Modernity and Spiritual Autism: A Question of Chickens and Eggs

I have previously diagnosed modernity as the ascendence of rebellion against the order of being. And this, I have argued, arises from spiritual autism, the inability to experience the order of being as sacred. The predictable result is the demand for ever-more freedom: first political freedom, then freedom from want or need, then freedom from social conventions, from morality, and finally (I hope, anyway) from biology itself. (Taxpayer-subsidized elective sex changes for all!)

I have, in other words, regarded insensibility to the sacred as having causal priority over rebellion agaisnt the order of being. I wonder now if that is the correct ordering of things. Is it possible that man's atheism is instrumental -- that he denies God because he yearns to be free of the order of being, not vice-versa. It is the distinction, in other words, between spiritual autism as akin to literal autism (a simple pathological defect of understanding, will, and spirit) and as the intentional affectation of ignorance so as to rationalize the unfettering of one's will from basic rational and ethical considerations.

Discuss!

Comments

[Joe]

"The fool says in his heart, there is no God" - and so modern Atheists are fools... but the question remains (to quote the Far Side) "what kind of fools are they"? They are fools who deny God's authority so as to foist themselves as their own authority so as to commit actions that would otherwise be held against them by their own consciences. This is why Atheists tend to have chips on their shoulder vs. how Agnostics react and act. If you're just not sure if "a" or "the" God of revelation exists, you tend to be a bit less sure of yourself and less authoritarian with others. But if you insist that God cannot exist...because you say so... notice how your attitude towards other people tends to become arrogant and imposing. (All while simultaneously insisting that it is Theists who 'impose' their viewpoints.).

[Peter S.]

It strikes me that a reflection upon the transformation of sensibility of the Russian people before and following the 1917 revolution can possibly serve as an illuminative case study with regard to the question posed. Let me focus upon a particularly significant Russian locus of the sensibility to the sacred: the veneration of icons. In her review of the recent work by Irina Yazykova, “Hidden and Triumphant: The Underground Struggle to Save Russian Iconography” – a somewhat dry book on an important subject – Frederica Mathewes-Green begins with the following observation:

Among the illustrations in this volume there is an AP news photo from the Russian district of Bogorodsk, dated 1950, of a crowd of people carrying icons out of a church. This isn’t a religious procession; instead, they are handing the paintings up to a man standing in a farm cart. Though it is cold—you can tell from the bundling garments and fleece-lined caps—the crowd looks energetic and happy, and a pretty young woman at the center of the photo looks particularly joyous. In the foreground a boy is holding a small icon, perhaps of Christ. The cart is already overflowing with these paintings of saints and biblical figures on wooden plaques. The load is going to be hauled out of town and burned.

How can we comprehend what this photo would mean to Russian Orthodox Christians? We could imagine that, instead of icons, the happy crowd is raiding an art museum and bringing out priceless paintings to be destroyed. Or we could picture them carrying Bibles, every Bible they can find, from low-cost pew copies to big family Bibles, and personal Bibles full of notes and underlining. Or we could imagine them carrying out photos of the people we love—our mothers and grandmothers, our sweethearts, our children—tossing them all into a cart to be destroyed.

All three meanings would overlap for a devout Russian Orthodox watching this scene, and, even those who have not experienced the use of icons in worship can grasp that they are charged with significance and dearly loved. Icons provide a focal point for the expression of faith, and no image is as charged with power as that of a beloved face. If you wanted to destroy a nation’s faith, you would have to destroy their icons. (http://www.frederica.com/writings/the-holy-gaze.html)

How is it possible that such a sensibility toward the sacred, so deeply rooted in centuries of Russian faith, could be so utterly overturned and in such a comparatively short period? How could “Holy Russia” so quickly become “Godless Russia”? Clearly both rebellion and autism were copiously present, along with political and societal compulsion. It could be argued that rebellion led, with autism following in its wake, but why should the inversion of sensibility have taken place so readily and thoroughly?

As a final note, despite three quarters of a century of atheistic domination, Russians are presently the least atheistic of any European polity: http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2011/0506/Russia-emerges-as-Europe-s-most-God-believing-nation

[Dirichlet]

Peter,

I think the answer to your question can be found in Dostoevsky. During the 19th century, Russia remained a "backwards" feudal state while Western Europe modernized at an extremely fast rate. Russia's intellectual elites, educated in Western liberal ideas, became more and more contemptuous and violent as the century ended and Russia still had not joined the March of Progress. As time passed, they associated Russian backwardness with the Church and the Crown, which they set out to destroy and the character of the people, which they set out to reform.

Characters like Ivan Karamazov, the Underground Man and Raskolnikov reflect the character of Russian intellectuals during the 19th century. Prophetic stuff, so prophetic that I'm sure some skeptics in the future will say that Dostoevsky's writing are from the 21st century.

[Peter S.]

Dirichlet,

You gesture close to the heart of the matter, to be sure. It reminds me of the comment by the Protestant sociologist of religion, Peter Berger, that if India is the most religious country in the world, and Sweden the least religious, then America is a nation of Indians ruled by Swedes. Philip E. Johnson continues the analysis:

“The ruling philosophy of our Swedes is naturalism, the metaphysical doctrine that nature is a permanently closed system of material causes and effects that can never be influenced by something from outside—like God. From the Swedish viewpoint, the proposition that some supernatural being intervenes in nature or human affairs, or reveals its will through “Holy Scripture,” is inherently nonfactual. The ruling Swedes might recognize that religious “feeling” is a legitimate aspect of human subjectivity, but they emphatically object when people act on the fantasies produced by this feeling to the detriment of other people, or when delusionary beliefs impede the achievement of important social objectives. Above all, they will not tolerate any effort by the Indians to replace naturalism—or rationality, as the Swedes think of it—with some superstition involving an imaginary Supreme Being.” (http://www.firstthings.com/article/2008/11/002-the-swedish-syndrome-32)

Like fish, the rot starts at the head.

It is Dostoyevsky’s genius to encapsulate the inversion between “holy Russia” and “godless Russia” in the leading characters of his most famous work, the Karamazov brothers Alyosha and Ivan. It is worth recalling that Ivan’s famous story, “The Grand Inquisitor”, is told directly to Alyosha as a challenge to his faith; Alyosha’s reply is a Christ-like kiss upon Ivan’s lips, at once a surrender and a triumph, although one which Ivan, tellingly, fails to recognize – “The kiss glows in his heart, but the old man adheres to his idea.”