From: jimruttshow8596
Religion plays a significant role in the stability and cohesion of civilizations, often acting as a bulwark against internal dissent and self-contempt. Its presence and influence are intrinsically linked to a society’s resilience and its ability to maintain its values and identity over time [00:28:20], [00:48:02].
Religion as a Societal Foundation
Every civilization, without exception, is religious in its founding [01:00:50]. This foundational aspect suggests that shared beliefs and spiritual practices contribute to the initial establishment and subsequent stability of a society.
Combating Oikophobia
A strong religious tradition can serve as a bulwark against oikophobia, which is the “fear of one’s own cultural home” [00:32:47]. Societies with a strong sense of duty and a patriarchal model (as seen in ancient Rome) tend to exhibit less oikophobia [00:32:39], [00:32:41]. When religion is rejected, there is a “nexus of religious weakening and civilizational weakening and orthophobic rise” [01:00:40], because religion and civilization are intertwined [01:00:48].
The Need for a Higher Purpose
Human beings generally possess an emotional need for something higher than themselves to aspire to [01:02:20], [01:10:04], [01:10:08]. If this spiritual need is not met by traditional religion, individuals may seek meaning elsewhere, sometimes in destructive ways, such as “tearing down the statues of their own founding fathers or on on going out and rioting attacking the police” [01:32:40], [01:32:42], [01:32:46], [01:32:48]. This search for communal activity and a higher cause can be filled by religion, providing a unifying force against societal boredom or “civilizational ennui” [01:32:07].
Historical Examples of Religion’s Role
Ancient Greece
During times of civilizational crisis, such as the Persian Wars, societies tend to band together, and protecting one’s own civilization becomes paramount [00:20:25], [00:20:27], [00:20:28]. At such times, there is “very little thought…to think that their own civilization might be worse or or to think that persians are superior” [00:20:39]. A common saying is “there’s no atheist in a foxhole” [02:24:20], meaning that in times of existential threat, people turn to their gods, whether they believe in them or not [02:24:27], [02:24:29]. Once security is established, as in post-Persian War Athens, there is more room for intellectuals to question traditional religion [02:28:02], [02:28:03], [02:31:02], [02:32:21].
Roman Empire
Roman religion was characterized by duty, obligation, and ritual [00:36:59], [00:37:02], [00:37:04]. However, as Rome became wealthier and more powerful, its traditional religion, created in a simpler agrarian time, began to seem “rather quaint” to the elite [00:36:46], [00:36:57]. This shift led to increased flirting with foreign cults like those of Isis and Judaism, and eventually, Christianity [00:37:16], [00:37:18], [00:42:04], [00:42:06], [00:42:08].
Edward Gibbon argued that Christianity contributed to the decline of the Roman Empire [00:40:14], [00:40:30]. While the speaker acknowledges Gibbon’s points, they suggest it was more about Christianity being an “alien” element unsuited to governing a large empire [00:42:27], [00:42:30]. Early Christianity was largely pacifist [00:42:39], which was not practical for an empire that needed to fight wars [00:42:44]. Christian thinkers later developed justifications for warfare (e.g., Ambrose, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas) [00:42:52], [00:42:53], but by then, it was “already too late for the roman empire” [00:43:18]. The original form of Christianity in the early apostles was “completely incompatible with the Roman Empire” [00:44:46], [00:44:48], described by Nietzsche as a “slave morality” [00:44:53], [00:44:55].
The Middle Ages
The Middle Ages represent a period of low oikophobia due to more economic factors [00:46:04], [00:46:06]. A lack of wealth and security meant less leisure for self-observation and critique, and limited access to knowledge due to widespread illiteracy [00:46:16], [00:46:17], [00:46:21], [00:46:28], [00:46:29]. Christianity, though initially subversive, “morphs into the traditional and the the the established and indeed and obviously in many cases of the violent” force of the era [00:47:33], [00:47:36]. The intellectuals of the time were often “under the gun” in monasteries, limiting the development of free thinkers [00:48:26], [00:48:29], [00:48:33].
The Modern West
In the modern West, particularly among oikophobes, there is a tendency to reject Christianity because it is seen as “traditional” and “Western” [00:40:57], [00:40:59], [00:41:01]. In its place, many “flirt with things like buddhism” or other Eastern religions, which offer an alternative spiritual aspiration that differentiates them from their “peers at home” [00:41:06], [00:41:07], [00:41:37], [00:41:42].
While some of the founding fathers of the United States might have taken religion lightly or rejected it [01:03:31], [01:03:36], appeals to God and a higher power were “much more common in those days than they are now” [01:03:45], [01:03:47], [01:03:49], [01:03:51]. Atheism is on the rise, with more atheists today than 100 or 200 years ago [01:04:16], [01:04:18].
Religion, Freedom, and Skepticism
Increased freedom and access to knowledge can lead a society to “lapse into orthophobia” [00:51:27], [00:51:30], [00:51:31]. In societies with less freedom (e.g., North Korea), there is little oikophobia because dissent cannot be expressed [00:51:33], [00:51:35]. Genuine oppression prevents people from even realizing they are oppressed [00:51:48], [00:51:50].
As a society becomes more skeptical of traditional religion and embraces philosophical freedom, it creates more “intellectual room…to flirt with other opinions” [00:52:28], [00:52:31]. This can lead to academics and elites, who have the “loudest megaphones,” using their freedom to challenge and question traditional norms, showing their “specialness” by being “above all these things that you other people prefer all these traditional uh parochial norms and customs” [00:52:41], [00:52:43], [00:52:45], [00:52:55], [00:52:57]. Athens, as the first democracy, was also the first example of oikophobia in the West, precisely because it allowed for free intellectual exchange [00:53:20], [00:53:22], [00:53:26], [00:53:28], [00:53:31].
The Supernatural Element and Meaning
While some philosophers have attempted to establish “religion of positivism” or systems that fulfill the cognitive needs of religion without supernatural attributes [01:09:16], [01:09:17], [01:09:20], the speaker suggests skepticism toward such attempts [01:09:07]. The “supernatural component” of religion is seen as “quite important” because human beings generally need something “higher to aspire to,” and the supernatural is the “most obvious candidate” for this [01:09:57], [01:10:00], [01:10:02], [01:10:08], [01:10:11], [01:10:13]. Discarding the supernatural entirely for the “great mass of people in a society” could be “playing with fire” [01:10:24], [01:10:26], [01:10:28], [01:10:30].
This concept of meaning and its absence also relates to the idea of “boredom” or “civilizational ennui” [01:32:07]. If there is no higher cause or purpose, individuals and society can become bored, leading to a “civilizational problem” that accompanies wealth, luxury, and security [01:31:10], [01:32:10], [01:32:12], [01:32:15], [01:32:18], [01:32:21]. The decline of religion contributes to this boredom and “feeds into orthophobia” [01:32:24], [01:32:26], [01:32:27], [01:32:29].