In a recent post our friend Bill Vallicella sticks to his guns regarding what he considers the “mistake” of looking at the missionary leftism of the modern West as a religion. He prefers to use the alienans expression “ersatz religion” to describe it, while I’ve said all along that it really is a religion — not only by function and form, but also by pedigree and historical lineage. (And not just any religion, mind you, but a very particular religion, transplanted to New England in the seventeenth century, that gradually took on the pestiferous, secularized form in which it has infected the modern world.)
I’ve nothing new to say about it today, but I thought it might be worth re-linking a series of posts that explores this little disagreement (which might, I admit, seem hair-splitting to some of you) in detail.
First, I posted this discussion of an essay by William Deresciewicz identifying the religious takeover of our colleges and universities. (A couple of days later, I added this.)
Bill replied, at his place, with a detailed counterargument.
I then offered this in response.
Bill then posted this brief item (but without having first read the post just above).
Finally, I added a brief post quoting Moldbug.
All of this is a year old, and probably not of much interest to very many people; I realize that this may seem a pointless and pettifogging dispute. But given the pervasive and pestilential effect of this modern mind-virus in our ideological ecosystem, I think it’s important to get its taxonomy right.
11 Comments
I think it’s a big error to regard Leftism as a religion – for some of the same reasons as BV; but Ive written my argument so many times, and with zero effect, that I’m fed up of listening to myself.
But one thing you may consider is that seriously religious people *don’t* say that Leftism is a religion.
It is only people who are non-religious, even when sympathetic to a religion but not themselves seriously religious, who mistake Leftism for a religion.
If you aren’t religious, perhaps you don’t know what it is to be religious? I’ve been on both sides of that fence: they are very different states.
Hi Bruce — it’s nice to see you here!
I’ve certainly known a lot of people who have told me, quite explicitly, that leftism (social justice, environmentalism, etc.) is their religion. (I mentioned Rajendra Pachauri in one of the linked posts above, who said “[T]he protection of planet earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than a mission. It is my religion and my dharma.”
Now a person whose religious experience is based on a transcendent metaphysics might say of these people that they are “non-religious”, and thus they mistake their own beliefs for a religion, but that seems to me to beg the question.
Did you read the linked posts? My characterization is based on two things:
1) The religiousness, in both form and function, of modern leftism, and
2) Its actual historical descent from what we’d both agree was, in fact, a genuine religion, through a gradual process of mutation in which supernatural metaphysics was gradually leached away (although it leaks back in all the time, in belief in such things as “the arc of the moral Universe”, etc.).
I think that to you and BV, what I’m calling the “religion” of leftism is kind of like a well-fitted plug that blocks (and hijacks) the actual religious sensibility, much the way a carefully designed molecule can block a biological receptor. I can certainly understand this point of view, and can barely say I’d disagree with it. A religion that cannot look beyond this world to something transcendent is a shabby and paltry thing, “a tattered coat upon a stick”. I can easily see why it would hardly be worthy of the name.
But my point is that this truncating “blocker” is a sort of “sink” into which people afflicted by this memetic infection pour all of the same attitudes, dispositions, and actions that a “genuine” religion would command (and which a genuine religion would, as I’m sure you’d agree, reward with better results for the believer).
In other words, the secular cryptoreligion of the Left, which began its historical life as an actual religion, is still best understood as a religion (an explanatory stance that perfectly explains the Left’s behavior, in every particular), whether or not we think its present-day lack of a genuinely transcendent metaphysics technically disqualifies it.
@Malcolm – But we must beg the question, one way or another!
Most non-religious people don’t believe that true religion is even possible – it is ruled out by assumption. This is (almost) precisely Leftism itself.
So, from a religious perspective, the people who say Leftism is a religion are themselves Leftists – which is indeed my view. I don’t think there is a ‘Right’ really, the only real opposition to the Left is Religion (of certain types, but not all types).
So I think it is a serious error to regard Leftism as a religion – because it ‘blames’ Christianity for what was, historically and in fact, a process of apostasy; of leaving-behind Christianity.
That is why the virtue spirals argument is nonsense! It was the people giving-up Christianity who became the Left, giving it up and replacing it with worldly concenrs, with politics, economics etc.
