Best christian business books according to redditors

In case anyone is not aware, the tweeter, Kevin Kruse, is imo one of our greatest living American historians, currently at Princeton University. His book
One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America is a must read for anyone truly seeking to understand the origins of the left/right divide in this country. It's a history of an insidious intrigue to oppose any social program, which Kruse has laid out with meticulous documentation. It really is breathtaking the way he handles the material.

Imo, you really can't thoroughly understand where we are now, with out reading this book. I can't recommend it enough. Here's his webpage, which has a link to an interview he did with Terry Gross on NPRs Fresh Air. The interview was great and it gives you the gist of the book:

https://history.princeton.edu/people/kevin-m-kruse

In the USA, the profit-motive and religion have been conflated over the years (read One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America for more info).

No war criminal, but he, and his VP Nixon, started the myth that America was founded on Christian beliefs, and "encouraged" the military to behave like Crusaders. Soon thereafter, defense contractors began currying his favor by proclaiming similar claptrap. Eventually, Big Business got in on the action, to cash in on the Cold War between God-fearing America vs. Godless Russia.

Source: One Nation Under God

It is Christian libertarianism.

Bought and paid for by corporates. Pete is the alternate CL. Its apostles to billionaires. ^[1]

>The members of the First Congregational Church were mostly among the wealthy, giving Fifield the nickname "The Apostle to Millionaires". The Church from 1937 to 1942 paid substantial money to Spiritual Mobilization.

Pretty good book on all of this called One Nation Under God. It does a good job of tracking the rise of the use of God in politics. While its central argument can be debated, and it somewhat underplays the role of the Cold War, it does a great job at illustrating when God began to be inserted into American politics.

You likely grew up in the weird fusion of American Southern culture and a specific brand (Baptist evangelical) of Christianity. Most Christians are not American. They're not even mostly white. They're not even mostly male.

Here's a good book about the history if anyone is really interested.

And here's another.

Yes. 'Murica has worked hard over the last century to demonize socialism in all of its forms. One of the more recent books I read about it was One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America by Kevin Kruse. He also had a good interview on NPR about it.

It's not uncommon to feel as though you're the Golden Boy in your smaller high school with a wider range of success and failure among kids - and then to find you are just a little above average after landing on a good college campus where everybody is smart and everybody has things going for them.

For example, a cardinal rule of Rush is not to wear your high school letter jacket or championship ring. After a few well deserved snickers, an Active will tell you everybody there has those, to take them off and show us what's beyond the high school accomplishments.

You've been chosen time and time again for your superior innate intelligence and your proven track record of accomplishment. Your Brothers chose you because they judged you as good to the core and capable of great things - worthy of their investment and love. Good on you. Now let's see what you can do to be worthy of their confidence.

Practically speaking, you may need a few wins to buff up your own confidence. Look at your schedule and see what you can cut out, so that you have more time and more focus to excel at the things that are left. Two generations ago, your fraternity was designed to be immersive - you worked hard to excel in class because being truly educated is a rare privilege (most workers are simply trained, programmed, or work by algorithm) - and the rest of your focus was with your fraternity: Brotherhood events, mixers, intramural sports.

Once you've swept the decks clear and have more time for what's left, start a physical conditioning program - cardio for stamina 6x/week and resistance training for strength and for your self image (3x/week full body or 6x/week for muscle groups - leaving an important rest day between working out the same muscle group), with cleaner and purposeful nutrition to feed and stimulate the muscle growth. Start working with a couple of Brothers who understand the science and rigor of conditioning, and be accountable to them. Losing 10 lb of fat and gaining 10 lb of muscle will do worlds for your self confidence and it will get you better notice from the Lesser Ribs of Adam. And unlike with molly, deep and well earned self confidence doesn't go away.

I'm not a fan of campus based mental health counseling for this level of downturn - counselors are in the business of finding or creating things wrong with you - and they are usually just Masters Degree level professionals. You do need a doctoral level professional (psychiatrist, not psychologist - only psychiatrists can prescribe effective meds) when and if you begin to have suicidal thoughts - new meds and very little couch time can turn that around. At your level, you need to unload to your Brothers, and start to work on a real plan to make you a better, happier, and more confident you. It's easily doable before you start class in the fall. If you want to hack your brain, the highest selling motivational book of all time is still in print and still as effective as ever: https://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Salesman-World-Og-Mandino/dp/055327757X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3KQZMCU9HQ2SY&keywords=the+greatest+salesman+in+the+world+og+mandino&qid=1554671423&s=gateway&sprefix=the+greatest+sales%2Caps%2C204&sr=8-1 128 pages. Under $10. Every successful man I know has read it, and as hokie as it may sound, when used as directed, it works.

The goal is not to have you believe you are the greatest man to walk the ivy covered halls; the goal is to remind you of your gifts - innate and taught - and to assure you that you can live a happy and significant life filled with people who love you and remarkable accomplishments if you will apply thoughtful analysis, laser focus, and indefatigable diligence toward accomplishing your goals. Many will look up to you and be drawn to your mission. You can, truly, Be Amazing.

DM me if you want to chat.

Right-wing news sources are running with Ronan Farrow's assertion, in a panel on Real Time with Bill Maher, that Bill Clinton "has been credibly accused of rape." Clinton's exploits are old news, of course, but in the interest of not talking about Epstein, I don't actually want to talk about what Bill did or didn't do.

My question for the Motte is: does anyone have a good handle on the history of the locution, "credibly accused of rape?"

I feel like I've seen it a lot lately, though I first noticed it during the Kavanaugh appointment hearing. I found its epistemology extremely troubling at the time. To refer to someone as having been "credibly" accused of anything is to embed a question-begging assertion into what might be taken on the surface as neutral reporting. Traditionally, American news media avoids suits for libel by reporting the allegation of criminal acts. There are probably some interesting arguments for why they shouldn't even be allowed to do that, but set those aside for now; assuming we're okay with the news media reporting allegations so long as they are clearly labeled as allegations (and remember that by "okay" here I mean "should not be held liable in tort"), doesn't the phrase "credibly accused of rape" violate the rule?

After all, "credibly" means believably or plausibly. But the plausibility of an accusation is precisely what juries are supposed to determine in a criminal prosecution.

In fact the phrase "credibly accused" seems like a linguistic troll on the order of "it's okay to be white." It is an invitation for people to express disbelief, which is outside the Overton framing of "believe all women," and so it is a locution people generally allow to pass without comment. It seems like a sneaky way to shift people's priors.

So I think it is pretty clever, as rhetoric goes, but it seems like a relatively recently-weaponized phrase--

--until I check Google Ngrams, anyway. And then I notice that it was and is a common phrase in the discussion of Catholic clergy and sexual abuse (appearing e.g. here in 2007). In this context, "credibly accused" looks like a way of saying, in effect, "yes, we know that sometimes people make spurious accusations, but these don't look spurious and so we are giving them our full attention." But the epistemic problem still seems to be there: the word sounds like a way of saying "we are taking these accusations seriously," but--is it possible to take an accusation seriously without putting the burden of persuasion on the accused to, essentially, prove a negative? The "credibly accused," in short, are not merely accused--they are nudged into the territory of "presumed guilty."

So, I was able to determine to my own satisfaction that "credibly accused" (of sexual misconduct) was not a phrase invented for today's culture war battles, though the roots of its current popularity do seem to be in the 60s or 70s. But its current associations with sexual misconduct, I can't find a clearer history on. I do seem to recall seeing the phrase recently deployed against Donald Trump in connection with extant impeachment inquiries, also, but I can't find that article now, likely thanks to Ronan Farrow. So whatever its origins, it does seem to be steadily increasing in popularity.

But it does look like rhetorical sleight-of-hand to characterize allegations as "credible accusations." And I am left wondering when the phrase made the transition from "a way of distinguishing between spurious and plausible stories" to "a way of taking the victim's side." The timeline seems to very roughly track America's coming apart. If we assembled a list of similar rhetorically-weaponized phrases from today's culture wars and ran them through Google Ngrams or similar, would it parallel these charts?

I've not gotten around to reading these but a professor of mine did his thesis on the cold war and recommended these books to understand how capitalist America used religion to legitimize itself especially in opposition to the "godless" Soviet Union

https://www.amazon.com/Spiritual-Industrial-Complex-Americas-Religious-Communism-ebook/dp/B00590X48Q/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1480361625&sr=8-1&keywords=religious+industrial+complex

https://www.amazon.com/One-Nation-Under-God-Corporate-ebook/dp/B00PWX7R56/ref=pd_sim_351_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=0AQJZGJE0BV0DDYJ5H6T

Social networks especially for men have been on steep decline since the 70's. A highly accredited academic wrote about it a while back and he got shit for some reason because he partially blamed multiculturalism. Even if you dismiss the multiculturalism angle which I do his research was very well done and shows a bleak picture of the American social landscape. Charles Murray also wrote about this stuff in Coming Apart.

https://www.amazon.com/Bowling-Alone-Collapse-American-Community/dp/0743203046

https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Apart-State-America-1960-2010/dp/030745343X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1518974854&sr=1-1&keywords=coming+apart

I will add that the reason men have struggled more with this is because men's groups are exclusive rather then inclusive. Or rather the inclusiveness is based on some metric. I.e we all lift, or we all ride bikes together, or we all enjoy climbing. Female social groups are inclusive. You're welcome here no matter what you do as long as you don't do anything to rock the boat.

