Why Modern Life Feels So Empty

everyone pays homage to The Cult of the South where everyone is their own priest a talking point I've seen flying around the internet is that society today feels empty the funny thing is this has been shouted from all across the political Spectrum it seems that almost everyone can agree we have some crisis of meaning on our hands across the modern world often times when people who normally want nothing more than to give one another a hard slap come to agree on something there is some good philosophy to be had and one interesting take on the

current Collective sense of meaninglessness comes from buung Chan in his book The Disappearance of ritual he makes a point of critique of the way many of our current societies are structured without invoking excessive Nostalgia for the past he observes that the habit of sacrificing everything for the sake of maximizing efficiency and production has robbed us of a richer view on reality and today we will unpick this criticism get ready to learn the downsides of too much productivity what the meaning of Christmas has to do with existentialism and whether there is something to be said for

the irrational and the Silly Bear in mind I'll be unable to cover every aspect of Han's thought here and also that the question why does so much today seem meaningless is such a complex and multifaceted one that any succinct answer to it will inevitably leave a lot out additionally while I won't have time to look at in-depth critiques of Han's views here it is important to remain critical when absorbing his his ideas but without further Ado let's crack on starting with the very idea of a ritual one rituals and their relevance much of Han's argument

rests on the idea that we have slowly given up rituals for the sake of more efficiency and productivity so let's start by defining what he means by ritual and the broad reason he thinks they have been eroded away the idea of a ritual is actually pretty hard to pin down in terms of identification it is very much you know when you see it a Catholic mass is a clear example of a ritual as is an initiation ceremony many communities around the world have formalized coming of age rituals where you leave behind your childhood and become

a fully fledged member of that Society taking on all of the associated responsibilities of an adult in that culture so rather than giving necessary and sufficient conditions there are instead a few key characteristics Han identifies rituals as having throughout his essays it is not that all rituals contain all of these but rather that together they describe a sort of family resemblance between rituals to borrow a term from Vicken Stein first Hans says that rituals often involve a temporary suspension of the ego this is sort of an obscure sentence but it points to a pretty intuitive

idea rituals often contain rules that are strictly followed regardless of how any individual feels about them all around the world the Catholic Latin mass is performed in pretty much the exact same way and the parishioners broadly know what they should do they sit they stand they hear certain passages read they kneel and they receive the wafer and wine that formed the Eucharist there is not much question of any individual attendant putting a personal spin on it it is just followed on the one hand this aspect of ritual has been criticized rather heavily it has been

seen as stifling individual expression while Han recognizes this critique and certainly doesn't want to idolize every ritual he also thinks this is one of rituals greatest strengths though SRA was an enormous fan of individual authenticity he also thought being an autonomous agent can be an awful lot of pressure it is easy to feel the crushing weight of responsibility on our shoulders to be free individuals making our own ways in the world for Han the ritual is a brief opportunity to take that burden off and allow ourselves to be absorbed in a collective it is a

bit similar to n's idea that egos would be suspended within certain dionan rituals the Line Between Us and other people is temporarily blurred because we are all doing the same thing and forgetting ourselves for a moment second secondly Han thinks that rituals are tools of recognition again this is a pretty nuanced concept that nonetheless has a real intuitive feel to it when we encounter a ritual that's familiar to us it is almost like seeing an old friend we feel comfortable in its presence and since we've repeated it before it gives us a sense of friendliness

or grounding when I was very little I lived in a small village and every year almost every resident used to Gather By The Village Hall on Christmas Eve to spend an hour or so singing carols around around a big bonfire before going into the village hall for some mince pies some mold wine and a cup of tea I still remember the Curious feeling of homeliness that that ritual brought with it I would look forward to it every year and in a weird way it made me feel welcome in the community I lived in this is

partly what Han means when he compares the effect rituals have on our lives to making a home out of a house it is a way of dressing up a given moment in time with a repetitive exercise that builds layers of meaning as it gathers momentum the first time I attended the carol singing it was a new ritual to me but the next time I had all the memories of the first time to Grant it additional meaning and by the third it truly felt like something special those few hours on Christmas Eve felt like they were

glittering because they had been made Sacred by all of this memory and meaning thirdly Han thinks that rituals imbue certain situations with a sense of value that goes well beyond our everyday economic ideas about efficiency or production rituals bring with them a sense of play because they are by Nature divorced from the kind of serious business of making money or producing Commodities a group of people have decided that a given situation is special or sacred separate from any profit motivation again let's take the Catholic mass significance is granted to the whole thing by placing it

