Why I Believe

The Demoralized Mind

“Our descent into the Age of Depression seems unstoppable. Three decades ago, the average age for the first onset of depression was 30. Today it is 14.”

So starts a recent thought provoking article by John Schumaker titled “The Demoralized Mind” (https://newint.org/columns/essays/2016/04/01/psycho-spiritual-crisis/)

He further explains that up to 62% of diagnosed depression cases are in fact misdiagnosed cases of demoralization.

Rather than a depressive disorder, demoralization is a type of existential disorder associated with the breakdown of a person’s ‘cognitive map’. It is an overarching psycho-spiritual crisis in which victims feel generally disoriented and unable to locate meaning, purpose or sources of need fulfilment. The world loses its credibility, and former beliefs and convictions dissolve into doubt, uncertainty and loss of direction. Frustration, anger and bitterness are usual accompaniments, as well as an underlying sense of being part of a lost cause or losing battle. The label ‘existential depression’ is not appropriate since, unlike most forms of depression, demoralization is a realistic response to the circumstances impinging on the person’s life.

It turns out that people are getting all the more disillusioned by the failings of our consumer-driven lives, realising that a life-style of “take-me-to-the-store” is empty of true meaning and significance.

Research shows that, in contrast to earlier times, most people today are unable to identify any sort of philosophy of life or set of guiding principles. Without an existential compass, the commercialized mind gravitates toward a ‘philosophy of futility’, as Noam Chomsky calls it, in which people feel naked of power and significance beyond their conditioned role as pliant consumers. Lacking substance and depth, and adrift from others and themselves, the thin and fragile consumer self is easily fragmented and dispirited.

How on earth did we manage to get ourselves into this existential mess, where “most people today are unable to identify any sort of philosophy of life or set of guiding principles”?  In my personal opinion (and here my view diverges from that of Dr Schumaker) the problem started many years ago, as Friedrich Nietzsche prophetically proclaimed:

“God is dead.  God remains dead.  And we have killed him…
…There has never been a greater deed; and whosoever shall be born after us – for the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto.”
– Parable of the Madman

For the past 2000 years people have been living under the moral laws as taught by the Bible.  For 2000 years now it has been considered wrong to sleep with another man’s wife, pay for the service of a prostitute or open the centre-fold all the way.

But now we’ve killed Him.  No longer will we need the morals as taught by the Bible and churches, we shall be making our own morals laws now.  We shall decide for ourselves what is good and right, thank you very much.  So, with the blood of God on our hands, let’s take stock of what our “higher history” of the last 100 years have brought us.

A search for significance

Nietzsche’s words were prophetic in the sense that Atheism and Agnosticism have seen astronomical growth figures over the past 100 years.  In Europe alone, Atheism has grown from about 0 in 1900 to more than 100 000 000 people in 2000.  Many other western cultures have been slow to catch on, but in the Age of the Internet, Atheism is slowly building momentum in all corners of the world.

From what I can see, God’s death has left an emptiness in man’s soul that is truly hard to fill.  Previously man could find significance in having a relationship with the Living God, he could extract meaning from knowing that God has a purpose for having him around.  Consumerism has proven to be a poor substitute for God in bringing significance and meaning to our lives, but all is not yet lost, says Dr Schumaker.

According to anthropologist Raoul Naroll, a ‘moral net’ in the form of a cultural infrastructure is required to ensure the mental well-being of a community.  Schumaker explains.

To avoid this (a community’s mental illness), a society’s moral net must be able to meet the key psycho-social-spiritual needs of its members, including a sense of identity and belonging, co-operative activities that weave people into a community, and shared rituals and beliefs that offer a convincing existential orientation.

Co-operative activities, communities, shared rituals and beliefs that offer a convincing existential orientation…wait, what? Does that not sound very much like those pesky churches that we are trying so hard to get rid of?  Apparently we should build more churches, organise co-operative activities that weave people into communities with shared rituals and beliefs.  Churches, that is, but without God.

The Church, but without God

Sounds silly, doesn’t it?  Not so, says the people of Sunday Assembly (https://www.sundayassembly.com), a church for atheists that meet on Sundays to sing songs, listen to inspirational talks, and create community together.  These people are taking Naroll’s moral net very seriously.

Unfortunately, here too, there is a major problem brewing.  We should ask ourselves WHY consumerism failed to bring significance to our lives in the first place.  In my opinion, Consumerism failed because it is meaningless at its core, an attempt at generating significance from nothingness.  The Demoralised Mind, as Dr Schumaker calls it, is precisely that because people become disillusioned with the empty promises that are being dished up by the consumer culture.  It can give nothing, because it has nothing to give.

Will the Church-without-God not suffer from the same malady?  Is it not also an attempt to generate inherent meaning and significance from a world-view that is intrinsically empty and without inherent significance?  In a universe that created itself by random processes, void of plan or purpose, life is purely accidental and is by definition without meaning or significance.  In fact, Sunday Assembly openly acknowledges this fact in their charter.  The very first item on the list:

Sunday Assembly is 100% celebration of life. We are born from nothing and go to nothing. Let’s enjoy it together.

How then, does one extract meaning and significance from a world view that definitively states that life is meaningless, by definition?  While Sunday Assemblies may make you feel warm and fuzzy inside, eventually the novelty will wear off and the sceptic person will be forced to consider the roots for what they are, utter meaninglessness and void of any significance, bringing us full circle to the very same Demoralised Mind created by the Consumer Culture.

A God, it seems, is necessary after all

Unfortunately this problem is not unique to Atheism, and it would be grossly unfair to blame all the world’s problems on Atheists and Agnostics.  The problem of finding significance in this life will forever remain elusive as long as we try to find it from within ourselves.  At best we can only temporarily fool ourselves into believing that we can create our own meaning.  Without an external agent supplying the reason-for-being, any philosophical system or worldview must inevitably conclude that life is inherently meaningless, and that “All is to no purpose”, as the Preacher said in Ecclesiastes.  It is that hole of emptiness that we find in ourselves that no amount of gadgets or shoes or drugs or feel-happy songs can fill.

If we as a human race are to be cured of our demoralization, a God, it seems, is necessary after all.

The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.
(Ecclesiastes 12:13 ESV)

Epilogue: Please note that I am vividly aware that that God is not automatically real, just because we WANT or even NEED a God, nor is it my intention in this essay to make a case for God’s existence.  The point that I hope to convey to the reader is that there is probably no question more important for each of us to answer than this: “Is God REAL”?  Without a very real answer to this question, we will forever be groping in the dark, and a life of significance will be beyond our reach.  Is this not a question worth investigating to its final conclusion?  The answer, either way, will be life changing.  We owe it to ourselves to look past all the emotional dust being kicked up by both sides of the debate and find the truth.