In a recent conversation with a friend on the rising threat associated with speaking your mind in a typical American workplace, I remarked that the abandonment of the sacred realm in modern society has made people emotionally fragile and socially handicapped. In healthy traditional societies, the sacred belongs to the Gods. In societies that are falling apart, the idea of a jealous grandfather in the sky and his sidekick occupies that space but still manages to keep insanity at bay. But what happens to a society that degenerates further and takes the journey from Gods to the one true God to its logical conclusion, i.e doing away with the sacred entirely? In other words, how has modern society coped with the loss of the sacred realm, other than by diligently working to destroy the planet?
By pretending that the Gods do not exist (because science), Humans have not given up on the sacred. Instead, they’ve rented it out to a new occupant - Technology. And by masterful mental acrobatics, anointed it as the new one true God. If you think carefully, there is nothing in the world as beyond reproach and question as technology. Technology is overrunning the world today just as the desert cults overran it in the past and the mechanics are almost identical. The short-term material gains promised and the disdain for the non-believer’s dissent are the defining features of its glorious rise as is the trail of destruction it leaves behind. It is now unthinkable to pass a moral judgement on a new technology and the only recourse is a humble acceptance of the inevitable.
The destruction technology causes extends to the physical world as well as the meta-physical. The physical damage is clearly visible all around us but the psychological damage is not as tangible, which compounds the problem because it is the latter that paralyzes human societies from doing something about the former. As is universally acknowledged, adoption of every new technology is essentially an exchange of meaning for power. In the culture of technology, life is meaningless because freedom is believed to come for free, shunning the age-old wisdom that freedom is measured by the price you pay for it.
The loss of meaning has far-reaching consequences for every member of the society as the culture of reflection rapidly gives way to a culture of reflex, in which thinking is an unnecessary burden unless it is employed in the service of technology, that is, in making processes more efficient and people more productive. Faster cars are self-evidently desirable even if it is not so obvious what one does with the time saved. Doubling or tripling the human lifespan by bio-medical intervention is a noble project no matter if it will lead to billions of unemployed 100-year-old adolescents.
Yet, many people develop a revulsion towards technology as they grow old. They intuitively figure out how it is single-handedly responsible for making their life miserable. I know folks who gave up using smart phones and microwave ovens to make a statement of some kind. But disengaging physically from technology is no longer an option except in a superficial sense. Evicting the ghost of the tenant from your head and handing over the reins to the rightful owners of the sacred realm, that is where the magic is. Freedom too. And the price for it must be paid individually.