in a worship context It Is by its very nature leaving behind the Notions of efficiency or getting it done quickly there may be entire pieces of music sung in order to lend reverence to the moment and to extend it it is anti-e efficient it is luxurious with time for Han a ritual does not say this is a great way to spend some time while you rest to be productive the next day it rather says I am the point I am meaningful separate from any concern about productivity or money for Han this reminds us to look

outside the habits of producing more stuff or making more money or devoting ourselves to work and instead carves out a space for us to Value other things in this way it is almost a small Act of rebellion against the dominant way of valuing our time in accordance with the market here time is not given meaning by what we have to show for it but the time itself is granted significance to Riff on another philosopher it is the difference between aiming to get a boulder to the top of the hill and simply smiling while you're pushing

it it's primarily the last of these that Han thinks has made us devalue rituals in the modern age for him the dominant way of measuring value in the world has become market value essentially this means that we value things primarily for how much money they make or how much they produce this is subtly different from the kind of critiques other philosophers have made of our current economic organizing system Han is not so much talking about the exploitation of one economic class by another but rather a shift in values that is encouraging us all to place

work and productivity at the top of our priorities and that fails to recognize other forms of value that might make for a more rounded or fulfilling life there are many ways that Han thinks the modern World demeans rituals and we'll be looking at some of them later but a lot of them stem from the idea that rituals are pointless or inefficient the religious idea of the Sabbath is a very good example this is a sacred day of rest and in many ways used to be treated as such with most businesses grinding to a halt on

designated Sabbath days but now sabbaths have largely fallen out of fashion at least in Europe most businesses just run usual hours on sabbaths in order to make more profit there is nothing inherently wrong with these individual decisions but suggests trends like this are part of a general sacrifice of rituals for the sake of market value so that is the broad outline of what Han thinks a ritual is and how he thinks they've been under attack but so what if these rituals truly are inefficient isn't it only right they should be left in the past well

the trouble is that all of those functions we said rituals fulfilled are now going underserved and that can have some pretty dire consequences starting with increased isolation if you want to help me make more videos like this then please consider becoming one of my very kind patrons you'll help me and gain access to occasional exclusive content the link is in the description two communities and togetherness one of the great crises of the modern world is loneliness so much so that the World Health Organization has actually declared it one young people are reporting being lonelier than

ever before and the number of close friends people have has dropped precipitously since the 1990s additionally many observe a nebulously defined erosion of community over the past Century it's difficult to say exactly what this is but if you talk to anyone over the age of 60 they tend to mention how much more people knew one another in the past how people spoke to their neighbors and how they perceived a generally higher degree of public trust this may just be Nostalgia on their part but I'm inclined to give it some credit given just how ubiquitous this

particular observation seems to be given this crisis one thing is clear we should be paying very careful attention to the sorts of things that build communities up and the sorts that tear them down for Han rituals are an invaluable tool in the art of forging close-nit communities when a group of people are all doing the same thing at the same time they can begin to identify with one another they egos melt away and they feel as if they're part of something larger than themselves if anyone here ever has sung in a choir or played in

an orchestra Han seems to describe a similar feeling to that we temporarily forget ourselves and prioritize people around us over whatever whims we have at that moment in group music making every participant essentially sacrifices their own will for the sake of making a beautiful peace come to life this is the effect we talked about in the previous section rituals make our own egos seem far less significant from a first-person perspective but here it is not just about forgetting us it is about remembering others Han discusses how when we lose sight of ourselves we become much

more open to looking outwards towards other people but also to something something higher or greater than any one of us in a religious context this might be a deity but in a secular one it might just be the shared idea of a community one of the rituals we have that is still alive and well is marriage and in a marriage ceremony the two participants not only pledge themselves to one another but also to the higher idea of marriage they are often thought to form one unit that is greater than simply the two of them put

together and they both live in service not just to one another but also this other thing the point is that some communi is formed even if it's just two people and this allows for bonds of trust to be built there's a sense that everyone involved has something in common and that they are very Loosely working towards a shared goal it is not that communities could never be formed without rituals but rather that they can be fantastic Aid in this they form part of the patchwork of shared ideas practices and touchstones that creates a sense of

