The Gods that Failed: Diagnosing the Dying Religions of Conservatism and Liberalism

“Sanctuary. A scene from Transformers 3 was filmed right here in this room. Abandoned City Methodist Church in Gary, Indiana. HDR” by slworking2 is marked with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Published 3/11/2022

Beliefs are very hard things to let go of. When one’s entire life becomes devoted to upholding and maintaining a faith, the utter failure and disintegration of that belief system can become unbearable. In order to cope, many people indulge in escapist fantasies. This is not due to any lack of intelligence or moral failing; rather, a close examination shows that we can find complex psycho-social reasons for why and how denial, repression, and various defense mechanisms operate in the spheres of economics and politics.

In today’s world, there seems to be a genuine lack of understanding of how political ideology molds people into compliant, obedient citizens and consumers who willingly and voluntarily assimilate into a society that does not serve their fundamental, basic human interests. Part of the reason is that it’s become normalized for thousands of years in Western civilization: we seem to accept illegitimate hierarchies and social structures because they have fed, clothed, and sheltered us and our kin for generations, and without these institutions most of us would be like fish out of water. We’ve become domesticated and reluctant to “bite the hand that feeds”.