The Therapeutic Ideology (Part 4 of Revisiting "Triumph of the Therapeutic")

In 2022 we see with clarity what Rieff could not when he wrote Triumph of the Therapeutic in 1966: the form of the Therapeutic Ideology that has replaced Christian tradition. Here is its outline:

1. The absolute hegemony of the isolated Self, narcissistic and therapeutic, lonely-autonomous, unhinged, and uprooted from tradition, history, transcendence, family and broader moral purpose.

2.THe dissolution of constitutive family bonds; deconstruction of childhood as filiality, spousality, paternity, maternity. Reconstruction of the de-gendered individual as an unit of production/consumption.Gender as self-choice rather than a gift-that-is-given.

3. Rupture of sexuality from unity/fertility; the triumph of contraception as a culture; legitimation of pornography, homosexuality, transgenderism.

4.Shameless desecration of incompetent human life as without value and the consequent genocide of the helpless unborn, senile and ill.

5. Replacement of smaller, more human, intermediate communities/agencies by the cancerous growth of an expansive state and global corporations.

6. Loss of the sense of a Creation as sacred, enchanted, sacramental, and open to the holy and transcendent as well as awareness of sin.

7. In its place hysteria about "Mother Earth" alone, vulnerable to rape and unguarded by a Creator or responsible stewarts.

8. Ironically, at the same time, dominance of outsized technologies that deplete us of agency/initiative and induce passivity, dependency, lethargy and hopelessess.

9. Scientism that inflates the promise of science and places immense trust in its power.

10. Unacknowledged fear of death that seeks safety in technological and state control of human life.

11. In lieu of diminished allegiance to locality, family, faith, and nation the emergence of identity politics rooted in victimization, self-pity, grievance, powerlessness and resentment in a relentless, hopeless Marxist dialectic of oppressor/oppressed.

12. A bipolar meritocratic, careerist, technocratic society split between the educated/affluent and the marginalized/uneducated/poor.

13.Prevalence of an anti-metaphysic that fails to see Being, abundance, gratuity, transcendence and hope but submerges into scarcity, fear, relentless conflict, rage, and despair.

14. In place of the sense of Time as visited by, enclosed within, and destined for Eternal Life, we have: the lonely Therapeutic Self, entrapped in the flux and conflict of Marxist dialectic, enmeshed in and dependent upon a Macro-Matrix of Hyper-Technology/Mega-Government/Giga-Capitalism, in a meaningless Nietczhean universe, clinging to a Darwinian illusion of inevitable technological progress. The Masters of Suspicion reign supreme!

Things are at least as bad as Rieff feared! This is a Dark Empire we must resist!