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Comment Re:How do Puritan Calvinist Athiests work? (Score 1) 180

There’s a pretty striking family resemblance between modern “woke” moral-political culture and early Puritan Calvinism. Not the theology, obviously—but the moral style and social dynamics. A few parallels:

  • Moral absolutism and social discipline: Both treat everyday behavior as subject to rigorous moral scrutiny, with strong communal pressure to conform to norms.
  • Purification and heresy-policing: Boundary maintenance via denunciations, excommunications, and rituals of orthodoxy—today it’s call-outs and deplatforming; then it was church courts and shunning.
  • Austere seriousness: A shared ethos that prioritizes rectitude over levity; suspicion of frivolity as complicity in vice or injustice.
  • Confession and penance: Formal repentance and re-education after transgression—think struggle sessions or DEI remediation echoing Protestant public discipline (different metaphysics, similar mechanics).
  • Predestination-adjacent status anxiety: Puritans looked for “signs of election”; today’s activists signal moral standing through continual self-examination and public proofs of rectitude.
  • Early moral socialization: Instruction impressing sin/privilege, depravity/complicity, duty/allyship—pedagogies aimed at shaping conscience from a young age.
  • Political-theological fusion: Morality fused with a program for social order—using policy and discipline to engineer a righteous commonwealth.
  • Apocalyptic register: Eschatology then, existential crisis now; urgency amplifies intolerance for deviance in the face of perceived catastrophe.
  • American genealogy: Much of U.S. moral culture (across factions) still runs on Puritan software, so the resemblance is part continuity, part convergence.

Important caveat: they diverge on metaphysics (grace, God, salvation), institutions (church vs. HR/academia/media), and telos (otherworldly vs. this-worldly). But as a civic religion—with catechisms, rituals, sacraments of confession, and excommunication—the parallels are hard to miss.

Comment 1 in 2 Indians work in tax free agriculture (Score 0) 35

The latest World Bank modelled estimate for 2023 shows Sierra Leone’s agricultural workforce share (43.0%) is effectively identical to India’s (43.5%), differing by less than half a percentage point—closer than any other country reporting recent data.

G20 Countries Ranked by Agricultural Employment Percentage

Based on recent data, here’s a sorted list of G20 countries by the proportion of their workforce in agriculture:

  • India: 43.51%
  • Indonesia: 28.77%
  • China: 22.33%
  • Turkey: 14.64%
  • Mexico: 12.64%
  • Brazil: 8.20%
  • Argentina: 7.21%
  • Russia: 5.66%
  • South Africa: ~5.50%
  • South Korea: 5.43%
  • Italy: 3.79%
  • Japan: 3.01%
  • Saudi Arabia: 2.88%
  • France: 2.59%
  • Australia: 2.20%
  • Canada: ~2.00%
  • United States: 1.57%
  • Germany: 1.20%
  • United Kingdom: 0.99%

Observation: Despite the stereotype of populated entirely by doctors and engineers, India is the least urbanized and least industrialized nation in G20. Expecting India to be the factory of the world is like expecting Sierra Leone to be the factory of the world. Probably possible in a hundred years. For now the best bet IMO is Indonesia.

Comment Fake News. Andrei Soldatov is a journalist. (Score 2, Informative) 74

I cannot find any mention of Andrei Soldatov as the father of Russian Internet using sources one year old

Andrei Soldatov is a prominent Russian investigative journalist and co-founder of the website Agentura.ru, which monitors the activities of Russian secret services. Together with Irina Borogan, Soldatov has authored several books on the Russian intelligence community, including "The New Nobility," "The Red Web," and "The Compatriots" [1][2][4]. His work often delves into the operations and internal dynamics of Russia's intelligence agencies, such as the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Military Intelligence Directorate (GRU), providing insights into their roles in domestic repression and international operations [2].

Soldatov and Borogan's investigative journalism has frequently put them at odds with the Russian government. They have faced significant legal and financial repercussions, including being added to Russia's list of "foreign agents" and having their bank accounts frozen [1]. Despite these challenges, their work continues to shed light on the opaque world of Russian intelligence and its impact on both domestic and international affairs.

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