Identity, truth and meaning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2w7OEQKbphM

Peter Kopa, 11.4.2023, Prague – The English version follows below.

An article by Peter Strasser, a retired university professor who teaches philosophy at the Karl Franzens University in Graz, appeared in Zuerich in the NZZ a few days ago. His most recent book on the subject, “Apokalypse und Advent – Warum wir dagewesen werden” (Apocalypse and Advent – Why we will have been there), has just been published by Sonderzahl-Verlag, Vienna. We offer a review of his reflections, which help to understand the great problem of the anguished inner emptiness, which today has reached endemic levels that have opened the doors to the ideologies of globalism.

Introduction

Every philosophical and anthropological reflection on the identity, truth and existential meaning of man starts from the fact that he is a composite of body and spiritual soul, capable therefore of being self-conscious, of thinking, knowing and willing. Since the dawn of history, all civilizations and cultures have believed in a superior being and had an identical understanding of good and evil. However, it has been about four hundred years since some thinkers have emerged in the West who have questioned the existence of God or his cognizability.

This approach has so far had various nuances and the doubt about God gave a first sign of its great gravity in 1917 in Russia. This was followed by Nazism and then the material prosperity never seen before in the West, where God and the Church were gradually set aside. The final phase of this process is presented to us as a staggering ignorance of man’s identity, of his truth and meaning, leaving Western civilization without its theocentric foundation. La identidad del hombre:  ser o no ser

Vast segments of society, especially in the richer countries, show the distressing symptoms of materialism, which, according to Prof. Strasser, means the loss of the objective meaning of life. At the same time it manifests a religious emptiness that induces a deep anxiety which, according to Strasser, can translate into an explosive political force.

In contrast to the Asian existentialist vacuum, Prof. Strasser tells us: “Such existentialism is completely alien to the West. Western man searches for the meaning of life, the meaning of history and, ultimately, of creation. He is, at least as long as the religious tradition is alive, part of a history of salvation. This has a paradisiacal beginning, a fall into sin, an interregnum of millennia in the valley of tears, which is considered to be our earth, until – according to the Judeo-Christian revelation – the return of the Messiah at the end of time and the appearance of the New Jerusalem.

If we search in Wikipedia for ‘new religious movements’, we are surprised by 135 entries, and if we introduce the concept ‘esotericism’ the same thing appears. It turns out that nowadays there is nothing that is considered so mundane that it cannot be transferred to the sphere of the ether, astrology or mystery. And all these new phenomena are symptoms that their foundations lie in distant antiquity. That is to say, they manifest a certain nostalgia for that lost paradise of ancient Judeo-Christian wisdom that gave greatness to our Christian West.

And, what is more. Prof. Strasser tells us: “Our liberal, tolerant and democratic way of life, which was intended to satisfy the citizens’ need for meaning, is about to collapse in anguish over lost meaning”.

The new market of pseudo-religions

Commenting on Strasser, it seems to me that one could paraphrase Karl Marx in reverse: that materialistic and godless welfare is the opium of the people. Faced with the pathos of the lack of identity, truth and meaning in people’s lives, a whole industry of products and services has been created to help them at times to cope with this aimless wandering. For example, this can be seen in the cinema, on Youtube, in the quasi-religious sublimation of the environment, in the WOKE ideologies, LTGB and genderism.  These ideologies pretend to offer a certain meaning to life. And this meaning is miserable, unworthy of man, because it is within the sphere of materialistic thought, denying God and transcendence. It is also miserable because it is based on lies, or at least on pseudoscience, as in the case of the ecological terrorism around CO2. El cuento del CO2

However, here it would be an important omission not to see the enormous movements of return of the prodigal son to the father’s house. In this sense there are thousands of web pages – like ours -, hundreds of films, books and media actions that are gradually opening people’s eyes. Throughout the world, the pandemic has undermined confidence in the state, which is closed to recognizing the identity of man, his truth and his meaning.  Today there are only two basic choices: either we allow ourselves to be dazzled by materialistic well-being or we decide to embark on the beautiful adventure of our own conversion to God.

Even today, this alternative has an irresistible attraction for many people who dare to raise their gaze towards a horizon of true freedom and happiness. But it is not a question of demonizing neither the open market, nor consumption, nor welfare, but only the twisted intention with which it is enjoyed with fatal atheistic gloating, as if it had a maximum value or were the ultimate goal of life. And in this sad moment, one falls into the delusion of thinking that one is freer because one has shaken off the Ten Commandments and God himself. La conciencia como libertad ante la verdad

The abuses of the State

Returning to Prof. Strasser’s text, he tells us that the state has abusively relativized the demands of democracy by allowing itself to collude with the ‘scientific mafias’. This gives birth to the suspicion of a covert conspiracy, which would explain the nonconformism expressed by the denialist bells of the latest pandemic. The truth is that the state has successively rejected scientific data on this issue. In this political atmosphere, therefore, collectivist formations are emerging, based on a kind of fundamentalism, always within the bubble of ignorance of identity, truth and meaning in the life of man. They are movements analogous to fascism. Professor Strasser is quoted as saying:

”In Europe, too, the pressure is being perceived that is observed in many countries, where the concept of the people is acquiring a religious connotation in the minds of popular seducers, who came to power through nationalistic slogans. And so, from the heritage of tradition they try to extract myths loaded with orthodox dogmatism, with the idea of being reactivated in order to confer on politics a meaning of salvation”.

“What we should pay special attention to in the future – and it will be a future of multiple and global crises – is the loss of the objective meaning of life. And this is followed by existential emptiness and anguish. Thus, in our postmodern societies a new addictive behavior is appearing in this respect. This emptiness is increasingly covered by irrational teachings and activities, the defection of which can lead to suicidal, hyper-aggressive and unbridled behavior. ¿Por qué el globalismo apoya a la izquierda?