The Cassandra of 'The Machine'
thenewatlantis.com
thenewatlantis.com
I've never met an adult convert who gave off any other vibe than "I am afraid of grappling with the world as it is, so I am turning to a comforting fantasy." They can and do often dress it up in various fancy phrases. They decry the awfulness of modernity and claim religion is the solution. But it is rhetoric. People don't become religious as adults because they are dumb or lack eloquence. They convert out of fear of the world.
There were always people creating illusionary worlds to control other people who gladly believed their lies, there still are.
We live in a chaotic and illegible world, but humans crave legibility so much that they will rather believe the fantasies that take their freedoms (wealth, agency) than deal with the chaos themselves.
Religion is one such a narrative, but governments or corporations have their own, just as harmful. Or - as many people seem to think - actually beneficial, because "people cannot handle the truth". Which I don't subscribe to.
I would encourage you to think of forces other than fear that might be driving observed behavior. It is only in this way that you have any hope of creating an alternative attractive force that satisfies the needs that are currently being served by religion.
But this is an exercise that is best performed by you. It is about changing your own attention. Next time you come across some "adult convert", instead of looking for signs that prove your assumptions (that they are looking for comfort), look for some positive sign.
Consider how you are reacting to this very comment chain. Are you thinking "there is no possible way any person could ever be attracted to religion for any other possible reason than fear and need for comfort". When you asked me for suggestions were you actually curious? Bring that same curiosity to your next interaction. Demand of your own attention to see a positive reason.
And consider that if you are not able to notice the positive intentions in the actions of another, that might be a you problem.
There is nothing wrong with wanting a community, but there is something wrong with telling people something is true when it is not just to get one. I get that people benefit from religion in a lot of ways. I just don't think that undermining basic questions of what we do and do not, what we can and can not, know, is worth those benefits.
A person who, in the privacy of their bathroom, looks in the mirror and repeats comforting lies to themselves to make themselves feel better is substantially less offensive to me than someone who publicly professes bullshit to make themselves feel better. If this seems blunt, ask yourself why we live in a world which gives automatic credence to ridiculous beliefs if and only if they happen to align with the ridiculous beliefs of a few sanctioned groups.
Do you think people join other communities out of fear? Someone who decides to play magic the gathering, join a dance class, a book reading group, or art class?
If people join these kinds of communities sometimes out of fear of being alone, and sometimes for other reasons, why do you not extend the same generous interpretation to people who join religious communities?
Some people see no value in learning art, music, literature or poetry. Some people do. Some people see no value in exploring spiritual topics, some people do.
Consider everything you said and apply it to improv classes. What changes?
Humans are just primates hardwired for selection bias and paredolia. We rationalize but we aren't rational beings, we're primarily driven by emotion and ego. We're smart enough to recognize death but also smart enough for mortal fear.
And that's even before we get to the vast political and cultural power of religion which even in this "atheistic" age still manufactures consent or justifies the policies of most governments around the world.
Unfortunately, gods will never die because they will never not be useful and people will never stop anthropomorphizing their environment.
Nice little "blood-and-soil" mythos he's got going there in his "reactionary radicalism."
> And what is to be done? The answer to the Machine, for Kingsnorth, lies not in the Right or the Left, not in capitalism or communism, not in some ideological system or set of conceptual abstractions. [...] The closest we may get in the book to a description of how to secure a more humane future is the term “reactionary radicalism,” which Kingsnorth borrows from sociologist Craig Calhoun. It is a way of life that thrives on tradition, in a local place, in prayer, among a people. “The moral economy rarely makes rational sense. But it makes human sense, which is what matters.”
The book seems to follow the almost traditional dichotomy between "perverted", growth-at-all-costs urban techno-libertarianism (with some stings at liberalism for some reason) and "pure" rural Christian traditionalism.
Interesting that the figureheads of both those movements come from the right today.
As a liberal leftist, none of those two systems look particularly appealing to me. Are there no other options that the author could imagine?
And yet I can sympathize - the world seems sometimes almost absurdly inhumane at the moment, the people in charge seem both incompetent and to have a death grip on power and not out of any particular skill or strength, but because we cannot articulate any real alternative. The fantasy that we can fix this problem by embracing tradition or some other dumb shit is appealing because it doesn't force us to grapple with the real problems of the world.
In the broadest strokes I tend to agree that we will need to return to the human, but I think that doesn't have to look like Christianity or any other made up bullshit. I can be humanism, but we must be willing to do things which might lower GDP to get there. We have to be willing to restrain ourselves and others for the benefit of harmony. Tough sell for Americans.