Much digital ink has been spent in recent years on chronicling the attempts to fill the God-shaped void at the core of modern Western society. The idea that wokeness is a religion, for example, is widely accepted in heterodox circles, while atheist millennials are increasingly looking for answers in
I've been a research scientist for over 30 years (theoretical physics) and the last 2 years of the covid debacle has seriously undermined any trust I had in institutions. The headlines and official pronouncements weren't matching what I was seeing in the data and seeing in my own analyses of the data.
More worryingly, it became increasingly clear that speaking out might not be the best career move possible. The censorship and the weaponization of the epithet "misinformation" has been deeply disturbing. The attempts to throttle information (good or bad) should concern us all - whether it's a result of some shadowy cabal or the confluence of circumstances pushed by well-meaning but ultimately clueless politicians.
There is no science without questioning - it's the foundation of the scientific method. You can however, have The Science™ as promoted by governments and institutions without questioning. In fact the new religion of The Science™ relies rather too heavily on the prohibition on asking questions.
The political divide on these issues is bizarre. I have always considered myself to be left-leaning but I'm guessing these days I must have morphed into some far-right wrongthinker without having noticed.
Pretty much everything we have been 'officially' told about covid and the interventions is, at best, a distortion of the truth and, at worst, an outright lie. I have never witnessed anything like it - the outrageous certainty when no such certainty was warranted.
I suppose one day I will be censored because we can't allow anything but Safe and Effective™ narratives to exist.
"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." Friedrich Nietzsche
Grateful for the privilege of being part of the Triggernometry tribe for quite some time that, not only has kept the intellectual and otherwise loneliness away, but gave us courage to question and seek honesty and integrity in who we are and what we do.
A wonderful start to your new endeavour, Konstantin. Glad to be here.
Konstantin, a beautifully crafted article and one I largely agree with, but I think it is important to bear in mind that what distinguishes age-old cultural religious belief from the get-hip-quick varieties on offer from post-modern relativist political ideologies is that the former, in essence, concerns itself with universal truths abstracted out of thousands of generations of human experience, while the latter is the construct of literal-minded reductionist theories for building imagined utopias.
This definition of 'religion', though, is a bit Dawkins-esque and simplistic, isn't it? 'Religion is just a mechanism to explain things and we don't need it because we now have science' is not actually borne out by any sophisticated understanding of serious faiths, and it doesn't explain either why religious belief is increasing globally rather than diminishing. Also, of course, secular belief systems - Marxism being the obvious example - are just as likely as religions to end up being irrational, superstitious, rigid and murderous.
I'd say that the essence of true religious commitment is revelation: something mysterious which can't be contained by present understandings of reality, and which is transformative for the human person. That's the core of any serious belief system, and it's one which secular liberals often fail to understand, because it doesn't fit with their metaphysics. The fanatical commitment to a belief system that attaches itself to religions is something different: it can attach itself to almost anything, and today it mostly manifests as politics.
I appreciate that you did talk about 'primitive religions.' But maybe a better say to look at it would be to say that many different belief systems, whether religious, secular or political, can be captured by fanaticism and rigidity. Just a thought.
great first article on a very pertinent subject. I have noted recently, particularly regarding the Ukraine situation, a level of nihilism and contrariness-for-the-sake-of-it on the dissident Right, which is worrying though, perhaps, not as surprising as we might first think. Nihilism on the Far Left is to some extent inevitable, on the Right it is a sign that things have slid dangerously out of control
Finally. Sanity. I’m now putting Konstantin alongside Sam Harris in being two of the only people I trust because they manage to avoid this predictability. The only tool we have against our own biases is to be aware that they are permanently shaping our views. If you talk about that-I immediately trust you the most. It’s a reassuring way forward in an age where fact checking just one, apparently convincing, Twitter thread would take days worth of reading. It’s amazing and depressing how many otherwise smart people (with big audiences) don’t give this a second thought.
Brilliant work, KK. The lack of trust in the media and establishment elites is easy to explain. What is more difficult to explain - or at least to accept - is that the vast majority of people have exposed themselves as prepared to accept whatever today's narrative of choice coming out of the tellybox, no matter how contradictory or convenient to the wallets and consciences of the elites it is, and however deleterious it is to the common man.
