202410242303 Status: #idea Tags: #politics #institutions #united_states #meritocracy # A new value structure needs to be created to replace religion Traditional conservatives in the United States frequently try to make the case that the US is a Christian nation and would like for the country to hearken back to these roots. However, as Nietzsche so poignantly stated, God is dead. The advancement of the Enlightenment ideals of skepticism and empiricism, alongside a long-running unmooring from the church as the center of societal life, has made it impossible for modern man to *truly* believe as those in the middle ages (or even early American history) did. Liberals have addressed this by adopting wokeism as the new religion of choice. Meaning is found, not through atoning for our sins and seeking to make ourselves worthy of entering the kingdom of heaven, but instead through atoning for our privilege and seeking to make ourselves worthy to be accepted by elite liberal institutions and groups. This viewpoint, however, is destructive - it encourages policies that punish achievement and elevate mediocrity, solely in the name of equity. In addition, it creates a stifling intellectual environment, with large swathes of the social sciences (and even some hard sciences, such as genetics) lacking in funding, reluctant to draw the ire of woke institutions. To progress as a nation, we cannot look backwards to a bygone era as the conservatives do or sacrifice our society on the altar of a destructive neo-religion as the liberals do. We need to create new value structures that align with meritocracy, progress, and the celebration of *positive* inequality. But is this possible without religion? The Founding Fathers attempted this in the United States - to create a republic based on Enlightenment ideals, enshrining many concepts as "human rights", separate from any religious context. But can this value system stand on its own if it is of this world? If our values are of this world, then why should we not challenge them and change them? The Tech Right is trying to propose a viable alternative, enshrining progress and technological development as our highest good. It remains to see whether this will be enough. --- # References [[Understanding the Tech Right]] [[The Techno-Optimist Manifesto]]