I’d say Darwin is certainly part of the liberal tradition.

But Dvault is wrong that it is bad that the place that the institution of the church had in society was essentially replaced by nothing? If so, wrong how? Wrong that it was replaced by nothing (or at least nothing good), or that it is bad that it was replaced by nothing?

For some sure but it misses the commnal issue where many see their worldview 'branch' being fatally undermined by others leaping.

We have large numbers who can no longer see the church as the place for moral authority but have leapt to no new branch (or accepted that the only moral authority comes from within)

I nominate Sports to take over the mantle from Church as the main social cohesion element. It attempts to manage the same national and ultimately global conflict of tribalism vs. community. Inspires passion and dedication. It brings together family and the people around you towards a common goal. Symbolizes war, power, and other historical traditions. And most of the discussion surrounding what to follow and support is emotion-based rather than fact-based.

The best part? In diametric opposition to Church it's ultimately meaningless. We shouldn't want important beliefs and policies in our society to be determined on the basis of the above paragraph, but it does appear that we might indeed need an outlet for those aspects.

Do you live anywhere near a major State University?

Hey, you made a post I mostly agree with, is hell frozen?

I went to a highly accredited science focused university (computer science degree) that is about 40-50% asian with a heavy foreign chinese tilt. About 12% white. What I will say about these students is their work ethic is absolutely ****ing unbelievable. These kids, with few exceptions, do absolutely nothing but study. I had to adjust to become like this too just to avoid being overwhelmed by the competition since most classes are curved.

Does seem notable that sports fandoms seem to have risen in parallel with the decline in religion, and maybe especially in very secular parts of Euroland.

I was comparing foreign schoolkids (ie teens) with Western. A half hour extra studying per night isn't going to close the gap much; three hours, maybe.

Andrei Markovits (disclosure: he's a former professor of mine, and acquaintance) makes this exact argument. Check out his book on this. It's sorta dry and not perfect but he's obviously headed in this direction, that the argument is effectively that an intense sporting culture (including professional sports) emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century. Because of capitalism, because it could be commoditized, because it could be made empirical - it had all of the facets of modern and post-modern society that embraced science and markets -- and has replaced old religious and nationalist passions, while still keeping a martial spirit alive.

So it basically fulfills a bunch of goals and utilities of liberal capitalist society, and the rise of professional sports in culture should be seen in that light: it replaces church, replaces military training or even activities like Boy Scouts to inculcate discipline and physical fitness in men, redirects tribalist aggression, and as an added bonus you can sell and commoditize literally all of the components. The argument is that it's sort of the perfect cultural marker for advanced capitalist societies that are highly competitive but retain the vestiges of the human condition of aggression, violence, tribal passions, uniforms, chants, whatever. It's no accident that for instance professional sports culture (namely baseball), college athletics as a serious thing in the US, the re-emergence of the Olympics, the development of ice hockey and later basketball all germinated at the height of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era. They were all post-industrial developments.

So in the future we will all become Neo-Shintoist sumo fanatics?

The toxic masculinity and overall self-destructiveness of (amerikkkan) football really do represent our capitalist culture very well. I hope you guys don't see that as a good thing.

It's probably a little worse since I spend a lot of time watching college football wherein a bunch of millionaire coaches and admins lord over unpaid, mostly young black men and smash them into each other so that often brains are scrambled and they break limbs and stuff, and only the top 3-5% of these players make any real money from it, and almost all of the managers, coaches and admin types fight tooth and nail to make sure only management ever gets paid. It's really the prototypical American looking glass.

Totally worth it to see tOSU get dunked on by Purdue.

Oh speaking of tOSU, worth reiterating that in addition to maintaining functional slave labor who are compensated in educations that the universities often actively dissuade the athletes from getting, college football coaches will often colluded with local law enforcement or universities to prevent any justice at all when their players or coaches abuse and rape their classmates and families and what not, super healthy ecosystem they have going on.