I don't suppose that's anything new either, depicted as it was in 1948 by George Orwell. However, from the start of 2020 when I knew something wasn't right, I was left in a very small minority indeed having rejected the Covid narrative and also rejected the 5g nanobots bampot narratives of the anti-vaxxers. It's very difficult to come to terms with the fact that,in this age of infinite information, life has gotten more and more lonely for the open-minded inquisitive sceptic who refuses to jump to comforting conclusions.
Great article. Welcome to substack Konstantin, you have kept me sane throughout the pandemic!
We are entering the post-scientific age with quasi-religions cropping up all over the place. Individuals within these religions don't realise they are in a religion (maybe I am too but I try to stay objective). What is the most worrying is the morality issues attached to those beliefs. If you don't agree with me, not only are you stupid but you are evil. That is what I am most worried about over the coming years, especially with the unrest we may be about to experience with financial crises and food shortages in some countries.
Welcome to Substack, and good luck. You and I don't always see eye-to-eye on issues, but we certainly agree on the importance of examining evidence and trying to see the world accurately, rather than accepting a predetermined package of ideas that match our politics.
Thank you for starting this as it is easier to follow than a viral Twitter thread.
I’ve long thought that ‘Religion’ was a tool for control given there are so many, many of which don’t line up with the beliefs of the others, that beyond a basic sense of a ‘God’ and a few basic rules which many argue a society can’t live without.
These basic rules or moral guidelines aren’t religious in nature, they are the simple rules of getting along in a group of people which is as basic as the days when we roamed the planet as hunter-gatherers. Get along or get shunned which meant death.
It’s too early here on the West Coast of the USA at the moment for this but I do look forward to the next submission here on Substack.
The question of why one's attitude to Brexit predicts one's attitude to COVID (say) was explained by Thomas Sowell in "A Conflict of Visions" and "The Vision of the Anointed". Sowell is still with us. Perhaps you could have him on your show.
I do agree with some of what has been said here, but this “Water drops are falling from above – the Sky God is displeased” characterization of religion seems like a pretty simplistic, cynical, and caricatured view, something like a straw man argument. It seems to be implied that it is always something regressive, superstitious, naive, potentially dangerous, something that we ‘succumb’ to, etc. It’s as if ‘the religious instinct embedded in all of us’ (how? why? from where?) is a primitive instinct, a delusion based only on our ‘feelings’, something perhaps to be overcome through the advancement of ‘science’.
Many seem to think that the scientific worldview always necessarily represents progress, always represents an improvement over other ways of seeing and knowing the world, but the scientific paradigm has just redirected our attention, in a rather narrow way, to a different aspect of the world. Science is often presented in such a way that makes one think that it ‘explains’ this or that, when really it just ‘describes’. It’s more like 'dashboard knowledge', and focuses on the reductionist, mechanistic, quantitative viewpoint, dealing with certain patterns and predictable outcomes that allow us to manipulate and harness nature in certain ways, but it does not really constitute a worldview in and of itself, and is not able to really ‘explain’ our reality in a meaningful way. Hence the crisis of meaning that we are facing. (The writer Owen Barfield sums up this viewpoint as 'science must be true because it works'.) We can predict and manipulate in many ways, but we do not really understand the essential ‘what’ that we are dealing with, our notions of ‘matter’ and ‘energy’, for example, being essentially just abstractions. Modern ‘scientism’ is itself a kind of religion, with its own priest class, dogmas, heresies, congregations, corruption, etc.
I find that most materialists, atheists, etc. who criticize religion/spirituality or any notions of a practical spiritual science or metaphysics in general, have a pretty superficial and limited view and understanding of what those things are, and tend to create straw man arguments. They’ve set themselves in opposition to what is essentially their own very limited notion of what religion/spirituality is. And I think to myself, well, if that’s what I thought spirituality was, then yeah I would scoff at it too. Perhaps the most cliche example would be those atheists who rail against the notion of some bearded man in the sky, and whose position is defined by its opposition to such notions.
