I first heard about Christian deconstruction from an episode of The Babylon Bee podcast. The guest they interviewed, Alisa Childers, spoke on the importance of people understanding the reasons for their core beliefs, but was critical of the deconstruction movement for tearing apart beliefs without rebuilding their foundation. My own examination of Christian deconstruction found that it is essentially an apostate movement; a justification for discarding one’s faith in Christianity. While I have no issue with people examining, testing and discerning what is and isn’t true, many of the videos I’ve seen are people justifying migrating from their deeply held beliefs. Their revelations aren’t new or uniquely insightful. What I have noticed is that Christian deconstructionists are critical of their faith, while not being critical of the moral structures and belief systems they want to replace that faith with. They are often critical of the religion of their forbearers, without realizing the system they wish to replace it with, is also its own unexamined ideology.
I deleted my Facebook and Twitter over a year ago. Even when I had accounts on those websites, I fought hard to ignore their notification systems. Even as my unread notices grew to over 80, I avoided the dopamine hit from clearing that little red number inscribed in a circle. Training ones brain to ignore notifications is the first step at fighting back against the growing war for your time and attention.
In late December, I drove out to the middle of nowhere to see The Georgia Guidestones. Hours away from major cities and Interstate highways, the Georgia Guidestones are a series of granite tablets, wedged into the ground to form a cross. Commandments for humanity are etched into the faces of each stone, one language per face. It’s a haunting, eerie site. The inscriptions read like a madman’s dystopian nightmare. Constructed in 1980, no one is sure who funded the site’s creation, or why they were built.
There were many Orwellian phrases pumped into the brains of the populace in 2020. It’s been a long time since we’ve heard two weeks to flatten the curve and social distancing. However, the most disturbing phrase of 2020 was definitely “We are all in this together.” Used in every advertisement and government message, it was a deceptive, narrative lie. Two years later, we see that we are only in this together, so long as everyone complies. It was a phrase that set the stage for creating an other for society to turn against. We were never in this together, but don’t ever believe the lie that you are in this alone.
I’ve grown increasing concerned over the way big social media networks have been manipulating large swaths of the population. Many of them compete with, and are actively aggressive to, smaller independent platforms. I rarely ventured onto the large platforms except to promote my own material. Yet, the growing audacity of these networks and their blatant manipulations of human thought and perception, has led me to the point where I feel I can no longer ethically use them. I decided that even using them passively for promotion was no longer morally acceptable. In February of 2021, I deleted my Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. I’ve potentially cut myself off from a large number of acquaintances I’ve know throughout my life, yet I’ve always had my own presence on the web which I control and promote. The people who truly matter, will always be able to find me.
My mother had Multiple Sclerosis. While I was in primary school, she had lost her ability to drive a vehicle. By the time I was in high school, she could barely walk. The Internet was the big new thing, and while it opened her world greatly from her limited mobility, her view of the world was still restricted to what she saw on TV and through an Internet Explorer web browser. It’s a terribly distorted way to see the world, and it is currently the way many people in cities all around the planet are viewing current events. For many of us who live in cities have been locked away from each other by our governments, Orwellian messaging is blasted to us from news, advertising and social media, telling us we are all responsible for the microbes in our bodies and the lives of everyone on the planet. It’s a terrible distortion of reality and is fracturing the minds of people in my country and all around the world.
The majority of people who are infected with the virus SARS-CoV-2 do not develop severe cases of COVID-19. However, some people develop a cytokine storm, and their own immune system may start to work against them. The response of many world governments to COVID-19 has been to restrict travel, close non-essential businesses, restrict gatherings, close parks and inform their citizens to distance themselves from one another when possible. Leaders want to slow down the spread of the virus, in order to not overload hospital systems. Yet, these policies are also slowing this massive machine; this infrastructure that has evolved to support several billion human beings. Our society, though composed of people and not cells, also has an immune response. Our societal immune system can bring us together to survive the darkest of times against untenable odds, but it also has the power to overreact, give itself to mass hysteria, and ultimately rip our people apart in an attempt to save it.
Comedians have taken on a very interesting role in the past couple of years. Many of us have grown up with comedians that write a lot of jokes about politics, such as Bill Hicks or George Carlin. Yet today, we have comedians that are dedicated almost entirely to politics, such as Lewis Black, or political satire such as John Oliver and Samantha Bee. Somehow, even comedians who don’t constrain themselves to such narrow topics are now looked to, and looked down upon, for their opinions about the broader political and social climates of our society. Although I do agree that comedy and art can be a helpful mirror, as a tool for introspection on our current culture, I think we do a disservice to entertainers when we look to them to replace the roles previously given to intellectuals, academics and philosophers.
Recently, I was listening to a Sam Harris podcast episode where he interviewed Richard Dawkins. At one point in the podcast, he attempted to lead Dawkins through a mindful meditation session, to which Dawkins responded, “I couldn’t stand it … I was listening to your words and I was keeping my eyes shut and doing everything you said. I couldn’t see the point of it … Five minutes would be about my limit I think.” I do enjoy Harris’s interviews, but his avocation for meditation borders on evangelism. Although I do meditate myself, I also have several friends who say they do not benefit from meditation, or it leads them to anxiety. Although mindfulness and meditation can be powerful tools, it’s important to remember that humans are complex, and what works for one person, may not work for everyone.
Nihilism often gets a bad rap. Unlike other philosophical doctrines, nihilism is usually not a fully encompassing belief system. Although we tend to group people like Nietzsche and Camus into the nihilist camp, few philosophers or authors actively identify as purely nihilistic. Philosophers who tend to use bleak views of the world might do so in order to emphasize the reasons for holding a more positive outlook. As Camus says in The Myth of Sisyphus, “Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable.” The absurdity of the universe, rather than being disparaging, can instead be an acknowledgment that we are responsible for our own purpose. It is that self determination that, while acknowledging we may live in a world void of meaning, allows us the freedom to form our own happiness.
