So, I had a debate with a friend recently that got me discussing a lot of latent ideas deep within my worldview that I feel need addressing.
Basically, the debate started over whether secularism is "boring". He did not provide much context of what he meant, he just brought up the topic to me to see what I'd say, and honestly, this whole idea seems so foreign to me that it baffles me.
How can secularism be boring? I mean, all secularism is, politically, is the rejection of religion as an aspect of politics. It seems to be a good thing, if anything. I don't WANT religion in my politics. If anything when rejection is injected into politics, I kinda despise it, because it's just a bunch of authoritarian do gooders wanting to force everyone to live according to their perspective.
I embrace secularism and a separation of church and state. I reject the idea that we need any sort of social project or greater purpose to be motivated by. He did link me some long opinion pieces talking about the subject, with the UK having a state church and a monarchy, while the US does not, and also some really sad post by some christian pastor going on about how bland a world without jesus is and how we can just do whatever we want and live for ourselves and murder babies if we want to (abortion). And again, it just seemed...sad to me. Like how can you think a world in which we can do whatever we want and live for ourselves is boring?
I cant help but find parallels here to the people who support the idea of work. There are some people whose imagination and conception of life is so dulled by the routine of work, that they can't imagine life without it. The idea of having so much free time scares them, and they just can't help but think they would be bored if not forced to show up at a job day after day.
To me, it baffles me, for me, there are never enough hours in the day to do what I want to do, and in the few cases there are, I'm normally tired and need sleep, so sleeping that off and continuing the next day is actually for the best. But yeah, I'm almost never bored. There literally isnt enough time to do all that i wish to do, and so much of my time is dedicated to basic tasks needed for self maintenance even without counting for formal employment. How dull must your mind be to think you'd be bored without work? The problem with those people is that work is all that they know, and the idea of not engaging in it scares them, because they literally lose their concept of life and purpose without it.
And that's what I see this as being about. There are a lot of people who believe that we need to have some sort of intrinsic purpose to keep us going. That we need someone telling us what to do, and what to think, and how to act all of the time. That humans can't be left to their own devices, or they will start acting immorally. Such an idea is drawn back to the protestant work ethic, and the basis of that original work ethic comes from....religion.
Religion is, to me, a mind virus. An idea that serves little actual unique usefulness, and acts as a mind virus that replicates itself endlessly through evangelism and is very resistant in the minds of many to being challenged. The idea is set up to not be challenged, to make you feel bad for challenging it. It will ask you who are you to question it, that you are doing something wrong if you ask too many of the wrong kinds of question, that you are going to hell if you reject it. Sure, most christians and religious people challenge their faith, but only within a tight overton window, beyond such a point, questioning is not allowed, and those who throw off the shackles of the religion may face social consequences.
Heck, it is because of the authoritarian nature of religion that we established secularism, the separation of church and state in the first place. Because religion will become tyrannical over others if given the power of government. it will formally attack and persecute those who disagree with it. A lot of our liberal ideals are based out of the rejection of the UK's system of government, actually. They had a state church, so we did not. They didnt have freedom of religion and persecuted people, so we do not. Our ideas corrected what was wrong with their system, and we are much better off for it.
But some religious people cannot stand this. They think that secular society is decadent, that something is wrong with it, that people need "god", or jesus, and that without religion governing their lives, that people will live sad, meaningless lives and engage in superficial pleasures like sex, drugs, and abortion. And that we need to restore god and christ into peoples' lives and have more christianity in our culture.
And to me, much like with work, the reason people believe this is because it's often all they know. Many religious people do not TRULY know what it's like not to be religious. And they project their understanding of a life without christ onto others. Yes, some people convert later in life, and often times, those who do did so while falling on hard times, and were exploited when vulnerable. And if anything, those guys are the most radical, just as the atheists who leave religion as adults in a relatively traumatic fashion become the most radical and ardent atheists.
Being someone who is closer to that end of the spectum than the one interested in religious faith, I can't help but see religion negatively. I believe its influence on this world is negative, that its contributions are a net negative. This isn't to say that without religion all problems would be solved, nor does it mean that everything about religion is bad. I would just argue that its positives can be found elsewhere, and that if we were to think about a world in which everyone were religious radicals, and everyone were radically secular, that the later would be favorable. I just dont see many valuable contributions of religion to the world, and do believe, to some extent, we would be better off without it.
Heck, to me, if anything, I realize that if religion were conquered once and for all, and we all became atheists...the world would go on much like it did, and people would often find new ideologies to cling to. Some think secularism is boring in that sense, that secularism can't live without its arch nemesis religion, and that it will be replaced by something else. I can't fully disagree or refute this. After all, it has been argued that the reason new atheism fell from prominence is because of postmodernism and social justice ideology. of course, to me, that's just a secular religion. So is marxism, by the way. And the alt right, and libertarianism. Many political ideologies tend to have quasi religious elements to them and people would fight amongst these if religion were to suddenly disappear. I really dont think the world would change much, if at all, if religion were to disappear in the west. People would just replace religion with something else.
