Wednesday 17 January 2018

What is the biological cause of modern Western insanity?

From a biological perspective, I would regard the current Western insanity as a 'mismatch' problem - Man is a social animal; human ancestral societies were always religious, therefore Man evolved to function in a religious context.

But modern Western societies are non-religious/ anti-Christian. Man is not adapted to live in a secular society. Men are psychologically un-equipped for atheism.

Modern Men thus find themselves in an alien, incomprehensible, meaningless social environment - social reality is unreal, the human mind is disconnected from human society - therefore the inhabitants of modern Western societies are insane*.

*By insane I mean some combination of qualitatively behaviourally maladapted, unable to do reality-testing, behaving in an un-understandable way, having deranged emotions that reduce reproductive success, suffering a fragmented and non-consecutive stream of thinking.

(Note: The above is a biological explanation, based upon scientific models; which means that - even if correct - is is partial and distorted. It is not an ultimate explanation.) 


4 comments:

Malcolm Pollack said...

The religion is still there. It's just taken an insane, occluded form.

Bruce Charlton said...

@Malcolm - I regard that idea as profoundly wrong, indeed inverted!

Leftism is Not ideologically derived-from Christianity, but Leftism is essentially *anti*-Christian.

Or, Leftism is Christian apostasy, not a Christian heresy...

Consequently, the most-Christian modern churches (trad Catholics, conservative evangelicals, Mormons) are the least Leftist/ converged.

The least-Christian modern churches (such as the Episcopal church, liberal Catholics, Methodists) are the most Leftist.

The secuar-Right is merely a part of the secular-left (they are all materialist hedonic systems, based on how to attain happiness-alleviate suffering in mortal life); the only true opposition to Leftism is religion (which has non-worldly, supernatural, non-material aims).

The only alternative to Leftism is religion - the only choice is a choice between religions.

I have argued this in my books Thought Prison and Addicted to Distraction (available online, linked via the side bar).

Malcolm Pollack said...

Hi Bruce,

>> Consequently, the most-Christian modern churches (trad Catholics, conservative evangelicals, Mormons) are the least Leftist/ converged.

That's actually consistent with both of our views: those churches most willing to hold on to the idea of a transcendent, actual God, and so preserve the Earth/Heaven hierarchy, are most resistant to the flattening and immanentization required for the mutation of traditional religion into the secular Leftist cryptoreligion. Catholicism was most naturally resistant to this mutation, as it was deeply and essentially hierarchical even in its earthly structure. Protestantism began by leveling the worldly church (in principle, if not always in practice), and so was a natural starting point for the great Untergang of the sacred.

I quite agree with you that real, Godly Christianity, with the apex of the cosmic hierarchy planted firmly in God (as opposed to transgendered athletes, wind turbines, and black people in the movies) is in many ways the polar opposite of Leftism. The new secular cryptoreligion is a dark perversion -- or, exactly as you say, an inversion of genuine religion. My only point is that it came into being as a monstrous mutation of Christianity, not as an independent, reactive creation.

So -- despite our differing opinions about the evolutionary lineage of this Bizarro-Church, I think we agree, perhaps, more than you allow for.

Malcolm Pollack said...

Bruce,

>>

The secular-Right is merely a part of the secular-left (they are all materialist hedonic systems, based on how to attain happiness-alleviate suffering in mortal life); the only true opposition to Leftism is religion (which has non-worldly, supernatural, non-material aims).

The only alternative to Leftism is religion - the only choice is a choice between religions.


Right: between religions. Indeed I agree completely with everything you say above.