#4: A Replacement for Religion

I have just finished reading A Replacement for Religion by The School of Life, there are lots of helpful thoughts in it to guide my project. Firstly it identifies the beneficial elements of religion that we have lost in a secular society;

“For a great many people, in large parts of the world, it has gradually become impossible to believe in anything divine. However consoling and uplifting it must be to have faith, there are simply too many rational arguments that stand in the way of being able to trust in benevolent deities who will ensure our ultimate redemption…However, this view neglects how much of religion has never been about belief…Religions have put on communal gatherings, helped us with relationships, marked out the seasons, written ethical codes, buried us, celebrated births and rites of passage, tried to encourage kind and forgiving behaviour, built sublime gathering places, connected us to nature, commissioned works of art….alongside spiritual redemption, religions have been interested in our ethical and emotional well-being as well.”

The book goes on to identify eight key problems faced in the modern world in the wake of religion’s ebb.

The Eight Ills of Modernity

1. Perfectibility
   Progress and growth are assumed to be a general rule of existence in the modern world, in which so many of our needs have been taken care of by science and capitalism. This notion, reinforced by social media, has been taken on by our psyche’s and we are haunted by the idea that we should be striving for achievement and perfection in every area of our lives, anything less than this can feel like a failure.

2. Optimism
Modern societies imply that it is only acceptable to be optimistic and upbeat when dealing with others if we want to be liked and accepted. This can lead to frustration and anger when we are met with obstacles and can leave us bitter that the world is not as positive as we were led to believe. This false optimism can also cut us off from true and honest communion with others, leaving us lonely.

3. Individualism
In western societies we are encouraged to be defined by our job and our status. This work based identity is inherently unstable; we are only ever a sacking or a retirement away from losing our established sense of self. It also encourages psychological and economic rivalry. The sociologist Emile Durkheim discovered that the more individualistic a society becomes, the more the rate of suicide rises.

4. Exceptionalism
It is presumed in modern society that it is within our power to achieve a mighty destiny, we are encouraged to amass fortunes, create a great artistic work or reach other planets, whilst the notion of being ordinary is disdained. As the great majority of us will most likely live ordinary lives, this can leave us feeling self hatred for not having achieved more.

5. Meritocracy
Our societies believe that anyone can make a success of themselves if they have enough talent and energy, that there is no impediment based on gender, class or race. However if we feel that those at the top truly deserve their success then we imply that those at the bottom also deserve their failure. Poverty is then converted from painful bad luck, to damning personal incompetence. This outlook ignores the vast array of social and psychological impediments that are working against us.

6. Anthropocentrism
Traditionally religions have placed humans below a higher power, our society places human beings above the claims of nature, animals, gods or the universe more broadly. In addition to the devastating effect this outlook has on the other life that shares the planet and on the climate in general, it also places our worries and concerns above all else. We have no perspective of our place in the order of things and are consumed by the vicissitudes of our lives, this inflates or egos and creates all kinds of psychological disorders from anxiety to narcissism.

7. Romanticism
The modern era has been powerfully shaped by the notion that romantic love lies close to the meaning of life. From the end of the 18th century it has been popularly believed that there is a perfect person out there waiting for their ‘true love’ who must be all things to their partner and anything less is seen as a failure. This has resulted in giving us an unrealistic impression of our partners and expectations that are inevitably not going to be met, thus we find it harder to love well.

8. Novelty
Modern societies attach prestige and status to whatever is new and novel. One manifestation of this is that we instinctively prefer youth to old age, which results in the wide scale disregard of the elderly population. We have become a society addicted to dopamine, fed by 24 hour news cycles and endless scrolling. This also exacerbates mental health disorders.

The Eight Consolations

The School of Life also proposes eight “consolations” to replace the insights left in the wake of religion.

1. Brokenness
   Many ancient religions and cultures insist on the inherently broken nature of the human condition; a central tenet of Buddhism is that life is suffering, Ancient Greece insisted on the tragic structure of every human and Christianity gave us all original sin as our birthright. This outlook, although gloomy at first, actually normalises our suffering and allows us to accept our proclivity to make mistakes. We are not uniquely curse, merely members of a predictably flawed race. It also allows us to feel grateful for moments of happiness and success as they are less likely to be expected and taken for granted.
   