usess if rituals make a place or time homely then they also make a shared home with the other participants Han suggests that without these rituals it is surprisingly easy to become self-absorbed by this he does not mean that we will think too highly of ourselves but rather that we will sort of forget other people and other things because we are too wrapped up in us and our image I bet most of us have seen this sort of thing in action someone makes themselves miserable because they cannot stop having thoughts about them and their own ego

they might worry about whether people are watching them or making fun of them or whether they're going to do well out of life or whether they're ugly or tall enough or good enough it's not that this is immoral it's just profoundly unpleasant one of the joys of a ritual is that we temporarily do not worry about any of these questions and instead allow ourselves to be swept up by the moment all while maintaining our individuality before and after it is similar to the observation by CS Lewis that we humans are much happier not when we

are thinking highly about ourselves but rather when we are not thinking of ourselves at all and rather focusing on other people or other things anything outside of us Han points out that our current value system really prizes individuality we are taught to be independent from one another to embrace our own authenticity and carve a unique path through life this has many strengths to it it allows for a large amount of individual variation and does Stoke a sense of real Independence in people however Han also wants to point out the downsides of this approach it works

against the sort of ego forgetting that allows us to bond together during rituals to form one body and act as one for Han this all follows quite naturally from an increasing emphasis on individual achievement and performance if we are looked down on for associating with communities and instead constantly asked what we individually have done and achieved then ritual ends up running counter to the very thing we're encouraged to do if we're not careful this atomization may condemn us to loneliness it's important to note here that Han is not saying the past was better in every

way in a lot of cultural criticism we can have a knee reaction to something wrong with the present by idolizing the past but Han keeps his Focus firmly on the here and now and he warns us that the misery brought on by constant self-concern and the crushing expectations of bare individual achievement will only get worse over time if we do not find ways of reconnecting through communities bonded together potentially with shared rituals these might be formal rituals like church services but they might also simply be shared revered practices as long as it serves the function

of making us at home in the world and with others then it would go some way to allaying Han's worries on the other hand we certainly don't want to lose sight of the individual entirely I don't know about you but I would not wish to become totally ruled by ritual either it seems to me that there is a balance to strike here and an ongoing question of where exactly that balance is however this is also only one aspect of Han's argument just as a lack of ritual can tear people apart to make them feel like

they have nothing in common it can also so turn the world into a bleak and uninteresting place and this is just our next point three blank maps and empty story books a common theme in a whole host of philosophy is that the human hunger for meaning is heavily related to our search for narrative the French philosopher Paul rur used to say that a huge amount of our understanding was caught up in narrative especially our understanding of ourselves he probably has the neatest exposition of this view but we see its precursors long before him Friedrich nicher

talked about how people could overcome nihilism by making themselves into a work of art and giving lifestyle this is sometimes interpreted to mean we would lend ourselves a meaningful narrative to our own lives one that would make our suffering worthwhile Beyond this we can often see how existential crises mirror the frustration of narrative arcs in Ecclesiastes King Solomon goes through a deep despair at the meaninglessness of life and he focuses on cycles and a lack of satisfying closure you wake up you go to sleep you wake up again you go home you go to work

you go back to home and over and over again until you die at no particularly significant moment in Alber kamuz the myth of Copus the cycle of rolling a boulder up a hill and watching it fall back down is partly distressing because it flies in the face of any sort of conclusion and thus a resolution to a narrative all through existential philosophy we see the concept of meaning often closely aligned with narrative descriptors and a lack of meaning associated with sequences that defy narrativization when someone asks what is it all for they seem to be

requesting a resolution a point in life where they can sit down their flag and say this is what it has been for at least up to this point and this is a job Han thinks rituals are very well placed to do another aspect of making a portion of time homely is that it becomes infused with a sense of meaning there is nothing physical to distinguish a house from a home but it means something for the occupants and the same goes with temporal rituals classically The Coming of Age ritual is meant to Mark the end of

childhood and the start of adulthood it answers the question what has it all been for by saying until now it's been about becoming an adult it is an event infused with narrative and as a result it slightly disrupts Solomon's observation about the endless cycle of waking up and going to sleep if someone goes through this sort of ritual there was a day when they woke up as a child and they went to sleep as an adult there was difference there was progression of course we can wonder why we need this sort of benchmarking in our

