It is perfectly possible to imagine a future for the capitalist system in which its built-in atheism becomes, so to speak, official–in which, belatedly taking its cue from Nietzsche, it may throw off its mauvaise foi and dispense with a moral superstructure which is not only increasingly superfluous in practice but embarrassingly at odds with its own profane activities. Such a future, however is still remote. As far religious conviction is concerned, one does not jettison history's most formidably successful symbolic system overnight. Besides, just at the point when Western capitalism may have been edging in this direction, two aircraft slammed into the World Trade Center and metaphysical ardor broke out afresh.
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The irony of this is hard to overrate. No sooner had a thoroughly atheistic culture arrived on the scene, one which was no longer anxiously in pursuit of this or that placeholder for God, than the deity himself was suddenly back on the agenda with a vengeance. Nor were these two events unrelated. Fundamentalism has its source in anxiety rather than hatred. It is the pathological mindset of those who feel washed up by a brave new late-modern world, some of whom conclude that they can draw attention to their undervalued existence only by exploding a bomb in a supermarket. This is not, needless to say, a distinction between West and East. Fundamentalism is a global creed. Its adherents are to be found in the hills of Montana as well as in the souks of Damascus. The world is accordingly divided between those who believe too much and those who believe too little. While some lack all conviction, others are full of a passionate intensity. There are those who are loyal to little beyond power and profit, and there are others who, outraged by some of the consequences of this moral vacuity, tout doctrines that can blow of the heads of small children. As John Milbank writes,"[an] agnosticism designed to ward off fanaticisms appears now to foment it both directly and indirectly."
Ideologically speaking, the West has unilaterally disarmed at just the point where it has proved most perilous for it to do so. Furnished with a mixture of pragmatism, culturalism, hedonism, relativism, and anti-foundationalism, it now confronts a full-blooded metaphysical antagonist, one brought to birth in part by its own policies, for which absolute truths, coherent identities and solid foundations pose not the faintest problem.
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Western capitalism, in short, has managed to help spawn not only secularism but also fundamentalism, a most creditable feat of dialectics. Having slain the deity, it has now had a hand in restoring him to life, as a refuge and a strength for those who feel crushed by its own predatory politics. If it finds itself besieged from the outside by a murderous creed, it is also assailed from within by the rage and paranoia of those of its fundamentalist citizens left high and dry by its priorities. At the very moment when contemporary capitalism seemed to be moving into a post-theological, post-metaphysical, post-ideological, even post-historical era, a wrathful God has once more raised his head, eager to protest that his obituary notice has been prematurely posted. The Almighty, it appears, was not safely nailed down in his coffin after all. He had simply changed address, migrating to the US Bible Belt, the Evangelical churches of Latin America and the slums of the Arab world. And his fan club is steadily swelling.
From Terry Eagleton, Culture and the Death of God (2014), pp. 196-98,
I first posted this excerpt in March 2016, and you know what happened eight months later.
The fundamentalists/integralists might not win next week, but they’re not going away.
Because religion is not going away. The only question is whether good religion or bad religion will play a dominant role in shaping the future American mythos. If there is no good religion available, a bad one inevitably fills the vacuum.
The advantage the fundamentalist mythos has over the variety of liberal ones is the way it builds solidarity. Liberals in their individualism and celebration of autonomy and choice are often more morally mature because more magnanimous, but they have no flag to rally to. Hence Eagleton’s allusion to the famous Yeats poem. Liberals in their division are more easily conquered.
So here’s the rub: We all live by some religion/mythos, even the most secular of us. The question I’m asking in an essay like the one I posted yesterday is whether your religion is good enough: Does it have scope and richness? Does it have coherency and adaptibility? Is it your own personal fantasy, or is it truly grounded in something bigger, deeper, richer than you? Has it produced good, wise people? Does it demand that you become better and wiser? Has it stood the test of time? If not, maybe you need to get something better.
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