Surprisingly both groups are still hierarchical. Female social groups rank hierarchy by the most social person that distributes rewards with equal allocations. Male social groups reward the man that gives out the most the equitable shares.

Explained more simply women give each person in the group an entire pie and the most popular is the one that finds the pie shop. Men work together to make a pie and the leader is the one who carves up the pie and gives it out fairly. I.e. the males that contributed the most ingredients or more involved in preparing the pie get bigger pieces. Men that take the pie all for themselves or give up the pie to others are considered too dominant or too weak.

This goes all the way back to male apes going on hunts while female apes stayed back and waited for meat to be brought to them.

Our modern society is shifted to favor the female schema over the male one and men will suffer until more balance is reached.

First off, I don't think it's helpful to take the hard position of "there is a war on boys/men" unless you can thoroughly argue that position. A "War" implies aggressors and defenders which puts people you're trying to convince on the defensive. Even if you believe it's true, taking such a hard position without having your arguments air tight just defeats your purpose. Even if you do have your arguments on point, it's easy for people to use a strawman to say you think women are oppressing men. Even worse they will take you as saying women seeking equality oppresses men, or that you're saying men are powerless, then dismiss your claims based on that misunderstanding.

I would recommend making a softer assertion along the lines of "the well being of men has been declining in the Western world." That softer claim is much easier to defend, just look at suicide rates, incarceration rates, education stats, life expectancy rates etc. Take an approach that is closer to "we are all int his together so we should all want both men and women to do well and right now men need help." That triggers the leftist desire for collectivism and cooperation.

Tucker Carlson is running a Men in America segment every Wednesday this month about how men are in trouble these days. He provides a ton of stats and statistics on the topic. I'll edit this if I can find links to the segments.

March 7 Tucker: Something ominous is happening to men in America

March 14 Tucker: Washington not worried about male wage crisis

With any of these books, I highly recommend looking up video interviews with the authors to get more information and to see how they condense their arguments.

The war against boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men by Christina Hoff Sommers.



Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream - and Why It Matters Paperback –
by Helen Smith PhD

Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 Paperback – January 29, 2013
by Charles Murray


The gender gap stuff has been going on since the 1970s. Economist Thomas Sowell, student of Milton Friedman, has been explaining how asinine the claim is for decades. Here he is dismantaling it back in the 1970s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_sGn6PdmIo

[Here is another take down from more recently.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EK6Y1X_xa4
) This interview covers his book Economic
Facts and Fallacies, the chapter Male-Female Facts and Fallacies would be a good resource for you to read and take notes on concerning the pay gap myth. Here are some good quotes from that chapter.

>“History shows that the career paths of women over the course of the twentieth century bore little resemblance to a scenario in which variations in employer discrimination explain variations in women’s career progress.”

> “The proportion of women in professions and other high-level positions was greater during the first decades of the twentieth century than in the middle, all before anti-discrimination laws or the rise of the feminist movement.” Further, “There is no pay gap for full-time workers 21-35 living alone,” and, “As far back as 1969, academic women who never married earned more than academic men who never married.”

>In another study, from 2005, “Among college-educated never married individuals with no children who worked full time and were from 40 to 64 years old, men averaged $40,000 a year and women $47,000.” What, then, explains cases when the numbers tilt the other way?

Here is a transcript of the above interview. Here is a good one...

>Interviewer: Well, you're right. I'm gonna quote you again. "Among the many factors which influence male-female economic differences, the most elusive is employer discrimination."

>Dr. Sowell: Yes, that when you correct for all the various factors such as the number of hours worked, the continuous employment versus taking a few years out to have children and so on, you take all that into account, the differences between men and women become quite trivial. If you look at the academic world or as far back in 1969, women who were
never married and earn higher incomes than men would never marry. They became
tenure professor at a higher rate than men who would never marry. And then later on if
you look at the general population, if you take the women who are past the childbearing
years and they work continuously, their incomes were higher than men who would work
continuously and so on. So the difference is that not that the employer is paying them
differently, but that they have different characteristics.

>Interviewer: So, the central variable and explaining economic differences between men and
women is not employer discrimination, not the rise of feminism, it's that women--it's
child rearing, marriage and child rearing, that's the variable.

>Sowell: Yes.

>Interviewer: As that varies, a woman's arrival or participation rate in higher level occupations
varies with that, that's—

>Sowell:Absolutely.

>Interviewer: Okay. Now in principle, you note, family responsibilities could be perfectly evenly divided between fathers and mothers. But that isn't the way it has worked in practice.
Quote, I'm quoting you again. "Since economic consequences follow from practices
rather than principles, the asymmetrical division of domestic responsibilities produces
male-female difference in income." Question, what are the policy implications of that?
If we become fixed on eliminating male-female income differences, is it the case that the
only choice, the only route for doing that is to involve the government in redesigning the
very nature of the family?










The Pay Gap Myth and Other Lies That Won’t Die
By THOMAS SOWELL

Thomas Sowell takes down the gender 'wage' gap


***

Milton Friedman - Case Against Equal Pay for Equal Work - Professor Friedman explains how support for "equal pay for equal work" helps promote sexism.

This is an interesting argument but to fully understand what he is referring to you need to understand that minimum wage laws have traditionally been used as a way to oppress weaker social groups.
If there is any work where being a man or being a woman makes an individual more qualified for a job or better suited to the job, then the only power the unsuited party has is to offer to work for less money. If you insist on equal pay though you remove that one economic incentive the less desired group has to convince someone to hire them, they cost less.

This is captured well in the generally true claim "No man hates another more than he loves himself." You can be the biggest racist or sexist in the world but it's very rare for that prejudice to be motivating enough that you would see your business where you derive your livelihood and the security of your children fail just to spite someone. There are so many examples of very racist people putting their prejudices aside in order to hire minorities simply because it's cheaper to do so. Establishing equal pay or minimum wage laws completely removes the economic incentive to put your own prejudices aside. They remove greed as a motivating factor for giving people opportunity.

Economist Walter E Williams has written a book on this called South Africa's War Against Capitalism based on his study of the country during apartheid. Milton is making a similar argument against equal pay as Williams did concerning minimum wage. Williams point was that if you have racism in a society where people are irrationality predisposed not to hire a certain group, then the only power that group has to get a job is to offer to work for less. That's why white, racist labor unions have always been the ones to push minimum wage laws when confronted by a minority population competing for jobs. You saw the same thing happen in the US when black men moved North and competed with white laborers for railroad jobs. The white unions pushed for our first minimum wage laws which removed the economic incentive from employers to hire minorities.

If you take the feminist argument seriously, that there is rampant sexism in certain industries, then it makes no sense to force those industries to pay women an equal amount. Rather than hiring them despite their sexism because they can pay them less, those employers will simply stop hiring women altogether because they hate women. To me this shows the irrationality of the claims that feminist make about sexism being the cause of a lack of representation in certain fields. It's not because of sexism but because of self-selection. In countries with higher levels of gender equality you see even higher rather of self-selection in jobs. There are far more women in tech in countries that rate low on women's rights. Russia for example.

Economist Walter E Williams - Minimum Wage as a Racist Tool 2:20

What about hearing him speak about his most recent (incredibly relevant) works?

https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Apart-State-America-1960-2010/dp/030745343X

Very highly received by scholars and non-academics, btw.

I'm undecided on wage increases, but we do need to be careful of logical fallacies here.

The first is the appeal to motive fallacy. The identity of who is funding the ad is irrelevant to deciding the truthfulness their claim. We need to look at the issue itself and see what the merits are on either side, regardless of who is presenting what side, because as Jamie Whyte put it in Crimes Against Logic:

>It is perfectly possible to have some interest in holding or expressing an opinion and for that opinion to be true.

The second is the Card & Kreuger example you cited. We have to be careful of making a hasty generalization. The Card & Kreuger findings by no means settled the issue. In fact, the very next section to the page you linked, which discusses the responses to that study, begins:

>In subsequent research, David Neumark and William Wascher attempted to verify Card and Krueger's results by using administrative payroll records from a sample of large fast food restaurant chains in order to verify employment. They found that the minimum wage increases were followed by decreases in employment.

So the effect of minimum wage increases on employment is still not definitively known, at least based on what I can gather from that Wiki page.

TL;DR: This issue, like most, is much more complicated than it may seem at first and we need to look at it carefully without resorting to hasty and fallacious thinking.

Cryptofascist "stateism" religion claims.

It sounds like you are asking the right questions. Remember, the Scriptures do not teach that "money is the root of all evil", rather, "the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil." I would also encourage you to remember that giving (or helping others) is a spiritual gift listed right alongside leadership, teaching, and working miracles (see 1 Corinthians 12).

I will pray for you during your continued discernment, and if you are looking for some good reading while you try to find your way, I would suggest Timothy Keller's "Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God's Work".

Buy This: https://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Salesman-World-Og-Mandino/dp/055327757X

Remeber This: A true salesman is a master of empathy. Of understanding. You need to UNDERSTAND 'your customer'. Be their friend, collegue, voice from afar. And they will chose your business because of YOU.

Use one these: close.io, Pipedrive.com, GOOGLE SHEETS DAWG

Learn About: Porters Value Chain, Game Theory, Socioeconomics & Pyschology of Sales. <- gives you perspective.

