Posted by fschmidt on
URL: https://mikraite.arkian.net/Thoughts-on-Philadelphia-tp1317.html

I visited Philadelphia last weekend.  First I will talk about Philadelphia itself.  Philadelphia has this unique combination of attributes:

1. big city
2. cheap
3. tolerable weather
4. old neighborhoods

I can't think of any other American city that offers all of these.

I used to have more ideological concerns like low taxes and loose zoning.  I no longer really care about these.  I am more interested in practical issues, and all of the above 4 are practical.

We can compare to other cities we know.  The San Francisco are has 3 out of 4, but is far from cheap.  San Francisco has better weather, but is about 10X as expensive to buy the equivalent house in an equivalent neighborhood.  And generally the cost of living is much higher in the San Francisco area.  Dallas lacks old neighborhoods.  This is actually a disaster for anyone who doesn't want to live in a rural area.  All of modern America is a complete cesspool, so anyone who wants to live in a nice urban or suburban area will be out of luck in Dallas.

Philadelphia is far from perfect.  The average inhabitant is your typical American moron.  This is compensated for by it being a big city with plenty of immigrants, especially Koreans.  Philadelphia also has horrible street signs and mediocre roads.  But Philadelphia still seems like the best compromise I have seen.  I think this is the logical area for a Mikraite settlement.

I visited a Mennonite church there.  I attended their morning service for 2.5 hours and then an evening service for 1.5 hours.  That was finally enough for me to realize that I would get bored of attending Mennonite church regularly.  I had an opportunity to attend the other religions I looked at regularly, but not the Mennonites.  Now I feel like this may not work out.

After this I gave the whole issue of which religion to align with a lot of thought.  Orthodox Christianity has the advantages that its service is the most appealing, and that it is closest to what most of our wives are used to.  These are big advantages.  The downside is that it is too modern.  An alternative that solves this is True Orthodox Christianity.  The problem with them is that they are small.  But for a Mikraite settlement, we just need one church.  There may be one in Philadelphia.  But even if there isn't, we could simply finance a new True Orthodox church there.  Unlike the Mikraite religion, True Orthodoxy is a marketable religion, so we could market a True Orthodox church just like we market any other business.  I think this really solves the problem.  One other advantage is that True Orthodoxy seems much more intellectual than Mennonites or Islam, these videos being an example.