Organizing Society Without Religion
As much as I don’t like this to be the case, I believe that a society cannot organize itself without some sort of religion or unifying philosophy. Ancient China had Confucianism which was mostly etiquette and philosophy, but it was still the glue of Chinese society. Communist states base their civilization on class struggle which works as long as the people believe in it, but after decades of socialism the memory of capitalist oppression wanes and can possibly feel antiquated or falls into collective memory instead of lived experience. Even in the modern world, many people still go to churches that are toxic and full of theological issues and impractical moral systems. The reason isn’t always exclusively spiritual, but in my experience tends to be the result of humanity not knowing how to organize communities or societies without some sort of shared value set or collective ideology or identity. In a country that is based on a religion that is difficult to believe for a technologically advanced population, we see that those involved in the religion will even go as far to directly oppose science, education, or even human progress to hold on to their lifestyle and personal identity. This is playing out in the US with evangelical churches and Afghanistan with radical Islamists taking control of the government and directly countering the progress of their society to prevent their society from becoming secular.
As older belief systems become too alien for the people in the world to continue believing in, new belief systems should logically emerge and sub-plant them. However, the world has turned its back to philosophy or the asking of any deeper questions, because capitalism created conditions where money and production are valued over existential questions. This has led to a world where the economy is so bad that most people cannot even get jobs, and have no deeper spiritual, esoteric, or guiding philosophies to fall back on. The modern generation has reached a level of nihilism that should not be possible, with some even calling for the extinction of all life or the end of the universe because there appears to be no meaning or reason for existing in a profane capitalistic world. Others take the opposite approach and cling harder to Christianity or old religions, hoping that even with their inherent problems and contradictions they still provide some kind of meaning to a pointless life. Others even go as far as having children, and making parenthood their entire reason for existence. Capitalism historically gave people meaning by teaching them to identify with their labor and jobs, with unemployment and the inability to provide work to modern people undermining this entirely and leaving a void that subsequently is leading us into population decline, as well as personal, societal, and cultural collapse.
Modern people could theoretically organize a society based on secular principles like Science, Technocracy, or even political principles like human rights and non-oppression. However these ideas all become controversial in an economically unequal and uneducated society because class struggle dictates that any idea or political philosophy will serve the ruling class that has to implement it. Secular government means secular plutocracy. Human rights in the US means the rights of the ruling class to extract as much profits from everyone else and crush unions. Any belief system that does not consciously direct its efforts and attention towards the control of the ruling class and dismantles it is a dead ideology that will always be bastardized and replicate plutocracy. This is why Anarchist and Libertarian states become third world countries and Socialist states are the only real opposition to the established systems. The economic competition and enforced scarcity resulting from this also destroys the social bonds in communities, families, and even the entire country. Christian nationalism is taking off because an uneducated rural person who knows the church as a positive and caring community, may begin to think that a society resembling his religious organization is an improvement from the modern systems.
In conclusion, it seems that in order to organize a society without religion, the society must produce some sort of ideology or philosophy that improves material conditions for its people and that most people can agree with. Religion historically did this, and the charitable faiths were typically the ones that were able to unify society. Socialism did this for the same reasons and without necessitating any kind of supernatural belief or religious philosophy among its population. Technocracy can do this, but it will require education, positive social interactions, propagandizing, charity work, and an improvement to the material conditions of society that is genuinely felt among the majority of society. Technocracy is currently a niche ideology but it can become a lived experience for people through charity and activism. It must be implemented by the working class and activists with a strong sense of class struggle and who are vigilant against the capture of their ideas by the ruling class. Any ideology captured or hijacked by the capitalist class will fail to function as the organization for a successful, free, and scientific society.
As older belief systems become too alien for the people in the world to continue believing in, new belief systems should logically emerge and sub-plant them. However, the world has turned its back to philosophy or the asking of any deeper questions, because capitalism created conditions where money and production are valued over existential questions. This has led to a world where the economy is so bad that most people cannot even get jobs, and have no deeper spiritual, esoteric, or guiding philosophies to fall back on. The modern generation has reached a level of nihilism that should not be possible, with some even calling for the extinction of all life or the end of the universe because there appears to be no meaning or reason for existing in a profane capitalistic world. Others take the opposite approach and cling harder to Christianity or old religions, hoping that even with their inherent problems and contradictions they still provide some kind of meaning to a pointless life. Others even go as far as having children, and making parenthood their entire reason for existence. Capitalism historically gave people meaning by teaching them to identify with their labor and jobs, with unemployment and the inability to provide work to modern people undermining this entirely and leaving a void that subsequently is leading us into population decline, as well as personal, societal, and cultural collapse.
Modern people could theoretically organize a society based on secular principles like Science, Technocracy, or even political principles like human rights and non-oppression. However these ideas all become controversial in an economically unequal and uneducated society because class struggle dictates that any idea or political philosophy will serve the ruling class that has to implement it. Secular government means secular plutocracy. Human rights in the US means the rights of the ruling class to extract as much profits from everyone else and crush unions. Any belief system that does not consciously direct its efforts and attention towards the control of the ruling class and dismantles it is a dead ideology that will always be bastardized and replicate plutocracy. This is why Anarchist and Libertarian states become third world countries and Socialist states are the only real opposition to the established systems. The economic competition and enforced scarcity resulting from this also destroys the social bonds in communities, families, and even the entire country. Christian nationalism is taking off because an uneducated rural person who knows the church as a positive and caring community, may begin to think that a society resembling his religious organization is an improvement from the modern systems.
In conclusion, it seems that in order to organize a society without religion, the society must produce some sort of ideology or philosophy that improves material conditions for its people and that most people can agree with. Religion historically did this, and the charitable faiths were typically the ones that were able to unify society. Socialism did this for the same reasons and without necessitating any kind of supernatural belief or religious philosophy among its population. Technocracy can do this, but it will require education, positive social interactions, propagandizing, charity work, and an improvement to the material conditions of society that is genuinely felt among the majority of society. Technocracy is currently a niche ideology but it can become a lived experience for people through charity and activism. It must be implemented by the working class and activists with a strong sense of class struggle and who are vigilant against the capture of their ideas by the ruling class. Any ideology captured or hijacked by the capitalist class will fail to function as the organization for a successful, free, and scientific society.