#I think it’s coming from a Unitarian view but I have negative interest in religious groups of any sort

[foldingfittedsheets]

Everytime I see one of your sex shop (and adjacent) stories, I'm struck by the fact that I think you'd make an AMAZING middle/high school sex educator, especially for a program like OWL (Our Whole Lives).

I meaaaaan. Maybe? I do like kids, but I struggle to cut back on cursing in my everyday vernacular. Also my only credentials are having worked in a sex shop and I thought generally they’d want actually licensed health people. Food for thought I guess!

[liskantope]

Slightly rambly personal update on some social things that might be mildly interesting to some of my followers.

I’ve done other big moves as an adult, but this is the first one where I’ve been so flat-out overwhelmed with the transition that I’ve been almost entirely unable to put effort into starting a social life. It’s very uncharacteristic of me not to immediately strike out and try to find people and activities. Literally the only things I’ve done in that direction during the four weeks that I’ve been in my new city have been to check out the local Unitarian Universalist chapter, and to attend a Slate Star Codex meetup. The local UU fellowship one of the largest in the country (another first-timer, who happened to have been raised a UU, called it a mega-church), and yes, there are monthly local SSC meetups where I am.

Neither the UU nor the SSC meetings were quite what I expected given previous experience, which is not to say that they were bad, but at least in the case of the UU I’m going to have to spend a little longer sizing it up.

My previous UU experience had been very sporadic attendance during grad school, at a fellowship (which I learned to always refer to as a “fellowship” because there was some twitchiness among the members in reaction to the word “church”) which was modest-sized, held in a charming building in a beautiful area, and had more of a scienc-y, atheistic bent than I imagine most UU groups have. The fellowship here (which is very much called a “church”* and now I’m just having trouble adjusting to calling it that) by contrast seems much more religious, at least in the language that the sermons are couched in, and it’s just the very, very most open-minded and liberal end of the religious spectrum. It’s much more overtly political than the other fellowship, with a particular focus on racism (mind you, African-Americans are equally underrepresented relative to the city we’re in to how they were in the other congregation). As a newcomer, they gave me a fridge magnet listing five political beliefs under “In this congregation, we believe:” that are worded in such an political-buzzword-y and hokey manner that I can’t bring myself to actually put it on my fridge. I prefer my earlier conception of UU as simply being about a pursuit of truth, spirituality, community, and other positive aspects of religion while rejecting religious dogma and promises of an afterlife, where truth and justice weren’t explicitly laid out to us in terms of specific political platforms (even though, of course I would always expect most of the congregation to be oriented politically leftwards).

Just about the only thing my two UU fellowships/churches seem to have in common is that the congregations are composed of about 50% retirement-age people, few people in my age-range, and very disproportionately white people with a high level of education. Apart from that, the congregation here is about twice as big as the other one, which has its upsides (such as it being easier to meet other young-ish people there -- I already have been aggressively invited into a really friendly social group which I’m going to give a chance, despite being taken aback by conversation topics of “I had to stop watching Game of Thrones because it got too problematic” and expectations of everyone specifying pronouns on their name tags). On the other hand, it also takes away some of the intimacy of a tight-knit community (e.g. it’s impractical here to invite members to share joys and sorrows during the service), and the sermons require a lot more technology which takes away from some of the atmosphere. And I just don’t feel like I fit the mold here as well -- I want to be part of a congregation that emphasizes effecting change in the real world, but I align much more with the purely nontheist/naturalist/humanist point of view rather than the slightly more emotion-laden, far more political Social Justice culture I’ve seen here so far.

I’m going to continue to give it a chance for now, especially as it’s conveniently close to my home. Enough ranting about that.

The SSC meeting was also quite different from what I’d expected after the one and only SSC meeting I’d previously gone to, which was in Edinburgh during the first round of near-simultaneous meetings worldwide that was advertised on SSC in August 2018. This also presented a stark contrast to my one earlier experience, although in less of a negative way. The Edinburgh meeting felt like a ragtag group of mostly international people (I was one of them!) who were coming together under one common interest. There was a lot of diversity in that group, at least in terms of gender (but I also felt, background, personality, personal presentation, and other things). There was a wide variety of topics being discussed, but it was constantly being tied back to SSC with questions like “What got you started reading SSC?” and “What do you think about Scott’s fiction?” Judging from the one SSC meeting I’ve attended here, my local SSC group is quite different. It was entirely American men (I’m told that only one woman has ever shown up to the regular meetings!) who all fit the competent nerd guy aesthetic, which I certainly feel comfortable in but is somewhat less exciting. It did not at all represent the demographic I imagine when I think of SSC readers, at least in terms of diversity, although there was some diversity of political/religious orientation. There were only occasional direct mentions of SSC, and the topics of conversation switched between purely philosophical questions and major current economic/political questions (e.g. universal basic income). The whole thing made me feel like I was back in grad school having an intense intellectual conversation among a group of grad-student friends. Since this is definitely something I’ve been feeling starved for, I wasn’t complaining and I already look forward to attending the next meeting. But this experience lacked the excitement and novelty of what I always imagined in meeting rationalist-adjacents IRL and which I found (to some degree) at the Edinburgh one.

*This is despite the fact that in only two small getting-to-know-you meetings I’ve done there, I’ve heard from at least a couple of people who were so traumatized by their previous experiences with churches that they were almost too put off by the idea of attending another church to try out UU at all! I really think changing terminology might be a good idea.