In any case, what is unknown and inexplicable to some, is not necessarily unknown and inexplicable to others. People, through their biases, preconceptions and paradigms have closed themselves off from accepting certain explanations, information, and evidence, or from accepting certain methods of inquiry as valid. They like to proclaim what we can and cannot know. But if one is limiting themselves in regard to where they are willing to look, then some things will always remain inaccessible to them. In such a case, perhaps it's that we are being too narrow in our worldview, and not that others are being superstitious. Perhaps we need to expand our conception of what it is possible to be scientific about, what it is possible to know, and even what it actually means to 'know' something. Suffice it to say, there is a big disconnect in our understanding of what is going on in the realms of thought, feeling, imagination, etc. on the one hand, and the realm of our physical sensations on the other, and the true relationship or connection between these two.
I agree with a lot - and I’ve said that SJW are part of a religion for a while now. They just don’t know it. I’d go out on a limb and say LGBTQ is somewhat akin to a religion for many too, as is BLM.
Do I completely distrust the Establishment though? No. Certain things, yes. We should be sceptical and look at things from a distance instead of getting caught up in a tidal wave of emotion. But, for example, with COVID. I don’t believe it was all the Establishment's fault and everything they said was a lie. They had a lot to deal with and it was changing information as per science and medical research that was changing. They reported what info they had at the time, and then that changed. So to simply say, “Oh, they lied to us,” I think, wouldn’t be the right approach. Yes they have, at times, many times, of course they have. But we shouldn’t have an outright mistrust for them because of that. This just feeds in to what Konstantin says about cults, religion and questioning everything…it’s kind of the same thing to just say the Establishment lie constantly and can never be trusted. That’s my thought on it anyway.
Asking all the right questions as always. For more on the current religious dilemma, Thomas Howard’s Chance or the Dance, a Critique of Modern Secularism couldn’t be more relevant and enlightening. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it. I also can’t help but think of Wendell Berry’s essays particularly “Why I am not going to buy a computer” as per our haughty and false notion that we technologically advanced are more knowledgeable than we were before when in fact the opposite is true.
I've been a research scientist for over 30 years (theoretical physics) and the last 2 years of the covid debacle has seriously undermined any trust I had in institutions. The headlines and official pronouncements weren't matching what I was seeing in the data and seeing in my own analyses of the data.
More worryingly, it became increasingly clear that speaking out might not be the best career move possible. The censorship and the weaponization of the epithet "misinformation" has been deeply disturbing. The attempts to throttle information (good or bad) should concern us all - whether it's a result of some shadowy cabal or the confluence of circumstances pushed by well-meaning but ultimately clueless politicians.
There is no science without questioning - it's the foundation of the scientific method. You can however, have The Science™ as promoted by governments and institutions without questioning. In fact the new religion of The Science™ relies rather too heavily on the prohibition on asking questions.
The political divide on these issues is bizarre. I have always considered myself to be left-leaning but I'm guessing these days I must have morphed into some far-right wrongthinker without having noticed.
Pretty much everything we have been 'officially' told about covid and the interventions is, at best, a distortion of the truth and, at worst, an outright lie. I have never witnessed anything like it - the outrageous certainty when no such certainty was warranted.
I suppose one day I will be censored because we can't allow anything but Safe and Effective™ narratives to exist.
"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." Friedrich Nietzsche
Grateful for the privilege of being part of the Triggernometry tribe for quite some time that, not only has kept the intellectual and otherwise loneliness away, but gave us courage to question and seek honesty and integrity in who we are and what we do.
A wonderful start to your new endeavour, Konstantin. Glad to be here.
Konstantin, a beautifully crafted article and one I largely agree with, but I think it is important to bear in mind that what distinguishes age-old cultural religious belief from the get-hip-quick varieties on offer from post-modern relativist political ideologies is that the former, in essence, concerns itself with universal truths abstracted out of thousands of generations of human experience, while the latter is the construct of literal-minded reductionist theories for building imagined utopias.
