The Secular vision honors individualism, self-reliance, self-regulation, self-improvement
and self-actualization. American culture is
at the forefront of the secularization movement, and its proclamation
of the virtues of rugged-individualism are well
known. The emphasis on the individual and the sense
of self can lead to a highly creative, explorer type
personality who breaks-down barriers and casts aside the chains imposed
by authoritative regimes—who sets himself "free." Being
left to pursue his own self-interest,
he is optimistically confident is the best way to
create a free, healthy and safe social order. A
free individual guarantees a free society.
Recent history has thrown some monkey-wrenches at
the Secular optimist. The avowedly secular Communist societies
of Russia and China required strong-arm dictators to "guide" the
individual until he was properly prepared to become free. Citing
an inevitable "withering away of the state," it
was argued that the State apparatus was necessary
for a time (meaning, that oppression and suppression
of the individual was necessary) but that it would, in time, fade away
and be replaced by a decentralized government run by "the
people."
Secular Americans describe
themselves as free individuals in a free society (free
markets, free sex, free public schools, freedom of religion, etc.)
as they, ironically, continually expand and sustain
the largest military occupation of other countries
ever achieved by any other empire.
In sum, Secularism has the four
shared themes—that a Big Story
1) is sourced in an emotion of
dreadful fear,
2) identifies and names the Other as
Intimate Enemy,
3) seeks to annihilate the goddess and/or the feminine and
4) expresses its heartfelt values through a self-fulfilling apocalyptic story
of self-annihilation.
Continue—Secularism—Sourced
in an emotion of dreadful fear
