PART TWO

 

A New Ideology, Believing in Nothing

 

This brief historical survey of the transformation of love-motivated spiritual individualism into soulless egalitarian political individualism serves as an introduction to my proposal to create a non-mechanistic, non-utilitarian value system capable of sustaining human effort and meaning that does not depend on collective immortality, nor promises of the survival of the individual ego after death in either its sacred or secular form.

 

Human beings do not live in the natural world but in a world of meanings generated by symbols. Recently the concept of the psychological, social and cultural self is being understood by social scientists as a narrative art form, a work in progress. In the beginning was the Logos. Man not only makes the Laws of God but also the Laws of Nature. Being unable to prove otherwise without using man-made verbal symbols is to concede the argument! Many refined religious mystics have believed that nothing is sacred and refuse to drag down super-cultural or spiritual reality to the level of being reduced to mere man-made symbols. Recently narcissistic Parisian intellectuals have exploited this situation for personal fame and fortune. Some Jewish scholars still leave a gap in their sacred texts where mention of the unnameable is intended. Believing in nothing is not vulgar scepticism but is the highest spiritual achievement.