The title says it.
The core reason why Leftism, Liberalism, Political Correctness and the Social Justice Warriors have been winning and winning and winning for fifty years and more - is their offer of Sexual Liberation.
The Left offers Sex - whatever you want, potentially unbounded, and religion does not: all religions are restrctive about sex - and the mainstream socio-political opposition to the Left (the secular Right) are perfectly clear that they want the sex more than they want anything else.
It really does not matter how psychotic life becomes in the West - how obvious are the absurdities of Political Correctness - how wicked are the inversions of truth, beauty and virtue... there will not be and cannot be a backlash against Leftism, except on the other side of a mass religious revival.
It is precisely because the Left absolutely and categorically refuses to be religious that we have Leftism. No matter what happens, the West stubbornly and categorically refuses to be religious.
(I mean seriously religious - religious so that it makes a difference, so that it leads to significant self-sacrifice; not being 'spiritual' as part of a lifestyle, nor being 'liberally' or 'moderately' religious = primarily Leftist with religion fitted-around.)
The West refuses to be religious because of Sex - because all religions demand sacrifices when it comes to sex; and Westerners will not make these sacrifices.
Nearly everybody in The West has their own sexual 'thing' which they most hope for, and which religion would take away from them (or make them feel bad about) - sex before marriage, sex with lots of people, extramarital sex, sex with anybody or anything other than your spouse...
Most people don't ever get what they want, sexually, but they live in hope of it - and religion takes away that hope; takes away their 'right' to live-by that hope.
And that is intolerable to Modern Man. Modern Man will tolerate anything rather than that - including the collapse of the system which provides him with peace, prosperity, comfort, convenience and distraction.
Ultimately Modern Man will not get what he wants - because that is impossible in this mortal life, and that kind of wanting puts each individual at odds with every other human being, and the whole of creation.
I'm not saying that the one and only reason that each and every secular Western Person who rejects religion has done so because he will not give-up his or her 'rights' to some religiously-forbidden sexual possibilities.
Not quite everyone, there are probably a few exceptions, those whose rejection of religion is principled and un-self-interested and really-and-truly nothing to do with sex, not fundamentally based-on sex, not even deep down in their secret fantasy life...
Maybe you are one of them; but probably not.
It's any desire of the flesh - food, companionship, etcetera. Religion offers a true satisfaction which the world cannot give. We gain freedom through submission to this truth.
ReplyDelete@AdamW "It's any desire of the flesh - food, companionship, etcetera." - In theory, yes; in practice it is sex that made the crucial difference - and Christianity only became insignificant and Leftism only became dominant from the sexual revolution of the mid-1960s.
ReplyDelete(Of course, Atheism/ Leftism this had been perceptibly building-up from about 1800, with such early examples as Byron and Shelley; but initially only affected the ruling classes. The 'final acceleration happened from the 1950s through to the mid 60s, when institutional Christianity very visibly collapsed and the mass media became overtly pro sexual 'liberation.)
Yes, I think the sixties were an inflection point. In the States it coincided with the Baby Boomers reaching a critical age amidst unprecedented levels of affluence while a war was tearing the country apart (discrediting the established order) and technology was making it easier to avoid some of the more immediate consequences of promiscuity.
ReplyDeleteSort of true, but to me the larger problem is the taking away of the good, rather than the lures of the perverted. If we had decent jobs and could get married early, especially for women, because it is a basic biological need for them to pair bond and start having children.
ReplyDeleteBut what is good and healthy doesn't provide much of an excuse for the existence of massive bureaucracies, nor the variety of questionable products sold as substitutes for the dissatisfaction we face in the modern world.
@Leo and August - I would reverse the causal arrow. I think that causes are spiritual decisions (or rather evasions) and what you describe are the consequences.
ReplyDeleteIf the adults remove the legitimate choice from the environment, one should not be surprised that the children do not choose it.
ReplyDelete@August - Yes, but that is a consequence - down the line, after the choice was originally made.
ReplyDeleteFor me, sexual morality is the easiest thing to accept about Christianity. By that I don't mean Christian sexual morality is easy to live by, but that it's easy to recognize as being obviously right -- and it is correspondingly obvious that the ongoing "sexual revolution" is vicious and asinine. (I do realize, though, that only a small minority of non-religious people see it that way.)
ReplyDeleteThat said, in retrospect, becoming an atheist did undeniably make it harder for me to resist sexual temptations. It made it harder to give a reason when asked "Why shouldn't we?" "It's against my religion" was short, simple, impersonal, and unanswerable. Without religion, all I had to fall back on was "In my personal opinion it's not a good thing to do because blah blah blah" -- obviously not nearly as effective in convincing others, or myself.
@William Indeed, but the problem is deeper than that, because without God then the bottom line is some kind of utilitarian argument, so all moral principles are reduced to expedient means linked - by long and speculative causal chains - to pleasanter states of mind than the alternatives. This was my problem in trying to argue in favour of real and honest science from an atheist basis, the best I could manage was that about fifty steps on, this might slightly increase the probability of a more pleasant life for some people, for a while... but when real and honest science is immediately professionally damaging... well, why bother?
ReplyDeleteBelief in God doesn't make it any philosophically easier to understand or articulate the non-utilitarian basis of morality -- but it does make it practically unnecessary to do so. The God hypothesis doesn't clear anything up for the would-be moral philosopher, but it can be quite helpful for the would-be moral man.
ReplyDeleteThere's an understanding that you don't argue with people's religious convictions. That understanding is rapidly eroding, but it's still there in many social circles. But if your moral convictions are not based on religious authority, it's a standing invitation for other people (and, more importantly, for your own lower self) to try to argue them away. It also makes it impossible to take a controversial moral stand without seeming arrogant and pig-headed, without saying in effect "I'm totally confident that my own take on morality is right and yours is wrong."
@Wm - I think you are profoundly mistaken about this. The quote attributed to Dostoyevsky along the lines that if God is dead then anything is permitted is the plain truth. The fact of a creator - in particular (to go no further than this type of deism) - is essential if anything at all is to be explained, justified - if any kind of knowledge is to be possible.
ReplyDeleteThe obsessions with sex and eating are sad (but inevitable) reflections on the inability of modern society to provide any higher meaning to life than the satisfaction of primitive impulses. It seems most people eventually slide into the logical consequences of nihilism.
ReplyDeleteNext, consider Maslow's hierarchy of needs:
1.1 Physiological needs
1.2 Safety needs
1.3 Love and belonging
1.4 Esteem
1.5 Self-actualization
1.6 Self-transcendence
Modern society is capable of satisfying step 1 and sometimes step 2, at least in the forms of saving the irresponsible from themselves. But step 3 is being actively fought, since marriage and family formation must not occur, and since social bonds must be ready to be destroyed at a moment's notice in our atomized society (start by sending off all youth to distant universities, then scatter them afterwards). And then the subsequent steps of the hierarchy are no more than ghostly modernist goals to be provided by the state, goals which of course will never be truly attained.
Bruce,
ReplyDeleteYes, the coincidence of these factors was not the cause of the sexual revolution. It just made the job easier for the revolutionaries.