In the middle of an essay on the nature of god that I am struggling to make progress on, this little reflection is a nice break.
The world is ready for a new mode of cultural organizing. Anyone who isn’t ready yet will tire of the way things are soon. No interim solution for the loss of religion from pulic life has been workable so far. And religion really is gone from public life. It’s not coming back. Post-modernism bludgeons any meta-narrative to death, and scientism was the final nail in this particular coffin. And so, the primary method of cultural organization in the west is gone. Even young people with strong spiritual beliefs have little to no interest in religion anymore. It’s over.
So what comes next? I am certain that there will be a thing that comes next. Right now, as a society we’re collectively trying out replacing religion with politics. That’s not going so hot, if you ask me. Politics are pretty weird right now, and all we’ve really managed to do is make a bunch of idealogues shouting at each other on the internet. The neoliberal capitalism machine keeps doing neoliberal capitalism and the major systemic trappings of western society haven’t really changed much here. A return to paganism or animism or some other form of spirituality is another popular interim solution in certain circles. This is unlikely to be adopted on a societal scale. Those older methods of cultural organization existed not only as a product of a certain time, but for a certain time. A religion or form of cultural organization exists not only as a product of it’s time, but to serve the needs of it’s time. We have different social and spiritual needs, which paganism wasn’t created to fulfill.
Something will come next. Some new way of organizing ourselves culturally, that actually works. Something to take the place religion used to occupy as we as a society move beyond religion. Post-religion.
So first thing’s first, post-religion definitely won’t be called post religion. And thank god, post-something names are fucking awful. I hate that I wrote a blog post entitled such a thing. I should probably be mocked for it. But post-religion won’t be called post-religion not because it’s a stupid name, it’ll be called such a thing because it won’t be defined by it’s relationship to religion but by its relationship to culture and to society. It will be a genuine method of organization, standing on it’s own.
Post religion likely won’t contain any grand sweeping meta narratives, but it will likely contain micronarratives, a word I just made up right now that means an overarching narrative telling truths about the world, but much smaller in scope. Primarily contrasted from meta narratives in that it attempts to explain universally whatever is within it’s narrative, but keeps the scope of that narrative small. I don’t have any justification for this and I’m not interested in coming up with any because this is obviously a pretty laid back blog post, but I strongly believe that this is where cultural beliefs are headed. I think people are or will soon be disillusioned with this post-modern skepticism of all universality, and that micro-narratives will be made by stitching kernels of truth together.
Post religion will have to be capable of acknowledge multiple truths. This is related to the idea of micronarratives, but distinct. A micronarrative might be capable of explaining why there are different truths from different perspectives, but the containing cultural force of post-religion must still be capable of ackowleding all of these truths. This is one place where politics as a cultural organization scheme has failed truly spectacularly. In the age of the internet, with widely available data and facts and figures, it becomes increasingly clear that truth is not so much a matter of determining the facts as it is determining which facts matter. When the right tells you that violent crime is committed more often by people of color, they aren’t lying. When the left tells you that violent crime is associted strongly with poverty, and that more people of color are in poverty, they aren’t lying either. Political disagreements are rarely a disagreement of fact and truth. They are a disagreement of which truths matter.
There is a growing need for spirituality in the west. Young ‘spiritual but not religious’ people want something to fill this need. Existing religion is ill suited for our globally connected world with it’s multiplicity of truths, but the spiritual needs it filled are still empty without it. Post religion will not be religion, but it will be spiritual.
I have stopped looking for the perfect religion to give me answers anymore. It can’t exist. Religion is for pre modernity. It has no answers for us today. Some new mode of cultural connection and organization will come about. I am not sure what it will be, but I know that it will have to address some of these needs. God I hope it hurries up though. I’m tired of plan trusters.