The Conflict of Modern Life and Classical Religion

January 22, 2018

The Conflict of Modern Life and Classical Religion

Abstract:

Modern Life:
Internet
Social Media
Likes
Connections
Image
What must I do?
You must appear to be great!
Automobiles
Highways
Traffic
Navigating Highways
What must I do?
You must come first!

Classical Religion:
Love
Unity
Respect
Honesty
Humility
Compassion
Concern
Charity
What does God want me to do?
Look out for others always, never shove others out of your way.

Summary Explanation:

Modern life now conflicts daily and even hourly with all of the principals of Classical Religion - specifically, all those wonderful life rules all religions present and teach and that practically everyone agrees with and seeks to emulate such as compassion, caring, being other oriented, humility, honesty - because of the design and function of two of the seemingly essential, major elements of modern industrialized civilization: automobiles and social media.  This is not just another finger-waving, shame-on-you attempt by someone seeking to place people on a behavior guilt trip; this is an observation of a deeply rooted problem that needs to be consciously understood and worked against if we want to see the essence, the kernel of Classical Religion survive at all in the modern world. 

Consider driving in traffic: in order to just make it to work or the store on a daily basis it is now necessary for anyone living anywhere near a city to engage in "me first" aggressive driving in order to make the needed lane changes and navigate the various over passes encountered along any urban journey.  This so easily leads to not just "me first" driving but actual aggression carried out by humans in vehicles who decide to swear, gesture, and even physically crash into and fight or shoot at each other.  On any level modern driving forces anyone, devout or atheist, to put away humility, other-oriented thinking and compassion and instead use pride, aggression, and selfish calculation just to get by much less the cascade of truly sinful behavior begun when a road-rage scenario plays out.  Indeed it is very severely challenging to actively change this and attempt to drive in a charitable, compassionate way because you may very well be taking your own life into your hands by doing so on roads so very full of aggressive, self-concerned drivers.

Consider now also social media (Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, et al.) where the goal is seemingly to present or elevate yourself before your friends (real or algorithmic) to create "likes" or "follows" which is your confirmation that you are valuable to them and that you somehow matter.  To do this, you must not only depict your life as it is but attempt to spin it, edit it, enhance it - all of which are synonyms for lying about it - which makes people daily, and usually hourly, commit the deeply sinful act of falsehood, dishonesty, deception, and telling lies.  Now it isn't as bad as the falsehood of say a Bernie Maddoff or a slick horse trader, because at the least it appears no one is being hoodwinked out of their money by way of these lies, but nevertheless giant scale communal lying, misrepresentation and falsehoods are being created and shared about as a means of garnering validation in the way of "likes".  But validation is itself built on validity - which is truth, logical or philosophical - and virtually nothing on social media is built on validity.  This has the effect of bending and warping a communities grasp of what truth is and causes ignorance of the reasons why honesty is so essential and not to be traded away for anything much less for the sake of establishing your worth by way of what other people think of you.  In all religion, the emphasis was and is always on being concerned with what God thinks of you by way of how you fulfill and observe the laws and guidance of His religions, which is much more of a bedrock, solid, distortion-free standard than the whims of fellow human beings who are well proven to be plastic in the extreme.  Without a consistent, distortion free bedrock foundation of good character, there can be no real happiness in life. 

These two elements of modern life, one very much physical and quite dangerous to the body, the other virtual and equally dangerous to the character and the mind, have now made it seem like no where in daily life are the teachings of religion applicable because to use either one - which one must in order to have a job and interact with the digital economy that will soon touch literally everyone's life - places one in an untenable position where one must at some point think and behave in very non-religious ways in order to use the automobile or the social media page as per it's design. The solution for social media is to use it as a platform for real discussion and event sharing rather than "selfie" grandstanding which is now being proven to be deeply psychologically damaging especially to young minds but also detrimental to the sanity of any mind; the solution for automobiles and traffic is much harder because it involves real humans making choices under pressure because they are in speeding metal vehicles while deciding what to do.  Perhaps as autopilot self-driving features become more and more capable and common that will make a dent in the traffic situation.  The real problem is that if you constantly choose to be prideful, selfish and even cause harm or danger to others so that you can be first, you are constantly corrupting your own character and even your own soul - all for the sake of arriving somewhere 20 or 30 seconds quicker than if you backed off and did not think and decide in a selfish "me first" manner.