Patron Saint Holidays

A lot of my thoughts about patron saints are downstream of this article I read 10 years ago about Joan of Arc. (note: from a feminist blog that's mostly assuming feminist readership)

I recommend reading the whole thing. But some things that stand out:

So there’s another thing I’ve been thinking about, and reading about, and you can laugh at me all you want, but: Joan of Arc. I’ve been thinking, and reading, a lot about Joan of Arc. Patti Smith has a line in “Just Kids” about the optimism of little girls who choose “Joan” as their confirmation name; it got stuck in my head. Because you have to choose the name of a saint, basically, for those unfamiliar; you have to choose the saint you want to have your back. When you’re in trouble, or you need to make a very hard decision, and you need supernatural aid to keep going safely, you get to make one phone call, and it’s this particular saint, so think about the sort of trouble you’re likely to get into, and choose the one who will take your call: That’s part of what a confirmation name is about.

And yeah. Guess who I chose.

It goes on to tell a long-ish story about Joan,  about a bunch of incredible things she did, many of which seem born out in historically record. (I don't know how epistemically rigorous the post is, so, grain of salt. But seemed in the normal range of historical things that historians might argue about but is at least plausibly true).

I think is really good reading, not really summarizable, and I suggest you go read it instead of reading the last couple paragraphs that I'm about to quote. 

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but... I'mma quote them because they are the bits that are most relevant to the broader discussion

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(last chance to go read the article instead of reading the last couple paragraphs of it)

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Okay:

And I don’t know if I believe in Jesus, but I believe in Joan of Arc. I believe that if you choose Joan to be your one phone call, then Joan comes through. I kind of — this is weird lapsed-Catholic God-has-a-plan-for-you stuff, so bear with me — don’t actually think it was an accident that this one line from a book I read a year ago got stuck in my head, this week, and that I ended up finding the trial transcripts online. Because I’d never read them before, and I was over the whole religion thing, but I ended up finding out that she was a real person. This real,  live, bitchy, funny, charming, smart, obstinate/contumacious/disobedient, gender-inappropriate, charismatic, determined person, who somehow managed to happen, a really long time ago. I don’t know what I believe about the God thing. But I believe that we’re human beings, and that the range of human possibility includes Joan of Arc.

Here’s a list of things that Joan is the patron saint of, issues on which it is decreed Joan shall have your back: “Captives, France, martyrs, opponents of Church authorities, people ridiculed for their piety, prisoners, rape victims.” And soldiers, particularly female ones. Which is to say: Joan has a very definitive opinion on Bradley Manning. Joan has a very definitive opinion on civilians who are killed in long-term invasions and occupations. Joan has a very definitive opinion on rape, and rape survivors; she has a very definitive opinion on being threatened with rape and death for telling your side of the story; she has a very definitive opinion on being ridiculed for one’s beliefs. And I, personally, would not want to piss off Joan.

It's certainly possible to follow this idea off a cliff. But it seems like there's a healthy, epistemically virtuous version of this where one can draw strength from a hero-figure who embodies virtues that you want to live up to, and who would be on your side if you're feeling alone.

There's some diciness of "It feels easier (to me) to draw strength from characters that are real rather than fictional. (Some people draw strength from Harry Potter, but for me, knowing a real live human being did a hard thing makes it more substantive). But, if you need your heroes to be real, you'll be tempted to paper over their faults and exaggerate their virtues. And if a lot of people are doing this for the same hero you end up with some group-rationality failures)". 

Adding a comment instead of another top-level post saying basically the same thing.  Add my thoughts, on things I liked about this plan:

It's centered on people.  A lot of rationality is thinking and deciding and weighing and valuing possible actions.  Another frame that is occasionally good (for me at least) is "How would <my hero> act?" -- and this can help guide my actions.  It's nice to have a human or historical action to think about instead of just a vague virtue or principle.

It encourages looking through history for events of positive impact.  Many of us wish to impact the future (potentially the long future) for the better.  It's nice to have examples of people in the past that made an impact.  I think it helps me think about my possible impact and the impact of the people around me.

It marks a time on a calendar.  Maybe my sense of time was warped by covid, but also I think I've missed the regular holidays that a religious life spaces throughout the year.  It's also nice to coordinate on things, even if the coordination is small and just a few friends.

I want to start a list of people I might consider for this, but keeping it to myself for now!

I feel like I agree with Elizabeth's suggestion that we allow holidays to rise to prominence naturally rather than advocate for universal observance, but for different reasons.

Chief among those reasons is that if we are bidding for a holiday to be universally celebrated, it is almost certain to be designed by the advocate rather than explored by the celebrants. This has two problems: one, it puts a ceiling on how successful the holiday can be due to the design decisions made in the original campaign; two, if the designed elements fail, they are likely to take the whole holiday down with it, and we lose the lessons/examples/opportunity-for-a-good-party thereby. Letting people opt-in to experiment and then mimic the activities they like gives both a better shot at deeper engagement and a higher likelihood of the holiday being kept, at the cost of being slower to reach social fixation.

I also suggest a different pattern than Patron Saints (though I approve of it) to include: celebrations of battles. Notably this includes significant defeats - the US celebrates Pearl Harbor Day, for example. I imagine the 'rationalist battles' consisting of a group of people who try Doing the Thing for one of our central concerns. Any time this happens it should eventually be resolvable into Thing is Done! or Thing is Sustainably Underway! or Failed to Do the Thing. If there are interesting features of the story, like a really good showcase of rationalist virtues under pressure, or new failure modes, or anything else, it might be worth celebrating on an ongoing basis.

I like the battle pattern in addition to the saints pattern because I believe we're entirely too focused on individuals in full generality, and its always a group effort at the cruxes of history.

There's an actually two different concepts here which I'd both like to get some attention

• "Patron saint" holidays (where part of the aesthetic is your relation to an individual you look up to and draw some strength from)
• "Smaller/experimental/not-immediately-scaled-up holidays" (where the point is primarily "don't necessarily scale up holidays", but they can focus on things that are not heroes)

I think patron saints are a useful aesthetic handle for why the latter might be good, but wanted to flag the distinction, and the "small holidays in general that organically grow" was probably my primary motivator for the post.

Lots of people felt they'd been injured by being mailed doomsday codes for LW or EAF for Petrov day...

how so? 0_o