For example, modern Leftism really got going with the early pacifists and abolitionists… these were Christians shifting the focus of the churches out of the spiritual, transcenent, other worldly – and into topical concerns.
This affects where we look for the answer. WIth your analysis, the problem with Leftism is that it *is* a religion. With my answer the problem is that Leftism is *not* a religion. You say too-much Christianity; I say not-enough.
This affects what we try to do in response.
Apologies for butting in here. I can’t help it :)
Bruce,
I am a big fan of your writings but I notice you have a tendency toward Procrustean reasoning. Malcolm has never implied that “the problem with Leftism is that it *is* a religion” but rather, he’s often and clearly said that the problem with Leftism is that it’s a very bad (false, unhealthy, incoherent, immoral) kind of religion. He’s never said there is such a thing as “too-much Christianity” let alone that contemporary Leftism is an instance.
This is true of many of these “people who say Leftism is a religion”. They just don’t actually say what you say they say. (And not all of these people are atheists or agnostics. Some are “religious” by any reasonable standard.)
You seem prone to dividing the world into very large and simple groups, defined by your understanding of what people with certain values or ideas would or should think, refusing to consider what people actually do think. This makes gigantic simplifying generalizations and speedy inferences a lot easier, but it’s bad for accuracy and insight.
If you would slow down and pay more attention to what others are really saying I think you’d have to agree that these objections are beside the point.
For example, it’s true that “it was the people giving up Christianity who became the Left, giving it up and replacing it with worldly concerns” but this is compatible with Malcolm’s claim that Leftism is a religion. At most, what follows is that Leftism is not Christianity. (It was people giving up a certain form of Leftism who became neo-conservatives; that doesn’t mean that neo-conservatism is not a political ideology or even that it’s not some form of Leftism.)
Malcolm is offering a functional-genetic account of religion. That seems like a pretty reasonable starting point, at least. If you don’t accept that way of approaching the question, what is your proposal? An account of the essence, the necessary and sufficient conditions for something to be a religion? There are no such conditions.
Earlier you seem to appeal to some kind of phenomenology: you know what religion is because you are religious, and you know what Leftism is because you used to be a Leftist; these are “different states” that you know from experience. That seems like very weak evidence. Do you really know what it’s like to be a shrieking SJW who wants to hurt people because they reported on IQ statistics, for example? I doubt that, and if you ever were one of those people, I doubt you can clearly remember that state of mind now. But in any case, there is probably no phenomenological “state” common to Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Odinists and all the other people we agree are “religious”. Or if there is, we have no reason to assume that no Leftists have ever been in a similar state (as a result of their Leftism).
So anyway I suppose I’m asking what your criterion or account of religion is. Malcolm has offered one, which seems pretty reasonable, and which does not “beg the question” as far as I can tell. Do you have a better alternative?
Thanks, Jacques.
Hi Bruce,
Jacques beat me to the punch, but I will add a few words in agreement.
You wrote:
As Jacques pointed out, I’ve never said that the problem with leftism is that it’s a religion, but rather that it is a deformed and truncated cryyptoreligion that has displaced its healthier, transcendent ancestor in the minds of its adherents.
The gradual stripping away of transcendence from Christianity, and the shooting of Heaven down from the sky, has had at least two pernicious effects. First, it has destroyed the objective basis for morality and civic virtue. Second, it has meant that Heaven must be constructed here on earth, and that salvation can only be achieved in that earthly effort — and woe betide anyone who gets in the way.
I have written often that I believe this creeping secularism to be not only a lethal threat to the vision of the American Founding, but also to be, in a strictly Darwinian sense, acutely maladaptive.
Making matters worse is the fact that this mutated religion has been able to conquer the West precisely because it has been able, by jettisoning its transcendent metaphysics, to persuade so many people (yourself and BV included) that it isn’t a religion at all. This has enabled it to “fly under the radar” in nations that ostensibly seek to separate church and state. That was the point of this quote by Moldbug:
Just to be clear: I don’t oppose Leftism because it’s a religion. I oppose it because it’s Leftism. Contrary to what you think I think, my opinion is that a great many of the woes of the modern West are due to this great Untergang of transcendent religion. A resurgence of Western Christianity — a rebuilding of this once-great civilization’s ancient foundation — would, I think, be the best, and may be the only, hope for America and Europe.
