Modern Society’s New Religion: Worshiping At The Cult Of Doom
Why we should reject the cult praying for the destruction of the world
It’s hard not to notice the world is more pessimistic.
Obviously, there are reasons for this. I won’t bother to list the most glaring causes which may be bringing the various elements of society down. You can easily do that yourself. But there’s something different about this doomscrolling gloominess.
It’s celebrated and worshiped. Some even act like cheerleaders rallying for it. I’m really surprised an entrepreneurial individual hasn’t started selling “Hurray Apocalypse” t-shirts complete with a campaign of associated internet memes.
You can see it in news outlets, popular bloggers, world leaders, and even in people you know. It’s almost like a cult. In fact, we’ll call it The Cult Of Doom, and it comes with its series of tenants which are celebrated:
We’re all going to die long before we should
Society is going to collapse
But this is good because everything mankind is based on is evil and must be torn down, whether it be statues, economics, or culture
Whatever hierarchy exists must be torn down as well
So, what do you replace everything with after it’s all burned down, or you tear it down yourself? Well, something magical and better.
Although, like Houdini, The Cult of Doom hides their solution for the escape to the death-producing contraption they themselves have talked into being.
And in many ways, they are bringing the doom they prophesize into being. But I’m sure many doom cultists feel they’re innocent. Their prophesies are just warnings, like Old Testament prophets chiding us to change our wicked ways.
Maybe. For part of them, this may be their goal. But the actions of a large collection of the Cult of Doom create a self-fulfilling prophesy.
In the end, that’s the ultimate goal: to watch everything burn down. Screw the damage and carnage in the process, just reset the game and change the rules in the middle of the contest.
Some may not mind that. Tear it all down, and hurray apocalypse! Life is unfair and terrible anyway. But there are consequences to the Cult of Doom and living out their prophesies.
What’s more, you can see the carnage caused yesterday, today, and to future generations that don’t have a say at the cult’s regular meetings of terror with their cherished sacrament of fear.
Our friends in the Cult of Doom do three things:
They tear down our common language and ability to relate with each other by destroying the base which unites.
They destroy present expectations for society.
They destroy future hopes and breed pessimism.
I know this is a lot for you to swallow, so let’s start with the cult’s destruction of our common language.
Doom Tears Down Our Common Language
“We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”
— C.S. Lewis, “The Abolition of Man”
During World War II, author C.S. Lewis began a series of lectures because he heard shocking things within England. Some outwardly wondered if English society was truly better than Hitler’s Germany. After all, no one society can judge another — each has their own value system.
Lewis thought this was garbage and looked for a root cause for this strange belief.
He found lessons in popular school textbooks for children telling them there is no such thing as a concrete value; everything is subjective to our own eyes. It was also hidden in subjects that had nothing to do with ethics, such as grammar.
Lewis felt these lessons bled into society causing poor judgement and the lack of ability to pass on good guidance to newer generations. He explained humanity acted through their belly, chest, and head.
The belly: base nature, animal desires, hunger, thirst, and simple instinct
The head: logic, deep thought, and no emotion
The chest: intersection of belly and head, where emotion applies to logic
For mankind to be a special rational animal, you need a mixture of belly and head. Logic may be associated with the angels, but without emotion, it’s cruel. All belly turns us into a “trousered ape,” which is no different than an animal. The chest mediates and makes us human.
But to use your chest, you must understand how to mix logic and emotion together.
This can only be learned from values passed on from others, or as Lewis says, “Old birds teaching young birds to fly.” But if all values are subjective, how can lessons be passed on? How can you ever learn to use your chest?
Lewis believed that all great societies had their common collection of values, beliefs, and norms — whether in religion, ethics, or stories. He called them “The Tao,” or the way.
The Cult of Doom’s greatest wish is to rip apart this Tao due to its unfairness and evil. But without it, how can one pass on the most complicated human lesson of balancing belly and head? It creates a lost society with no common base, truth, or natural order. But this isn’t the cult’s only victim.
Doom Destroys Expectations For Society
“But young men will only do what’s expected of them. And a lot did use to be expected. There were social norms to work hard, provide, take care of loved ones, and so on. Today, these norms have largely dissolved. Young men have responded accordingly.”