2. Melancholia Universalis
   An acceptance of a philosophy of universal melancholy can help us to understand the nature of our vulnerability. There are many things in life that will go wrong unexpectedly and unfairly, the things we love are susceptible to disaster while the troubles that we face tend to be solidly established and recurrent. A relentless view of optimism leaves no room for melancholy, but acceptance of the sadness that is present allows us to be open to the possibility of “cheerful despair”, a more rounded view of both sides of life. Gratitude can again be more powerfully felt when we don’t take the good for granted.

3. Dependence
We would be better served by accepting the fact that we are dependent on other people for the most important things we are able to achieve in life. From our family units in raising children to construction companies to building cities, no grand feat is completed by a single individual. “In order to flourish, we cant look simply to our unique strengths – we need to allow ourselves to be helped by, and therefore become dependent upon, the intelligence and talents of others.”

4. Ordinary Life
Rather than limiting our praise and heroic achievements, we would benefit from looking with more sensitivity and artistry at the beauty and sweetness of our everyday lives. In modern society being ‘normal’ can feel like something of a failure, but it is also the way that the vast majority of us will live. In order to mitigate the sense of shame that can come with this contradiction we could more fully appreciate how ‘the ordinary’ can also be fascinating, good, endearing, noble, dignified, fun and meaningful.

5. Tragedy
To counter the ills of meritocracy it would benefit us to understand the nature of tragedy. We are sometimes not responsible for the things that happen to us, they are not a result of our nature, it is possible to be a good person and still fail. The Ancient Greeks would celebrate this fact by creating huge festivals to celebrate tragic drama, in which a minor mistake by a normal person would have devastating results. These plays informed the citizens that their lives were ultimately in the hands of the gods. Christianity too has built its religion around the story of a good man who was unjustly punished. A healthy relationship to the idea of tragedy allows us to develop a less competitive and more compassionate outlook on life and each other.

6. Transcendence
With the recession of religion we have been left without any sense of orientation of ourselves in relation to something bigger or more eternal, as a result our immediate difficulties and burdens seem like they are all there is. We would benefit from having a regular relationship with transcendence; contact with eternal and grand phenomena in comparison with which our ordinary preoccupations can seem redemptively unimportant. This needn’t be through a particular deity, it can be through contact with nature such as stars in the night sky, a great old oak tree, a rushing river or a vast desert. This connection with a greater force gives us consolation, our responsibility as individuals diminish and we are consoled by a broader perspective of life and our place in the universe.

7. Good Enough
Although ambition is important it can also often create a standard of judgement against which our actual lives can easily fail. Mid 20th century psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott found that his patients were often deeply worried that they weren’t doing a good job of bringing up their children although they were almost always good and loving people. So he developed the approach of feeling ‘good enough’: we may not be perfect, or the people we love may not be ideal, but rather than being tormented by imperfections we should be more willing to accept the compromise of being ‘good enough’. “By compromising, we’re honouring how much of the good is actually attainable, given the constraints of a reality we are newly devoted to respecting.”

8. Recurrence
To counter the ills of novelty, we can take consolation in the balancing idea of recurrence; things that are recurring and cyclical. The nature of life is cyclical and in our unending modern striving for progress we can get fatigued by the idea that we must always lean towards the new and the novel. By studying the inherent patterns that are found in nature we can take solace that there is much in our lives that is subscribed and subject to necessity. We can also use this recurrence to notice and make the steady incremental change to improve what we wish to improve in our lives.

These consolations are presented by The School of Life to directly heal the aforementioned ills of modernity:

For Perfectibility there is Brokenness
For Optimism there is Melancholia Universalis
For Individualism there is Dependence
For Exceptionalism there is Ordinary Life
For Meritocracy there is Tragedy
Fro Anthropocentrism there is Transcendence
For Romanticism there is Good Enough
And for Novelty there is Recurrence

Architecture and Art

The School of life also identify the importance of both architecture and art in their ability to create resonance in religious spheres.

Architecture is important for it’s ability to inspire humility and reverence in people through the use of space, and art for it’s ability to render certain thoughts and morals beautiful through imagery.

The book proposes creating buildings and works of art that embody and symbolise each of the eight Consolations mentioned above.

Takeaway

This book has provided valuable insight into my project, it has helped me to identify the specific problems that arise in a modern secular world, but it as also offered specific solutions to tackle them. This will be very handy to keep in mind going forward.