Good luck on your mission to reconfigure human biology over a span of a generation or two. Competitiveness and masculinity aren't just facets of modern culture.

Sports also promote fairness, diversity, team-building, honesty, the collective over the individual, work ethic, and egalitarianism.

I think the part where Benjamin is off is that he doesn’t understand the intense role of the church in the West until 50 years ago. If you just think yeah there were some churches before and now there are churches too you miss the change in norms.

Does anyone remember the crack baby basketball episode of South Park?

Fairness--nope, honesty--nope, collective over individual--sort of, egalitarianism--nope. team-building--sort of. A lot of the things you posted are theory but not reality. ie, every team has multiple players who are worse than teammates but play due to other reasons. Cheating is accepted if you can get away with it. Refs aren't fair. Teams try to get individuals to compete against each other for roles and spots on the team. I'll concede the others.

I agree that humans are naturally tribalistic while maintaining it's stupid as all hell that'll get many of us killed for no good reason.

The obvious retort to .Alex. who (I think) is a supporter of secularization of society but is also dismissive of re-configuring masculinity is that it seems just as radical to take religious institutions out of the lives of the masses as it is try to reconfigure gender norms. If we're taking the conservative pose on gender, I'd suggest opening up our social conservatism to the idea that up-ending religious institutions was just as big of a challenge. Is just as big of a challenge. It was obviously effective from one perspective: religious institutions and orthodox religious practices are decaying here in the US and globally. I'd argue the project is only halfway complete, because -- and I'm a broken record here -- but the challenge remains to find that institution of social cohesion that organized religion has played for an extremely long time (granting all of the ways religion failed to do this, harmed social cohesion, etc. the bigot child rape misogyny stuff that I largely acknowledge as valid).

Sports, especially watching professional sports, doesn't exactly fill all the niches that organized religion did. Religion was a social hub/community, a way to spread a common set of ethics and morals, a way to instill folks with meaning, purpose, and responsibility, and the only exposure to philosophy that most people encountered. Watching pro sports only superficially fills the social hub/community space, doesn't instill folks with ethics and morals, and while some people do derive meaning and purpose in their lives from watching sports, it is a sad and pathetic exercise. And, uh, the exposure to philosophy that folks get from watching pro sports is pretty minimal.

The role for sport is important but obviously very limited compared to religion in gving people meaning.

Why do bad things happen? Because the offisde rule works in mysterious ways?

Maybe it's (literally) right in front of your nose.

Is it even possible to reconcile dvaut1's idea of social cohesion with a divisive society that rejects huge numbers because of their political views.

Social cohesion has to be inclusive to the vast majority of people within it - despite their views which may well be rejected.

Sure, I agree sports is an extremely pale imitation of religion and doesn't really fill anything close to the social needs that organized religion did and does. Conceded. I'd also grant .Alex.'s point that it's less deadly and the worst sectarian sports debates result in hooliganism and not like deadly conflicts, so it has its advantages.

But sure, I'm not suggesting sports = religion and I agree that it will never do that, which is why I'm here partially caping for the idea that the decay of religious institutions as problematic.

This is pretty classic causality dilemma. I'm arguing the big divisive society we live in where we're all revolted by each other is due to the waning influence of religious institutions in public and political life.

So I'd say yes, it's possible under the correct circumstances to have more social cohesion. Certainly not some utopia vision where we all get along, not that obviously, but we'd have less division if organized religions were more central. That's almost incontrovertibly true. Now: Is that a good thing? Is the kind of social cohesion promoted by organized religion a good thing? Maybe not, YMMV, I'm not necessarily defending that. Just to bring it back to the start, I'm simply arguing that social conservatives long argued this social disunity would happen and the left derided it and (from my vantage point) the left now has a bit of moral panic about norm erosion and social segregation and whatever else. Not the totality of the left, there's a vibrant accelerationist part of the left, or people simply steadfastly anti-clerical or anti-religion that are probably pleased enough.