Broken Promises

"Religion in general compensates for the fact that modern society doesn't deliver us what it promises." - Dr. Jeffrey McPherson

I won't quote anyone specific at you, but the simple fact is that when religion is taken out of the equation, Western people measure their success in life with only two factors: the status of their work lives, their professional accomplishments, and the status of their personal lives, generally measured by the amount and quality of their personal relationships.  These lives are generally distinct from one another, but more importantly they are the primary evaluative mechanisms of modern society.  An example will help.

If I were to walk up to you some time tomorrow and tell you that my friend John is very successful, you would imagine that he is either gainfully employed or engaged in an educational path that will make him so, and that he similarly partakes in fulfilling relationships with his family and friends.  There will be some other nonsense about happiness somewhere in there, but this is mostly assumed to derive from the fact that he's financially successful and has fulfilling relationships.

We covered this general topic today in a class I'm taking with the aforementioned Dr. McPherson, and we specifically covered the fact that these are both lies.

The great English philosopher Thomas Hobbes had a good deal correct when he said that men are dangerous, not because they seek happiness, but because the happiness that they seek is only found when they have both met their needs and desires and ensured that they will forevermore have those same needs and desires met.  In other words, what Hobbes is saying is that having $500 in your pocket will make any person happy, but most people will only be happy if they can ensure that a continuous stream of cash will supplement that $500, enough to sustain a comfortable, enjoyable existence.  Without that security, without knowing that tomorrow and the day after and the day after that will also be fine, most people tend to not be happy.

This becomes a problem in the modern world, because our primary indicator of status and success is directly tied to our occupations.  One man is a cashier at McDonald's, another is the teller at a bank and still another owns the bank.  We would probably evaluate these men, given no other criteria, as being progressively more successful.  The problem with the modern world is that in an instant, that can change.  To be fair, people at all times in history have been at the mercy of their employers, but workers (or those seeking work) in the modern age definitely seek a more ruthless kind of devaluation.  Workers are hired and fired at the whims of employers in the modern world because they tend to be almost completely replaceable.  If Jerry who works as a cashier begins acting up and making it clear that he believes he has earned a raise for himself, it is usually easier to find someone to replace him in his meaningless job than it is to give him a raise: and most employers will do just that.

This problem stretches on and on throughout the modern workforce: valuable, skilled people lose their jobs daily because "the company is going in a new direction" or because they've just been off of their game for the last few months.  Thus, one of our primary methods of self-valuation and of evaluating others is, at least in the modern world, as ephemeral and vulnerable as a mist on a windy day.

"That's fine," some might say, "I actually derive my personal value from my relationships."

...okay, I'll admit that I may be the only person I know that would actually say those words, but you get my point.

The problem is that this often over-burdens our relationships.  There's a reason that we all buy into the Hollywood myth of the perfect love story: we want it.  There's an intimacy and a meaningfulness in our love myth that's lacking in our professional lives, and we want our lives to mean something the way that lives (and loves) in the rom-com do.  Who doesn't want their life to be enveloped in fulfillment and deep personal intimacy with Zooey Deschanel?

Maybe I'm getting too biographical...

Anyway, the point is that we take all of the meaning and weight that we can no longer derive from our occupations (given their ephemeral nature) and we thrust all the impetus for our personal meaning onto our personal relationships.  The really funny thing is that we are then genuinely surprised when our relationships leave us emotionally drained and longing for respite.

Another problem with our relationships is that in the modern world, more than ever before, our relationships are disposable.  If tomorrow I decided to permanently cease all contact with my family members, relocate to Denver, Colorado and start a new life in which I didn't utilize social media, the thing that would give most of my new friends a feeling of uneasiness and distrust about me would not be that I seemingly had no family, no friends and no life prior to January 29th, 2013, it would be that I didn't use social media!

We live in an era where the single most "meaningful" aspect of our lives can be put on and taken off like a ratty sweater whenever we want.

So, in the end, we have two criterion for happiness and personal success, both of which can be ripped out from under us at a moment's notice, completely outside of any control we might exert.

Feeling happy yet?

It's no wonder then that so many people turn to religions to derive their meaning.  As the quote at the beginning of this diatribe reiterated, we are promised the world.

Chuck Palahniuk says in Fight Club, "we grew up believing we would end up as rock stars and pro football players," we have been fed the lie that if we work hard and do our best to be nice we will have great, rewarding jobs and fantastic personal lives and that these will give us meaning.

Then we put out 18 applications to fast food restaurants, get a college degree, try and fail in our personal relationships and we're left with no money, no means to acquire it, the shame of living under someone else's roof, and none of the interpersonal comforts that are supposed to make it all feel better.

What religion does, whether it's true or false, is provide us with a metaphysical, invisible system by which we can look at a lonely, unemployed life and still say two ourselves: 1) I am unconditionally meaningful 2) Things are going to eventually get better for me, and 3) All of this bad stuff really might not be my fault, and even if it is, I'll eventually be okay as long as I behave.  Not always, but they usually tend to offer some solid advice as well.

I dare you to find a religion that doesn't do that.  I don't even mean the big ones, although they also fit those parameters.  Look at Mormonism, Scientology, Satanism, Neo-Paganism, old paganism, greek mystery religion, theravada Buddhism, shinto Buddhism, etc.

Again, I'm not trying to say anything about the truth or untruth of religious claims.  I for one am a Catholic, and a proud one at that.  But even though I believe that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is an historical fact, I do acknowledge that my whole worldview does a pretty good job at telling me that I'm unconditionally meaningful, that eventually, no matter what, things are going to get better, and that most of the evil in the world, even when it happens to me, isn't my fault at the core.  And where it is, I can fix that.

Those are comforting thoughts in any time period, but especially in ours they offer a powerful impetus.

That's enough for now, but tomorrow we'll tackle truth claims.

It's been wonderful,

     J.R.M.C.