Amidst our civilization characterized by extremely weak motivation - probably the weakest in the history of the world - there are individuals who are strongly motivated.
But these commonly make the mistake of assuming that their own personal motivation is something that can be scaled-up: the mistake of assuming that - "What motivates me is something that could - and perhaps should - motivate the masses".
Yet each individual who has reached a situation of being highly-motivated, has reached that position as a consequence of an unique spiritual journey; starting-out with different innate character, abilities, situation - and then following a trajectory determined by previous choices and particular circumstances.
There is really nothing to suggest that this unique pathway - or its particular end-point - ought to be, or could be, an effective template for motivating everybody else.
Nor even that any number of such personal odysseys will add-up or average to a formula for mass motivation.
Quite the contrary: all actually-existing group-level motivations continue to be extremely feeble and to decline; no matter when or if individuals within these groups are genuinely powerfully motivated.
Of course; it is impossible to prevent highly motivated individuals from assuming that some future mass and motivated group can be extrapolated from his own experience...
But in practice such assertions will continue to be treated as idiosyncratic, as eccentricities or hobby-horses.
Because what worked for him, (almost certainly) will not work for me. (There are just too many differences.)
So, we shall, and increasingly, have small numbers of highly motivated individuals; but not highly motivated groups.
And, if we are to have realistic optimism, it will need to depend on a confidence that individual persons operating "alone" (in a material sense) can indeed make a positive overall difference.
In other words; confidence for a better word depends on the reality of "the spiritual", and its ultimate domination of "the material".
2 comments:
'Nothing really matters, anyone can see / Nothing really matters / Nothing really matters to me' (Freddie Mercury)
Motivations differ from one person to another and it's often said on this blog that secular atheists are weakly motivated, weaker with successive generations.
However there does seem to be a common factor between highly-motivated and energetic individuals and that is faith.
A depressed person thinks that everything is bad or pointless and that it *always will be* bad or pointless.
But that doesn't mean it must indeed be so, or even seem so, to him. If he has faith then he may reason that despite appearances things will seem less pointless to him eventually. His mind *will be* gradually renewed and he will resume journeying along his unique pathway.
Hence motivation could be contagious if faith were contagious.
Is faith contagious? Given the age of miracles is past and given that others see only the faithful person's pathway, which is not theirs, and not the faith directly, it seems like the answer is no. Faith has to start in small amounts and grow as a result of individual experience.
@Ron - Pop nihilism always sells, so long as it is combined with hedonism...
I think you are right in some generic sense about "faith" - so long as that faith has been achieved by some kind of sincere personal quest. Beyond that - it is difficult to generalize.
What is difficult to grasp but (I believe) true, is that things have changed because people have changed. What you call contagious faith used to happen when people experienced the world (to some significant extent) via a group consciousness. But that has almost disappeared, and with it the possibility of contagious faith.
On the flip-side, this also means that almost anyone can - if he chooses - stand on his own freedom and responsibility, in a direct relationship with God and Jesus Christ (and other spiritual entities).
Not by perception (not by seeing visions or hearing voices) - because that form of relating to the spiritual realms has also changed, and dwindled or become absent (except in conditions of impaired consciousness); but instead having a direct relationship from direct or intuitive knowing.
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