From "Peloton makes toning your glutes feel spiritual. But should Jesus be part of the experience?" (WaPo).
How does a modern-day meaning-making community work? And is there room for old-school religion? Americans in recent decades have been rapidly ditching religious services and looking for spiritual uplift, meaning and transcendent community through experiences like yoga and spin classes, political activism and cooking — more and more of it online....
Casper ter Kuile, a Harvard Divinity School... said Peloton is part a much bigger trend he calls "unbundling." Within that, people are now browsing in a variety of places for the things they once got all at a congregation: worship, scripture, life transitions and social justice among them. As a result, he said, American religious life is very unstable, very individualized. "When religion is infusing these secular spaces, it troubles the concept of religion, but also troubles the strict secularity we’ve come to expect."
Ter Kuile noted the irony of people — Peloton riders — challenging religious institutions while they are themselves part of an activity many see as cultlike. He says that’s more about institutional religion’s current branding problem. "They’d trust Peloton as a cult but not the Catholic Church as a religion," he said.
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34 comments:
Scroll by like a normal person and grow up. If you don't want to hear it, don't listen. So sick of everything becoming a hatefest because somebody will ALWAYS be offended, no matter what.
Peloton is an online spin class, am I right?
I doubt any men have soaring emotions.
Let me know when they finish the Peloton Cathedral.
That's the rub of it, isn't it? We can have secular pursuits as our "religion". That's progressive!
(P.S. Don't you dare have a non secular, sky god based pursuit as religion, especially if it's of a Christian persuasion. Christians are so hateful and backwards - just antithetical to progress. We must drive all sky god thinking out of the Temple of Progress!)
And what wendybar said.
I ride a stationary bike 60 minutes most nights when I'm home.
I feel better for doing it but hardly spiritual.
I replaced the handlebars with a sheet of plywood and often work at my computer while riding or watch a movie on my computer.
Of course, not a $2000 peloton but a $300 bike I bought at sears 15 years ago.
Perhaps I need to waste a lot of money to get the spirituality. Or, I can put the $1700 into the collection plate on Saturday and get it that way.
This story sounds like a native ad to sell peletons to people who want spirituality and think they can get it through a piece of gear
John Henry
Don't discuss religion and politics in mixed company. They right to shout down the Jesus nut
It would be totally appropriate to offer that as an option - criticizing the suggestion is ridiculous.
Why can't they have separate Peloton classes? One for the Christians who want Gospel music. Another for the Catholics who prefer a Georgian Chant. Another for the Big Hair 80's Rock fans. EMO music might be difficult.......And so on.
Or...play the music you like yourself at home. I would like to hear Ride of the Valkries while spinning. The downside is that I can't hear that without thinking of Bugs Bunny and "kill da wabbit!" [What's Opera Doc?]
Geeze. Why does everything today have to be some sort of political emotional crisis and create divisions between people.
Groups fragment, tolerance shrinks, physical proximity not required for participation. As the trend to live our lives in the virtual world (internet related activities) increases in societal changes will be accelerated. Only human nature remains constant, which is the fly in the ointment of this brave new world. It's going to be a long dark winter with no spring in sight. Hopefully something worthwhile comes out the other side of this meat grinder, but I doubt it.
On the bright side - I'll be dead before full dystopia hits. I wish the future good luck. It will need it.
Fu*king Christians. *Now* they expect to derive spiritual bliss from a fu*king overpriced stationary exercise machine.
Why do I think if Schaeffer had suggested Sufi Dervish music, or Hindu Kirtan, or Tibetan chant, or Shinto Kagura, the reaction would have been very different.
Peloton has many many different playlist options of recorded classes. You can choose virtually any kind of music and find a pre-recorded class to take with that music. So it doesn't seem like Christian music would be out of the question if that's what a teacher wanted to use. But I generally don't like Christian music, and I don't know how big their audience would be. It's funny that people had to get on her for suggesting it.
(WaPo)
They've advanced from reporting on twitterings to reporting on facebookings.
Hi, I’m Casper ter Kuile. ...
"I live with my husband in Brooklyn, NY."
It is unsurprising that Americans have made totems of consumer brands. Thorstein Veblen published The Theory of the Leisure Class in 1899 and discusses this phenomenon. Apple, Dyson, Bose, Beats. They're all marketed towards a certain kind of status-conscious yuppie. From Veblen:
"In order to gain and to hold the esteem of men it is not sufficient merely to possess wealth or power. The wealth or power must be put in evidence, for esteem is awarded only on evidence. And not only does the evidence of wealth serve to impress one's importance on others and to keep their sense of his importance alive and alert, but it is of scarcely less use in building up and preserving one's self-complacency."
That post with the Peloton ads and made up captions was a fun one.
Dammit Lupita! You had one job...
@J. Farmer: "Conspicuous Consumption" was the Veblen catch phrase that I recall.