Final Thoughts: Being thrown to the wolves sucks but its the only way to become a wolf. Sales training is a repetative memorization and attitude adjustment program. Have zero fear when doing, remove your ego, and climb by learning.

And if you're not happy with it go do something else man. Worlds a big place. Lots to do.

If you haven't read "One Nation Under God" yet, it goes through the history of that relationship.

Kevin Kruse's book One Nation Under God shows how corporations used Christian churches and movements to fight against the New Deal, which ended up morphing into the Christian nationalist movement that has taken over the Republican party today. It's a scary mix of theocracy, fascism, and unrestrained capitalism.

Also, there's the new Christian movement called the Prosperity Gospel, where they essentially say that the more you donate to the megapastors, the richer God will make you in the long run (backed up with scriptural citations, of course!). So the idea is that people who aren't rich aren't blessed; if you're poor, it's your fault! It's a shocking yet ingenious way to merge Capitalism and Christianity.

I'm an ex-Christian, and absolutely hated the Prosperity Gospel, because I was convinced that the love of money was the root of all evil. Funny how I never made the connection that capitalism is basically the root of a great deal of problems on our planet today.

For more in-depth reading, check out "The Search for God and Guinness: A Biography of the Beer that Changed the World" on Amazon. It's a fascinating read about the Guinness family.

Yeah, I think this is baked into the nature of capitalism. It needs us to consume, consume, consume to make more profits. It needs to constantly inflame our desires to drive us to more consuming. It needs to constantly make us feel inadequate in a way that the next purchase will solve, and then repeat the cycle. And then for products that seemingly lead to financial independence, it needs to coopt them to turn a profit for someone else. "Just come over here, I am a certified expert in financial planning--just turn over 1% per year to me and I will make your investments soar!"

Capitalism doesn't thrive by creating independence, it thrives on creating dependence on the market.

Two pieces of writing I find interesting on this front: anthropologist David Graeber's "bullshit jobs" thesis (http://evonomics.com/why-capitalism-creates-pointless-jobs-david-graeber/) and the theologian William Cavanaugh's short, accessible book Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire (https://www.amazon.com/Being-Consumed-Economics-Christian-Desire/dp/0802845614). The analysis of the nature of our economy in the latter is fantastic even if you don't share his particular theological views or interests.

One idea from Cavanaugh that really struck me: if we were satisfied with what we already had, the entire global economy would come crashing to an immediate halt. Therefore the system must ensure that we are never satisfied. In this way it isn't really "buying" goods and services that is the characteristic activity of the capitalist economy, but the act of "shopping"--a more abstracted activity which we can constantly participate in. It is not having and possessing the item, but the act of acquiring the item that is our implicit goal.

Some of this has to do with the phenomenon that Charles Murray described in Coming Apart. In short, increasing social stratification, and the collapse of community and social capital among those on the bottom rungs of the social ladder. That concurs with this study - Christians with less education are still more likely to consider religion important, but are also less likely to go to church.

So this isn't cause for celebration ("yay, educated people are still Christian, take that, people who believe that education causes secularization"), but rather a symptom of a disaster that's striking less educated people. As both Ross Douthat and Peter Beinart have pointed out, a post-religious right (and a post-religious politics in general) is cause for concern, for everyone.

Fantastic book. Historian Kevin Kruse has one as well that talks about how big business got in bed with the evangelicals in the 1930s/1940s as a reaction to FDRs New Deal. Prior to the Depression, most evangelicals were focused on social justice and workers rights, and thought the government should have a greater role in helping the poor.

Both evangelicals and big business feared the rise of a godless federal state. This is where the Religious Right laid its roots... it's why we have In God We Trust on our money, One Nation Under God in the pledge, and the National Prayer Breakfast. It was all a part of a revivalist movement that began to marry rugged individualism and Christian evangelicalism.

It includes some revealing chapters on the influence of Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell on US Presidents.

One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

This article article implicates some of the SBC and their love of oil cash:


http://www.pfaw.org/rww-in-focus/the-green-dragon-slayers-how-the-religious-right-and-the-corporate-right-are-joining-fo

This book discusses the subject:

https://books.google.com/books?id=09poCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA146&lpg=PA146&dq=southern+Baptist+convention+oil+money+gop&source=bl&ots=2iIolSbzUZ&sig=Cxd0GXMa8NS9958tkF5jeNllGeM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiThoHJqcjJAhVJqR4KHWIJCrEQ6AEIHzAH#v=onepage&q=southern%20Baptist%20convention%20oil%20money%20gop&f=false

I suggest this book as well. It discusses the relationship between big oil, the GOP and SBC:

http://www.amazon.com/American-Theocracy-Politics-Religion-Borrowed/dp/0143038281

by the way, I should point out that the video of Phillips linked above was in May, 2008 and he was talking about some "hypothetical" economic crash...predicting gloom and doom, all because of the corrupt financial sector in the U.S. He fucking nailed it, as he has done throughout his career, so this is someone people should listen to more often in my opinion. I highly recommend his last two books, especially American Theocracy.

I'm an avid reader of business books and have read all of these. Anything Tim Ferris is garbage in my opinion. That being said, there are three books you have to read:

1. 48 Days To The Work You Love by Dan Miller
   
   
2. The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller
   
   
3. Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World by Michael Hyatt.
   
   You will get so much mileage out of those three books alone and they're all very easy reads.

Check out the book "One Nation Under God".

It's about the Republican and Religious leadership slowly converting the right wing into a religious zealotry of a party. Fantastic read if you enjoy history!

> Where would I find a good source for the doctrine of vocation etc.?

This book has helped me sort through these issues. I have finance, econ, and religion degrees and speak a different language, so I know where you are coming from in having a wide array of interests.

I know businessmen who think that "I don't go to work to make money, I go to work to share Christ." This is fundamentally a papist view of work. The guy in the robe administering the sacrament has just as spiritual of a job as the CFO making strategic business decisions for the firm.

https://www.amazon.com/Every-Good-Endeavor-Connecting-Your/dp/1594632820

>The points trotted out seemed hackneyed and formalistic, and the "right answer" was always whatever cast Europeans and/or white males in the worst possible light.

It's funny because if you look at what's getting published in the top journals (American Sociological Review and American Journal of Sociology), it's nothing like that stuff. But that's still what our undergraduates are interested in (even though it's not really what are classes are like). I volunteered to be a discussant for some of the undergraduates' BA thesis and the two that I was assigned was something about Black Feminist epistemology (intersectionality is bad, boo! You should be black and feminist, but nothing more) and something about Foucault and death penalty abolition. They were just so out of the norm of the work done by the faculty and graduate students of the department, I didn't know how to react to them.

Honestly, I'm not surprised at your experience--that's still a big part of the field, especially at the undergraduate level--but I can tell you that, from the perspective of people in my department at least, that stuff legacy of sociology is, in a word, "embarrassing". I'd recommend Shamus Khan's Privilege (it just won our biggest book prize last year, the C. Wright Mills award) as a better example of what's actually being researched right now in sociology. Here's a PDF of the introduction, where he lays out all his arguments and the rest of the book is mostly filling in those theses with data. Rather than saying "hierarchies are evil and it is European/white/male's fault", the very first "lesson" of the book is "hierarchies are natural and they can be treated like ladders, not ceilings" (pg. 15). Historical sociology has always been less interested in that gushy stuff and more interested in developing theories about macro-level changes (why did states form? what causes revolutions? how did the Ottoman state centralize? why is nationalism different in Germany and France? how did the passport come about? where did capitalism come from?), though there's also stuff about how macro-level events affect people and social structures at the micro-level (Charles Tilly's The Vendée comes to mind).

Wow, you're absolutely terrible at debate.

What everyone is trying to explain to you that just because OP went around a few dangerous places and lived, that doesn't make these places safe. Hence, OP saying "you were all wrong!" is disingenuous because it's based on luck instead of actual crime stats.

A few resources for learning how to debate topics online: this book, this book, all of these.

To Serve God and Walmart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise does a great job of explaining just that. Basically, as /u/acomir stated earlier, they vote Republican to, first and foremost, "protect their Christian way of life" by banning abortion, gay marriage, etc.

Crimes against Logic, by Jamie Whyte. It's really clever and witty.

Edit : you can find a lot of his Times articles here. Be sure to check The five great fallacies and how to spot them.

Would be very interesting if it was intended that way, since he decided to write a followup called On Truth.

I think you can go deeper into Wal-Mart and its low-cost, low-pay model than /u/api does. It's not purely based in frugality; it's based in the low-pay, non-union Southern and Western United States, and is strongly tied to the conservative Christian Republican demographic. Bethany Moreton has written a good book on the topic called To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise for those interested in reading up on the topic.

This is actually a really interesting and complicated question with an answer rooted in the very foundation of the United States as a nation. I did a whole research project on it in graduate school because my dad worked for Philip Morris for 30 years and I couldn't figure out why he would sign on to work for a company (in the 70s) who's product killed people (the health risk was determined in the 1950s with the SG's warning on cigarette packages coming in 1964 and the cigarette ad tv/radio ban around 1971).




The TLDR summary: the Protestant Ethic of working hard in life and doing well for yourself ultimately fuels capitalism and thus the foundations of American society. Said morality dwarfs other concerns such as the potentially negative impacts products can have long term on consumers.