This definition of 'religion', though, is a bit Dawkins-esque and simplistic, isn't it? 'Religion is just a mechanism to explain things and we don't need it because we now have science' is not actually borne out by any sophisticated understanding of serious faiths, and it doesn't explain either why religious belief is increasing globally rather than diminishing. Also, of course, secular belief systems - Marxism being the obvious example - are just as likely as religions to end up being irrational, superstitious, rigid and murderous.
I'd say that the essence of true religious commitment is revelation: something mysterious which can't be contained by present understandings of reality, and which is transformative for the human person. That's the core of any serious belief system, and it's one which secular liberals often fail to understand, because it doesn't fit with their metaphysics. The fanatical commitment to a belief system that attaches itself to religions is something different: it can attach itself to almost anything, and today it mostly manifests as politics.
I appreciate that you did talk about 'primitive religions.' But maybe a better say to look at it would be to say that many different belief systems, whether religious, secular or political, can be captured by fanaticism and rigidity. Just a thought.
great first article on a very pertinent subject. I have noted recently, particularly regarding the Ukraine situation, a level of nihilism and contrariness-for-the-sake-of-it on the dissident Right, which is worrying though, perhaps, not as surprising as we might first think. Nihilism on the Far Left is to some extent inevitable, on the Right it is a sign that things have slid dangerously out of control
Finally. Sanity. I’m now putting Konstantin alongside Sam Harris in being two of the only people I trust because they manage to avoid this predictability. The only tool we have against our own biases is to be aware that they are permanently shaping our views. If you talk about that-I immediately trust you the most. It’s a reassuring way forward in an age where fact checking just one, apparently convincing, Twitter thread would take days worth of reading. It’s amazing and depressing how many otherwise smart people (with big audiences) don’t give this a second thought.
Found you on Twitter, appreciate all your commentary. Looking forward to what you do here on Substack. Best of luck, and cheers KK.
Brilliant work, KK. The lack of trust in the media and establishment elites is easy to explain. What is more difficult to explain - or at least to accept - is that the vast majority of people have exposed themselves as prepared to accept whatever today's narrative of choice coming out of the tellybox, no matter how contradictory or convenient to the wallets and consciences of the elites it is, and however deleterious it is to the common man.
I don't suppose that's anything new either, depicted as it was in 1948 by George Orwell. However, from the start of 2020 when I knew something wasn't right, I was left in a very small minority indeed having rejected the Covid narrative and also rejected the 5g nanobots bampot narratives of the anti-vaxxers. It's very difficult to come to terms with the fact that,in this age of infinite information, life has gotten more and more lonely for the open-minded inquisitive sceptic who refuses to jump to comforting conclusions.
Great article. Welcome to substack Konstantin, you have kept me sane throughout the pandemic!
We are entering the post-scientific age with quasi-religions cropping up all over the place. Individuals within these religions don't realise they are in a religion (maybe I am too but I try to stay objective). What is the most worrying is the morality issues attached to those beliefs. If you don't agree with me, not only are you stupid but you are evil. That is what I am most worried about over the coming years, especially with the unrest we may be about to experience with financial crises and food shortages in some countries.
https://nakedemperor.substack.com/p/global-food-crisis?s=w
Welcome to Substack, and good luck. You and I don't always see eye-to-eye on issues, but we certainly agree on the importance of examining evidence and trying to see the world accurately, rather than accepting a predetermined package of ideas that match our politics.
Wonderful, really looking forward to seeing this blossom
Thank you for starting this as it is easier to follow than a viral Twitter thread.
I’ve long thought that ‘Religion’ was a tool for control given there are so many, many of which don’t line up with the beliefs of the others, that beyond a basic sense of a ‘God’ and a few basic rules which many argue a society can’t live without.
These basic rules or moral guidelines aren’t religious in nature, they are the simple rules of getting along in a group of people which is as basic as the days when we roamed the planet as hunter-gatherers. Get along or get shunned which meant death.
It’s too early here on the West Coast of the USA at the moment for this but I do look forward to the next submission here on Substack.
The question of why one's attitude to Brexit predicts one's attitude to COVID (say) was explained by Thomas Sowell in "A Conflict of Visions" and "The Vision of the Anointed". Sowell is still with us. Perhaps you could have him on your show.
