>Gnostic/prison planet-adjacent beliefs are more in vogue in the west than ever>People are openly just considering religions as costumes, where people are willing to go from calling themselves pagan or catholic or born again at the drop of the hat >No revival of Buddhism in sightWhat gives, I get that there might be a dearth of actually sincere western buddhists who are more than willing to engage in various flavors of non-theistic buddhism, but you'd think that for how effective the 'playbook' Buddhism provides for dealing with living in a chaotic and arbitrary world there would be a stronger interest in Buddhism among the youth cohorts.
>>42241753>What givesBecause a malevolent creator, and it's minions farming negative energy from us makes more sense with the way things are going in the world than ''Dude be like water lmao''.
>>42241753>People are openly just considering religions as costumes, where people are willing to go from calling themselves pagan or catholic or born again at the drop of the hat>No revival of Buddhism in sightThere's no appeal for old school Westernized buddhism among most of Gen X and Z because Western buddhism was mostly a movement among dissatisfied college-educated individuals from protestant backgrounds who, in the modern world, find it easier to simply be atheists. The needed amount of reading needed to actually be a bonified philosophical buddhist is also intimidating for zoomies, it's easier to call oneself a neopagan because than you just need to watch videos on your phone and buy a few things off of Etsy, while inter-Christian sect conversion is easy enough for most.
>>42241753western buddhism doesn't hold up to scrutiny with all the scandals individual leaders have had and people from traditionally Buddhist backgrounds have a totally different view of religion than westerners who are embarrassed by the religion of their grandparents but don't really believe in anything