Edit: I am grateful to my dad and do not blame him in any way. He even helped out with the project by letting me interview him.




Great Reads:


https://www.amazon.com/Ashes-Americas-Hundred-Year-Cigarette-Unabashed/dp/0375700366


https://www.amazon.com/Protestant-Ethic-Spirit-Capitalism/dp/1603866043

Well, to borrow from Charles Murray, "Fishtown" just told "Belmont" to fuck off.

Time to get a better job. I've been reading 48 Days to the Work You Love and it uses Scripture and common sense to show that work doesn't have to be burden, it can actually be something you ENJOY. It then shows go to go about finding that better job. Keatsandyeats is also right, make sure you get some financial advice and work out a budget. Your local finance section of Barnes and Noble would have a lot of books on the subject. Dave Ramsey's stuff is actually pretty good if you've never thought about such issues. Also, I'm praying for you. I hope things turn around for you my brother.

Charles murray, author of the bell curve:

https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Apart-State-America-1960-2010/dp/030745343X

Although this focuses on the white working class, this is a critical component of the analysis

Camille Paglia, noted feminist:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/paglia-transgender-civilizations-decline/

These two would be considered fairly “oppositional” to each other

However, there is plenty of research from many think tanks showing the decline of the family and some possible reasons for it from AEI to Brookings

If you want some real fun facts about Guinness, I highly recommend picking up a copy of "The Search for God and Guinness". If you're an atheist, no worries. The book isn't trying to prosthelytize. It's simply a biography of Guinness as a company and the Guinness family, many of which were clergy. It's a very interesting look at how Guinness has made a positive impact throughout its long and rich history. It even details the history of beer itself and how it was likely created by accident.

I have this:

http://www.amazon.com/Give-Praise-God-Reforming-Worship/dp/1596383925

I also have this:

http://www.amazon.com/Recovering-Mother-Kirk-Reformed-Tradition/dp/1625646933

While I am at it, more links:

http://touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=13-10-020-f

http://heidelblog.net/2014/04/recovering-mother-kirk/

I'm a big "word, sacraments, and prayer" emphasis kind of guy, per my church:
<blockquote cite="">
Q. 88. What are the outward and ordinary means whereby Christ communicateth to us the benefits of redemption?
A. The outward and ordinary means whereby Christ communicateth to us the benefits of redemption, are his ordinances, <b>especially the word, sacraments, and prayer</b>; all which are made effectual to the elect for salvation.</blockquote>

http://opc.org/sc.html

Grace and peace.

Literally a book:

https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Apart-State-America-1960-2010/dp/030745343X

While it's good to think about personal, individual virtuous conduct on your own part, I would recommend additionally thinking about systemic and institutional ways you can "hardwire" Christian sensibilities into the organization of your entrepreneurial ventures altogether.

An extremely good book from a Catholic ethicist reflecting on these types of themes is "Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire." While Catholic, he's drawing on broadly Augustinian sensibilities, and in that sense shares a strong "proto-Reformed" type view of things like the nature of the will, the taint of sin, etc.

If anyone is interested in the history of this, please read/look into "One Nation Under God". I'm reading it now and it lays out how this came to be and how our country turned into "god's country"

Read books, meet new people, try new hobbies.

https://www.amazon.com/Days-Work-You-Love-Preparing/dp/1433685922/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?adgrpid=57149571518&gclid=CjwKCAjw36DpBRAYEiwAmVVDMCRfD2dgdjh7QzpRHjt4EWkrBJCrSuPV5l_P6HLQWgPZ5n3zxSCzyxoCrGUQAvD_BwE&hvadid=274727164268&hvdev=m&hvlocphy=9006071&hvnetw=g&hvpos=1t2&hvqmt=e&hvrand=11039603321921260983&hvtargid=kwd-300297535650&hydadcr=15805_10362718&keywords=48+days+to+the+work+you+love&qid=1562927719&s=gateway&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.com/Proximity-Principle-Proven-Strategy-Career/dp/0978562038/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=proximity+principle&qid=1562927759&s=gateway&sprefix=proxi&sr=8-1

At this point in the US its kind of a feedback loop, the republican party made their bed with christians (particularly the powerful ones at the top) and they now lend their political influence to rightwing causes.

That being said, there are larger trends that show religious people, especially the very religious tend to be very conservative and this is a trend that has held for centuries. What is new is the hollowing out in America at least of the political middle of the laity.

One could and people have written whole papers and books on this very subject.

I will just say a lot of this solidified around and because of the Reagan presidency, he built the "moral majority" coalition and it still affects us.

More basically, those who are taught that an old book contains the greatest truths handed down by a divine being who is the ultimate source of authority tend to be more susceptible to accepting things that are and resistant to change, as well as having a susceptibility to authoritarian acceptance and worship (they already literally worship a god in this structure, so why not politically?).

These are also people who believe in absolutes, in an unchanging, perfect god and an unchanging set of perfect morals. Much easier that way.

 

> In its broadest sense…fundamentalism is a form of ideological intransigence, which is not limited to religion, but includes political or social positions…

source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1369219/

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_authoritarianism

 

Here are some books of relevance:

One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

https://www.amazon.com/One-Nation-Under-God-Corporate/dp/0465049494

 

American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America

https://www.amazon.com/American-Fascists-Christian-Right-America/dp/0743284437/

(Note the author of this one Chris Hedges, has a background in theology, but a very leftist/liberal one. He isn't an atheist, but is very hostile to much of christianity in america)

 

What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America

https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/0805073396/

 

And here are some links to online free content that may be of interest:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalism

 

An overview of christian political affiliations, it also has citations and sources for those who doubt that increased religiosity correlates positively with right wing/conservative voting and views.

http://www.pnas.org/content/109/10/3616.full

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/10079-religious-and-free-market-fundamentalism-have-more-in-common-than-the-tea-party

Your dad reads Charles Murray and other conservative/libertarian social scientists, too?

So I read a few rants about people having shitty mornings today (including me) and figured I'd drop some knowledge. If you have a chance, get The Greatest Salesman in the World by Og Mandino, and read one of the "scrolls" near the end of the book every morning with breakfast, or on your commute. They're very short, but very motivating tid bits that will help improve your life one day at a time. The first half of the book is a story of some salesman (which, admittedly, I've never found the need to read), but the second half is composed of these short scrolls. Each one focuses on a different tweak to your mindset.

I'll give you my answers, since they're definitely going to be considerably different, at the very least, from the ones you'll get from anyone else around here.

>Mainly, I'm interested in hearing the Protestant criticisms of Catholicism, and Catholic criticism of Protestantism.

I can't really speak to this one, as I'm not really either of those. There are Catholics that I would deem to be "true Christians" (e.g. Gustavo Gutiérrez, Óscar Romero, John Dominic Crossan) and there are Protestants that I'd refer to as the same (e.g. Jürgen Moltmann, Reinhold Neibhur, Martin Luther King, Jr.). Heck, I'd even call people who don't profess to follow Jesus yet act in a Christlike manner to be "true Christians" (e.g. Mohandas Gandhi, Ernst Bloch, Slavoj Žižek). I'm much less concerned about one's theology than I am about one's praxis.

>How do you view the "lukewarm" Christians mentioned in the Bible?

You're talking about the ekklesia in Laodicea in Revelation 3:15-16, right?:

>I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth.

These are Christians that refuse to take a side. James Cone has a good quote that I tend to go back to for those "Christians" that refuse to take a side:
>"Either God is identified with the oppressed to the point that their experience becomes God's experience, or God is a God of racism."

One could substitute any form of hierarchy for Cone's "racism" in that quote; race for him is an ontological symbol of oppression. For God to be a god of liberation (as Jesus' God was/ is) He/She must have an alignment with the oppressed. He cannot be neutral, for neutrality to injustices privileges the status quo. And just as God must take a side, so must Her/His followers. That's what the lukewarm Christians in Laodicea were doing - refusing to take a side. They were unwilling, perhaps afraid to be "hot," and thus were no better than the "cold" rest of the world. Revelation's God is saddened by Her/His followers refusing to take a stand - lukewarm is equivalent to cold, neutrality is equivalent to oppression, but it is much easier to judge active agents of oppression than its passive agents.

> How do you feel about the divide on social and scientific issues - where it seems Catholics are generally more progressive, and Protestants are generally more conservative?

I don't really have a great answer for the science one. If you believe in a Creator (I don't ), and you believe that that Creator is "good," then you should believe that everything that that Creator endowed you with, including the ability to reason, is likewise "good." Thus, denying scientific discoveries and theories because they go against a literal reading of a 2500+ year-old book is spitting on your Creator's gifts to you.

As far as "social issues" go, it should be noted that the metanarrative of the Bible is inherently a political story, one of liberation. Whether God is guaranteeing a "promised land" to slaves in Egypt or guaranteeing that He/She will bring Her/His people home from exile, the authors are making statements against empires. When Mark opens his Gospel with "The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God," he's making a direct statement against Caesar Augustus, who was said to be the bringer of evangelion ("good news") and whose full imperial name included the phrase Divi Filius ("Son of the Divine/ Son of God.") The anointed (Christos) son of god that brings the good news was not the Emperor of the known world, but a Jewish peasant bastard from rebellious Galilee. He went on a mission preaching a "Kingdom of God" (as opposed to an "Empire of Rome?") where "the last will be first and the first will be last." He attacked the center of social/political/religious/economic power of Judea, the Temple of Jerusalem, and was promptly executed by Rome with a method saved for political radicals. But then, the scandal! He was resurrected, denying the ultimacy of Rome's power and Rome's ideology, ensuring via promise that the "Kingdom of God" was something that can be achieved.

