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God in a meritocratic society

7 Feb 2023

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God in a meritocratic society. Interesting thoughts that generically apply to a secular, materialist state. I’m not sure the meritocracy is the most relevant part.

the meritocracy’s anti-supernaturalism: The average Ivy League professor, management consultant or Google engineer is not necessarily a strict materialist, but they have all been trained in a kind of scientism, which regards strong religious belief as fundamentally anti-rational, miracles as superstition, the idea of a personal God as so much wishful thinking.

Thus when spiritual ideas creep back into elite culture, it’s often in the form of “wellness” or self-help disciplines, or in enthusiasms like astrology, where there’s always a certain deniability about whether you’re really invoking a spiritual reality, really committing to metaphysical belief.

Anthologies: Gratification, Spiritual Architecture, On Aesthetics, On Thinking and Reasoning, Successful Prophets, Everything Is Ideology

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