America The Politics and Culture of Emptiness

by Robert Morpheal

COMMUNITY of emptiness..The concept of community has been radically
diminished across the decades. This is largely the result of American
style religion. Deprival of community tends to be part of the goad
towards kingdom of god spirituality, where secular community is more
forcefully replaced by the church gathering, with its own belief that
real community only becomes possible in a messianic context, and is
not of this world. This is a radical reduction in pressure upon
congregations to create and maintain real and truly functional
communities beyond their being a shadow of a future not yet. In this
world disconnection, loss, and depersonalization, with token charity,
being the rules not so much the exceptions. Congregational community,
as a taste of a future not yet attainable,  is less attractive when
there is a real, functional, secular community that truly meets any of
its members needs and wants. New forms of geographic dislocation, of
nomadism, that skips like a stone across the social and cultural
waters, touching down hardly anywhere and hardly at all, before its
sojourn ends in sinking down. Every such strike against the water is
the same. This brings us to the issue of personal emptiness.

PERSONAL emptiness. The formal, depersonalized, relation takes
increasing precedence over the personal and more intimate. Whether in
congregation or in professionalism, extending to a quasi
professionalism that invades and pervades every other form of human
activity whether money is directly involved or not, personal emptiness
gains ground against personalization. Really knowing anyone becomes
increasingly questionable, redefined in terms of an increasing
superficiality. This decreases the distance between knowing other
persons, as persons, and what any individual can claim to know about
God, as God is defined as being within the system. This trend becomes
progressively worse, increasing the levels of alienation and
depersonalization until there is ultimately no difference between
knowing any individual person, and the idea of knowing God. The main
exception to that becomes the sexual act traditionally defined as
knowing of one's marriage partner, but that knowing also is redefined
in shallower personal terms, ultimately devalued to no more than
sexual intercourse. This is consistent with a concerted attack on the
concept of individual identity. Personal knowing, outside of sexual
intercourse, and particularly between genders in a heterosexual
context, is increasingly put into question as a superficial illusion,
empty of further real meaning. This is tacitly encouraged by the
official encouraging and tolerance for various forms of identity
fraud, made increasingly popular without adequate challenge from
psychology, sociology and psychiatry who are co-opted into the same
game plan to further an ideology of personal emptiness.

ENVIRONMENTAL emptiness comes from the fact that the world's religions
largely stand opposed to any adequate progress on environment and
natural conservation issues. America is a leader in this emptiness,
not simply a pragmatic follower of it. The world's largest religions
see the world in antinomian terms, at best, as only material to be
used, of little or no intrinsic value, and to be discarded in favor of
an other worldliness that stands directly antithetical to belief in
facilitating legitimate enjoyment of this world and nurturing true
caring for it. To the contrary destruction of the environment is a
major catalyst for antinomianist spirituality, right wing religion as
it is often called, and thus a cherished mechanism. That causes most
environmental leadership to be merely a lie, in distinction to what is
seen as the higher religious truth. The science of environmentalism
and conservation being deprecated by that hierarchical ordering
defining what is to be understood as truth and ultimately as
environmental morality and wisdom.
This need to destroy the environment, inclusive of social and natural
environment, as well as both leisure and working environments, in as
many ways as possible, is closely tied to strategic emptiness and the
need for apocalypticism.

STRATEGIC emptiness. It is largely too late to cure many of the
lasting effects of the American led strategy of using its own
religious beliefs in conjunction with technical weaponry of war, as
both justification and means in conflict. Religion was a major
contention in Cold War motivation against the USSR, feeding
potentially world destroying apocalypticism. Apocalytpicism is
religious belief in a to be most desired end of worldly existence by
means of violence.  It claims to be among the highest values. The same
strategy  became a catalyst for pushed against the wall violent
conflict with Islamists who have hardened their own lines in
consequence into a new and equally unreconcilable dialetical
opposition. Both sides now being lockd in deadly irrational struggle.
American spirituality has shown that it requires that type of
dialectic opposition for its own survival, and that without that
strategy, having a fully and completely opposed enemy, in a game of
good and evil it itself becomes spiritually empty of one of its most
fundamental and cherished meanings. Other ideals tend to be
notwithstanding this ultimate value of two ideological extremes in
absolute dialectical, god and satan, pardigmatic opposition.

PSYCHOLOGICAL emptiness. Following environmental and strategic
emptiness, we find that human potential is redefined in terms of a
retrogressive conservative determinism whose will is the destruction
of individual attainment as being purely vanity, and of no real value.
This takes the form of denial of acknowledgment and rewards, of
personal interest in a culture of widely enforced disinterest, even in
the majority of exceptional instances of exceptional strivings and
achievements. The deprecation of the majority of strivings as false
valued vanity, at the same time confers privilege of relatively eased
attainment to a few, tokenizing with the illusion that similar
opportunity is available to anyone. The latter merely the illusion of
potential, obstacled by the belief as to what is seen as a higher
truth.