Liberation is the heart of Jesus' evangelion. Thus, as far as social (and economic. Especially economic!) issues are concerned, the God that Jesus professed will always be on the side of the oppressed, not that of the oppressors, for that would be the demesne of the God that named Caesar "Augustus." I hesitate to even affirm "progressivism" as the Christian God's ideology de jure; it's more radical than that. Jesus completely subverts what the Romans considered to be "reality" by presenting a Kingdom of God free of death (oppression). He revealed society's constructed nature, denied the invalid claims to ultimacy (because nothing man-made can truly be "ultimate"), and presented an alternative. Whereas Empire causes oh so many to fall into non-being, Jesus instilled his followers with the courage to be.
>And lastly, why do you think you've found the most correct version of Christianity?

Most correct? I hesitate to ever claim superlatives, but I am confident that my understanding of Christianity is much closer to Jesus' religious beliefs than the abomination of "mainstream" Christianity is. Why, though? Because I make every effort to read the Gospel with the eyes of a first-century Jewish peasant - Jesus' original followers and original audience. Or, failing that, I read it through the eyes of oppressed classes, after all, they certainly have a hermeneutical privilege. I read the Bible unpolluted by Plato's doctrine of the eternal soul or by the obscenity that is Constantine's in hoc signo vinces. I divorce myself from the assumptions of "nature" that our society makes, just as Jesus himself did. I reject the inherently flawed assumptions about a "just world" and those that affirm the powers-that-be as infallible.

What does that leave me with? Hope. Energization against an unjust world because Christ's gospel screams that there shall be a real, just world that we can bring about. Not just can, but must, for
>"Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. Peace with God means conflict with the world, for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present.".

So, am I confident that I've "found the most correct version of Christianity?" No, and I don't think that that's possible. But I have been to the mountaintop, I have seen the Promised Land, and I know the Kingdom of God. Exegesis, coupled with the hermeneutic of the oppressed, offers no reasonable alternative "Christianity" to the gospel of liberation. Sadly, instead of this "bottom-up" model, Christianity has long been co-opted by "top-downers" more interested in either explicitly imposing their will further upon the downtrodden or simply pushing their legitimate grievances aside in favor of otherworldliness. But again, God cannot be neutral, and what use is a God on the side of the powerful? Why let them continue to stack the deck, to stack their team? The only God worth believing in is the God who evens the score, who stands on the side of true (distributive, not retributive) justice, the God who killed all oppression and bought us liberation at Calvary.

Can you clean? Start a house cleaning service.

Are out out of the city? Get a lawnmower and start a landscaping business.

Got $11.88?

I found this book helpful http://www.amazon.com/Crimes-Against-Logic-Politicians-Journalists/dp/0071446435

It isn't terribly in-depth, but it helped my understand the mindset of thinking logically and seeing where fallacies lay, plus the author has a very good sense of humor which makes the book nice to read.

I would say all of the above, but I'm unsure on economic security. There is no demographic group that is poorer today in real terms than they were a generation ago, even if they aren't advancing near as fast as we would like.

There is a general consensus that getting married improves one's financial position, due to the division of labor and generally lower time preference that come with such a relationship. The nature of our current welfare system doesn't help - in controlled experiements were families randomly receive welfare, those receiving payments break up at a higher rate.

Charles Murray's recent book "Coming Apart" deals with exactly this sort of topic:

http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Apart-State-America-1960-2010/dp/030745343X

I think that internet has likely advanced these trends. In the 'real world', even with traditional values on the decline, there are still heavy social pressures to live certain lifestyles, and it's hard to move just to get away from the judgement of your neighbors. At the same time, if you're living a responsible married life focused on the future, you're also likely to be surrounded by people with similar values who reinforce your chosen path.

Moving life online has had the effect of accelerating 'liberal' values. Reddit is the best example of the internet formula in action, but the effect is the same almost everywhere. Attention is allocated very intensely, breifly, and semi-randomly. Speed is rewarded over quality. Outside of the smaller subreddits, the top posts are lowest-common-denomenator content that can be upvoted fast. It seems plausible to me that those who are coming of age in this culture will have relationships in a similar fashion, especially as those relationships are just more content experienced digitally.

At the same time, the positive community effect is being subverted. Any judgment can be avoided, and any validation obtained, on the social networks of the web. To the individual, all lifestyles are now effectively laid out on the table in front of him, with none being consistently labeled as 'the right way'. It should not surpise us that when short-term satisfaction is presented as an equal choice to long-term committment, few choose the longer-term option. (This has been studied as well). It is especially harder to keep to the 'slow' lifestyle when the internet offers an endless stream of other people living the 'good' life right now. Saving for retirement or future kids is not a very attractive option when you're bombarded with images of your friends new cars or vacations.

> what are practical options to get out of poverty?

Save up enough to move somewhere where you can surround yourself with people who are better off and learn from them. My extended family is mostly hillbillies from West Virginia. The only ones to "make it good" were the ones who escaped the cycle by fleeing the state with family, friends, the military, or even all alone with nothing but a bus ticket, and an urgent desire to work as hard and long as necessary to break the cycle.

I am a child of a single mother who made that leap at enormous personal sacrifice, and am grateful to her for doing so.

Unfortunately, even making that move requires above-average intelligence. The technology economy has created an intellectual meritocracy. Since IQ is mostly -- or perhaps exclusively -- a heritable trait, we've in fact created a family-based caste system in the USA being spread in the name of "democracy" throughout the world.

Rebellion against this ostensibly meritocratic system and the intellectual elites self-interestedly promoting it as "equal" creates predictable populist sentiment ranging from the relatively benign, incompetent reign of Donald Trump to the genocide of suspected intellectuals by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

How does this relate to financial independence? It's in the best interest of anyone investing their money and intending to retire early to foster a stable society that can consistently profit and innovate. The society we've created is one with rich technologists at or near the top of the heap and a growing chasm of outrage dividing the political spectrum. How does one promote a financially-independent viewpoint in a way that enhances personal futures without destroying the social fabric that allowed its creation?

Thank You citizen

William T. Cavanaugh has an excellent (and brief) book that deals with this exact issue: Being Consumed.

Basically, these are evils that the church should not abide. It is our duty, as a eucharistic community, to be shaped and formed by the sacrament such that we learn to consume rightly, and therefore become food for others. The way we do this in the free-market is to speak with our dollars, since that is really the only way of speaking that we have which will be listened to. There are a lot more details obviously, since it's a book. I highly recommend it.

> as a reaction to communism I believe.

Sort of. More like a reaction to the New Deal. The definitive history of the phrase is the book One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America.

Abridged version is that the corporate fatcats tried to co-opt christianity in order to try to undo the New Deal which they labeled socialism. They put a lot of money into the effort, effectively kickstarting the religious-right. All that corporate money is how guys like Billy Graham got their start.

Here's an NPR interview with the author.

American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century

Yep. I'm not an expert, but I learned a bit from writing the paper. I will say the flow of books on the religious right slowed to a trickle after Obama's election in 2008, which I see as a good sign. Writers and thinkers on the subject seem to say that the RR reached their peak of political influence with GWB's administration, and are now on the decline (but again, I'm no expert). If you're interested in a thoughtful look at how the religious right gained so much power, a good slightly older resource is American Theocracy, written by a former Republican strategist in 2006. Chapters 4 through 7 outline the history of religious conservatism in the US, and how the Republican party capitalized on it to become "America's first religious party".

Congratulations. My wife and I are missionaries in Japan and support raising had been the most difficult part be far. There are two good books I would highly recommend: The God Ask, and Funding Your Ministry.

And capitalism and religion(christianity) have a symbiotic relationship.

https://www.amazon.com/One-Nation-Under-God-Corporate-ebook/dp/B00PWX7R56

Weston's A Rulebook for Arguments is clear and concise.

Heinrichs' Thank You for Arguing is more informal with lots of pop culture references.

Sagan's Demon Haunted World is a paean to science & critical thinking and Whyte's Crimes Against Logic is good as well

There is an excellent book all about this: One Nation Under God

The book itself is kind of entertaining and informative, but the title is pure hyperbole. I think marketing had more to do with the title than the author. I think it is supposed to be tongue-in-cheek. I certainly don't advocate the intentional use of logical fallacies for persuasion. For an excellent treatment of logical fallacies used in this way, I recommend Crimes Against Logic: Exposing the Bogus Arguments of Politicians, Priests, Journalists, and Other Serial Offenders.

Edit/response: Your comment has corrected a factual error I have made. I'm not Canadian and thus I spoke from assumption based upon a shared British tradition. In this case, it's not the courts being stripped of power, but rather the bill is too vague and divests interpretation to the existing provincial policy. It is these existing provincial policies that are incoherent and ideologically driven. I think parts of my my point still stands thou, this is not a bill that empowers and strengthens marginalized people, it feels more like a token gesture to make politicians look like they're doing something.

