From God to Hookup Culture: Why the Secular Age Isn’t So Secular

The Miserable Genius Hypothesis

Whenever I come across a brilliant thinker, it’s hard not to feel a little insecure.

I mean, just imagine being able to write with the same kind of dark prose of a Kafka or having even just a speck of the creativity of a van Gogh. All the while, the rest of us have to make do here on planet earth.

But usually before I drown in my own self-pity, a somewhat counter-intuitive fact jumps out at me: that the greatest minds in history have often not been able to enjoy their achievements because they otherwise had miserable lives.

Kafka, for example, spent most of his days paranoid in bed until he died of Tuberculosis at forty; we all know about van Gogh’s cutting off his ear mishap. But the list goes on: Nietzsche was a sickly outcast who went mad for the last ten years of his life; Dostoyevsky had to be locked away in a Siberian prison camp before he could even begin to establish himself as a writer; Kurt Gödel — one of the greatest logicians to have ever lived — starved himself to death after developing the fear that all of his food was poisoned. I can go on forever.

But as unfortunate as these lives were, it might be too hasty to chalk them up as being coincidental. Maybe there is a real correlation between brilliance and misery and that turbulent life events create unique perspectives for the experiencers, allowing them to analyze the world in a much richer way than they would otherwise.

And if this hypothesis of mine contains any truth to it, it could be one way to make sense of the ground breaking insights of one of the great sociologists of history, Emile Durkheim.

Emile Durkheim’s Hot Take on Religion

Now Durkheim found himself in a strange point in history. Born in late 19th century France, the world he lived in quickly transitioned from being rural and agricultural to becoming completely industrial and mechanical. Living amidst these two polarizing societal paradigms, Durkheim was therefore in a unique position to compare them and form theories on how they differently affected humanity.

And while the majority of the intellectuals around him celebrated the fact that the scientific rationalism of the new world was defeating the religious superstitions of the old one, Durkheim saw something else entirely. Specifically, not only did he think that the modern world remained religious, but he took things a step further by proposing that religion and society are interchangeable, and that to be in any group of people — which we inevitably always are — means that we necessarily have some kind of religious affiliation with it.

Okay, let’s pause for a second.

You might be feeling a little sceptical right now. I mean, if religion and society are really interchangeable, what should we make of all the atheism that it is so fashionable to live by these days? And even for those of us who are believers, isn’t religious devotion a choice — even a sacrifice?

Durkheim reminds us, however, that whenever we assert our own belief systems (or lack thereof), we might be overlooking our preconceived notions of what religion really is — assuming the very narrow definition of religion as referring to a group of individuals who share a belief system in God.

Alternatively, Durkheim defines religion as:

[A] unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say things set apart and forbidden — beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community.

The Sacred & the Profane

Before we go any further, let’s take a step back and figure out where this definition comes from and what makes it so game-changing.

Durkheim figured that the best way to get to the source of religion was to observe the behaviours of the followers of some of the oldest known religions — and what would be a better fit for this role than the oldest known religion: totemism? Observing followers of totemism closely, Durkheim noticed that they categorized everything in nature as religious symbols or “totems” and each totem was claimed by different clans within the society. (A kangaroo for example may have been the totem for one clan while an oak tree may have been a totem for another.)

Durkheim also noticed that the clans exhibited two distinct ways of living: on the one hand, unsurprisingly, they were observed searching for food and engaging in other tasks that directly related to their immediate survival. But in addition to meeting their survival needs, there were also elaborate ceremonies of intense singing and dancing that were organized as a kind of tribute to the totem that the given clan chose to worship. Accordingly, Durkheim categorized the first mode of living as representing the “profane” of the group — the aspect of life that is “monotonous and slack” — and the second one as the “sacred,” which corresponded to what was set aside as special.

Durkheim concluded that the arbitrariness of what was chosen as totems by clans indicated that they didn’t actually believe that what they were worshipping was intrinsically holy, but instead they were more interested in committing to worship an anonymous and impersonal force that the specific totems were thought to symbolize.

Thinking about what exactly this impersonal force is, the concept of God might come to mind, but Durkheim preferred to speak of it as the “totemic principle” which guided the actions and beliefs of a clan.