CULTURAL emptiness. Included in this is the promotion of the trend
that sinks lasting quality of cultural products, in terms of any
universalizable and absolute standards of quality down to a culture of
the lowest common denominators. The desire to make culture emptier,
less attractive, but to retain its mass appeal in terms of statistics
of production and marketing, as a flood of commonness, creates an
emptiness that is far less competitive with the integral rational
emptiness of otherworldy concepts. It is always easier to promote a
materially empty concept, and irrational belief in that concept, when
material culture is itself made increasingly empty and lacking in more
meaningful content, true art, and craftsmanship. We also see the trend
to increasing cultural emptiness in the arts where completely abstract
and hyper realist tendencies are often all that remain, because they
offer no content or context for further interpretation beyond a
superficial, and largely uncommunicative aesthetic. Aesthetic objects
increasingly lose their opportunity, placed in conflict with religion,
and its denial of art having a role in what it sees as a more true and
real system of revelation. Art as illigitimate usurper takes a
beating, relegated to mere kitsch and costly ornamentation at best,
stripped of any deeper and wider signification.

POLITICAL emptiness. This is a peculiar factor, often unthought about.
It has deep roots in the beginnings of American independence.
Overthrow of the British colonial governance parallels the Biblical
paradigm of revolt against the kingdom of God in Heaven. We must
recall that there is a long tradition of divine right of kings in
England and Europe. A tradition making the king second only to God in
command over all the people. Democracy, as governance, is therefore
seen as flawed from the start and guilty of the Satanic crime.
Democracy fallen from grace, and only intermediary to a future kingdom
of God, under number one, God himself, rather than number two, the
mortal king, becomes the assuaging of the original guilt of overthrow
against the king's legitimacy of rule. Democracy, though given a
value, is seen ultimately as evil, not as good, and to be replaced by
messianic rule in a kingdom of God. This places governance in a
peculiarly empty situation, as a temporary condition, that need not
strive for excellence. Excellence comes after that democratic
governance is replaced by the more absolute. This tension tends to
empty governance of a significant part of its efficacy, and to put it
into contention with the specific brand of theism that is constantly
put into struggle against governance's secularism.

Added to this is the idea of “in god we trust” appearing conspicuous
reminder, even on the monetary currency, creating both the delusion
that monetary relations are not given the primacy tht they in fact are
given, and further destroying trust in governance. It puts into
question trust in any other person or persons. It legitimizes distrust
and thus promotes and excuses untrustworthy behavior as the normative
worldly condition. Again stimulating social antinomianism.

COMMUNICATIVE emptiness. The trend is one of increasingly passing over
in silence, most matters of contention. Dissent and disagreement, no
matter how rational and reasoning, scientific or otherwise right, is
discouraged by that fact. So too are many forms of relation between
persons. It leads to the murder of genuine dialogue and to the
slaughter of many forms of progress. One of the ways in which this is
encouraged is to attack communication with its most negative
opposition, destroying its more positive valuation. Silence is golden
tends to become the catch phrase mimicking the right wing
fundamentalist religious position. The failures to teach and explain
positively, arising from this trend to increasing emptiness, are
consistent with a society that is moving away from reason towards an
increasing reliance on what it believes is divine revelation. It is
also a radical deprecating of the role of many forms of positive human
activity and potential cooperation, in favor of an increasingly world
denying antinomianism.

MEDICAL emptiness. Increasingly we see the religious concept that
claims that whomever loves his own life shall lose it, working against
any concepts of universal accessibility, equality, and real true
quality of medical care. For many medicine is increasingly negligent
and palliative rather than life enhancing, but the prevalent religious
belief system offers justification for the failings that then
increasingly pervade much of the provision provided by the system.
Governance again tends to show little interest or intent as to
rectifying an ideology that takes away much of the responsibility and
accountability for provision from both practitioners and from
government. Private enterprise and for profit medicine would have a
difficult justification, as they exist today and as they are tending
to evolve in America, without religion to support their tendencies
towards a medicine of emptiness. Rising costs, and declining options
as to private insurance, add greatly to the trend. Life utterly
impoverished as the cure to illness, is certainly not life deemed
worth cherishing. Instead it is made more empty.