As for "cultural elite", my line of thinking was influenced by Harris and Murry's conversation based on Murry's work in Coming Apart, where the experiences of those making decisions are so far removed from the realities of life for the masses that they find it impossible to see society through any ideological lens than their own.

I would also like to say I'm one of these ignorant "cultural elites", privileged with a educational opportunities that my peers missed out on. After a worrying rise of nationalistic/anti-immigration sentiments in our Australian election followed by Brexit than the US Elections, I was lost and confused. The education I received was failing in its translation and the utopia I though should occur never materialized. It was only though a chance encounter with Peterson's JRE #877 that I got the first big "Ah ha!" moment since I read "The GNU Manifesto" and "Manufacturing Consent" as an impressionable highschooler decades ago.

Peterson's lecture series on Personality and Maps of Meaning presented a nuanced, high resolution explanation for our current chaotic cultural and the forces behind them. He then presents a powerful set of steps that the individual can take that are grounded in practical psychology, evolutionary biology and mythic symbolism. For example, after almost two decades of education I have never heard anything as power as his explanation on why students should be taught to write.

Anyway, sorry for the long edit and thank you /u/Statistical_Insanity for braving the down-votes in this partisan sub-reddit. I hope you join /u/yahooyellow in subscribing and continuing to contribute. Lively, honest (and sometimes messy) intellectual debate is truly what the world needs more of.

I would recommend reading 48 Days to the Work You Love by Dan Miller. Great book on how to transition careers using your skill set and passions. Even if you stay in sales you may find a path that better fits you. 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal https://www.amazon.com/dp/1433685922/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_.ZTHAb3D9NCXN

You need a career. I could give you a long speech about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps but I'll leave it at this. Read this book, do what it says.

The Sacred Santa provided some enlightening reading on that and related topics.

The Scottish Free Church Covenanter within me wants to set fire to one and use it to see other popish evils to set on fire - but part of me really wants to read this book and wonders if not there might be a place for it after all.

Also https://www.amazon.com/Protestant-Ethic-Spirit-Capitalism/dp/1603866043

Small book. Pricey because it's out of print, but great nonetheless. https://www.amazon.com/Pursuit-HappinessGods-Way-Living-Beatitudes/dp/161097493X

No doubt

The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is pretty much the introductory text on the subject. Read it for class. Never thought I'd bring it up on reddit.

Edit: It deals more with capitalist roots as a natural extension of Protestantism rather than riskiness.

In sales we call it the 3 steps.

Set the goals, plan the work, work the plan.

It really is that simple.

I'm just saying, figure out where in the sky you want to BE in 10 years, figure out what you had to do starting NOW to get there which gives you a bearing and a plot to your personal 'North Star'

Set the goal, plan the work, work the plan.

There's a lot psych to it like writing positive statements and leaving notes all over the place and forcing yourself to think positive YES I CAN!

Crap like that.

Check out Og Mandino's 'The Greatest Salesman in the World' , while based on faith and 'churchy' sounding (it was written in another Era), it is actually a primer on life. Oprah recently made a lot of noise about 'THE SECRET' which is a very similar rhetoric and how to psych yourself out to achieve your dreams.

It all depends on the goal. If OP wants to send a message, then choosing The God Delusion or God Is Not Great would certainly send that message. If OP wants a book that's a good read, both are still good choices, but now there're other books that are equally good choices.

The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality, The Portable Atheist, On Bullshit, On Truth, The Good Book: A Humanist Bible, The Moral Landscape, The Demon Haunted World, Religion and Science, and many others are excellent reads, but don't send that little (possibly unnecessary) jab.

This book helped me learn how to sell myself. It works, read it.

http://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Salesman-World-Og-Mandino/dp/055327757X

Og Mandino bequeaths a lot of wisdom in this book, with a religious theme. I don't consider myself religious at all and did not find it too preachy. I would say that it provides incredibly persuasive ideas that will help you stay in a positive state-of-mind. The following is a snippet:

"I was not delivered unto this world in defeat, nor does failure course in my veins. I am not a sheep waiting to be prodded by my shepherd. I am a lion and I refuse to talk, to walk, to sleep with the sheep. I will hear not those who weep and complain, for their disease is contagious. Let them join the sheep. The slaughterhouse of failure is not my destiny."

I liked On Truth and On Bullshit two tiny little books philosophizing about exactly what they say they are. I also highly recommend Borges' short fiction, each individual work is short, but you can consume as much as you choose since there are so many.

I've been doing it for nearly 20 years. THIS book will help you. It's the best out there and used by many organizations.

http://www.amazon.ca/Greatest-Salesman-World-Og-Mandino/dp/055327757X

Apparently Jesus would be all about the sanctity of profits.

Anyway, your comment reminded me of this OTHER book, which I'm guessing would interest you if you haven't already heard about it/read it.:

http://www.amazon.com/Serve-God-Wal-Mart-Christian-Enterprise/dp/0674057406/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1299352786&sr=1-1

(and I only link to Amazon for reference purposes... not to promote them)

Philosophical:

• Anarchy, State, and Utopia by Robert Nozick.
  
• A Theory of Justice by John Rawls.
  
  
  Crimes Against Logic by Jamie Whyte was enjoyable for me in college.

Crimes Against Logic. It's not a comprehensive primer on logic but this book highlights many common logical errors used today.

Check out this book. It's on how the rituals and consumerism of Christmas in America are deeply religious, they just worship Santa instead of Jesus.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1556358393/

The topic specifically says "DC Bars". A bazillion comments are talking about drinking. People from flyover country are amazed that it's socially acceptable to drink during the workday, but apparently this is not a big deal in DC. You just defended it yourself, and when I pointed it out, you suddenly changed the topic to restaurants. WTF?

> on an afternoon for lunch. I'm drinking. Gasp.

I'd get fired if I came back to work from lunch with alcohol on my breath. The fact that you consider it normal speaks volumes about how out of touch you are.

> What does "relentlessly pro-immigration" mean?

Call everyone who's for immigration restriction a racist? Basically if you think Trump "disqualifies" himself by suggesting that illegal immigrants be deported you're prob. a progressive extremest.

> Who, specifically, is giddy about "replacing" the population of the USA?

Progressives who want a one party state, based off demographic changes? Kind of people who write these articles?

> No. We don't have the evidence to justify this conclusion.

I'm sorry you don't think we 'have evidence' to say that " those who don't see PC as a problem are the group most likely to also be in favor of it?" Wouldn't this just be common sense?

Do you think people who do see PC as a problem are likely to be in favor of it???

> I'm having trouble following your argument. Are you saying that Democratic Party candidates are to the left of the party's voting base?

I don't know how I can state this more clearly than I did:

If these is no gap in attitudes beliefs between progressives and their voting base why results of the answers to a simply question about political correctness differ so largely between 'ultra-progressives' and the majority of Democratic voters?

This question shouldn't be a difficult one to comprehend.

> Who are these "extreme progressives" you keep referring to? It seems like you're using it as a stand-in for more well-to-do progressives.

I'm not, I'm talking about specifically the group outlined in the Atlantic article.

> Why might well-to-do progressives see PC as less of a problem? I can think of a few explanations that have nothing to do with "extremism."
>
>Perhaps well-to-do progressives are more likely to be educated on the subject of systemic oppression.
>
>Perhaps well-to-do progressives are more likely to be neoliberals who care more about social/identity issues than economic/structural issues.
>
>Perhaps well-to-do progressives, more likely to have been exposed to different types of people and a greater variety of perspectives in a higher education setting, are more likely to be sympathetic to "political correctness" insofar as it means trying to be considerate of what offends other people who aren't like them.

A) More likely to buy into the theory of 'systematic oppression' that downplays the importance of cultural or genetic differences between populations for a conspiracy about white power structures.

B) This one is likely true, but doesn't really counteract my point. One can still be 'extreme' and 'outside the mainstream' while not being a socialist/far-left on economic issues.

C) Most of the evidence suggests the opposite, that they are more likely to be ensconced in an echo chamber, largely out of touch with the lives of less privileged Americans due to their effective isolation ("Coming apart" being perhaps the best documentation of this).

I feel like I am repeating myself at this point but even if your particular, biased take is true, it doesn't really counteract my central point - there is every reason to believe that progressive policy makers are out of step with the majority of Americans on many, many issues.

> The fact is, we don't know. So my conclusions are just as valid, and probably a great deal more so, than yours.

Your conclusion that "We can't say that those people who are least likely to say PC is not a problem, are also the group that we can logically assume is most likely to be in favor of it" is a conclusion we cannot make assumptions about?

I think we may have reached the limits of the usefulness of this discussion.

>Guns were fine pre-brown invasion. The gun violence problem is directly and indirectly because of the Browns. They are committing most of the violence and brown diversity is a black cloud over all of society that creates despondence and erodes social trust everywhere.

Only partially true. Yes, the increased racial diversity in our society is contributing to the lack of social trust, as proven by Robert Putnam's work - which in turn is corrupting the morality and mental health of White people. But White culture itself has gone to shit in America, as proven by Charles Murray's Coming Apart. Both of which were largely caused by Jews [1][2][3][4][5]. White people have been morally corrupted and demographically and economically assaulted by Jewish-backed intellectual movements like liberalism and neoconservatism, and so they're increasingly turning to despair by becoming drug addicts, committing suicide, and lashing out at our pozzed society by becoming mass shooters.

https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Apart-State-America-1960-2010/dp/030745343X

I found this book to be very interesting on the topic. It doesn't set forth a specific solution, but does a good explanation of how we are coming apart in America.

