Connect with AYT

Subscribe via Patreon!	Find AYT's Facebook!	Watch AYT!

Dysfunction and Faith in the Modern World

A question arose in my head while listening to an ancient history book. The book talked about life in the ancient world; the book made reference to ancient people giving attention to local deities, family deities, cultural heroes who were blessed by deities. An abundance of deities, and a special attention to the divine, seems to be a characteristic of ancient people. We have so many records of how the ancients thought of the divine in their daily lives, and we have so few records of the more mundane aspects of ancient life.

I wonder...

Did most, ordinary people in the ancient world give so much attention and consideration to the divine? Or was it merely the scholars who thought regularly about the higher orders of the universe? - And since most books and records were written by scholars, we view ancient people as having far more attention to the divine than they actually gave.

Did the ancients consider themselves within the cosmos more attentively than most people do today?

Does the Mormon who mows your lawn find Christ in every blade of grass? Does your Jewish co-worker think through the Talmud when making decisions for the day? Does your Catholic neighbor consider the Bible when arriving at their lunch meeting?

Of course not. They aren't concerned with religion when going about their daily activities.

Many people consider themselves devout to a faith discipline, and many of those give no more than occasional thought to their acts in context of their faith.

So the question is, did the faith of the ancients give less regard (and less constant attention that could be called worship) to the divine than our archaeological records would suggest? Or did the ancients give constant attention to the divine in all facets of life, and do peoples of modern times give less attention to the divine - and if so, where do people of modern times give their constant attention (which some would cal worship) if not to the divine?

What do people give their lives for - not the radical maniacs who devote one day of death as the greatest sacrifice they can commit to, nor the life-long devotees who abstain from normal life to spread the teachings of scripture - what do most people (at least half of all the people) give their lives for, a lifetime of days, sacrificed for the higher ideal of... what?

Is it for the collective good of maintaining and preserving civilization, which makes life so easy for our species? For some perhaps yes, though I doubt that most people give much thought to their lives in context of history or the scale-and-function of civilization (except of course when they see a "first world problems" meme). No, I don't think the higher ideal of contributing to humanity is the level at which most people assess themselves on.

To venture a guess, I'd say most people, when asked why they make their daily sacrifices of getting up early, being honest at work, being a good parent, a good spouse or a good person, has nothing to do with civilization or divinity, but is merely a sacrifice to the high ideal of "success".

That's a problem.

It's actually a lot of problems, and I'll tell you about a few of those problems right now.

Modern people no longer turn their minds to sacredness or divinity, but instead seek out "success" with their constant attention (aka their worship).

Such a culture (or cult) of "success" - has many faces - the daylight face, wherein they worship the high-skill or high luck that makes a good life - they idolize those who seem to easily stay healthy, wealthy and loved by their loved ones - thus a cult of easiness emerges, a cult of aversion to hardship, a cult of get-rich-quick, a cult of "I don't tolerate drama, one-strike you're out", a cult of instantly-successful diets.

If the appeal of a new idea is how easy it is - easy to get in shape, or easily organize your clutter, easy to meet someone, easy to make money - when the reason to try it is because it's "easy" means you'll try it, the thing is likely to never get done.

And when that perpetual wishing for easy good life feels so far out of reach, an escape from pain becomes far more attainable. Avoidance, agoraphobia, drinking, pills, and worse forms of escape become a new form of hell.

We look to the ancients and think how silly they were for thinking there was magic or divinity in local forest and rivers, or some highest ideal of heaven toward which we could strive, as well as some hell that would be the terrible result if the highest ideals were not given attention every day.

How silly they were, eh?

We may even chuckle at the superstition of the ancients. Then we go back to scrolling through images and imaginings of our hopes and dreams both great and small. We scroll through images of the heavenly success we wish to achieve of wealth, health and love; that new relationship, that next vacation, that retirement. We also scroll through the headlines that scare us, of dire fates we wish to avoid, and we look through the profiles of the people we don't want to lose. Our own heaven, and our own hell; we give these things our constant attention.

How silly were those ancients, eh?

And yet soon after a society abandons it's places or worship (be that a forest, a temple, a tomb or a church) that void for a highest ideal to strive for gets emptied of the divine, and is filled instead with the "successful" works of ourselves and others. We flock to huge buildings (malls) with vaulted ceilings where we can make use of our success tokens (money) to acquire symbols and talismans displaying how closely we are aligned to that high ideal of "success".

Modern society has traded sacredness for "success", and has replaced the priestly class with those who convince us they should be admired (e.g. the sales manager, the internet star, the celebrity). Those who achieve "success" are idolized - an interesting coincidence of wording.

How silly were those ancients, who gave their daily attention to idols, eh?

Ironic that in modern times, we no longer visit a priest for a blessing or a hand-written scroll of prayer or protection, yet we scroll through our digital media to see all the things we pray to achieve, or pray to avoid.

We have traded in our clay tablets of heroic mythologies, for our tablets that can edit our photos and our stories to mythologize ourselves in the ways we wish to look. Do we expect there will be no consequences when how we 'look' becomes more distance from how we 'are'?

Truth is sacred, and the true-ness of reality has been forgotten by those who distance themselves from truth.

Disappointment is often called the difference between expectation and reality. Disappointment can be a mild annoyance, or it can be existential agony. Disappointment is another way of distancing ourselves from reality, from truth, as we imagine it in the future - just as painful as dishonesty is how we distance ourselves from the truth of the past. When one person in a community distances themselves in dishonesty, those who see will begin to have unrealistic expectations of themselves - thus one small dishonesty, one white lie of creating distance from reality, can spread.

That's how the cult of success creates the shadow cult of wishing for easiness - a recipe for disappointment - and subsequently a culture of despair. Because success is not easy to achieve, "success" requires skill, AND persistence, AND luck. And even when success is achieved, success is not divine.

Success does not fill the void for sacredness and divinity, and the image of success certainly does not make one fit for idolization, for constant prayerful attention. Success is an imagination of the future, and the likelihood to make that future a reality. Without the sacred, such a reality - even such an ability to alter reality - becomes empty and hollow.

So what is sacred? The details may be different for each of us, yet those details always describe something that is the same for us all.

Alignment of actions to benefit yourself in ways that benefit your family in ways that benefit your community in ways that benefit your region, your nation, and our world - all within the scope of our place in the cosmos. A Human, the social creature with a thinking brain, is hard wired to find meaning in such an alignment.

This alignment is what resonates with us when we see those who are "successful" and the pursuit of this alignment between self-and-cosmos is what feels meaningful. To strive for success is a backward approach to life and will bring no change to feelings of empty meaninglessness. But to strive for alignment and improvement, striving for the betterment of yourself, your family, your community, your nation, and our world, within the cosmos - whatever you perceive those to be - will build a foundation of meaning and sacredness, centered on reality and truth. Success is, at best, the by-product of attuning to the divine; and once in a while, in our most trying times, "success" is merely the next thing we can sacrifice in order to attune more closely with the divine.

"Be humble, for you are of the dust. Be noble, for you are of the stars."
-Serbian Proverb (most likely source)

Recommended Reading Library

Contact

If you would like more information about AYT, please feel free to contact us via Email with any questions or comments.