The Remaking of God

“In the twenty-first century, the third big project will be for us to create divine powers of creation and destruction and upgrade Homo Sapiens into Homo Deus” (Harari, p.53)

I read this line by Harari quoted in Mattias’s article, “The de-souling of the world”. I first heard of

Mattias Desmet

during the covid lockdowns. While surfing through the internet to find a sane mind who would make sense of what was happening around me, I came across his ideas. I needed a psychological explanation to the fear and the feeling of hopelessness that I saw all around on the streets of England. Mattias brilliantly presented the idea, which wasn’t really new but had been forgotten over the decades— mass hysteria or mass formation psychosis. He explains it in detail in his new book, The Psychology of Totalitarianism.

The world continues to exist in the grips of mass formation―a dangerous, collective type of hypnosis―as we bear witness to loneliness, free-floating anxiety, and fear giving way to censorship, loss of privacy, and surrendered freedoms. It is all spurred by a singular, focused crisis narrative that forbids dissident views and relies on destructive groupthink.

-Mattias Desmet

While reading his article, I was astounded by how similarly we felt and thought while having totally separate experiences. I have often felt this de-souling of the world around me when I lived in England, read this further. The antidote to this I felt then and Mattias and many others too have come to the same conclusion, is to live in closed knit communities, engage in loving discussions and engage in honest discussions with people. Read my stories from my village to see how I did that.

Rationalism promises to bring humanity to paradise, but so far, that has not been very successful. The air of the 21st century is constantly saturated with a sense of crisis. The war on terror, the banking crisis, the climate crisis, the MeToo crisis, the corona crisis, the Ukraine crisis – the thundering echo of one crisis still resonates when the lightning bolt of the next crisis strikes the fragile structure of society again.

Mattias explained further that the counter to the overdose of rationalism is, “We must focus our attention on this: The art of good speaking forms the logical remedy for a society sick with that new kind of lie that we call propaganda. We are going through a metaphysical revolution, comparable to the metaphysical revolution that led to the Enlightenment. This revolution essentially boils down to this: a society led by a propagandized mass is replaced by a society led by a group of people connected through sincere speaking.

In a sense, this revolution also transforms the imbalances created by rationalism; it turns them back into relationships. Sincere speaking is resonant speaking – it connects the Soul of man with the outside world; it restores the connection with fellow humans, one's own body, one's own drives, society, and nature.”

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I realised this back during the covid lockdowns that the answer to this in balance was to go back and live in my tiny village on the western shore of India. When in England as a student, I experienced this very de-souling of the world around me. My peers were extremely addicted to their phones. They would break conversation mid-way and ride into thought processes that the nudge on their screen had brought them. I felt incredibly distanced in a world where I had too many people around me. People shared a fake smile and spoke things that I knew they didn’t want to say- but still did because I went to have a chat.

I guess what was different here was that I was coming straight out of an Indian village and then traveled with friends around the world who hardly used their phones. I lived in a place or around people who shared genuine smiles, spoke at length, went on adventures and loved and cared intensely. Moreover they were rooted in something deeper. This, I did not find in the university in England. I found my peers lost in apps and social platforms that controlled their every move.

It took a radical decision on my end after having lived a life in England to leave that life behind - against the choices of my family and others who cared for me - and move back to my tiny village where my family and extended family- my fellow villagers were. They obviously took me in with open arms and since then I have been living in this close knit community, working on the field, growing our own food, spending quality time with friends who range from 30 years to 85 years. I love every little moment that I spend here - away from the internet, away from the mechanistic sounds of the world - covered in nature from all corners. Writing here on substack and working on fields to feed myself and my family. I am only 27 years old and I feel I made the right choice..

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So, now when I look back at the concluding note that I wrote for my book when I finished my 1800 km walk across India, I am not surprised that I too came to the same conclusion. Of course, the difference being, I did not come to this conclusion academically but through real-life experiences. We are in a race to re-make God and that is where we are losing sight of our inner world, of our soul. Here is the concluding note from my book.

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It has always been a problem with this new-age man. He tries to solve all the problems and yet gets entangled in the same problem every time. When the only problem that he can solve is understanding himself. When he runs around the world to find the answers to the questions for which the answers lie within himself, he not only traps himself into a trap of self-deception but also forms a sort of arrogance in this search, on the other side of which lies ego. He unknowingly brings back ego as the cure to everything. Sure, he does not mean to do so, but the wheel keeps moving and keeps pushing him in the direction of ignorance. Had he only craved truth, truth would have been only a hand's distance away from him. In the craving of truth, other things were attached to it, and he was left with nowhere to turn back to. He has pushed himself to the extreme end of this cliff, which only leads downhill. After falling off this cliff, hanging miraculously to a tree, and climbing back up several times, man did not learn the lesson of backing off and surrendering.

Man wants to own nature. Man wants to destroy and rebuild the very force that created it. He has destroyed every road he has walked on to create a new road in front of him. The human mind has formed a divide in ordinary human consciousness and created a subservient society: one dictates, and the other follows. To come out of this subservience is to reject the idea of submitting oneself to the king, to the throne that governs you. Should you start doing that, you might realise that you have served all your life, that you were always a slave in this society.

Now, what he needs is to delve into his depths and find an answer to the deepest of the questions that trouble him. To tread into the darkness of his soul, find an emerald, and come back to this place to tell the tale. He needs a profound experience that can change his life completely, bring clarity to him, and keep him connected to a cause that is a step higher than him.

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