayed. People meet others with like interests on the internet. Out my window on Thursday evenings in the summer I can observe cosplay of knights with their wooden broadswords and damsels, not so much in distress but in fancy late middle ages garb. I was staying at a hotel in Denver two years ago when a teenage furries convention was taking place. Neither appeals to me, but they now find each other with ease on the internet and then meet in real life settings.
We do not have as much civil discourse and courtesies as before. Growing up, I had strong political views, but that did not prevent me or others from hanging out together with those that came from households that held different views just as strongly as I did mine.
In recent years, I've been hit up several times with more frequency and vigor to join this or that club, even a country club that needs all the new dues payers that it can get to keep the golf course, tennis courts, pool, clubhouse and even the restaurant open and cared for properly. I don't even attend the local monthly dinners of members of my profession. I used to in order to get continuing ed credits to keep my license up-to-date and active, but now, I just stream podcasts while driving and fulfill the credit requirements of my licensing.
Life is becoming more cold and more brutish even as good quality food and medical care make it not so short anymore.
As their numbers drop, I do see that many of the remaining members of these diminishing clubs and organizations, including Mormonism, are becoming more adamant in their support for the organization to which they have long belonged. For example, when TBMs try to re-convert me and I mention the Joseph Smith Papers, I have heard on a handful of occasions that the TBM has read all of that and nothing in those volumes troubles him or her. When I ask how long it took to read it through, it quickly becomes evident from their answer that they have not but at most cracked open the first chapter of one volume. Two of them were surprised when I explained that the JSP spanned more than one volume. Obviously someone from the pulpit at their meeting house chapel had made such a claim--to have read through the JSP in its entirety and proclaimed it was a nothing burger for criticism of "the church."
I am curious if those of human vintage like me have observed these or similar trends and developments.
I am also curious of what you think of those that have dug their heels of allegiance to the organization in deeper in the face of membership attrition and inactivity postulate to be the psychological phenomenon going on. Is it an illustration of the fallacy of sunken costs (i.e., they've devoted so much of their lives to the organization that they must turn their heads and not look at the facts, hoping like Pascal's Wager that there might be some post-life reward)? Is it to yet have a club to belong to? What else might it be.