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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rambi who wrote (30268)	6/28/1999 2:41:00 PM
From: jbe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71178

I do think there is a lack of structure today and that societies need some sort of cohesiveness that we seem to have lost, which used to be provided by Christianity for many. penni, if you are talking about American society in particular, my humble opinion is that there is a good deal of cohesiveness. Much of it is provided by a sort of "civic religion," values and assumptions about how our society ought to be ordered that most people here hold unconsciously. For example, the mere phrase: "He has a right to..." reveals an unquestioned belief that people have natural rights -- not a belief shared by all societies. I also think there can be too much "cohesiveness," when people are afraid to hold, let alone voice, unorthodox beliefs. Personally, I like variety. Finally, I think we may be exaggerating the degree of "cohesiveness" that existed in one or another society at one or another time in the past. For one thing, we are limited to the written record. Where the "ordinary" person --i.e., the person who left no written record of his/her beliefs behind -- is concerned, we are limited to indirect evidence. (For example, I remember reading an essay by an historian of American history, arguing that the belief in witchcraft was much more prevalent than orthodox Christian belief in Puritan New England. No doubt he was overstating his case,but he must have had some sort of a case.) Secondly, when "unorthodox" belief is persecuted, it tends to go underground. The more monolithic a belief system appears to be, the more likely that all kinds of "proscribed" beliefs are percolating beneath the surface uniformity, even though they are unlikely to have found their way into the historical record. Joan Edit: P.S. Let us also not forget that in times past, different classes in any given society often had quite different "belief structures," because there was little, if any, real social intercourse between classes. In India, for example, different castes were expected to have totally different interpretations of "Hinduism." And since nobody insisted on orthodoxy, it did not bother anybody.