If you're struggling with this, please read Every Good Endeavor by Tim Keller I'm in a similar situation as you, and found this book to be fundamentally eyeopening.

When God created Adam and Eve, work was an integral part of the primordial human unit. From the very beginning, Adam and Eve are called to work and cultivate the Garden of Eden. God didn't just create humans, He wanted a human society that would continue His creative work. Regardless of the work you pursue, (as long as it is not work that directly contradicts God's nature) you are participating in that cultivation yourself. Economics and Statistics are high level, steward work that benefits all of humanity by helping us understand the patterns and logic embedded in God's creation. By utilizing the intellectual gifts God entrusted you, your work becomes a continuation of the original cultivation that we all partake. Take pride in your work, even work that isn't seeing as explicitly "spiritual" because all work is necessary.

I don't really know. My guess would be something described by Charles Murray in his new book (https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Apart-State-America-1960-2010/dp/030745343X): essentially, there is a segment of the country who is practicing stable, traditional paths of structuring their life like long term stable marriages, raising children in two parent households, etc, and there is a segment of the country which is not, and the former group is building a virtuous cycle, while the latter group is stuck in a vicious cycle.

This phenomenon likely has many many causes, but I suspect some of which are the decline of religion and the lack of alternative value systems to replace it in certain smaller communities, the prevalence and ease of escapes from socially-bonding activities like video games and drugs, the dramatic restructuring of economic activity away from traditional jobs to more dynamic creative type jobs.

The US is a much bigger place than the European countries, with a smaller social safety tradition, so these differences are probably more exaggerated in the US.

The Pursuit of Happiness - God's Way: Living the Beatitudes by Servais Pinckaers, O.P. I cannot recommend this book enough. It's solidly rooted in Scripture and St Thomas but at the same time very accessible and quite short.

The after effects, sure. But I don't think you can make the case that racism is the primary thing keeping black people down today. For example, take the period between the civil war and the civil rights act of 1964. Black people advanced socially in that time period much more quickly than in the period since the civil rights act, despite the fact discrimination was both legal and extremely common, at least in the south. This tells me there's something else going on. You can see a lot of the problems that plague the black community also plague some white communities, namely crime, poverty, and drug use. Charles Murray writes about said white communities here. And they appear to have similar causes, poor work ethic, single parenthood, and so on. As Thomas Sowell points out,, black culture and redneck culture aren't as dissimilar as you might think.

Part 2

As for figuring yourself out, I am still in the process. I've been told its a life long one. But I've learned more in the past couple months than the rest of my life. And here is what helped. Reading self help books. Various, but I'll list the ones with the biggest impact. Also personality typing books helped a lot. They may not be 100% accurate but they have accurately targeted thought processes that we all have and seeing them fully explained in a way that matched a majority of my life was chilling and revelating.

I'll warn you that spirituality and religion is rampant in self help books. Earlier in my life I found this repulsive and rejected a lot of things that could have helped me because I was a firm atheist. You know, I was a logical little kid and I believed in what I could see. I was calling bullshit on the whole god deal in junior high without any outside influences. I even used to go to church and I live in a very religious area, it just didn't jive with me. But I have realized that while spirituality often manifests itself in the form of religion, it is something that we all will have. Spirituality put simply is meaning in a seemingly meaningless universe. And you will want it. Before you die, you will want to know that it all mattered. For a lot of people they turn to religion. For other people they try to help others(HEY LOOK AT ME). As such a lot of the people that write self help books are religious and they insert God heavily into their texts. This does not invalidate anything they have to teach you. If you put down a book because the writer is religious then you are only hurting yourself. I do not extend this opinion to televangelists and the like. There are snakes in the field pretending to help people because its an easy way to make money. But mostly, the self help field is powered by people who really want to help others and who gives a fuck what they believe IF they can actually help people. The universe is fucking crazy if some people need religion to deal with it so what.

Personality typing is what I got to first.. it helped me recognize some of my motivations for the actions I take and the books on the personality types themselves are self help books. I prefer the enneagram to others and the best book to start with for that is Personality Types by Don Richard Riso. I've moved on a bit from this as I have more pressing concerns like finding a fitting occupation that I like but I will definitely return and explore. In understanding yourself, you can understand other people better. https://www.amazon.com/Personality-Types-Enneagram-Self-Discovery-Richard/dp/B00DO8TFAG/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1482784672&sr=1-1&keywords=Personality+Types%3A+Using+the+Enneagram+for+Self-Discovery+revised

Psycho-cybernetics Updated and Expanded by Maxwell Maltz. Once you understand a bit about how you work and what you want, how do you make yourself get there? This book is how. The whole book is based around one thing and how to apply it - what you think you become. It sounds kinda dumb but it is a truth. A man thinks about building a house, then he builds one. Everything that we've done started as an idea. We pull from the metaphysical(feelings, thoughts) to build from the physical(the universe). This includes our mind and body, because somehow the mind is (seems) metaphysical yet clearly relies upon physical matter that can be changed. So the mind can change itself. There is a section of the mind that operates autonomously, the sub conscious. This book aims to teach you about it and how to operate it. https://www.amazon.com/Psycho-Cybernetics-Updated-Expanded-Maxwell-Maltz/dp/0399176136/ref=pd_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=WBE8PSVGHBSQ7QSB80XT

Now I am working through the audio book of https://www.amazon.com/Days-Work-You-Love-Preparing/dp/1433669331 Its been very good so far and has a very practical workbook for figuring out what you really want to do. There is much philosophical thought on what work should be and really opened my eyes to what it could be. Before, I just needed money. I wanted something tolerable that made adequate dollars. But that may not be the way. As well it has much information on actually getting the job once you know what you want.

These may not resonate with you. Nobody made this list of books for me, I had to find it myself. I did read reviews and look at recommendations, but nobody said read this, this and this, and you'll be good to go. I don't think it works that way, but these are definitely great books.

You are reluctant to stop the weed because you were already like this before. What does that have to do with anything? If my foot is already hurting, and I go kick a door, it is just going to hurt worse. Regular weed use decreases motivation, its a fact. You can read studies if you need to see it to believe it. Slight impairments in pretty much all areas, which you definitely do not need if you are ADHD. Also some studies suggesting it can alter brain development for the worse. And not to mention the smoke.. You need your brain and lungs at 100%. You think these 19 years have sucked? Well you have a lot of years left. Conclude what you will. As for the anxiety and insomnia, I suggest ashwagandha. Its a godsend with no side effects. https://examine.com/supplements/ashwagandha/ If you get it, you need to make sure it says KSM 66 as that is the more effective version. It also varies per vendor but swanson is a good brand and the one I use.

Okay! You read my essay what now. Go to the doctor and get medicine. Yes they have side effects, yes they suck. But they work. First one doesnt work or the side effects too strong? Do not be complacent, change dose or change medication. Dose can be extremely important. On viibryd 40mg I have sleep paralysis and wake up after very short time leaving me extremely exhausted. Also insomnia. I've been on viibryd 20mg for 8 days and nearly all the negative effects have vanished. I just cut my pills in half, no need to go back to the doc just to test dosages.. although perhaps that was a bad idea because the reason I made this throw away account was to vent during a huuuuuuuuuge mood swing. That morning I was out walking listening to self help audio books planning my future. And all of a sudden I was slumped down asking myself why I ever thought I could achieve anything. Withdrawals can be rough.

My straterra, an adhd medication, the only side effect it causes is that its a little harder to urinate. Grants me a lot of control. Someday, I hope to be well enough to not need the viibryd. But I will never not need the adhd medication. My mother smoked while pregnant and breastfeeding and it damaged my brain. It sucks, its a fact.

How I broke my loop -

1. Desperation
   
2. Ayahuasca/mindfulness
   
3. Time/letting my brain mature and the adhd to taper off a little more
   
4. Medicine
   
5. Self help books
   
   Also don't assume that the mushrooms did nothing. It took awhile for me to realize what ayahuasca had done and how I could use it, I'm talking months. Although I haven't done them(I am interested in that though. Heard good things).

First thing I thought of: http://www.amazon.com/Being-Consumed-Economics-Christian-Desire/dp/0802845614.

Cavanaugh is Catholic and I'm not, but his work on the Eucharist being a resource for resistance to state torture and market consumerism is profound. Of course, I'm in the Eucharist-makes-the-Church side of Protestantism.

I want to tell you that if you build your identity on anything other that Christ, it will fail you, and you will fail it.

I've made my work an idol, and I'm amazed to say that for the first time in my life I'm starting to see things and myself differently. Please take a look at this book I'm going through right now as it has helped me a great deal: http://www.amazon.com/Every-Good-Endeavor-Connecting-Your/dp/1594632820/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1453911053&sr=8-1&keywords=every+good+endeavour

For starters on the subject of God and work, you might benefit from this sermon. I loved it:
http://www.gospelinlife.com/work-and-rest-5312

find a little book called "Crimes Against Logic."

Max Weber's essays on authority are some of the most important sociology scholarship, in my opinion.

Read everything you can by him on legal-rational authority (bureaucracy) and on charismatic authority.

