Monday, July 16, 2018

Antireligion

In this blog, I sometimes invent words by adding the prefix anti- to some existing word. I picked this up from Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of Antifragile. He points out that English doesn't contain a proper antonym for the word fragile. It would seem that the opposite of fragile should be durable, resilient, tough, etc. A similar (imaginary) word with the same meaning would be unfragile. This supposes there are two extremes of fragileness: fragile and not fragile. We might imagine dishes being mailed and trying to gauge which ones would arrive broken. That would amount to assessing the likeliness of something being damaged by chaos. Taleb notes there is another possibility: something being improved or strengthened by chaos. Trump has a penchant for lobbing chaos towards his opponents, which they swing at wildly to his benefit. The crack veteran soldier is hardened by the turmoil and brutality of war. Modern warfare doctrine has been heavily influenced by John Boyd's maneuver warfare, which is an abstract process that guides a belligerent to respond to the chaotic battlefield faster than their opponents. It was used to great effect in the first Iraq war. When war planners implement maneuver warfare, they are not just building an army that won't break in the face of chaos, but one that excels in chaos. An army that is not just unfragile, but antifragile.

In many domains we do see anti- used properly as a prefix. We can describe a spin as counter-clockwise, which the British call anti-clockwise. It is used correctly. It is not just the lack of clockwise, but the opposite. Sometimes the prefix is misused. A dud movie is called anticlimactic. Well, what is the opposite of climactic? The intended meaning is that the movie was weakly climactic or without climax. There are other prefixes that should have been used. Unclimactic, nonclimactic, aclimactic, etc.

If I decide to coin a new term - antireligion (technically, the term already exists, and just means opposition to religion) - it helps to know which variety of anti- is intended. We will actually use a 3rd version: anti- in the sense of the antijoke. The antijoke is a joke that pretends to not be a joke. Yet it has all the essence of a joke: setup, punchline, people laugh...or groan. It's ironically funny, but still a joke. Currently in theaters is the newest iteration of Deadpool, described as an anti-hero flick because he lacks the normal superficial virtues of a hero. Still, Deadpool generally does what all heroes do: confront forces of chaos to restore order. There are all kinds of similar examples of anti- used to describe things that are ironically pretending to be the opposite of what they are - mostly by hipsters.

It wouldn't be wise to criticize religions on principle, because nearly any social organization will be "religious" in a sense. It should be noted that the definition of religion that is normally used on this blog is the one described in Religions, Cults, and the Alt-Right, which described religion as an organization where members make logically improbable statements to earn social status. That is not a definitive definition, but it is certainly valid. You could tighten the definition to say that a religion requires belief in the supernatural, which is the most common usage. But, as William Briggs points out in his post today, Dissolving & Not Resolving the Fermi Paradox, often the opposite of a religious stance is just as much a matter of faith.

While one couldn't criticize religion as defined without taking on an enormous swath of the social order, we can still make valid claims that some religions are better than others, and that some organizations are more "religiousy" than others. We like to beat up on the leftist religion - referred to as The Cult around here - not just because they are super religiousy, but because they so thoroughly believe that they are the antidote to irrationality, the opposite of religion. They are the antireligion. The antireligion is a religion that pretends not to be a religion. They are ironically religious. While they constantly mock believers, what do they do? Recite a dogma of logically improbable beliefs, virtue signal for social status, and burn heretics. Hmm, sure sounds like the leftist stereotype of a religion to me.

Let's close this with an antireligion antijoke.

Why did the leftist cross the road?
To protest irrational Christians because diversity is our strength.

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