Our New Religion Isn't Enough

We certainly have plenty of false gods in our own time—status, wealth, beauty, likes, retweets—that we seek to appease and that make us utterly miserable. When we obsessively chase after such things, our lives really can become barren, and we can feel like we’re losing ourselves. But when we strive for things like friendship, love, justice, compass

Our identity, our meaning, our purpose, as humans, was always our ties and obligations to others, and now we are trying to do it all alone, trying to figure out who we are alone, and we’re nobody alone, no wonder we’re confused. And for many of us life has become about trying to heal or hide this thing, shoving it down, this basic human need to bel

The church once helped people live the good life in the present (whether multigenerational or generational, the present was long enough for the good life to have content and be open to mystery—to have response and responsibility). Now the good life is lived in the future, not the present.

In late modernity we’re not willing or able to name (beyond for our individual selves) the virtues, the values, or the character traits that make for a good life. We may have some ideas, but describing the substance seems to risk violating the ethic of authenticity. Our moral stance—our sense of what is good and what creates a good life—is authenti