lives why can we not perform a little personal ritual and be done with it but for Han this would be much less effective part of why rituals are such brilliant ways of narrativizing time is because everyone is in on the construction and that makes it feel more real again to use marriage as an example if I told you last week my partner and I said some words in a building that means nothing to anyone even if we privately thought of it as akin to a marriage it is not going to have that sense of meaningfulness

that comes with the recognition of a collective if I instead told people that I got married last week they would immediately know what that meant and how it marks a turning point in my life to clarify I didn't get married last week it's just a hypothetical the idea is that harm wants us to be able to make sense of time without it all blurring into one rituals even of repeated rituals can add a sense of differentiation to the days here here Han draws the distinction between ritual and routine because rituals are imbued with this sense

of significance they are likely to draw our total Attention our total attention then interestingly reinforces the sense of significance it becomes a kind of virtuous cycle as a result it stops life becoming one amorphous background blur and marks off certain time periods for Han this is one function of a religious weekly observance it means there is a bit of narrative closure in every week by contrast routine is just the stuff we happen to do every day divorced from any kind of symbolic significance I brush my teeth multiple times a day as a matter of routine

but it does not stand for anything it just does what it says on the tin all of this helps make life seem much less like it's just the same thing repeating forever it's a bit like having chapter headings it grants existence a sense that it's going towards something and that in turn makes it seem that bit more meaningful this also ties back to what we were saying in the last section about Community bonding if rituals help lend life a sense of narrative then sharing rituals with a community lends a sense of shared narrative this symbolic

depth stands in contrast to what Han calls bare life this is where we deliberately strip any meaning or symbolism away from the world and care only for material or consumable things it puts everything on the same level as me brushing my teeth Han Compares this to the difference between seduction and an empty Amorous encounter in the first case Han charts a whole series of narrative steps and suggests that would make it seem more meaningful whereas in the second there is nothing particularly to hang the meaning on there is no narrative Arc involving tension and release

and roles and shared play but instead there is a mere event to use H's terminology it is robbed of any ritual or symbolic meaning and is instead purely a means to some further end this is a bit tricky to cognitively understand or explain but you might get a better idea if you just reflect on the rituals that have existed in your own life how do they feel do they lend a sense of narrative to your life do they imbue an otherwise ordinary event with symbolic or greater meaning according to Han in an effective ritual the

answer should be yes I like how this puts a spin on other philosophies of meaning creation out there when someone like Jean Paul satra or Simone deboa ask us to craft our own meaning through individual authenticity and commitment to our values that is one perspective on what will add that ineffable meaningful to life the aim is partly to reenchant existence using a particular methodology to this extent those 20th century existentialists are putting forward an empirical hypothesis they are suggesting that if we do prioritize these things then that will make life seem full and dispense with

the feeling that it is all for nothing but Han suggests another way given his own religious background he looks outwards towards ceremony and Community to suggest that meaning is found in shared ritual experiences with other s rather than finding meaning in the self he wants us to look out for it it is not that our own atomized approach Gives Life Meaning but rather that we can make the experience of time and life seem meaningful with particular practices regardless of what you think it is a wonderful Counterpoint to the more individualistic focus of some of these

existential philosophies put a pin in this point as we'll be revisiting it in the next section and again it is the focus on production and efficiency which de prioritizes this kind of ritual if you are attempting to to maximize productivity and profit then any sort of independent narrative creation does not seem to make sense it basically appears like a waste of time in fact many of the properties of popular rituals run directly counter to values like efficiency the slow reverence with which the host is elevated and consecrated is deliberately wasteful with time a wedding is

often deliberately wasteful with money coming of age ceremonies are often wasteful with both this is partly what Han means when he says rituals allow for Lu y but at the same time this makes it a prime target for being slowly forgotten as the need for greater productivity and efficiency take over but as we have fewer and fewer rituals life seems less and less remarkable the multi-layered texture of an existance full of different meaningful narratives is sandpapered down into a featureless landscape and joy is sacrificed for the sake of performance but lastly I want to take

a little moment to reflect on the very concept of meaning and pose a challenge to some of the most famous philosophers in history four the terror of reasonability this is hardly the most controversial take in the world but I am an enormous fan of the concepts of reason and rationality during my undergrad I became obsessed with symbolic logic and then in my masters I used to stay up all night playing around with different logical systems and seeing what they could do I can only assume this is how every other university student spends a Saturday night

