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[...] It is one thing to accept something intellectually, but to accept the same thing emotionally is an entirely different matter. The one need that psychiatry cannot fill is man's inherent need for emotionalizing through dogma. Man needs ceremony and ritual, fantasy and enchantment. Psychiatry, despite all the good it has done, has robbed man of wonder and fantasy which religion, in the past, has provided. [1]

LaVey's statement holds just as true today as it did in 1969. Indeed, it would seem that not merely psychiatry, but many other organized segments of society have stepped in to fill what John Goldhammer refers to as "the God hole"[2]. Atheists are quick to proffer substitutes like Secular Humanism, political leftists espouse Marxist idealogy, and progressives of all stripes push their agendas in their respective areas of interest. The right is likewise scrambling to fill the void, generally by adapting archaic religious traditions to comport with contemporary social perspectives, or by substituting religion with nationalism, neoconservatism or other ideologies which fulfill the same need for an authoritarian "lord" or divine mission.

That human herdist instinct which accompanies religion in the form of proselytism has managed to adapt well to societal surrogates, particularly where any call for reform-at-large is concerned. Consider mandatory public education: Children are indoctrinated in an obedience culture and taught political correctness, often sprinkled liberally with tailored versions of "proper" morality and ethics. The whole educational system itself is an extension of the progressive movement, which serves as an engineering tool in the larger attempt to create an homogeneous, egalitarian democracy. As Kuehnelt-Leddin notes:

We must not forget that the extinction of illiteracy remains one of the capital tasks of the democratists, because they feel the need of a public which masters the three "R's" and is therefore able to mark the right name on the election papers; to read cheap novels and pulp magazines, leaflets, pamphlets, and advertisements; the need of a public which solves crossword puzzles, understands warning signs on the road and in the factories, and swallows "enlightening" writings without possessing the faculties to analyze them critically.[3]

As the influence of Abrahamic religion declines in the West, we are witnessing a much greater emphasis on "faith in humanity." The momentum of the enlightenment has provided a crescendo of knowledge and technological progress, while sacrificing a sense of purpose or meaning. The role once served by the church (however dubious) is now assumed by institutions with their own agendas.

Often, the results are pernicious. The replacement of rigid moral principles with fluid, "expert-based" societal engineering has not produced any promised utopias, nor has it greatly improved the intelligence, behavior, culture, or character of mankind in general. In some cases, this increased reliance on humanity's wisdom leads to a perversion in the very values that we hold as meritorious and uniquely Human. C.S. Lewis admonishes us of these dangers in his essay, The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment (do read this short work in its entirety). He expounds upon the idea that Humanitarian meddling, in its attempt to view punishment solely as a method of criminal reform, ends up converting the original purpose and incidentally creating a new sort of injustice, viz:

The Humanitarian theory removes from Punishment the concept of Desert. But the concept of Desert is the only connecting link between punishment and justice. It is only as deserved or undeserved that a sentence can be just or unjust. I do not here contend that the question ‘Is it deserved?’ is the only one we can reasonably ask about a punishment. We may very properly ask whether it is likely to deter others and to reform the criminal. But neither of these two last questions is a question about justice. There is no sense in talking about a ‘just deterrent’ or a ‘just cure’. We demand of a deterrent not whether it is just but whether it will deter. We demand of a cure not whether it is just but whether it succeeds. Thus when we cease to consider what the criminal deserves and consider only what will cure him or deter others, we have tacitly removed him from the sphere of justice altogether; instead of a person, a subject of rights, we now have a mere object, a patient, a ‘case’.[4]

This is the irony of the faith-in-humanity movement. Through the contemporary attempt to view all actions as mechanical cause and effect relationships, the human element actually becomes minimized, relegated to a cog in a machine. The depth of human experience--philosophical quandaries, emotional needs, the awareness of mortality--is reduced to an artificial realm of statistics, numbers, and theory. The anomalous nature of life is inimical to the desired plane of equal everything, so it is ignored, to ill effect.

And so we are left to question whether the cure is worse than the disease. Some individuals have seemed to undergo a spiritual regression, abandoning Christianity only to adopt older, less-ordered forms of spirituality like paganism, shamanism, or animism. In many ways, such a switch presents insignificant change to the actuality of day-to-day life. One can only speculate how such vicissitudes will serve to shape the essence of society (or humanity!) at large. Modern humans, as a whole, are no more enlightened or intelligent than they were in 1800. Collectivism remains rampant, and public interest has has kept the gullibility (Atlantis, UFOs, Ghosts, New Ageism, et al.) while tossing out the moral proviso. What we are witnessing is the worst of both worlds, licentiousness and ignorance combined, proliferating at the exponential speed of technological advancement.

All this is an attempt to fill the vacuum, the space formerly occupied by religion. Whether the outcome will prove a great success for humanity or merely another failed experiment in self-determination remains to be seen. From where I'm standing, the prospects look rather unpromising.


NOTES:

1. Anton LaVey, The Satanic Bible (1969).
2. John D. Goldhammer, Under the Influence: the Destructive Effects of Group Dynamics (1996).
3. Erik Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, The Menace of the Herd, or Procrustes at Large (1943).
4. C.S. Lewis, The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment (1953).

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