But I would go further, I don't even think that secularism really is that much of a moral vacuum. I think that associated liberal ideals like tolerance, separation of church and state, and the freedom for all to pursue their own happiness as long as they dont infringe on the rights of others is convincing in itself.
Heck, I would argue my humanist perspective is based on these things.
if anything, I've come to embrace the nihilism and absurdism that comes with purposelessness. And if anything, I think what the world really needs, is a good existential crisis. I think it needs to go through the process of deconversion that I did, and to grapple with the sheer purposelessness of the world. For it it is only through that kind of nihilism that all of our false beliefs fall away, and that we can start anew.
In order for new ideas to be created, the old must be destroyed. And I believe much of humanity oh so resists going through this crisis, and it fears it. I see it in how religions try to cling to relevance even as followers leave. I see it in how people approach the problem of work and what people will do with their lives if we struggle to create enough jobs for people. It seems like we have a hostility to giving up on our views, and just...embracingly the purposelessness, embracing the nihilism, embracing the nothing.
And to me, that's just the indoctrination talking. For most people, this is all that they know. They cling to their belief system in desperation, because quite frankly, existential crises are difficult. They can be emotionally painful. You might be forced to challenge every ideal and belief that you have ever held, and maybe you won't be you any more if you went through this process.
But you know what? Maybe that's a good thing. I think the world NEEDS an existential crisis. I really do. I think we need to challenge the usefulness of religion. The role of work in our society. What our purpose is. Because, to go back to the name of this blog, these things ARE plato's cave. They are the illusions. We have been taught and fed lies since we were young, and what we're resisting is breaking that indoctrination. We might even see doing so as painful.
But you know what? As someone who grappled with such things myself, I see it as worth it. I would actually argue that life is even more beautiful, if we see it for what it really is. That the possibilities are endless, if only we embrace them.
But sadly, most are still in the cave, and are hostile to those who have left. They believe the lies of the cave, and refuse to let people go through this process of purification. They even think those who have done it, and who see the world as it really is are somehow wrong or broken. If we are wrong or broken at all, it is trying to live in a world that does not serve our needs, but the needs of the cave.
Our social systems do not really operate under liberal frameworks. They are not always live and let live. They are very multi layered, and when one layer fails, other layers kick in. In the sense of someone like me, when the indoctrination fails, and I see the world as it really is, I just realize how coercive and oppressive these systems are. They really do have us working day in and day out, wasting our lives on meaningless labor, because they believe that without doing so, that we would lack purpose and decay. If anything, what I see as threatening us is the coercion to participate in the first place.
We seem to forget, these ideas were a prison, that some people built for others. And that they were originally very coercive. Through colonialism and the enclosure movement, and the establishment of private property and this "work to live" system, we established an oppressive system that forces people to work. And perhaps the reason I seem so angry is because I see this system for what it is, and realize it is made to enslave us.
But most just don't see it. Because they believe in religious notions of purpose, or secularized versions via the modified work ethic. They just see the world as those who established this system want to. They are puppets, with the elites the puppet masters.
What I wish for the world, is that much like me, they have an existential crisis, and they embrace nihilism and purposelessness. What this would do, is to burn away all of these false illusions of what the world is, and leave us with only what the world actually is. And from there, those ideas would lose their power and consign themselves to the dustbin of history.
We wouldnt have to do these things any more, if only we realized how pointless and purposelessness that they are. While a normal person looks at the idea of job as a calling with some level of giving people purpose, all I see is rolling rocks up a hill like sisyphus. Because ive embraced the absurd. But unlike sisyphus, Im not happy. Why? Because I realize there's still some entity forcing me to roll rocks up the hill. People might wonder, but if you didnt roll rocks what would you do? And I answer, whatever I want. I would read, I would do art, I would blog, I would play video games. Why is that such a hard concept to grasp. Again, are peoples' senses dulled so much by these ideas they can't think outside of them? Don't answer, we already know the answer. And that is why society needs an existential crisis after all.
And the same applies to religion. For me, religion is the ultimate filter to control people. It is something that tells people to waste their lives on useless BS, so that they can enjoy the next. It is the most worthless pyramid scheme that has ever existed. it is a scam. And to me, the idea that secularism is boring is just...baffling to me. It shows subservience to the religious mind virus and shows that your own imagination of life outside of it is so distorted that you dont actually understand it.
Without religion, life goes on. If anything, it becomes fuller, as youre living in the moment, and you realize that this very well might be your one life, and you better not waste it. So you want to experience all of the things you can, and live the best life that you can, understanding that time is limited and that it will be over before we know it.
And that is what I wish to give to the world. That feeling, that sense. We don't need religion. We don't need purpose. What we really need is "nothing". We need to learn to embrace nothing, to be comfortable with nothing. It is only then that we can be who we really are, and not who someone else wants us to be.
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