My answer became very long.
The problem with secularisation is that it weakens the ideal.
It's like weakening the ten commandments by seeing them not as commandments but as recommendations, then as suggestions, then as possibilities and then as ideas. In the end, you don't have much of an idea left, because you are not able to observe and learn from a norm which is not generally practised.
Those who grow up in predominantly secular environments recognise non-marriage as the norm. If non-marriage, the non-lifelong union from the moment of marriage, has risen to the ideal, then the question follows as how resilient the individual is in such an environment to factors influencing him in the moment of divorce and separation.
Without marriage (and children), and without the family bonds that result out of familial unities, the individual loses the social protection of the local community. He is at the mercy of the pressure exerted by commerce and the state, and his obligations shift from the family sphere to his workplace and his service to institutional organisations. From then on, he serves the state treasury and corporations as a source of income.
When secularisation has finally taken hold in companies and the state and the economy is based solely on secular goals, we can no longer speak of "values", but of factors.
The values that people normally wish to extend to all areas of their lives (including the world of work and politics) come to a standstill.
As a result, one no longer recognises how he can count on family ties where there are none, and he then wishes for the state or a single hero to save him from his misery (or become that hero himself). But all that a secular state and a secular economy offer him is to place himself at their service.
The tragedy of this development is that state and economy have taken the place of religion for morality without being religious themselves. We see how morality has shifted to its lower fragments such as "ecological footprint" and "health awareness". But if you see yourself as a pest, you see everyone else as a pest too, and instead of seeing the cycle of birth and death as natural events, you see them as a burden and an insult to your own existence.
The imagination and the religious instinct and the human sense of humour have free play when people are dealing with something which, however small, is rounded and complete like a cosmos. The place where babies are born, where men die, where the drama of mortal life is acted, is not an office or a shop or a bureau. It is something much smaller in size and much larger in scope. And while nobody would be such a fool as to pretend that it is the only place where people should work, or even the only place where women should work, it has a character of unity and universality that is not found in any of the fragmentary experiences of the division of labour.
While marriage and family have retained their official legal character, they have lost their actual spiritual character. But this most important union of all, that between a man and a woman, cannot be replaced by anything equal to it.
Ultimately, endeavours to found a family out of self-preservation, out of the motive of social security, out of the motive of doubling one's income, out of the motive of passing on one's own name, out of the vain desire to mould one's own child after oneself, etc. etc. remain inferior to love. Paradoxically, however, it is the unique bond of love between the sexes that leads to precisely these things: self-preservation, social security, a more stable income, passing on one's name and children wanting to emulate their parents' example. But they won't if they don't have parents (adult couples) who love each other.
The confusion that people in the West have fallen victim to is that their former Christian values created places that became very welcoming. Even before I became an adult, I saw xenophobia and intolerance of other cultures as wrong. A truly religious person welcomes a person who comes to them, they don't insist on converting to their faith, they offer it. However, where he forgets his values and dogmas and does not live by them himself, he has little to offer. What we are experiencing here in Germany is that we have forgotten our religious ideals, watered down our dogmas and therefore feel threatened by immigrants who we assume have them.
However, those who neither recognise their religious heritage nor find their secularisation problematic as a norm can be seen as ignorant. Their morals are based on their individual existence, not their family existence. But as an individual, you are subject to the tribal rules of those who see their salvation in "ecological footprints" and "health consciousness". Such tribal thinking is reflected in fragmented artificial small movements such as "BLM" and "LGBTQ" and the like. However, the superstructure is not religion but pseudo-religion.
The all too limited education of people in spiritual theories and practices makes them compliant instruments of those who are pseudo-religious.
Separating state and church is different from separating state and religion. Since it is not possible to separate the two, but people still pretend that this is possible, all kinds of uninvited guests come through this back door. Feminism, equality laws, health laws, consumer laws etc. etc. A thriving field for cynics, nihilists and mercenaries.
Now, after having painted this rather dark picture, I shall leave to say that my husband taught me true love. He ignored my immature attempts to break up with him, he gave me training ground in the art of love. Since he showed me how faith in the relationship between us can reveal itself and since we were lovers in the first of all places before the daily chores and sorrows took grip on us, I shall admit that it was him who chose me. He made it possible for me to also chose him as a consequence of his consequential mindset and heart. In turn, I was a role model to him in other matters, those of which he lacked himself. I am a very confrontational person which he is not so much.
The youth of nowadays may change their course and find back to the values and while I myself have found them through an overall comfortable existence, they might find it through the very necessities, since I am not so fundamental in mind as to reject the notion that virtue cannot be born out of need.
I love long comments so don't worry about them.
It weakens the ideal because it finds it profoundly foreign and unnecesary. I think this is because materialism.
Do you link inexorably economicism with secularism?
I completely agree.
I also believe that love is something that, by its very nature, is something very much linked to the soul. It awakens one spiritually, and is a path to the divine.