With all of this in mind, it becomes clear that it doesn’t really cut it to define religion in terms of its allegiance to the white bearded man in the sky, and a thorough understanding of it would have to also include whatever is behind the totemic principle and the separation of the sacred and the profane.

The Clan Itself as God

But if this mysterious impersonal force that is being worshipped isn’t God, then what else could it be? Durkheim had some shocking ideas on the matter:

The god of the clan can therefore be nothing else than the clan itself, personified and represented to the imagination under the visible form of the animal or vegetable which serves as a totem.

For Durkheim, the god of the clan and the clan itself are the same thing. And rather than a form of childish escapism that atheists often mock religion for, this core element of totemism seems to show how religion can be the most practical thing for a social group to embrace. Durkheim points out, for example, that any society requires the individual to look past their selfish needs to flourish. And how to do that? By creating an overarching principle that unites the community and gives them a meaningful incentive to look out for one another.

So when the clan is worshipping their symbol as sacred from this perspective, they’re actually describing social responsibility as sacred; and the time spent attending to their own personal business is considered profane because it strays away from the community’s needs but is nonetheless necessary for the individuals within the community to take care of themselves.

This theory can also be applied to more familiar forms of religion. In Judeo-Christian morality, for example, we might interpret the idea of bodily temptations as profane and devotion to God as sacred as really being a mechanism that pulls people way from focusing on their selfish needs to look out for the needs of others. (Think “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”)

And if we are willing to concede to this point of view then that means that rather than establishing a community and forming rituals based on shared beliefs, communities are actually formed first and then beliefs are created afterwards as a necessary means of keeping everyone on the same page.

And if you aren’t yet convinced of the inextricable link between religion and society, why don’t we take the most seemingly secular social group we can think of and see if it passes the test.

A Durkheimian Approach to Party Culture

Let’s say some alien anthropologist happened to teleport to a North American University town during its Homecoming. Would it be such a stretch to think that this alien would conclude that some kind of religious festivity was taking place? How could it not upon seeing a sea of people dressed in the same colours huddled together yelling incoherent phrases in the name of this “Homecoming” of theirs?

Or even on a smaller scale: if you’ve ever spent some time in a university town, think about the last time you’ve wandered the streets of the student hub on a Thursday to Saturday night past 10:00 pm and have not seen and heard the exact same thing from the exact same people wearing the exact same kind of clothing.

The party culture of a university town then doesn’t really seem much different than the totemism Durkheim saw take place in the Aboriginal tribes in Australia when you really think about it. It’s just that in the former case — instead of totems — hooking up, getting drunk and going to clubs are considered sacred while going to class and finding a job is profane. And ironically, what those living within this social group think is cool and rebellious about themselves is really all very predictable from an outsider’s point of view.

Why Does Any of This Matter?

Okay, okay, religion and society are interchangeable, you might be thinking. But who cares? How does taking on this perspective actually substantially make a difference in the world beyond just being a flashy way we can define society?

Good question! I think one thing we can do with this information is to accept the fact that no matter how seemingly modern, progressive and rational humanity becomes, there will nevertheless always be a fundamental part of ourselves that remains as irrational, superstitious and tribal as ever.

Now this isn’t necessarily a bad thing: the religious mindset can be a catalyst for the deepest kinds of social bonds and can be a vehicle for us to feel that we are a part of something much bigger than our individual selves. The problem, however, is that when left unchecked this same part of ourselves has in the past driven humans to participate in the most unspeakable kinds of violence and discrimination towards those who were perceived to be outsiders of the tribe.

An important thing to keep in mind, then, is that just because the world we live in is more secular than ever, it doesn’t necessarily follow that we are any less at risk for getting carried away with the same kind of fanaticism that has historically plagued humanity.

With that said, to preserve what is beneficial and to avoid what is scary about the religiosity that is part of all of us, it might be a good idea to keep some of the following things in mind: in what ways does the religious aspect of society manifest itself in a healthy way in the world today? In what ways is it being expressed destructively? How well do you know the fanatic within yourself?

I’ll let someone else write about that. For now, all I’m going to suggest is that this secular age of ours isn’t actually so secular after all.