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Nietzsche famously wrote that "God is dead," that our primary belief structure, our /common/ sense, was dead, murdered by our own doing, and we are left without a prism to which we could all view the world.
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But people would then be left without this prism, a lens through which one can view the world and his place in it. In postmodernism, we have further rejected this view claiming that we might create our own lens of the world a priori, through logic alone, separated from tradition.
And we have largely been left to our own devices to do so. We find morality, ethics, and most importantly /salvation/ through our own beliefs and our deeds, of ourselves. But also increasingly, from other men and women of our time.
It seems pretty straightforward that people need these beliefs. We live in space between the past and the future and we are increasingly rejecting the past and looking towards the future vision of others to direct their lives -- to afford them meaning and faith in something.
This meaning is at the core of everyone's life. We've either been taught that we must have some or we're naturally inclined to search for it in-situ. Everyone needs meaning.
This meaning becomes part of one's /identity/ - something to say "this is my life's meaning."
This meaning becomes part of one's /identity/ - something to say "this is my life's meaning."
What happens when one's meaning, the core of one's identity, is challenged by another?
If the cut is deep enough, or the beliefs held too strongly, the person who has been challenged will react strongly, even violently against it.
If the cut is deep enough, or the beliefs held too strongly, the person who has been challenged will react strongly, even violently against it.
It is no longer an attack on someone's beliefs in a faithless vacuum. It is now an attack on the people themselves -- their identity.
"These are my beliefs, this my identity!"
"Here is the length I will go to to show you and the world that my beliefs are REAL and TRUE!"
"These are my beliefs, this my identity!"
"Here is the length I will go to to show you and the world that my beliefs are REAL and TRUE!"
Politics have replaced religion. Politics is how people believe they will save themselves from the vast emptiness and nihilism. It is a rather weak foundation, as politics can rapidly change, but it is their strongest foundation and their strongest chance of /salvation/.
Thus, when criticized, they cannot back down on their belief structures. Instead, they must double down on them and increase their faith in it further, because the alternative is to go back to nothing, no foundation, back to the emptiness, to the murder scene of God.
Who are the evangelists and the preachers, of this new morality? Here's a list:
Journalists
Politicians
Interest groups
Tech companies
Thought leaders
Podcasters
Anyone with a sufficiently large platform
They all proclaim that they have the answers: the ethics and morality.
Journalists
Politicians
Interest groups
Tech companies
Thought leaders
Podcasters
Anyone with a sufficiently large platform
They all proclaim that they have the answers: the ethics and morality.
Thus, we have people choosing their meaning of life and salvation piecemeal through these people whose own meanings are not /salvation/, but the growth of their own platforms and audiences.
People pick and choose their own morality at will through likes, retweets and follows.
People pick and choose their own morality at will through likes, retweets and follows.
This is why meaning eludes those people - there's no consistent narrative. They only have non-cohesive bits and pieces collected from various sources; ideas that appeal to a short-term; ideas that can be accepted and denied in real-time merely because they sound reasonable.
"Spiritual not religious" is the perfect descriptor for this. They want all the benefits of church, a religion, a system, a foundation, a community; but they want those benefits without observance, duty, responsibility, repetition - because that's boring and not dopamine inducing
Agency is how we break out of this cycle.
Shoutout to my serial: Digital Agency where I will write about these sorts of issues. Subscribe: http://hyonschu.substack.com
First issue is on.... agency: https://hyonschu.substack.com/p/stoicism-as-agency