I do agree with some of what has been said here, but this “Water drops are falling from above – the Sky God is displeased” characterization of religion seems like a pretty simplistic, cynical, and caricatured view, something like a straw man argument. It seems to be implied that it is always something regressive, superstitious, naive, potentially dangerous, something that we ‘succumb’ to, etc. It’s as if ‘the religious instinct embedded in all of us’ (how? why? from where?) is a primitive instinct, a delusion based only on our ‘feelings’, something perhaps to be overcome through the advancement of ‘science’.
Many seem to think that the scientific worldview always necessarily represents progress, always represents an improvement over other ways of seeing and knowing the world, but the scientific paradigm has just redirected our attention, in a rather narrow way, to a different aspect of the world. Science is often presented in such a way that makes one think that it ‘explains’ this or that, when really it just ‘describes’. It’s more like 'dashboard knowledge', and focuses on the reductionist, mechanistic, quantitative viewpoint, dealing with certain patterns and predictable outcomes that allow us to manipulate and harness nature in certain ways, but it does not really constitute a worldview in and of itself, and is not able to really ‘explain’ our reality in a meaningful way. Hence the crisis of meaning that we are facing. (The writer Owen Barfield sums up this viewpoint as 'science must be true because it works'.) We can predict and manipulate in many ways, but we do not really understand the essential ‘what’ that we are dealing with, our notions of ‘matter’ and ‘energy’, for example, being essentially just abstractions. Modern ‘scientism’ is itself a kind of religion, with its own priest class, dogmas, heresies, congregations, corruption, etc.
I find that most materialists, atheists, etc. who criticize religion/spirituality or any notions of a practical spiritual science or metaphysics in general, have a pretty superficial and limited view and understanding of what those things are, and tend to create straw man arguments. They’ve set themselves in opposition to what is essentially their own very limited notion of what religion/spirituality is. And I think to myself, well, if that’s what I thought spirituality was, then yeah I would scoff at it too. Perhaps the most cliche example would be those atheists who rail against the notion of some bearded man in the sky, and whose position is defined by its opposition to such notions.
In any case, what is unknown and inexplicable to some, is not necessarily unknown and inexplicable to others. People, through their biases, preconceptions and paradigms have closed themselves off from accepting certain explanations, information, and evidence, or from accepting certain methods of inquiry as valid. They like to proclaim what we can and cannot know. But if one is limiting themselves in regard to where they are willing to look, then some things will always remain inaccessible to them. In such a case, perhaps it's that we are being too narrow in our worldview, and not that others are being superstitious. Perhaps we need to expand our conception of what it is possible to be scientific about, what it is possible to know, and even what it actually means to 'know' something. Suffice it to say, there is a big disconnect in our understanding of what is going on in the realms of thought, feeling, imagination, etc. on the one hand, and the realm of our physical sensations on the other, and the true relationship or connection between these two.
I agree with a lot - and I’ve said that SJW are part of a religion for a while now. They just don’t know it. I’d go out on a limb and say LGBTQ is somewhat akin to a religion for many too, as is BLM.
Do I completely distrust the Establishment though? No. Certain things, yes. We should be sceptical and look at things from a distance instead of getting caught up in a tidal wave of emotion. But, for example, with COVID. I don’t believe it was all the Establishment's fault and everything they said was a lie. They had a lot to deal with and it was changing information as per science and medical research that was changing. They reported what info they had at the time, and then that changed. So to simply say, “Oh, they lied to us,” I think, wouldn’t be the right approach. Yes they have, at times, many times, of course they have. But we shouldn’t have an outright mistrust for them because of that. This just feeds in to what Konstantin says about cults, religion and questioning everything…it’s kind of the same thing to just say the Establishment lie constantly and can never be trusted. That’s my thought on it anyway.
Asking all the right questions as always. For more on the current religious dilemma, Thomas Howard’s Chance or the Dance, a Critique of Modern Secularism couldn’t be more relevant and enlightening. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it. I also can’t help but think of Wendell Berry’s essays particularly “Why I am not going to buy a computer” as per our haughty and false notion that we technologically advanced are more knowledgeable than we were before when in fact the opposite is true.