You don't declare your position on this issue, which irritating. What do you actually think is good or bad? It seems like you're anti-individual, pro-religion (or "telos", but that always seems to be a subset of some religion whenever you mention it), and pro-reproduction, but only as a side effect of the religion. You don't want us to be coerced, or coerced into approving of pressure to conform, but you want us to conform willingly. You want us to have a sense of place and community identity, and you want us to live like ants and reproduce a lot with diminished individualism. Why? Just because, I guess.

Well, I don't want that, those aren't my values, I like individualism. You use words in odd ways (what's "formation"?) so I lose track of your meaning anyway, so maybe I got your values wrong, who knows. You're kind of shady about your values.

This makes me wonder about whether having a purpose (telos) is a good value, and about the purpose of purpose. But I think wondering that is not the way forward. People have a sense of purpose innately, it just gets foggy sometimes, we don't need to tell them to have one, only tell them what it might be.

I think "formation" is essentially a short-hand for "character formation"; I've seen the term used that way in Christian education literature and worldview studies.

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