Groups of Value: Anabaptists, Jews, and Japanese

submitted by fschmidt from self.nonmorons

I define groups of value as groups that provide meaningful value to its members, sustainable over generations. First I will consider groups that fail to meet this criteria.

While Islam seems to have a lot of potential, Muslims do not implement Islam in a way that provides meaningful value. This became particularly clear with their response to the covid lies. If Muslims have a reformation then they may become a group of value, but they aren't one today.

Christians also fail as a group in spite of Anabaptists succeeding. No other Christian subset provides meaningful value. And the Protestants are probably unsustainable.

Unlike western nations, the Chinese and Russians are probably sustainable. But they fail to provide much value to members because they do not have the high level of group commitment needed for strong cooperation. This is why their standard of living is unlikely to ever be very high.

Now I will look at the groups of value starting with Anabaptists. Not all Anabaptist churches provide value (they have liberal churches) but many do. They have high commitment to their church and conference (group of churches). They uphold moral standards and generally have a decent standard of living.

Jews have a high level of commitment to their own group which allows strong cooperation. This is true across the variations of Judaism which means that even degenerate liberal Judaism still provides value to its members. And this is why Jews have a high standard of living.

The Japanese are unique in having a high level of commitment at the national level. They also feel a commitment to the business that they work for. These things enable cooperation and a high standard of living.

Are there any other groups of value? I don't know of any.

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In the case of Japan, their high level of commitment seems to be rooted more in ethnic, cultural, territorial (i.e. national) ties than in religion as such. I imagine modern Japanese businesses and their relationship with employees could be a throwback to medieval fiefdoms.

Western Europe, around the same time, had the guilds which built upon the value contributed by members and provided value back to them. Both of these systems grew from distinct local cultures and political structures, and were probably strongly tied to local religious groups as well. The group that is historically and culturally closest to this in the West would be Anabaptists. I wonder if part of their success, in contrast to other Christians, could be that they also maintained a somewhat coherent ethnic identity (preserved their ancestral languages, etc.) while living in fairly isolated rural locations.

For orthodox Jews, I would say the basis for their identity and commitment is something like ethnic "separateness". While the Japanese identity formed through millennia of geographic isolation, the Jewish identity formed through ethno-religious separation over a similar time scale. But for the Jews too, there was a significant degree of physical separation in ghettoes and other territorial enclaves, and this was deliberately maintained. Liberal Jews are just riding the coattails of orthodox Jewish historical distinctness and current western (formerly Christian countries') decadence. They are not a sustainable group.

Russia and China are huge super-countries, comprising many ethnic groups under a broader cultural identity. They are more sustainable that the West, because instead of pitting different groups against each other in a divide-and-rule fashion, they seem to be promoting cultural and linguistic homogenization headed by the dominant ethnic group. But this works against group distinctness, so does not promote groups of value.

So I think creating a sustainable group of value requires an optimal blend of cultural, ethnic, and religious identity that is reinforced over time by some degree of territorial isolation.