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Just wondering which areas or cities in the U.S. were the least religious and spiritual... also least drug culture...
Have lived in the bible belt and it definitely has its share of religion out in the open, part of culture...
Living in the bay area now, and seems to maybe be an equal amount of spiritual/new age/mother earth goddess stuff going on...
Personally I find them both pretty kooky and don't enjoy being around people talking about how I should find god or get in touch with mother earth or crystal power or find happiness in a joint. Though certainly the latter is much more tolerable than the former.
So what areas are good for skeptics who aren't into this stuff and don't want a predominance of it...
I'll throw out Chicago... I know it has a big catholic presence but... didn't really experience much of this while living there.
Interesting you are equally bothered by the "Gaia / faux Buddhist / faux Hindu yoga" belt as you are by the Bible Belt. At least you are consistent, nothing is worse than the "New Age" holier than thou types who castigate traditional religions ... I digress.
I'd say NYC would be right for you. Their intellectualism is more nihilistic than the West Coast version, more Old World, more French existentialist.
DC (or at least the NW part, which is where I lived and worked) was the most unreligious place I've ever lived. Really, though, the only really actively religious place I've ever lived has been a smaller town in Virginia. Everywhere else (LA, SF, Delaware, Minneapolis) has been very live-and-let-live.
Interesting you are equally bothered by the "Gaia / faux Buddhist / faux Hindu yoga" belt as you are by the Bible Belt. At least you are consistent, nothing is worse than the "New Age" holier than thou types who castigate traditional religions ... I digress.
I'd say NYC would be right for you. Their intellectualism is more nihilistic than the West Coast version, more Old World, more French existentialist.
It isn't religion/spiritualism per se, nor the practice there of that bothers me... it is just a plethora of church/shops/or brought up in conversation often aren't in "the loop" you could be looked down upon. Always on peoples minds... Yeah you might be right with the NYC thing...definitely one of my favorite cities but I haven't lived there. I see you are in California too, and while it is cool... I am not sure if it is a "long long" term thing as far as settling down i.e. I'm not sold YET... but it should be good for awhile and I am going to try it out at least a few years. I love the setting and weather, but yeah not into the hippy dippy/new age stuff just as much as I'm not into the bible belt stuff
I would feel just as uncomfortable at a church as some kind of drum circle/yoga event/druggy reggae party.
Funny you mention french existentialism...that is along my lines of thinking in some aspects...more Fanon/Sartre/De Beouviar, less Kierkegaard + science + a little Roman stoicism... though certainly I am not "all about it" nor caught up in some dogma...
Yes, big Catholic presence in Chicago (as well as most other major cities in the Midwest and Northeast). But if I am reading you right, you don't mind religion, you just don't like adherants badgering you (evangelizing, prostelitizing, etc). It is not part of Catholic culture or tradition to do this. I don't think you'd have to worry about being harrassed by religious people in any Catholic-dominated areas (or Jewish or mainline Protestant, for that matter).
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