Bruce seems to be making the mistake of confusing what is meant by religion/religious.
When critics describe leftism as a religion, they mean it in the anthropological sense. Studying the psychology and behavior of leftism shows it to be in a category with other forms of human behavior which are called religious.
When Bruce claims it’s not true religion, he means it in the Kierkegaardian or CS Lewis sense, that there is a difference between inner devotion to the transcendent vs outer form of religious practice. Since leftism is bullshit, he makes the semantic error of thinking it therefore must not be a “religion”.
Bruce also thinks Mormonism is legitimate tho, despite ample historical evidence to the contrary, so I think we should not hold his reasoning powers to great expectations.
Nate,
I can’t let that pass. Bruce Charlton is an intelligent, thoughtful, accomplished and articulate man. I think he’s just (rather willfully) misread me here, that’s all.
Malcolm,
I’m mostly kidding. Bruce is a smart and admirable guy for sure, and a valuable voice against the Cathedral. I’ve just seen him make some headscratching errors in reasoning.
He says he believes in Mormon metaphysics, but that asserts that the supreme creator, God the father, was once a man, and lives on a planet. I’m convinced this is incorrect as I’ve studied Mormonism very deeply myself. It’s an absurd anthropomorphism, not to mention the infinite regress of God’s father and grandfather etc that the Mormon schema creates.
And of course Mormon scripture is loaded with anachronisms demonstrating it to be a 19th century creation. Bruce relies on meditation and feelings on this issue in the face of ample historical documentation. It makes me deeply skeptical of components of his approach despite his intelligence.
And simple errors in reasoning like in his response to this post just fuel that.
Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck…
One thing I didn’t see in the “is Leftism a religion” debate was how, in my view, the Utopianism of Progressive, Protestant Christianity was exchanged for Utopianism of John Lennon’s “Imagine” simply by it becoming fashionable for people to believe their own collective PR.
Think of the effect of the industrial and scientific revolutions of the last 150 years. Who needs God when men can literally alter the Laws of Nature simply by writing spells on paper (AKA statute legislation?) To me, it is obvious that man (or perhaps more often WOMAN) now is deemed capable of determining what is man and what is woman, no need to defer to that pesky thing called a sex chromosome pair. People are equal, unequal outcomes are evidence of malice (racism), we put it on paper and so it is true by axiom. Deviation from this belief is heresy, not a difference of opinion, and heresy is evil and must not be allowed. Freedom of thought and of conscience is okay…except when it’s quite literally heresy. Heretics to be toasted, metaphorically for the moment.
C’mon, how is this even debatable?
Look at today’s sentiments. “We” (hereafter a reference to unknown and unnamed brilliant scientists, who according to the TV are all black and mostly women) will soon genetically engineer people, “We” will soon launch a (wo)manned mission to Mars, “We” will soon eliminate hunger, want, homelessness, unhappiness, loneliness and all of the -phobias on this week’s Dogma List. Oh, and “We” are well on our way to insuring that all people get along just fine with each other.
Who really is “We?” Given that most people know next to nothing about science, history, actual economics, or much of anything else, it is actually a stand-in for Santa Claus. Leftism is the religion of Wish-Fulfillment, of a God that is not only interested in us personally but a God who, if we visited the right universities, we could actually meet and with whom we could have a group hug.
I so tire of all this. Not one in a million people has the tiniest clue from where all of our modern marvels arise. “I, Pencil: My Family Tree as Told To Leonard E. Reed” (1958) is obviously too difficult for even college-educated Americans today. Not one person seems to realize just how much !Science! today is baloney (irreproducible trash.) We bathe daily in Science FICTION sold as a GoFundMe income stream.
And “We” aren’t repealing or replacing Nature’s Laws anywhere. All “We” are doing is watching Leftism be Nature’s ecological suicide switch, where all the anti-reproductive behaviors seen in Mouse Utopia experiments (just prior to the inevitable population collapse) are now in place. We are all animals. Nothing we do is outside of our DNA-programming. Engineering isn’t alchemy. And Leftism is a theology of ultimate egocentrism, the collective and utterly insane belief that collectively WE are god.
Excellent comment, DN — in particular the references to the plague of irreproducible science and to Mouse Utopia.
I will say that the progression from theistic Protestantism to what we have now is traceable, I think, without much difficulty.