Amerika

Permanent agricultural civilization was never guaranteed to succeed. Humans were originally nomadic hunter-gatherers because this avoided the problems of setting up permanent organizations where people did the same thing every day.

Civilizations seem to fall prey to two prongs of the same fork, (1) bourgeois cosmopolitan egalitarianism and (2) dualistic symbolism, which posits another world without the problems of this one. These are probably pitfalls of human mentation or consciousness generally.

The two are similar because both advocate a primal individualism which states that the desires, feelings, judgments, and emotions of the individual are superior to reality itself. They reject reality because sometimes it hurts (and we would be brain-dead not to feel sympathy here).

As a result, they invent a “better way of living” (bourgeois cosmopolitan egalitarianism) and a morality/religion about Heavens where the problems of Earth no longer exist. These are nice fantasies but over time make people delusional.

Over time, the former outweighs the latter because wealth and technology make people independent from nature, so they have no need for a religious alternative fact quasi-reality:

Atheists are more likely to be college-educated people who live in cities and they are highly concentrated in the social democracies of Europe. Atheism thus blossoms amid affluence where most people feel economically secure. But why?

It seems that people turn to religion as a salve for the difficulties and uncertainties of their lives. In social democracies, there is less fear and uncertainty about the future because social welfare programs provide a safety net and better health care means that fewer people can expect to die young. People who are less vulnerable to the hostile forces of nature feel more in control of their lives and less in need of religion.

The most recent report on religion was much-touted by the Right as the return of Christianity, when in fact it shows that most people are leaving Christianity but remaining “spiritual,” mostly because they have no need for doctrine since ideology has filled that void:

The latest RLS, fielded over seven months in 2023-24, finds that 62% of U.S. adults identify as Christians. That is a decline of 9 percentage points since 2014 and a 16-point drop since 2007.

But for the last five years, between 2019 and 2024, the Christian share of the adult population has been relatively stable, hovering between 60% and 64%. The 62% figure in the new Religious Landscape Study is smack in the middle of that recent range.

Younger Americans remain far less religious than older adults…the youngest adults in the survey (ages 18 to 24) are less likely than today’s oldest adults (ages 74 and older) to:

• Identify as Christian (46% vs. 80%)
• Pray daily (27% vs. 58%)
• Say they attend religious services at least monthly (25% vs. 49%)

Very few people are now Christian or follow Christian practice, but 92% of Americans still believe in some combination of an afterlife, deity, soul, and divine layer to existence. Now that ideology has assimilated Christianity, all that remains is basic spirituality.

The third-world morality of equality turns out to have been similar enough to the moralism of Christianity that the simpler form won out. Both Abrahamism and egalitarianism come to us from foreign third-world lands, and reflect how people think in failed or failing societies like those.

In the bigger picture, this individualistic ideology and religion suspiciously resembles a savior complex born of low self-esteem:

The savior complex, or white knight syndrome, describes the need to “save” other people by fixing their problems for them. Someone with a savior complex often feels the compulsion to go out of their way to help other people, even if those other people don’t need or want their help.

“The savior complex ties into low self-esteem and lack of self-confidence,” explains Dr. Ford.

There are several reasons someone might feel insecure about their place in the world and how they interact with other people, but often, the savior complex is rooted in the experiences you’ve had when you were young.

Civilization decay causes broken self-esteem, as does the anonymity of having a job and being responsible to the opinions of others instead of simply making the crops grow and slaying the wooly mammoth.

In fact, the general pathology of religion suspiciously resembles codependency, but with nature projected into an anthropomorphic role:

Denial Patterns

Codependents often…

1. have difficulty identifying what they are feeling.
2. minimize, alter, or deny how they truly feel.
3. perceive themselves as completely unselfish and dedicated to the well-being of others.

Low Self-esteem Patterns

Codependents often…
1. have difficulty making decisions.
2. judge what they think, say, or do harshly, as never good enough.
3. are embarrassed to receive recognition, praise, or gifts.
4. are unable to identify or ask for what they need and want.
5. value others’ approval of their thinking, feelings, and behavior over their own.
6. do not perceive themselves as lovable or worthwhile persons.

Compliance Patterns

Codependents often…
1. compromise their values and integrity to avoid rejection and other people’s anger.
2. are very sensitive to other’s feelings and assume the same feelings.
3. are extremely loyal, remaining in harmful situations too long.
4. place a higher value on other’s opinions and feelings and are afraid to express differing viewpoints or feelings.
5. put aside their own interests in order to do what others want.
6. accept sex as a substitute for love.

Control Patterns

Codependents often…
1. believe people are incapable of taking care of themselves.
2. attempt to convince others what to think, do, or feel.
3. become resentful when others decline their help or reject their advice.
4. freely offer advice and direction without being asked.
5. lavish gifts and favors on those they want to influence.
6. use sex to gain approval and acceptance.
7. have to feel needed in order to have a relationship with others.

Avoidance Patterns

Codependents often…
1. act in ways that invite others to reject, shame, or express anger toward them.
2. judge harshly what others think, say, or do.
3. avoid emotional, physical, or sexual intimacy to avoid feeling vulnerable.
4. allow addictions to people, places, and things to distract them from achieving intimacy in relationships.
5. use indirect or evasive communication to avoid conflict or confrontation.
6. believe displays of emotion are a sign of weakness.

Democracy urges us to be “very sensitive to other’s feelings and assume the same feelings” and “put aside their own interests in order to do what others want” as well as hitting many of these other factors, including the manipulation by sex that seems very commonplace these days.

It seems as if modernity represents two heads of a pathology and that over time, this reverts to money/power instead of the spiritual.

Tags: atheism, christianity, codependency, ideology, savior complex