as well but recently I've been reading a series of criticisms of rationality for approaching certain issues specifically those about meaning and existential problems a classic rationalist way of approaching the problem of life's meaning is outlined by Alber kamu where he says that when we learn that there is no inherent meaning to life attempting to create it or just believe in it is tantamount to abandoning all of your philosophical principles he even calls it philosophical suicide this is the basis for his absurdism he thought that moving past the need for meaning was then the only rational

route forward but in many ways kamu commitment to rationality in existential matters is pretty esoteric Friedrich ner used to say that life's meaning or lack thereof is not so much rational or irrational but stands outside rationality this is because he primarily conceives of life's meaningfulness not as a cognitive judgment about life but rather a sort of feeling around existence for him the person who questions where the life is Meaningful in and of itself is approaching the the matter backwards a feeling of meaning is instead the reward someone gets for having a strong and organized will

here the sense of fullness falls out of some prior condition it is not that life's meaning is asserted but it is rather an emergent property of other things this is also a theme throughout KAG guard's philosophy which often prioritizes leaps of faith in order to bridge the gap between the crushing amount of things we could do and the few things that we will actually be able to do this is also how he solves existential issues where he finds God via the use of a committed faith for him the question of life's meaning can only be

put to rest through a temporary irrationality perhaps the apotheosis of this approach is embodied in the criminally underrated Russian philosopher Lev shesto who saw the origin of many existential issues in the dogged commitment to rationality in our approach to the question of life's meaning he thought that existential despair often emerges from the idea that we must have a reasonable justification for being he viewed the rationality con as perfectly acceptable when we're conducting many forms of inquiry but that it misapprehends the nature of an existential issue for Han this idea of rationality is co-opted by the

prioritization of market value to place things which increase production as rational and things which do not as a waste of time or otherwise frivolous but Han thinks this too misunderstands the way to approach existential issues sure rituals often seem like they have no point from the outside but that is because their purpose can only be be understood from within it is a bit like how foreign language might appear as meaningless scribbles to someone who does not speak it but it could be beautiful poetry to anyone that does the demand that rituals be answerable to Market

forces or just Universal rationality robs them of their ability to properly do their job it's like judging a fish by its ability to climb a tree sure they are unproductive and inefficient but their task is not to be either of those things their job is to bring communities together IMB with meaning and create an understandable shape to time and this might involve doing something that seems absurd from the outside so what can we take from this well Han would probably want us to first become conscious of the Primacy of productivity in our map of value

many of us are already partially aware of this we're sometimes reminded of it when we are told to establish a work life balance or avoid burnouts but are we surprised that many of us struggle with this considering that we often do not have alternative value schemes to replace the one around productivity and efficiency in contrast to this Han encourages us to adopt some aspects of a ritualistic approach to life even though it might seem totally irrational from the outside here we are encouraged to look outside the totalizing force of market value and ask how we

can imbue moments of our life with meaning using his observations about rituals to do so this is not an imposition to return to particular historical rituals nor is it just a trit suggestion to Value other things because Han does not pretend that it is nearly that simple if we look at how he think rituals Grant meaning it's actually a rather involved process it includes multiple people gathering at the same time partaking in the same narrative and making aspects of time and life feel like home it is a much clearer practical idea of meaning creation than

that given to us by many other philosophers it is one of the most detailed philosophies of meaning construction out there and in some ways I think it is one of the most hopeful as we said earlier it provides a less individualist way of approaching existential philosophy much of the late 19th and 20th Century views on finding meaning are incredibly individual they're about discovering your personal authenticity and crafting your own values separate from anyone else the Uber mench is a pretty individual figure as is the concept of someone who is totally personally authentic crafting rituals together

and adopting a slightly more ritualistic approach to life is difficult and may rub up against our individualistic and rationalistic sensitivities we may feel silly or like we're becoming part of the herd but if Han is right then reintroducing a bit of ritual into our lives may serve as a small Safe Haven from the values of production and efficiency it can allow us to lend meaning to the process of life itself rather than sublimating it all to the end goal of numbers on balance sheets it can bring us closer together with others build communities and differentiate

one moment of time from the next it can give not not just one answer to what is it all for but several successive answers over the course of an entire existence to employ a much abused word it gives a sort of holistic form of existential philosophy where the solutions are not just found individually or rationally or introspectively but by creation action and most importantly play at the very least it sounds like it is worth some firm consideration but if you would like to learn more about Han's overall philosophy then click here to look at my

analysis of his Landmark essay the burnout Society I hope you enjoyed this video and have a wonderful day