\nAs with much conspiracy thinking, the spread of QAnon in these networks is not just dangerous, but also deeply sad. The grandiose promises of the QAnon worldview are mirrored and illuminated by the similar promises of multilevel marketing: equally false, and equally predicated on a desperate search for meaning and stability.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n
I think this emptiness of meaning is the core of our problem. As the Washington Post reported on Jan, 13, \u201cQAnon theorists were involved in every level of planning and carrying out the Jan. 6 insurrection;\u201d and surely QAnon could not be swallowed for a moment by large numbers of otherwise adult people if they were not grasping at straws for some sense of purpose, of stability. Nor would the puerility of video games and action movies, which furnished the scenario in which the crowd could figure as the heroes who were saving the world. The world is in fact going through a crisis of meaning that will lead to more outbursts like this if we do not somehow fill that legitimate need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We have somehow to do what Augustine did: come up with a worldview that gives meaning and stability, such that people would have no need to grasp at fantasies like QAnon or take to destructive violence to act them out. The worldview would not need to arise from the Judeo-Christian worldview specifically, but it would certainly want to be in harmony with the Wisdom Tradition, as the late Huston Smith called it: that vast cultural heritage of human traditions that hold out a vision of humanity as evolving spiritual beings in a meaningful universe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Until recently, Augustine had an advantage over us: The science of his day, such as it was, offered no serious competition to the Christian worldview. He carried out many arguments with Neoplatonic and other philosophical schools (which carried more weight than the science). He was able to prevail, in my view, because Cristian scripture furnished a better way to talk about the inner life, which was what the world at that time was looking for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Until recently. The material science and material worldview that has dominated Western civilization for several centuries seemed to deliver an airtight explanation of reality based on the random motion of material particles, and gained great credibility when it was able to deliver a dizzying surge of technology and material abundance \u2014 including very real advances in healthcare that we would not wish to be without. But when push came to shove it failed to account for the most vital endowments of the human being \u2014 our emotions, the intellectual achievements that distinguish us from the other animals, consciousness itself. A bit over a hundred years ago now the theoretical underpinning of materialism was exposed to the glare of quantum theory, with its discovery of the primacy of consciousness and \u201cnon-locality\u201d or interlocking unity of existence. Come down to today and you find physicists talking about \u201cnon-local consciousness,\u201d biologists unearthing precious legacies of cooperation running throughout evolution, psychologists leaving behind Freud\u2019s misguided focus on disfunction to work out a \u201cpositive psychology\u201d \u2014 and Gandhi gifting the world with nonviolence and daring to claim that \u201cnonviolence is the badge of the human species.\u201d Even military personnel now, faced with the trauma suffered by troops who are not wounded in body, are now speaking of \u201cmoral injury\u201d \u2014 the harm caused by hurting others that they tried to make recruits shed through the dehumanization of military training.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One group of \u201cnew scientists\u201d \u2014 this movement is often called \u201cnew science\u201d as opposed to \u201cclassical,” i.e. materialist science \u2014 has formed an Association for the Advancement of Post-material Science. The fact is, we need post-material everything. Starting with a post-material image of the human being. The vast common inheritance of human wisdom in virtually every known culture has unwaveringly maintained down the centuries that we are endowed with, if not actually are, spirit, soul, or call it what you will. We now possess innumerable scientific experiments showing that we can affect one another at a distance via what scientists call \u201csubtle energy.\u201d We can influence to some degree how quickly others heal, what they\u2019re thinking, even the neuronal activity of their brain. As one group of researchers showed, when two subjects meditate together for some time and then are widely separated, with both wired to fMRI devices and only one shown a flashing light, the other\u2019s brain will show the same rhythmic firing. The point here is not to refute Einstein, who famously refused to believe in \u201cspooky actions at a distance,\u201d or to make a case for parapsychology, but far more importantly to make us aware of our full humanity; to save us from feeling \u201clike gypsies in the universe,\u201d as one writer put it, and feel good about the undiscovered capacities inside us \u2014 and take responsibility for how we use them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Above all, it is to make us aware of the undeniable connection among us. It is inspiring to imagine the changes that would follow this awareness. Racism, which is after all based on a reaction to physical difference, would disappear. As Gandhi said, \u201cEven differences are helpful where there are tolerance, charity, and truth.\u201d Most kinds of alienation would be substantially resolved, taking off with it vast amounts of the depression, hostility and meaninglessness plaguing human life today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Post-material economics would go on from E.F. Schumacher\u2019s famous \u201ceconomics as if people mattered,\u201d relieving the earth of its crushing burden as people stopped frantically trying to make themselves happy by manufacturing more, buying more, eating more, throwing away more than they could ever need \u2014 often at others\u2019 expense. Think of the relief of the people themselves when they realize that frantic consumption isn\u2019t working, and they don\u2019t need it. They can start working toward happiness where it does come from: rich relationships, meaningful work, ways to serve, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n