This reflection has several steps, so the reasoning may be difficult to follow. There is no strict order though, but a confluence of facets or aspects of reality which ultimately configure the thesis presented. At each step, as happens with any discursive comprehension, a part of reality may make sense without reference to the rest of the argument.
It is important to underscore that these observations are not “original” when taken one at a time. Nevertheless, the joint display of these aspects may be ‘original’, as an individual transitory view, as they appear to the writer today.
The background is the understanding that ‘Modernity’ and ‘Capitalism’ may be best understood not as ‘structures’ or ‘systems’ –as they are frequently presented in public discourse–, but as historical products of war, dispossession, displacement, wandering, acculturation and social destruction. Neither ‘Modernity’ nor ‘Modern Capitalism’ are the ‘latest’ or ‘most evolved’ stage of history — a belief which is shared by all current ideological tendencies.
Once one sees the almost identical adhesion to the notion of Modernity and Capitalism as a ‘system’ or a ‘structure’ across all political, historical and economic theories, and only then, do we begin to understand the unquestioned assumptions which support these ideologies.
In this sense, Modernity *includes* all its counterparts, its ‘shadows’ and apparent opponents, like anarchism, libertarianism, communitarianism, socialism, communism, fascism… But this can be understood only when we realise the common basis all these ideologies have, which is the idea of linear-time, evolutionary, ‘staged’, sequential vision of history, where one ‘level’ of development follows another.
Modernity and Capitalism are historical products of war, dispossession, displacement, wandering, acculturation and destruction, and even the concepts of Modernity and Capitalism themselves are the product of these processes. In other words, these ideas are themselves the reflection of a world where dispossession and loss are a given, and where the default situation of the individual is one of lack of power to change reality.
Modernity and Capitalism, and all their negations and ‘alternatives, all the concepts thereof are rooted in human life which is irreversibly equal with compulsion (compulsion to work, compulsion to comply, compulsion to believe, compulsion to participate).
‘Understanding’ –in this context– means compulsion to ‘understand the irreversibility of the situation.
According to this condition of compulsion, so-called ‘historical progress’ appears as an absolute necessity, as something which cannot be doubted, discussed or queried. It is *evident* for the Modern and for the Anti-Modern, that there is or has been a ‘process’ of historical evolution, from the tribal original human groups to the current mass consumption, globalised ‘democratic’ societies.
In particular, for the neo-liberal (as well as for their most consistent anti-capitalist opponents) the ideological sense of history has transmuted into the expectation that post-cultural and post-national societies are not only necessary but inevitable, independently of any negative aspects this may have.
In this context, the individual is not only impotent but also guilty, although ‘guilt’ may take different forms. Where does this sense of ‘guilt’ come from? Guilt and impotence, helplessness take form together because official ideologies transmit not only the inevitability of progress but also the meaninglessness of the individual. Under neo-liberal ideology –very much as it happened under 20th Century totalitarianism, the individual *must* obey general, unexamined mandates of the economy of value. In all cases individuals have ‘no alternative’ but to ‘pay the debt’ not only their individual debt but also the inconceivable ‘debt’ of broken governments and states.
These combinations, which trap the individual in a universal sense of guilt, impotence, subordination and loss are now the essence of political power. A power which requires that people believe progress is inevitable (i.e. the projection of past loss towards the future), and simultaneously perceive themselves as impotent, alienated, ineffective, ignorant, limited, uninformed, uninterested and irrelevant.
Political power –in the post-cultural context– transmutes into something indifferent to the individual and to the people in general: debt and guilt and impotence become everybody’s bane because they are not recognised in a public sphere which has ceased to be representative, in other words, a public sphere which is not political nor public anymore.
So, the individual “introjects” (absorbs, accepts, identifies-with) the post national ideologies and simultaneously accepts and adopts the concomitant sense of impotence, guilt, isolation, loss and irrelevance. Even ‘oppositional’ and ‘alternative’ behaviours have that foundation.
Among the effects of this general condition, we can count how it reflects on religion. For example, we can see that religion, as ‘religion of salvation’, and the meaning of ‘salvation’ itself, are lost. They do not have a context anymore. The situation of universal loss determines that the alienated individuals do not see, do not understand, and to not feel they can be ‘saved’ by religion. In the ‘developed’ countries of the West, the need of ‘salvation’ takes at most economic and immediate meanings related to loss of employment, unpayable debt, forced migration, political oppression and forced migration. But the alienated individual–the individual who has privatised morality–does not feel morally threatened. And is right in assuming there is no need nor hope in finding moral redress in any area of the public sphere. The alienated individual is just reflecting the fact that religion itself –as well as other institutions–has been displaced by the universal process of the post-cultural world.
that is: he or she do not need religion. To a large extent, the ascent of populism corresponds to the search for, and always can take refuge into ‘private’ worlds of belief. If any threat appears it is always obscure, diffuse, ‘managed’ and justified behind the ideologies of inevitability and post-cultural Modernity.
Contrary to that, instead of a definite external threat (external to ‘culture’, for example) the individual only senses a ‘risk’ from inside the person itself. The individual feels alienated from him or herself. In other words, the individuals feel guilty, but this guilt– in the post-cultural context– is neither moral nor political anymore, this guilt appears as an agonising, perpetual sense of loathing and inadequacy, a sense of debt with the self perhaps, but never a sense of responsibility with any form or level or aspect of society.
In other words, the twilight of ‘salvific religion’ is completely intertwined with the extension of Modernity and Progress. The doctrines of salvation originate in local / regional / national / cultural contexts where religion was part a total social commitment. i.e. part of social daily activity and not a personal choice or a rational elaboration. Salvation had a practical meaning and was external to the individual person, as it had to be the salvation of the social group as a whole and could only be experienced as that. (The fact that doctrines of salvation may be expanding in cultures which are non-Western like those in the East or in Africa, does not negate the interpretation given about, precisely because those cultures are characterised by a limited separation between the individual and the collective.)
In the West, Protestants may not identify in themselves the sense of ‘guilt’ as described here. In Anglo-Saxon countries, ‘guilt’ is frequently associated with the Catholic Church. This is not a completely wrong characterisation. Variants of Christian belief have different relations to post-cultural loss.
What is missed is that in Catholicism (which did resist Modernity and still does to some degree) ‘guilt’ is not completely a personal matter but can be expressed as a social event of ‘guilt’. ‘Guilt’ still is social and can be externalised and ‘confessed’. Contrarywise, for the Protestant, ‘guilt’ is a completely private, hidden, personal matter. It is an issue between the private individual and ‘God himself’. ‘Guilt’, therefore, cannot and does not need to be expressed. Protestant doctrines prepared this outcome with the notions of predestination and infinite grace. In the end, in Western societies, ‘guilt’ has no social meaning.
Every society is affected to some degree by the landscape of post-cultural loss, and in all the forms of Western society individuals experience introjected guilt with the consequences here described. In some cases, ‘guilt’ can be manifested and communicated, in some cases –dependent on cultural residues– guilt is not communicable, not externalisable. This in turn lies at the root of many destructive forces which complete the general devastation of nations, cultures, societies, states, institutions, organisations and families extending over the whole world.