Modernity is Countercultural, So It’s Doomed
Secular humanism is fit only for elites who reject the ancient social norms, and elites are always rare
If you take seriously a name for the start of the period that epitomizes what we think of as modernity, namely the secular “Enlightenment,” it’s hard to avoid the sense that history is tragic.
After all, enlightenment is for disciplined minorities in a counterculture, not for the well-adjusted majority who are normal in so far as they adhere to the lower standards of mainstream cultural scripts.
Each counterculture within a society is doomed to expire either by being reduced to some shallow compromise that the normals can coopt, or by fading into obscurity due to its inherent unworkability. Similarly, an entire historic period that’s counter to the relatively primitive social norms of monarchy, feudalism, theocracy, imperialism, patriarchy, xenophobia, slavery or serfdom, social stagnation, and mass ignorance should be ill-fated for going against our species’ inclinations.
Think of the social revolutions of the 1960s, for example. These were driven by psychedelic drugs that inspired spiritual insights, challenging arts, and radical politics, all of which naturally opposed the mainstream standards of racism, sexism, and…
