I don't think there's any doubt that Social Justice is the new official state religion and belief system of the Anglosphere and the global corporate state and the young and university educated. The rest of us who worship old gods (and may be closer to the end of life than to the start) are like pagans in Rome after Constantine, we will all have to find a way to make peace with the new gods in town, which I think usually means either conversion or paying lip service in public and maintaining older rituals in private.
Mary Harrington is an excellent writer and as usual she nails the central point: societies can't stand without a sacred belief system and our post-Christian world has been ripe for a hostile takeover for quite awhile.
The next question for me is: can the Social Justice true believers build anything of lasting value or beauty? Obviously they are masters of dismanting and deconstruction, as these are foundational beliefs (that all that came before needed to be taken apart), but so far they have only been able to take over existing institutions not build any of their own.
And as for any works of art or thought that aren't canned dogma shrouded by word clouds of jargon, or updates on agitprop with a modern narcissistic twist, they still show no signs of getting beyond this.
I think until they can create some kind of positive vision or cultivate any talent besides resentment, until they can offer some kind of joy or beauty, there is always the slim chance of a Thermidor or counter-revolution.
And above all, the widely discussed 2015 book by Edward Watts, *The Final Pagan Generation,* eagerly taken up by writer/substackers as heterogeneous as Ed West, Rod Dreher, Razib Khan, Niccolo Soldo, and N.S. Lyons as a key to understanding how those of us who resist Wokeism are like Julian the Apostate trying to hold back Christianity.
Left me with the sickening realization that the same people who years ago supported the right to deface an American flag in the name of free if tasteless expression (a position I had to hold my nose and support) are mostly the same people that would today have someone prosecuted for doing the same to a rainbow flag...
I for one will never give up on a marketplace of idea / freedom of expression even tough I will likely have to go down with the ship.
Strong piece with a timely warning. I could not agree more with your assessment of where we, the West, is currently going. And where we have been. We seem to lack a common understanding that some kind of sacred vision is essential for our survival ...especially among the educated. I used to be one of them...
A religion that worships the murder of children and the obliteration of the role of mothers cannot last more than a few generations, as true believers would snuff out their own lineage. This post-liberal order is internally weak and preeminently vulnerable to attack from outside. The only way the trans movement could possibly solidify itself as a civilizational religion would be through either the apotheosis of a sentient AI or through the long-sought-for advent of motherless children decanted in factory-like nurseries. That is, to sustain itself, the new post-liberal religion must either carry on to the logical end of transhumanism or succeed at achieving procreation without mothers or families and thus descend into a kind of arational hive. Failure on both fronts would mean the inevitable death of this religious movement, in spite of its apparently burgeoning present strength.
Not sure blasphemy is dead just yet… If that woman would have tried the same behaviour in a mosque or temple….No doubt the court outcome would have been very different.
But great article! Here’s hoping some semblance of free speech, debate and discussion on differences in society remains ‘legal’ in the future ;-)
Taken with Haidt's classification of progressive and conservative values, it seems as though everyone is becoming a conservative in adhering to one set of taboos or another; and having sacralised the social justice agenda, it seems that those we now refer to as progressives are likely to start valuing authority and loyalty just as much as conservatives as means of enforcing adherence to their preferred taboos.
I suppose this is just another way of saying that in the post-liberal era terms like progressive and conservative may no longer serve as landmarks by which we can reliably orient ourselves.
Remove this comment if you feel its not appropriate. But in my opinion if the modern Christians(like their forefathers even 3-4 generations ago) had the balls to cut of the heads of the ECHR judges, then judges wouldn't have issued such a ruling. Of course this is also why ECHR will protect Islam from blasphemy. Christians are soft so they can expect to keep getting abused. Crying about the unfairness won't do a single thing. Unfairness is the objective.
Of course for the liberals, as opposed to post-liberals, free speech and individual rights (though not individualism ala libertarianism) *are* the sacred values. This was once hegemonic actually.
I'm noticing lately a beleaguered liberalism that won't officially sign off on being post-liberal but sees post-liberalism everywhere - and paints a picture of its inevitability that practically dares people to join its ranks - and chides the remaining non-beleagured liberals ala Quillette for still believing in free speech nostrums etc.
If the official religion of Britain is Anglicanism, why is it afraid to assert itself? If it is no longer Anglicanism, what is it? Dare you ask what it is and who chooses for us if not the British monarch who was the one who changed the religion of the English in 1534?
If we do not have an official religion we can all agree is the official religion whether we like it or not, it means Parliament in effect has the power of an absolute monarch over us because Parliament can pass and repeal any law under the Doctrine of Parliamentary Supremacy.
European courts upholding the right to piss on a Christian altar is evidence that Christianity is no longer the sacred official religion of the West. But what is?
'And Islam is every bit as averse to (and theologically at odds with) this spiritual landscape as the Christian faith. In this context, a putative Islamic theocracy will face an uphill battle in the West.'
I don't think there's any doubt that Social Justice is the new official state religion and belief system of the Anglosphere and the global corporate state and the young and university educated. The rest of us who worship old gods (and may be closer to the end of life than to the start) are like pagans in Rome after Constantine, we will all have to find a way to make peace with the new gods in town, which I think usually means either conversion or paying lip service in public and maintaining older rituals in private.
