Secularism and the
Crisis of Meaning
Crisis of Meaning
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Yet without some substrate of transcendent awareness there seems to be a deep creeping nihilism and anxiety that cascades from the soul. Just being rational, hedonistic, seeking likes and buying nice things doesn’t cut it. Filling yourself with this, paradoxically, makes you empty.
This secular emptiness and its anxieties manifests in strange ways. For example, the Marvel Universe, not unlike Greek mythology, is a form of pop-polytheism where superheroes take us on a hero’s journey, expressing the values of perseverance, faith and a grand battle against evil. It is a horrifically blunt cultural tool, but clearly a necessary one—a stand-in for deeper narratives of the human condition. Its unintelligible popularity is testament to this.
It seems that in our attempt to remove the prescriptive, non-scientific demands of God or gods (depending on religion) we have flattened human experience, reducing art, ethics, and meaning to mechanistic terms. But what is clear is that we need stories. We need symbols. And we need greater narratives, the right ones, otherwise they will be hijacked by narratives of otherness and fear. The ‘Old Gods’ of WWII, Populism and Ethno-Nationalism, will fill the transcendent need in humans. Something I fear is already in full swing.
Koons’ Hulk