(no subject)

[yakalskovich]

When I first saw this, I thought 'Well, hee hee'; then I thought, 'Hey wait, saphyria and alchemistseraph  live there as well, and if anybody says they deserve tornadoes, I'll be up with an axe against them.

A related discussion erupted all over my corner of tumblr, with one lady especially chiming in again and again.

Now I wonder whether it might be the other way round: religious people are more likely to live/stay where there are tornadoes around because they believe God will preserve them, put them in the place where they ought to be, or generally are less driven to leave the place where they've got roots?

Basically, the Bible Belt is the Bible Belt because the non-bible-thumpers, statistically speaking, are more likely to move away out of reach of the tornadoes, and thus leave a significant percentage of religious people in those places?

But so not posting this whacky theory that on tumblr for the next round of general slammage. Tumblr can be so awfully earnest.

Comments

[silveraspen]

There is a significant difference between being a religious person and being a judgmental holier-than-thou ass. In part simply that the latter are noisier and draw more attention. I happen to be the former; I hope I am not and never will be the latter.

That doesn't mean I'm not utterly blind with anger and disappointment right now at the sneering misrepresentation of weather patterns and "you deserved it" attitude that's all over that "infographic."

I was raised in the South. The majority of my family is still there. I moved for reasons related to career opportunity and an interest in seeing where the rest of my family's history was based.

Not everyone moves away, though. For some reason, people seem to like staying in communities where they have lived and worked and raised kids and where their parents have and their grandparents before them and on and on. It's home.

And you know, everywhere's got something. Tornadoes, floods, deadly blizzards, tsunamis, earthquakes, whatever.

I happen to know personally what it's like to watch a tornado go through one's back yard, and to work with people in a small town to pick up wreckage and start rebuilding after the destruction a twister can leave.

No one deserves that kind of devastation. No one.

[yakalskovich]

Sorry, I didn't want to offend you (or anyone) personally by posting the link to that graphic.

And yes, I meant 'judgmental holier-than-thou asses', really. And didn't mean to imply that anybody deserves natural disasters, as that would be stooping down to the level of the people who said New Orleans deserved Katrina for its many and historical sins. I personally think anyway that we don't get what we deserve. Nobody gets what they deserve; people only get what they get, The End. When people says 'They got what they deserved', they really mean that they approve of what these other people randomly happened to get out of the randomness of one thing happening after another.

I was merely wondering about the correlation, which is very visual and quite striking.-

[silveraspen]

Correlation does not equal causation. :)

[saphyria.livejournal.com]

*needs a Like button*

[yakalskovich]

No, it does not. I was just wondering whether that extreme correlation means anything.

But I think what Saph says down there makes a lot of sense, with 'tornadoes are part of the landscape'.

Being earnest.

[saphyria.livejournal.com]

Coming from a largely poor, agricultural state and yet being a well-educated academic, I take offense when anyone assumes that I am ignorant simply on the grounds of being from the South and having an accent. Yet, they do. And, being a Progressive, Liberal, feminist, gun-owning, religious person (yes, my family tends to scare both sides of the aisle) who is nevertheless proud of where she comes from, I admit I tend to bristle whenever anyone seeks to oversimplify the situation of the South and its people.

In regards to your theory, the religious aspect is not nearly as much a factor as the economic and emotional factors in why people stay or leave. There are all sorts of influences that impact whether people leave or stay, most of which have little to do with one's religion.

For one, much of the South is poor. It has long been so, for various reasons that are too numerous to go into right now. In my state, much of the workforce is agricultural, poor, and/or under-educated. And for many in the South, it is prohibitively expensive to up and leave the place they live. And don't for a second think that they don't know how much of the rest of the world stereotypes them. Why would they *want* to leave when they know wherever they go, whatever they do, they'll be viewed as ignorant hicks?

Secondly, moving also means leaving your family, your family's history, and your support network behind, taking a chance on somewhere else. When one is poor, one often depends on one's neighbors and family to get by. Moving means leaving all that. And as Aspen said, people like staying where they've lived and worked and raised their families. People are proud of where they come from, however humble their origins. It's that pride that gives people the fortitude to take what nature throws at them, and rebuild, not their religion.

I do apologize if this comment is coming on strong, but this is a subject near and dear to my heart. I am not a Bible-thumper, and I think most Bible-thumpers give Christians a bad name. But that is not the point. I came back to Arkansas after getting my degrees not because I agree with the majority of people either in religion or in politics, but because it is home, to me. Tornadoes are just part of the landscape, though they terrify me. My home town was mostly destroyed on March 1st, 1997. I was eight. But I'm still here.

And, as Aspen said, everyone has something. Azy told me I need to move away from the place constantly under threat of being destroyed by an act of God. I pointed out to her that she willingly moved to Hawaii and lives on the side of a volcano. (We did, however, find a place where a person'd be safe from just about everything. Wales!)

[yakalskovich]

Wales!! I must tell Sal that she lives in the safest place of the world. **grins**

And no, you're not coming on too strong. What you say makes a great lot of sense. Thanks for taking the trouble of writing all that.

[saphyria.livejournal.com]

As a history buff, I had a section on why Arkansas came out even poorer than other Southern states after the Reconstruction due to the lack of loans from Northern states, which effectively ended Arkansas's reconstruction a decade early. But I cut it out for length. >_>

Seriously, Wales gets rain, mist, sun, snow, and little else. Just have to watch out for the occasional alien invasion. :D

[yakalskovich]

I would have been quite interested in that section.

(And against the alien invasions, they have Torchwood, of course.)