Weber. On Charisma and Institution Building

Weber. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: and Other Writings

yeah, the way I see it is that colleges should select the applicants who are both the most qualified and who will mutually help to create the best collegiate experience for their classmates. Racial quotas don't seem to have any rightful part in that, but affirmative action (which I agree with to some degree, though I think maybe it isn't executed very well and may actually be harmful in some cases, as when people are put in situations where they cannot succeed) has skewed the proportions somewhat.

===

Geographic, racial, and ethnic diversity may also play a role in creating a better campus experience-- I've been reading Coming Apart and it covers how most of the cognitive talent in the US groups itself into Super Zips (really wealthy zipcodes usually bordered by equally or nearly as wealthy zipcodes), and that those elites are also producing a disproportionate amount of the cognitive talent in the next generation (I believe this is true across all races). So selecting merely on cognitive ability would lead to a disproportionate amount of people raised in this new elite bubble being admitted into the top tier colleges, which would probably have negative effects on the campus experience. It's a tricky issue.

You should know...EVERYTIME you use a URL shortener on reddit, your post will go directly to the spam folder and sit there. In the future, follow the "formatting help" to embedded the link behind test like this to hide a long URL.

I've approved your post.

Thanks! I didn’t think of it on my own—I was reading this book, and it powerfully impacted my approach to work:

https://www.amazon.com/Every-Good-Endeavor-Connecting-Your/dp/1594632820

Crimes Against Logic: Exposing the Bogus Arguments of Politicians, Priests, Journalists, and Other Serial Offenders

yeahhh i've been trying to do the same i've always been good at picking at fallacies within debates and arguments but never known the names and whatnot. i think my two favourite books i've read on it so far have been: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crimes-Against-Logic-Politicians-Journalists/dp/0071446435/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=1OUX7ZNGSEQQY&coliid=I7NZTFCGW8PUC

and
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fundamentals-Critical-Argumentation-Reasoning/dp/0521530202/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=1OUX7ZNGSEQQY&coliid=I2KQKKH9GW8FG2
managed to borrow both from my university library!

I'm pretty sure this whole book is about the Calvinist connections:
http://www.amazon.com/Protestant-Ethic-Spirit-Capitalism-Twentieth-Century/dp/0140439218/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1427254632&sr=8-1&keywords=protestant+work+ethic

You might find this book helpful http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1433669331

We're talking about two different things, here -- or at least two aspects of it. One is the acceptability of an employer pushing its belief system on its employees (particularly when those belief systems are "faith based"); the other is whether/when that applies to the CofS or the members who are themselves employers.

Let's start with the first piece, which is the "rights" of an employee. I'm thinking of the many times I have worked for a large company that got into a Management Thing Of The Month Club, whether it was "Quality Circles" or Agile development or "business process re-engineering." If the boss says you're going to take the course, and that this is the way we do things around here... that's how it works. If you disagree with its premise or practice, you could bitch about it, or be insubordinate, but eventually (a) you do it anyway (b) you go to work somewhere where you don't have to endure such silliness (c) you give it a try and decide it's useful after all or (d) you hold your breath until the Management moves on to another fad. (If indeed it actually is; I'm a serious proponent of Agile, for instance.)

Note that some of these management objectives do have faith at their core, at least in practices such as "we're closed on Sunday so you can pray" or choosing franchisees who participate in group prayers. While I've been lucky enough to avoid such companies (they also tend to have crappy pay), I have known people to work in "Christian companies," and even if such businesses cannot legally discriminate in hiring... well, you're probably not going to last long unless you put up with the "Thanks to Jesus" commentary. If you took a job at such a firm and their employment contract says, "We apply biblical management principles," then you know it ahead of time, and you have the freedom to not accept the job.

> You could claim that parts of Leviticus are not part of the religious teachings of Christianity, being that it is a "book of law" and not a book regarding the sacrifice of Jesus, but its part of the "holy scripture" and thus it is inseparable from the religious teachings of Christianity.

A better analogy is the Talmud. The bible is "the word of god," but the Talmud is interpretations by men. It's possible to consider yourself Jewish without following the Talmud -- and that's pretty much what Reform Jews do. (It was the Talmud, for instance, that interpreted, "Do not eat the calf in its mothers milk" as the complex laws of Kashrut.)
Now, is WISE part of Scientology? I don't think so. It's based on the Green Volumes, sure. But it isn't the Green Volumes, any more than Og Mandino's The Greatest Salesman in the World isn't part of the bible... though he sure refers to it a lot. (I haven't read the book in 30 or 40 years, and I recall it as being good sales advice... and also very Christian.) "Inspired by," sure. "Aligned with." Absolutely. Does that make the advice less valuable, if it's true...? And if it's not, I don't care where it came from.

If someone accepts a job that uses WISE management techniques, and is open about doing so -- which seems to be the case here -- then I can't see how they are being forced to adopt a religion.

Well anyways, here's a NRx reading list I'm slowly making my way through...

​



Introduction

The Dark Enlightenment Defined*
The Dark Enlightenment Explained*
The Path to the Dark Enlightenment*
The Essence of the Dark Enlightenment*
An Introduction to Neoreaction*
Neoreaction for Dummies*

Reactionary Philosophy in a Nutshell*
The Dark Enlightenment – Nick Land*

The Neoreactionary Canon

The Cathedral Explained*

When Wish Replaces Thought Steven Goldberg *

Three Years of Hate – In Mala Fide***

****

The Decline

We are Doomed – John Derbyshire*
America Alone – Mark Steyn*
After America – Mark Steyn*
Death of the West – Pat Buchanan***
The Abolition of Britain – Peter Hitchens

****

Civil Society and Culture

Coming Apart – Charles Murray
Disuniting of America – Arthur Schlesinger
The Quest for Community – Robert Nisbet
Bowling Alone – Robert Putnam
Life at the Bottom – Theodore Dalrymple
Intellectuals and society – Thomas Sowell

****

Western Civilization

Civilization: The West and the Rest – Niall Ferguson
Culture Matters – Samuel Huntington
The Uniqueness of Western Civilization – Ricardo Duchesne

****

Moldbuggery

Mencius Moldbug is one of the more influential neoreactionaries. His blog, Unqualified Reservations, is required reading; if you have not read Moldbug, you do not understand modern politics or modern history. Start here for an overview of major concepts: Moldbuggery Condensed. Introduction to Moldbuggery has the Moldbug reading list. Start with Open Letter series, then simply go from the beginning.*

****

​

Welcome (almost)! You'll love it down here. Check the sidebar about places to live, that's a good place to start. As for getting a job, I can't speak too much about it, but I'd say start early, and send resumes with abandon.

When we moved here a bit over 5 years ago, my wife sent resumes out from our place in Nashville, and got a job offer 4 weeks before we moved down. It can definitely happen. She followed a job search method from the book "48 Days to the Work You Love" (http://amzn.to/2fCE2U9), would highly recommend that approach to snagging something down here.

Tampa is growing at a rapid clip, it's an exciting time to be in the city!

Check out this book. It explains the history.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00PWX7R56?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_d_detailpage_o00_

Please read or listen to this book. It will change your life. I don’t love to read and it took me a week but I wish I would have read it years ago.


48 Days to the Work You Love

>I see you've never been poor! It doesn't work like that - when you are hand-to-mouth, you are highly stressed (for obvious reasons), and the stress of any such situation pretty much negates the ability to make foresightful long term plans - this is basically human psychology/physiology.

And yet sixty years ago, despite any demographic cross-section of the U.S. being poorer, this wasn't a problem. Marriage rates were higher among the lower class and single mothers were rarer.

I've become tired of this obscurantism and denialism surrounding the social issues of the poor. Yes, I'm sure in any cross-section of the United States, the poor have it worse, and are more stressed out and so forth. I don't doubt that in psychology, stressed people make worse decisions. That still doesn't explain the disparities of the world around us.

The United States, despite its problems, still has the richest poor people in the world. They work fewer hours on average than they did in generations past, and live in healthier environments. Despite this, I'm to believe that the reason they're all making worse life decisions than their grandparents is because of the crushing stress of their relative poverty?

People poorer than them, even living in an age without plentiful condoms and legal abortion, managed to have fewer kids outside of marriage and say together. At some point we must dispense with vague appeals to the miasma of poverty - this is about values, institutions, and a civil society in disrepair. The white working class has become totally disconnected in their values and behavior from the generations that came before them. They aren't lacking money; They need shame, discipline, and the fear of god.

>TL;DR If you don't agree with abortion, don't get one.



I completely agree with your sentiments, but I want to point out a bit of a logical fallacy many of us fall under when trying to argue with the religious. The problem is that things like abortion and gay marriage go against a Christian's fundamental set of beliefs, and they are taught not to abide by it in any capacity. Jaime Whyte does a better job of explaining it in his book "Crimes Against Logic." I think it's a book /r/atheism or /r/politics would enjoy.



http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0071446435

It all goes back to a guy named Billy Ghram, the red scare, and a story about how his work manipulated the poor and uneducated to believe that the gop was the party of Christ and that anything else is stalinist-communist.

It's not a short story, nor one easily understood by five year olds. Pick up this book for details
https://www.amazon.com/One-Nation-Under-God-Corporate/dp/0465049494

Probably the single most important idea he is responsible for is that taxes are conceptually theft. This man did a lot of damage to the idea of American values.