Returning to Church won't save us from nihilism

Very funny this is partly in response to a Brooks piece. He fits nihilism very well. Doesn’t every really write about much and when cornered contends that most of his attempts to make points are really just vibes[0] like famously claiming $60 spent on alcohol and a $17 burger make him relatable to Americans struggling with inflation[1].

But particularly hilarious is that he wrote this exact piece two months ago in the Atlantic[2]. He argued that the Greeks had it right and we all need to be more virtuous again.

As someone who’d describe themselves as a virtue ethicist I’d be inclined to agree. Utilitarianism leads to the bureaucratic tyranny Arendt discusses and deontology is just as hollow as belief in belief. The reality is that we can’t optimize ourselves out of where we are.

[0]: https://www.foodandwine.com/1911-smoke-house-bbq-david-brook...

[1]: https://newrepublic.com/article/142708/david-brooks-tyranny-...

[2]: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/07/trump-admi...

>we need to work to bring back the Ancient Greek model of the polis and in particular the Ancient Greek model of politics as what gives life meaning.

The Ancient Greek model of politics isn't compatible with liberal pluralism. The former assumes a common end and the latter assumes diverse conflicting ends. The Ancient Greek model looks more like modern China than it does like modern America or Europe.

This reads more like misdirection than analysis. Suggesting religion is just a collection of empty rituals is just sad.

It's almost as if he's trying to prevent those looking for help from considering religion.

"You don't want those gold bars over there, they're just painted rocks". But are they?

Aside from being true, Christianity is basically the only way to inoculate yourself against mimetic violence spirals. Which is missed here.

Religion is anti-fragile. The more persecution and negative press it gets, the more certainty we feel in our faiths. I would point out that nihilism is the opposite of religious faith, so the author is a little bit confused on that point.

The author's understanding of ritual/tradition as the sum total what religion means is at best extremely naive, but I am receiving it as condescending and dismissive. There was a way for the author to redeem the subtitle of the article. He could have gone down the route of "ritual for ritual's sake is not good, but the bigger thing that ritual is attached to is good". But instead, the argument went "religious ritual is empty and has nothing else attached to it, and that's bad; let's be sure to attach Humanism to the ritual to make it good."

The irony of the whole thing is that Humanism is a religion too, though many people won't recognize it as such. This makes the author's argument doubly misguided.

Well, Church isn’t God.

So I’ll grant them the title. But the stronger claim, that God won’t save us from nihilism, I disagree with entirely.

The absolute best resource I've found for educating myself about this topic is John Vervaeke's free online course "Awakening from the meaning crisis". You can search it in YouTube or Spotify.

He explains in detail exactly why a "nostalgic return to religion" cannot save us from, not just nihilism, but the entire set of crises western society is undergoing.

> In a recent op-ed, [David Brooks] warns that a rigid political climate on the left has led people on the right of the political spectrum to actively embrace nihilism.

That’s a strange dodge. "The Left made me do it" is a child's excuse, not an analysis.

The deeper truth is that nihilism isn’t born of politics. Nihilism what's left when after the exhaustion of meaning under total commodification. It's born of the spectacle, the replacement of reality with its endless representations. Every human relation is mediated through an economic relation, and eventually every gesture, every feeling, every passing thought gets rendered into a commodity.

We are desperate for connection, and the spectacle knows it. So it offers us platforms that promise intimacy but can’t deliver it. They were designed not to connect us to other humans but to make us friends with brands. We log in for friendship and get advertising.

Go outside? Good luck. It's empty because this stupid city was designed around cars, and even if there are people, they're tucked into their phones. It's a social ghost town.

If I propose to decommission the spectacle, I'd expect to receive a bewildering array of responses: "naive," "utopian," "impossible." So here we are, trapped in a world of our making where no one has the choice to enter nor to leave and everyone has been leveraged to maintaining it despite no one wanting it.

Good job. We have only ourselves to blame.

Sure, but for many, it's a place for community too. Rites of passage. Selecting a godparent. And singing! Hey without gospel music, we might not have had Motown.

Also, in some religions the temples are places for job searching, business networking... nothing wrong with that.

I wish I could have faith, a double major in science and philosophy killed all of that. But mystical moments still happen without all of the religious trappings, in conversation or nature.

I just don't know. Here in the US, Christian ethics still predominate, usually, and without organized religious participation, will that continue? Is it too much work to agonize over decisions without it?

The best way to deal with nihilism is by also becoming a narcisist, which as we can see from many of the people in power, is extra creeply effective.

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