When looking back across what is known of human history; it is notable that whatever was the official and established religion of the past, and whatever is the atheistic materialism of the present - almost all of them share a fundamental, metaphysical, assumption that individual people are insignificant in the context of total reality.
All these systems of religion or ideology seem to be united in an insistence that individual human beings cannot make any difference to the Big Picture in the Long Term.
Nonetheless, despite that individuals make no difference whatever they think/ say/ do - the conclusion is drawn that it is a sin, or dumb, or an insane delusion - but certainly a Bad Thing - if or when an individual believes that he does or can make a difference to eternal reality.
What is recommended of each individual is always to recognize and accept his own ultimate insignificance; and therefore to strive for something like humility, servitude, obedience, self-abnegation.
Despite vast differences between religions, and between religion and no-religion, and between ideologies - it is striking how they all nearly-always converge on this same assertion:
"Ultimately, you don't matter. You need to accept this as a fact, and live accordingly."
So many millennia of anti-individual propaganda, hammering down on us throughout our lives, is indirect evidence that we have contrary innate, spontaneous, and instinctual conviction that we are personally significant, and we do matter as individuals; and that what we think, say and do can makes a difference to the Big Picture - and permanently.
And that this difference may be positive.
There is, I suggest, an inbuilt assumption that we personally and alone can potentially make total-reality Better.
I don't think we need persuading of this, because it is a given.
But we do need some kind of metaphysical explanation of how this could be true...*
(i.e. An explanation of just how I personally could contribute something unique, irreplaceable, and positive; to eternal reality.)
We need this especially; given that all the society-wide and available metaphysical explanations of history seem to be dedicated to explaining how we personally are necessarily insignificant, and therefore cannot make any difference to reality...
(Or - maybe - explaining that, by believing in our personal significance and trying to contribute positively, we will necessarily be doing wrong, and making matters worse.)
* An explanation of how it is true that we personally and alone can potentially contribute something positive, unique and eternal to divine creation; is a thing that my metaphysical assumptions and Christian theology intends to accomplish: to my own satisfaction, at least!
2 comments:
"This caveat, while ever apposite, is nevertheless autophagous. On what authority, after all, ought we to reject some authority? Our own? How does not our own authority eat up our own authority?
You see the problem."
The words above are not my own but reflect the "dog-eating-its-own-tail" type of counterargument that is often employed against the spiritual significance of the individual.
Ultimately, I regard self-abnegation as the core of nihilism, because if I don't matter spiritually than neither does God or anything else.
That the individual ultmately does not matter, particularly in the way you describe it, is a fundamental and largely unacknowledged problem embedded within orthodox Christian assumptions, and I am quite certain that Christianity will remain dead in the water (at least beyond the individual level) until that problem is acknowledged and resolved .
@Frank - Indeed. What happens is that some strands of Christianity - especially insofar as it focuses on Jesus (eg The Good Shepherd) - emphasizes the value of individuals; but all this is underpinned by a metaphysical monism that denies any possible positive effect that an individual human being could have, under any circumstances.
This incoherent assert of opposites, pushed at different levels and formally un-integrate-able, has been going on for a very long time - but that doesn't make the situation any more coherent.
The general effect of this is that the Jesus-derived and individual truths of Christianity (as I understand it) is always undermined and discredited by the Omni-God-dominated deep metaphysical assumptions and dogmas.
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