Regarding the religious in the secular--a streaming radio station out of LA called KUSC broadcasts classical choral and spiritual musics every Sunday morning. The program is called "A Joyful Noise." It is all done without commentary or proselytizing.
J Farmer
I am one of those contrarians who shuns status symbols simply because "everyone."
My purchases are driven by a desire for the best performance at a price I am willing to pay. Occasionally, that has led me to status brands:
Not impressed with Dyson. I bought one many years ago (20?) because of the hype; it is very difficult to find a great vacuum. Meh. Spent the money to buy a canister Miele. Pretty good vacuum.
Received a pair of Beats as a gift. They worked fine, until they didn't. (To be fair, all of my headphones seem to crap out -- perhaps because the sweat involved with hard running short-circuits them?)
A pair of Bose wireless ear buds lost the bluetooth connection every time someone with a strong signal drove by me. THAT drove me apeshit. Then they just quit charging.
My quest for a decent pair of headphones continues.
I do love my iPad and find the iPhone intuitive to use. I am too stooopid for an Android phone, apparently.
So...I have never understood sacrificing quality for status.
Wasn't the promise of an increasingly virtual world that there would be the kind of multitudinous, a la carte choice that could cater to all such affinities?
So, now it's all about conformity, excuse me, "unity"?
@Anne-I-Am:
So...I have never understood sacrificing quality for status.
If you ever saw the dreadful movie The Devil Wears Prada, you can see the classic mistake. It thinks fashion means dressing in head-to-toe Chanel or Dior and flaunting a parade of designer "it bags." It confuses an obsession with fashion with an obsession for how one looks. Fashion is really an obsession with how one sees.
So, now it's all about conformity, excuse me, "unity"?
Conformity within the subgroup = Unity within the subgroup. Factionalization. Human nature.
Or...play the music you like yourself at home. I would like to hear Ride of the Valkries while spinning. The downside is that I can't hear that without thinking of Bugs Bunny and "kill da wabbit!" [What's Opera Doc?]
Ride of the Valkyries should be accompanies by a first person video of the rider as a helicopter assaulting a vietcong village.
J Farmer,.
That movie was entertaining.
The obsession with YSL bags--those baby-poop brown with gold lettering monstrosities--flummoxes me. I guess some people may find them attractive, but I think most people (some men, mostly women) sport them because they so obviously telegraph status.
Interestingly, the Canada Goose craze now--no obvious labels. An acquaintance who wears one (in SoCal--let's hope she bought it for the ski resorts) told me the coat is effective. I think one can buy a North Face or Mountain Hardware item for half the price and be just as warm. I don't know; I have always refused to wear those puffy, long coats because they are ugly (to me).
"troubles the strict secularity we’ve come to expect"
Have "we"?
Where woke religion dominates, we don't expect secularity and do expect heretic hunting.
I have been saying for decades there is MORE ambient craziness now than there was in the Middle Ages.
One of the big marketing words in recent years us “curated”. I was in a nice bookstore that described its stock as curated. Of all the things I do not want curated ... I preferred the big barn like stores, with uncharted books in profusion.
I get the impression the real slogan was “curated books for curated customers”
Mr Wibble you beat me to it. I like the smell of Wagner in the morning.
It always puts me in mind of 1st Air Cav, Death from above and Tom hagen.
John Henry
I'm so old I remember when the Black church's shout & response style gospel music was brought mainline popular music by Ray Charles in the 50's. In the 60's we had th popular hit My Sweet Lord by the Edwin Hawkins singers as well as the The Byrds with Glory, Glory among others. Let alone our hostess's fav, Bob Dylan, who performed numerous gospel numbers. Bottom line, gospel is a very listenable genre & it's hi-energy would seem quite conducive to relieving the ultimate boredom of stationary bike riding.
This is a basic problem I have with businesses built around "community". It's not a real community, it's a branded community. Trying to do something yourself that clashes with the brand identity puts the community into crisis, because the brand is the community.
Such an innocent question -- "Why can't we play the kind of music I like?" -- ends up offering a jarring view behind the curtain. People buy Pelotons because of what it says about themselves, and having some classes playing Gospel music -- even if you never go to them -- changes what that says.
People are always looking for a higher power, some divinity to shape their ends. I believe a stairmaster is more effective if you're looking for a divinity to shape your end.
Religion hasn't much inspired people for the past century. Nationalism and socialism are what gets the blood flowing. The Reds and the Nazis both built up exercise programs around these ideals. Their young people, at least as they were depicted in posters, always looked fit and healthy. Maybe Peloton could use a mixture of Kamala's fight speeches and Bruce Springsteen's music to help their customers achieve peak fitness.
They need pussy hats. Pro-Choice is the religion of choice. Throw another baby on the barbie, cannibalize her profitable parts, sequester her carbon remains is an instant and forward-looking burden reduction.
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