I agree. I can't tell where was the point of mass adoption of meta-consciousness, but I see it everywhere today, and it's a source of alienation from life. The first instance is described in Genesis and is inextricable from the rise of self-awareness, but it's unlike how people perceive reality now. It's like nobody except little children is willing to be immersed in a story as the protagonist only; they must also be the narrator at the same time. I suspect this is why the world felt much different during childhood, but eventually I was modernized as well, and I'm not sure if it's possible to "unmodernize" myself. There is great cultural pressure to be as a detached observer and to be able to always explain what you are doing and the mechanics thereof. To simply enact and experience without descending to a metanarrative is almost intellectually shameful.
That won't be so easy because Christianity is unique. Polytheistic gods are essentially avatars of human psyche that serve a narrative. In Christianity, there is not only the myth but also a concrete history of a concrete person in which the symbol and the symbolized became one.
Speaking of myths, it's not the case that there isn't one right now. What is happening is that religious education in secular population is so dismal that it seems as if they were living outside of a myth. It's almost ironic, given that metacognition permeates everything except the idolatry of science and technology. There is evolutionism as the creationist myth. We are constantly pushed to repent our ecological sins and support green politics, or be judged and wiped off by climate change—there's the secular apocalypticism. Scientific authority is treated as a de facto clergy that divines the mysteries of "the science" and should not be questioned. Every time someone invokes "according to this study," it's like citing a biblical verse; a clear depiction of what sits at the top of the hierarchy of values. The fundamental mistake of this perspective is that science only deals in mere facts, not truths. You can't extract an overarching truth from a material fact pieced together in artificial conditions. That's not how we experience reality, and hence so many are alienated.
The question is not the absence of myth, but whether the myth is any good. Looking at the state of society, I say no. Some say that we will be dominated by the AI when it gains self-awareness, but realistically, that won't be necessary. We are already willingly trading all power that we still have for an increasingly convenient virtualized reality so that no one competent enough to face reality unplugged will remain. And there's the last secular myth—the transcendence of mundane biology, freedom from strife, and eternal life. Just a small problem—it's very difficult to transcend a bunch of atoms.
I agree, you might like the book Science is a Sacred Cow by Anthony Standon. Indeed, the idea that humans being can be detached observer is one of the greater modern mendacities that saturates the westerner collective consciousness. Possibly interesting to you as well is that this modern affair of the hyper meta conscious awareness is something that is likely a consequence of the pursuit of truth that we inherit from Christinaity that gave rise to science and the enlightenment when brought into contact with Greek Natural Philosophy and ancient proto science, this is Nietzsche's hypothesis in the Genealogy of Morals, and one must ask just why modern material science emerge in western Europe? Copernicus, Kepler, Descartes, Newton, Darwin, and Galileo are all Christians as were most early scientist in Europe. By the time Kant writes a Critique of Pure Reason as also a Christian, Christianity is seen as legitimate belief, but non- rationally sensical by most prominent intellectuals; Christianity doesn't make sense like science does, though the vast majority of people was some form of Orthodox Christian and this around the 18th century, so when the trend became as pervasive and normal as it is now, is not obvious, but this trend has been unfolding for centuries hence Nietzsche's "God is Dead". I can only Imagine that the Industrial revolution and the Dotcom Boom accelerated the development of our present state of affairs towards hyper-rationalism.
Yes, this uniqueness of Christianity is to me what gave rise to the philosophy of humanism in the Late Renaissance as Erasmus was a Christian Humanist, but something striking about our technological idolatry is that a form of misanthrope is on the rise, or at the very least human beings are not enough and we must overcome and extricate ourselves from nature, we must also integrate ourselves with technology as well as deny or rebel against biology. To me all of these things are linked.
I agree, science has become the arbiter of truth in the way that the Bible once was and social justice the moral reformer Lutheranism was. Yet, I think that the subsequent Protestantism that resulted from the reformation which put such great emphasis on the seeking of truth is what gave rise to the meta climate that we inhabit where science and social justice took over in modernity. Hence, "Speaking of myths, it's not the case that there isn't one right now. What is happening is that religious education in secular population is so dismal that it
seems as if they were living outside of a myth. It's almost ironic, given that metacognition permeates everything except the idolatry of science and technology. There is evolutionism as the creationist myth. We are constantly pushed to repent our ecological sins and support green politics or be judged and wiped off by climate change—there's the secular apocalypticism. Scientific authority is treated as a de facto clergy that divines the mysteries of "the science" and should not be questioned. Every time someone invokes "according to this study," it's like citing a biblical verse; a clear depiction of what sits at the top of the hierarchy of values. The fundamental mistake of this perspective is that science only deals in mere facts, not truths. You can't extract an overarching truth from a material fact pieced together in artificial conditions.", why these trends are so similar to the conditions of early Catholic Christain Europe; the content is different, but the forms are essentially the same. Social Justice is more similar to the inquisition than the Civil Rights movement.
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I agree. though, I think our present notions of AI are myths as well, and these secular myths are very Christian, freedom from strife equates to peace on earth, transcend our mundane biology equates to there will be no more pain or tears and we will be given perfect bodies, and eternal life it should be easy to see how this conception results from Christianity. Though, I still think that Christianity as we understand could die out, because it just seems that beliefs systems die out and give rise to new ones across human history, like Zoroastrianism is the first monotheistic religion and is likely what inspired the practice of monotheism in ancient Hebrews even in the Bible Israelites are constantly back sliding in worshiping Pagan and polytheistic gods and there's some archeological evidence to suggest that the earliest ancient Hebrews practiced polytheism even Abraham's father Azar was an idol maker where Abraham was called away from idol worship to worship the one true God Yahweh, so it's more likely than not that Zoroastrianism which was present in influenced the Ancient Hebrews to develop their Monotheism that would go onto become Judaism that gave rise to Christianity as Jesus was Jew and Judaism was normal to Medina two centuries before Muhammad's birth so Islam as well, so to me Christianity will in likely hood will give rise to something else as it fades into the Twighlight.
