Self-Worship Replaced Actual Faith

And therein lies one problem of modernity.

Say “The Kardashians” to people, and unless you are a tween girl deeply into Instagram and beauty or someone that thinks My Dark Twisted Fantasy is a perfect album, you are probably going to say back: “superficial” or “famous for being famous” or something like that. They are probably the biggest, or easiest, representation of this idea that we’ve gotten away from ourselves and focus so much on celebrity and superficial stuff and IG and whatnot. It’s not the wrong argument, no, and there’s a lot of truth within it, although I would say the Kardashians are relatively savvy biz people and are definitely famous for a lot more than just “being famous.” We also love to be negative and hate on others who are successful. See also: many people don’t like Duke basketball, etc.

Yesterday, I watched this clip from Megyn Kelly about “decline of faith” in the West:

I don’t really know who this guy is, but he just wrote a book. A lot of his points were OK, but he lost me when — in the very early going of this discussion — he pointed to “transgenderism among teens” as a sign that Christ is dead. That’s such a very basic right-leaning male talking point, and I’d bet dollars to donuts that this guy has daughters. If one of his daughters came out as trans, he’d instantly shift the narrative to something else. That’s what dudes like this always do. But I digress.

The whole “America has lost faith” argument is very common, and other people similar to Megyn Kelly have made it before too:

As for how “data-driven” the decline of religion/faith argument is, there’s something to it, for sure.

Part of the problem, as we saw with the Harrison Butker backlash, is that religion kinda sells a bag of onions to young women in that their paths become very reductive, and maybe some young women want more than that. That explains some of the church decline, esp. among, well, young women.

Alright, so right now we know that:

• It seems like organized religion is in decline.

• Many people have made that argument.

What exactly has replaced it, then?

The common answers there are:

1. Work

2. Identity and identity politics

3. Being busy

4. Parenting

I’d say “identity” and “work” are the winners for “new religion,” personally — especially in America, where we pretend to have an identity problem that’s really a class/money problem, and where everyone cancels plans because of work and/or just generally answers questions and hides behind the idea of “so slammed at the office.”

Well, this guy in video clip №1 above is saying — in between bashing transgenderism — that Americans stopped worshipping God, and started worshipping themselves. A-ha! And now we are back to the Kardashian context again.

So, how true is that idea?

It’s easy to find examples where it’s true. Instagram, which still does good revenue and has good engagement even though TikTok has replaced it in the cultural zeitgeist, is a good example and a continual testament to self-worship.

I think we talk in extremes and absolutes too much, though. Most people do not self-worship and are concerned with paying bills, feeling relevant, staying employed, and getting their kids to activities. Honestly, for a lot of people, I’d argue their self-esteem is too low and beaten out of them by generalized society + inflation to the point that they can’t even self-worship online because they don’t feel good enough about themselves. Of course, some people who feel like cockroaches still post about the glory of their life all the time, and that depresses other people, and the whole circular thing keeps going.

It’s too hard to analyze millions of people at once, however. So in general, I’d say we have a cursory self-worship problem, but it exists within the 3–5% of society that posts the most online — and not everyone else.

Maybe more importantly, the problem we seem to have is that we cannot agree on the actual source of our problems and how we should be addressing them.

Of course a religious guy is going to appear on a conservative YouTube show and say “the transgenders are self-worshipping and society is collapsing,” and of course the subsequent only solution for a guy like that is (pause) “Vote Trump, he alone can save us.” Those things are obvious and happen every day in the media and on YouTube. We know that to be true.

That’s his specific swim lane of “why society is in demise.” But maybe we need to look beyond that — and that’s where self-worship gets more interesting, because maybe we can’t figure out the bigger issues because we’re all so focused on ourselves so much of the time.

A-ha.

Maybe the problem is that we don’t think enough about others and the 35,000-foot picture of life and what makes it nice and successful, and that’s why we’ve let work consume friendships and relationships to offspring and the like.

Just a thought.

Your take?