MATERIAL emptiness. While capitalism and concepts of the right of
private ownership conflicted with communism and its distrust and
distaste for private ownership, the religious mentality tends to
attack private ownership while denying the possibility of cooperative
collectivization at the same time. Attacks on owning the means of
production, are becoming as frequent, due to religious argument, as
are attacks against collectivism as being fundamentally anti-
capitalist and therefore an evil undermining of the system. This
extremely complex scenario, with its tendencies to reliance on
emotional irrationalism, is among the most difficult to grapple with.
Ownership of things, and particularly means of production and means
for development of talents and necessary for achievements, in an
essentially positively non cooperative, highly individually
competitive and often extremely divisive social environment, tends to
be surprisingly poorly protected, in spite of the increased necessity
to pursue such means within the entirety of the socio-political and
economic context of the prevalent ideology. However the attacks
against ownership and having the means, particularly against those who
are not particularly well advantaged, tend to be largely religious in
their content and method.

In particular the social welfare systems, long kept utterly inadequate
to truly support any sustaining and real betterment of any others
other than the criminal element, tends to tie itself closely with
religion, ignoring its own extremes of practical failure and is
diminishing and thwarting of human potential. After all, material
emptiness is given positive value, inclusive of welfare's
inadequacies, and the failure of the system as a whole to protect and
safeguard material means for social and practical advancement. Instead
it chooses to put that very same under a multitude of forms of nearly
constant covert manipulative threat and overt attack, usually
providing religious excuses as the sole justification, believing that
is justification for allowing that violence. The inadequacy of the
social welfare system and its persistent tacit forcing of dependency
on itself, by failure to provide more positive means and knowledge,
have a religious basis, not a socially scientific basis.

Religion also encourages failure, in terms of material bankruptcy, in
other ways. Its antinomian, thus anti materialist, strains of belief,
tend to support the loss of means more than they support the
successful application of means and the preservation of material
progress. Many of the traditional practices, unscientific and
irrational as they are, are supported in that direction, without much
real challenge from authority. The lack of questioning of the
religious basis for the use of bankruptcy, and other losses of means,
tends to persist, and even the lowest forms of frauds, confidence
tricksters, and all manner of similarly evil practices, are thus given
a surprising amount of respect and opportunity, due to their being
seen as a natural religious tool, furthering belief in religious
concepts concerning material loss as a legitimate means meant to lead
to a gain in “spirituality”.

SEXUAL emptiness. This tends to prevail in terms of the traditional
concept of the man being the head of the woman, meant to guide her
(due to belief in her essentially evil nature) to the good that only
man truly knows. Oddly this very same belief in total subordination of
the female psyche, under a religious dictate as part of what are seen
as the highest values, leads to many forms of deviation becoming
essentially a homosexual preserve. What is ok for same sex, is
essentially made unavailable to heterosexual relations. Peculiarly
this form of increasing prejudice and manipulation, contrary to
individuality and diversity of expression in heterosexuality, has
stimulated those of bisexual nature to choose homosexual options as
the only pathway open to them for achieving any real sexual freedom
from what amounts to a constraint to sexual emptiness. Added to this
is the peculiar concept that if religion condemns the gay already, for
being gay, their further condemnation, for other deviations, is no
longer a matter for worthwhile contention. Thus, heterosexuality tends
to be the most prejudiced against and the most constrained to
increased emptiness as to variant possibilities of individual
creativity and expression, affecting both cultural, particularly
artistic, and social spheres of activity.

In conjunction with that twist of the human condition is the fact that
the system of emptiness constantly strives to diminish the natural
role of sexual relations in terms of other forms of positive
partnership, meant to achieve other pragmatic, social and economic
purposes. Another form of divide and conquer, diminish and destroy in
terms of enhancement of opportunity and achievement, it relies on a
religious justification, denying science its truth and validity. Even
in terms of furthering human well being, the sexual relation is denied
its scientific importance, by placing irrational religion above those
rationally measurable and provable facts.

THEOLOGICAL emptiness. This is too complex to delve deeply into here.
What it entails is a rejection of most forms of philosophy and deeper,
more reasoning, consideration, inclusive of a rejection of science
(which is derivative from philosophy as its foundation), in favor of
naive, unthinking, unquestioning, acceptance of a irrational system of
rigid, unyielding, belief. It is essentially unevolutionary, and non
progressive. It remains a frozen system insulated from any
intelligence and isolated from from any increase in scientific
knowledge.

AMERICA as a culture of emptiness, increasingly reliant on that
concept of emptiness, is rooted in its origins in Puritanism. The
Puritans left England, because they were unable to accept progressive
changes, and chose instead  to hold to retrogressive conservatism,
against progressive social evolution and the growing primacy of
rationality and reason. A closed, non progressive, system of extreme
religious conservatism Puritanism harkened back to the time of the
Spanish Inquisition and the persecutions of religious heresy and
differing, that prevailed in Europe, before America was founded. The
result of those origins is a system that fails in its own struggle
with emptiness, itself becoming a culture of emptiness where that
emptiness is revalued and redefined as in closest relation to what is
defined, within the religious system, as ultimate good, and
absolutized as the door of imposed choice, to what is determined
within that system as being ultimate truth.