I don't have much more to say about it. I agree on some of the points you made and so there is not much I can add. You definitely deserved a better response, but I don't have much to say.
:)
Indeed, that is an apt statement.
I'm not sure what you mean by economicism.
People depend on the production of goods and services in order to live. If economic activity takes place solely under a secular order, how would it compare to a religious order? However, I believe that this is a rather divisive question and would not produce a particularly good answer. Since every human action is subject to its world view, I would affirm that economics and secularism are inevitably linked where the latter prevails. However, given the complexity of the situations and forms of companies and the people working in them, it is extremely difficult to judge them according to how religious they are, even if the company management, for example, pursues a purely secular course.
Thank you. That's fine.
What I mean by economicism is the fact of reducing society simply to its economic aspect, forgetting all the other aspects such as cultural, religious, etc. Very similar to what is happening today.
Perhaps secularism, or rather, the lack of religion, creates a void that is filled by other things. In this case, work. But I would say it's quite complex and I don't want to be overlooking something.
Confusion arises from my point of view from the fact that economic interests are not generally mentioned in connection with religious/spiritual interests nowadays. The authorities (governments and organisations) of our time have nothing obvious in this sense that can be questioned straightforward by the people, as they do not use official religious terminology. The very act of separating the religious from the secular, then produced legislation texts and do not contain any morals (but it forces to assume/interpret them behind them). This can be seen as a blessing and a curse alike. It depends, I am afraid.
It is therefore difficult to question something that offers so little in this respect. If we take the attackers of authority, such as Julian Assange, his persecution and imprisonment is not based on the fact that he has shaken revolutionary, generally common religious faith, but that he has published state secrets that "jeopardise national/international security". The highest authority then is state authority, which can be perceived to be secular.
He is portrayed by his accusers as someone who has betrayed national secrets as well as risking single lives of the individual people named in the leaking papers. In short, he has not jeopardised people's spiritual integrity, but their physical integrity, according to those who accuse him. They argue in terms of "security architectures", as I interpret it.
US-law says:
Now, the confusion sets in when one asks "who is the United States?" in this case. As well as "what is the offense?". Is national security inevitably linked to the economy? Isn't economics seen as something that can be used both to put a nation in danger and to move it out of it? Aren't economics based on foreign relationships? In order to maintain those relationships, is it important to be seen as a nation of integrity? And if so, if the integrity is seen as being disturbed (offended) and therefore formulated as an indictment, is not a court needed to judge the case and to give a final decision whether it was needed that documents must have had to be leaked or not and whether the whistleblowers are guilty of what they are accused of, or not (or partly)? Now, the task of the court then must be to find out if
If we don't want to let court happen, I am afraid that we lost trust in the bodies of government and its extended bodies. That is more than tragic.
What I think is that, nowadays, ideologies take the place of religion in politics, which determine whether this or that is right. Whether a war is justified. Whether a coup d'état, or a dictatorship, or a revolution is right or wrong.
The problem is, who is going to judge, those who judge? Because if those who are in charge of doing justice have their hands dirty, no matter to which authority you appeal, be it national or international, nothing will happen.
And furthermore, if by "US" they mean people, then it would have to be seen whether the people were offended, or the representatives of the people were offended. Also, it would be necessary to see, as you say, if the representatives of the people themselves did not offend the people with their actions. This is quite likely.
I think that if we move away from the divine, and start looking for justice in men, I'm afraid we may not find it.
I agree.
We, the peoples, are so identified with celebrities, politicians, the big players on the world stage that we forgot about ourselves in the sense that what is small in nature, is huge in scope (like Chesterton pointed it out). If we, the peoples don't live up to what is there and was there for a very long time (religious order) we will not get living examples of this order in the higher levels of hierarchy. We then are the victims of what we call evil while omit what can be done in our small cosmos of possibilities. This is why I find marriage and man-women relationship so important.
I very much agree with what you say. The macrocosm (big order) follows the microcosm (small order) and vice versa. The moment we forget ourselves is the moment we lose power, or maybe, our agency. But when we focus on ourselves, when we give value to the "small things", we realize that, not only do we have more power than we thought, but also that the outside has less power over us than we assumed.
I am a strong advocate of "focus on what I can control and have faith in the rest". And what I've discovered in this regard is that surrendering in terms of any external outcome is often the best way to go about things. Then results matter less, and what we do more.
Here is a little bit more to add.
Very good example.
I think this is true specifically for women, since their role tended to revolve more around home and family. I agree that making marriage the exception rather than the norm is directly detrimental to the family, which in turn is the cornerstone of society as a whole.
It is a loss of spiritual meaning in the mind and heart of men. Where he finds himself lost and without compass. And where any social consensus can be taken as a virtue.
Even if it is an unofficial marriage, as you said in the back, I agree. Although I think making it official has quite a bit of power.
You cannot remove a religion without another one appearing, even if it is a fake one. There is a famous Mexican saying that goes like this "he who does not know God prays to a saint".
I agree.