— Rob Henderson, No One Expects Young Men To Do Anything and They Are Responding By Doing Nothing
PhD student Rob Henderson explains he’s likely the only student at Cambridge that was living out of a garbage bag at age 7 and smoking weed by age 9. But he was fortunate enough to escape what he calls being:
“One of America’s Lost Boys — the young men who fail to mature, do poorly in school, live on the economic margins, and become absentee fathers or fail to form stable families of their own.”
Henderson was taken from his drug-addicted mother at 3, never knew his father, and was on a terrible path in life as he moved from foster home to foster home. At 17, he joined the military, after an Air Force vet teacher talked him into it, despite his abuse of drugs and troubled background.
He thrived there, responding to the high demands thrust on him, eventually using G.I. Bill money to pay for an education. Henderson doesn’t believe poverty creates Lost Boys, lack of expectation does. He states:
“People think that if a young guy comes from a disorderly or deprived environment, he should be held to low standards. This is misguided. He should be held to high standards. Otherwise, he will sink to the level of his environment. …You put a guy in chaotic and impoverished circumstances. And then you decide not to expect anything out of him. How can anyone possibly believe this will lead to anything other than disaster? Of my five closest friends in high school, none went to college. Two went to prison. Young men will only do what’s expected of them. Which today is not much.”
Henderson quotes statistics showing the amount of unemployed men between 25 and 54 has doubled since the 70’s, hovering around 17%, while the number of men per capita in prison has gone up 4 times in the past 50 years.
He notes these absentee members of society become absentee fathers, creating larger generations of unstable homes, raising future absentee fathers.
I see this myself on a regular basis. Working near one of the largest open-air heroin markets in the East Coast, this cycle plays out in front of my eyes. But no one forces a needle in anyone’s arm. They stick it there themselves.
If everything sucks, and doom surrounds the world around you, why wouldn’t you? What’s the point anyway? You can’t make it. Society is going to crumble, and the Earth will burn to a crisp in 10 years. Expectations? Expectations of what?
That type of nihilism is music to The Cult of Doom’s ears. But they’re not done.
Doom Destroys Our Future
“Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up?”
— William Faulkner’s Nobel Prize Speech, City Hall in Stockholm, December 10, 1950
William Faulkner won the Nobel Prize for literature right after the Soviet Union tested their atomic bomb. It created a climate of doom. Many — writers in particular — openly wondered if the world would shortly end. Faulkner used his speech to address this matter.
He noted writers have a duty to raise humanity’s spirits, not champion its destruction. He also warns writers against fear saying:
“The basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed — love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.”
Faulkner refused to accept humanity’s demise. He believed that humanity’s voice was inexhaustible, as is its spirit, soul, and heart. It’s part of a writer’s duty to lift these better aspects of humanity, not propagate the doom of a future that will never come.
Writers should be more than a recorder of the world around them. They should be a pillar lifting up humanity. He states:
“I decline to accept the end of man…I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things.”
The writers of The Cult of Doom see this in reverse. It’s their duty to promote the end of man, focusing on every terrible demise which can unravel us from nuclear holocausts, climate, economic collapses, and general chaos.
This Armageddon — or even the threat of it — is a chance to change the status quo, which they hate so much. When there is no future, why continue on a slow steady path designed to make the future better?
Don’t Worship At The Temple Of Doom
I’m not exactly what you’d call an optimist. But I don’t understand the fascination with worshiping at the Temple of Doom with life-hating pessimists.
I also understand the world has problems — major ones. But life goes on. It always does in some form or another and manages to scratch out some type of happiness. Right now, compared to the past, life is pretty good.
Warnings are fine. But bathing in visions of destruction, death, and horror kill a better part of us.
They tear down our base Tao killing our common language
They destroy our present expectations for society
They destroy our future hopes.
This may very well be by design, creating self-fulfilling prophesies proving their visions of doom and destroying the world they find so much fault with.
Keep this in mind as you run into the works of the Cult of Doom and point out their handy work to others. Finally, use 3 methods to fight back.
Decline to accept the fall of man, use your chest, and keep expectations high for yourself and others.
-Originally posted on Medium 5/30/22