Mary Harrington is an excellent writer and as usual she nails the central point: societies can't stand without a sacred belief system and our post-Christian world has been ripe for a hostile takeover for quite awhile.
The next question for me is: can the Social Justice true believers build anything of lasting value or beauty? Obviously they are masters of dismanting and deconstruction, as these are foundational beliefs (that all that came before needed to be taken apart), but so far they have only been able to take over existing institutions not build any of their own.
And as for any works of art or thought that aren't canned dogma shrouded by word clouds of jargon, or updates on agitprop with a modern narcissistic twist, they still show no signs of getting beyond this.
I think until they can create some kind of positive vision or cultivate any talent besides resentment, until they can offer some kind of joy or beauty, there is always the slim chance of a Thermidor or counter-revolution.
Much of interest in this line: Slate Star Codex, "Gay Rites are Civil Rites"
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/08/gay-rites-are-civil-rites/
And above all, the widely discussed 2015 book by Edward Watts, *The Final Pagan Generation,* eagerly taken up by writer/substackers as heterogeneous as Ed West, Rod Dreher, Razib Khan, Niccolo Soldo, and N.S. Lyons as a key to understanding how those of us who resist Wokeism are like Julian the Apostate trying to hold back Christianity.
https://edwest.substack.com/p/living-and-losing-the-first-culture
https://niccolo.substack.com/p/concluding-remarks-on-watts-the-final
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/learning-from-the-final-pagan-generation/
Left me with the sickening realization that the same people who years ago supported the right to deface an American flag in the name of free if tasteless expression (a position I had to hold my nose and support) are mostly the same people that would today have someone prosecuted for doing the same to a rainbow flag...
I for one will never give up on a marketplace of idea / freedom of expression even tough I will likely have to go down with the ship.
Strong piece with a timely warning. I could not agree more with your assessment of where we, the West, is currently going. And where we have been. We seem to lack a common understanding that some kind of sacred vision is essential for our survival ...especially among the educated. I used to be one of them...
It would be cool if there were a way to push back against liberal technocracy without having to uphold the Christian church.
A religion that worships the murder of children and the obliteration of the role of mothers cannot last more than a few generations, as true believers would snuff out their own lineage. This post-liberal order is internally weak and preeminently vulnerable to attack from outside. The only way the trans movement could possibly solidify itself as a civilizational religion would be through either the apotheosis of a sentient AI or through the long-sought-for advent of motherless children decanted in factory-like nurseries. That is, to sustain itself, the new post-liberal religion must either carry on to the logical end of transhumanism or succeed at achieving procreation without mothers or families and thus descend into a kind of arational hive. Failure on both fronts would mean the inevitable death of this religious movement, in spite of its apparently burgeoning present strength.
Could it be . . . Satan?
Not sure blasphemy is dead just yet… If that woman would have tried the same behaviour in a mosque or temple….No doubt the court outcome would have been very different.
But great article! Here’s hoping some semblance of free speech, debate and discussion on differences in society remains ‘legal’ in the future ;-)
Taken with Haidt's classification of progressive and conservative values, it seems as though everyone is becoming a conservative in adhering to one set of taboos or another; and having sacralised the social justice agenda, it seems that those we now refer to as progressives are likely to start valuing authority and loyalty just as much as conservatives as means of enforcing adherence to their preferred taboos.
I suppose this is just another way of saying that in the post-liberal era terms like progressive and conservative may no longer serve as landmarks by which we can reliably orient ourselves.
Remove this comment if you feel its not appropriate. But in my opinion if the modern Christians(like their forefathers even 3-4 generations ago) had the balls to cut of the heads of the ECHR judges, then judges wouldn't have issued such a ruling. Of course this is also why ECHR will protect Islam from blasphemy. Christians are soft so they can expect to keep getting abused. Crying about the unfairness won't do a single thing. Unfairness is the objective.
Of course for the liberals, as opposed to post-liberals, free speech and individual rights (though not individualism ala libertarianism) *are* the sacred values. This was once hegemonic actually.
I'm noticing lately a beleaguered liberalism that won't officially sign off on being post-liberal but sees post-liberalism everywhere - and paints a picture of its inevitability that practically dares people to join its ranks - and chides the remaining non-beleagured liberals ala Quillette for still believing in free speech nostrums etc.
If the official religion of Britain is Anglicanism, why is it afraid to assert itself? If it is no longer Anglicanism, what is it? Dare you ask what it is and who chooses for us if not the British monarch who was the one who changed the religion of the English in 1534?
If we do not have an official religion we can all agree is the official religion whether we like it or not, it means Parliament in effect has the power of an absolute monarch over us because Parliament can pass and repeal any law under the Doctrine of Parliamentary Supremacy.
European courts upholding the right to piss on a Christian altar is evidence that Christianity is no longer the sacred official religion of the West. But what is?
Gay rights is an offshoot of feminism, and feminism operates on bribing men with cheap extramarital sex to keep them quiescent in their matriarchy.
'And Islam is every bit as averse to (and theologically at odds with) this spiritual landscape as the Christian faith. In this context, a putative Islamic theocracy will face an uphill battle in the West.'
Actually, Islam is much easier to believe.