Humanism and God-Shaped Hole
Are these two compatible?
The assertions in question are two RW dogmas, humanism and ‘god-shaped hole in us moderns’. They are diagnoses of modernity. Quite important to the memeplex. Many normative concepts stemming from them. On the face of it the two appear contradictory. On a deeper level they might be mutually supporting. Join me in finding out...
Humanism on the right is embodied in the following memes:
- bugman - Kafkaesque critique of the Moloch
- human scaled cities
- fight against inhuman capital / overgrown bureaucracy
What is common is ‘modernity doesn’t supply human needs’. Moloch stealing from the common folk in increasing degree. Marx would agree.
There’s certainly brownie points to be gained by positing your fight as against a nameless monster. Slaying Leviathan doesn’t have the connotations that pointing out people with names and addresses does.
The god-shaped hole argument in short is that:
0) we have an innate (evolutionary) need for enchantment, the sacred in our world
1) that used to be filled by religion - especially Christianity in the West
2) modernity doesn’t provide it in a time-tried / Lindy format
3) postmodern individuals and institutions invent and follow their own peculiar deities
3) social ills stem from (3), as coordination failure
I call it ‘religion alignment problem’. We can see this as a subset of the humanist one. ‘Modernity doesn’t supply our human needs, among them there is the need for sacrum’. That’s flipping Marx on his head. Instead of religion being an opium to the masses on the way to their humanist happiness, they achieve the latter through the former. We could synthesize both positions into a utilitarian landscape, where some religions are opium, and some do make people happy. Many would agree with such a statement. Would you? Does more than one religion do that?
- ‘If these 2 statements are in set relation to one another, how can they be contradictory?’
This could be reformulated to the argument that ‘Christian humanism’ is inconsistent. And as Xtianity is mostly referred to in this context, I’ll focus on it. You can substitute any other religion, with few alterations here and there.
RW humanism tells us: ‘build Human-scaled cities!’, ‘put Humans before processes!’, ‘Capital works against Our interests!’. That is ‘optimize actions to a visible Human good’. Let’s take the RW ‘god-shaped hole’ argument to be ‘you should make your life all about God!’. Then you feed your time to It as the god-benefit optimizer tells you.
That’s irreconciliable with the humanism. Maybe this is just another of the puzzles of modernity. Or maybe one of the assumptions is wrong? I can’t see changing the humanist argument. It happens in too many places. Takes on enough different shapes to be definite.
The way out
There are more kinds of spirituality besides the fully dedicated one. There’s the one where you just do a performatory donation of your time. Where you’re a humanist, or even an egoist, but do a little Lectisternium to the gods every now and then.
Most religions have at least a dual mode of function. The priests mediating the truth, the believers who use it in their daily life in theory, and the monks, devoted 100% to the doctrine. Only the monk telos is 100% religious. The commoner one is like, 20%? Religion only providing incentive structure to avoid some failure modes.
- But that’s all just postmodern talk! We like to believe all our ancestors felt as disenchanted about religion as we do to feel better! It’s not historical!
This might be correct. Comment your opinion on ‘disenchantment-normativity’.
The ‘flexibility of commmitment’ is a requirement for any civilization-apt memeplex.You need a clear separation between the Men of God and Men of Earth. To try to make everyone of God, you preach them a dumbed down version and they forget about the crops. And literally drink the cool-aid. Don’t try to give salvation to everyone. It must be hard. Make many ways valid, not just one. To give priests so much power is a way to hubris too. What if that already happened?
Stopping the cancer
The god-shaped hole argument is two faced. First, people don’t sacrifice to the correct gods ( ones that sustain civilization and lead it to better places). The second is that some sacrifice to the wrong gods. There are always people - mostly women - who feel a real need to perpetuate their religion. You can witness in HR departments where that can lead.
It’s bad when your religion doesn’t provide a way for those zealots to satisfy their religious urges in a civilization-respecting way. They’ll wreak havoc. Either through using a different religion / memeplex or corrupting the one you propose. Well, they might be harmless, but don’t leave it to chance. Think about it. At any moment there will be myriads of heresies brewing in every nook and cranny. Waiting for a moment of weakness. Then those most memetically viral will spread. Strong positive feedback loops. Eventually forbidding other ways of being. Unsustainable parasitism. Cancerous overgrowth. Killing the host then dying with it.
La femme c’est fasciste.
More treatment of the topic of Gods will be in the future.