Why I’m A Political Atheist
And Why You Should Be One Too
I want to preface this whole article with the statement that being politically atheist DOES NOT mean being politically inactive. There is a large difference. So get your vote on!
This is the age of politics — politics of the living dead. A society that hasn’t yet realized that it took its last peaceful breath thirty years ago. The era of civil disagreement and a collective march to a brighter future seems exhaled and gone.
We lost the ‘we’re in this together’ attitude while great entrenchments have been made. Bubble cities, bubble persons, bubble minds have been constructed and lived in happily. Shame has been thrown. Hate has been levied. And if our global cultures are just a bunch of dreams all melted together, then the political nightmare of modern reality has taken over.
That is why we must disregard our political beliefs as nothing more than bad dreams.
We are now like ants crawling on the withered barks of our ideologies. On individual trees lost so far in a deep dark wood. So far in the minutiae of our assurances that WE alone are right, that WE and our in-group have it all figured out while the other side is wrong and uncompromisingly evil. That is why we can never see the forest through the trees again.
But there are no sides. There is no left or right spectrum. There is no center. That is only a state of mind. A lie born out of a complacency for conflict. The gene-deep need in us to fight for what we believe in.
Well guess what — I don’t believe.
I don’t believe in the political spectrum. Left, right, or center. Because the political spectrum does not exist insofar as it moves the needle on constructive reality.
What does exist rather, is a void that we fill with our own hate, our own love, joy, and sorrow — with our life-raft ideologies.
The very idea of entrenched sides is ludicrous. Each so-called “side” has positives and negatives. But you don’t have to accept ALL the bad, because they do SOME things you like.
Political ideologies are not like relationships where you accept a person’s flaws and love them for who they are. Political ideas can be swapped and slotted and moved around.
Let me put it this way: if the left has some beneficial policy ideas and the right has some pragmatic policy ideas, take the good stuff and throw out the rest of the ideological garbage. Take the best from all the systems to make a better one. And when one stops working because of external circumstances, then switch it out. There’s no reason to stay in a loveless marriage with your own “side” out of cultural necessity.
Our political beliefs are all the worst parts of religion and none of the good. Wrapped up in the essences of our beings. Inseparable from the idea of ourselves.
This is causing immense damage to humanity and the earth.
In fact:
It’s gotten to the point where unity is destroying us.
I submit that the only answer is to disassociate yourself from your beliefs, and I argue it’s the only way to set up a peaceful and prospering society. To dispassionately and rationally engineer our political systems to work for the people.
To decrease misery.
Still, I recognize the immense privileged position I’m in to even be able to write and think this. There are many places in this world where the reality is much different. Where autocracies reign or the question of who is elected answers if your family is going to starve.
However, I think if there were a way to fundamentally alter our connection to our beliefs, disentangle them from the heart of our hearts, the world would be a much better place.
For ideologies of racism, hatred, misogyny, imperialism, and all other soul damaging isms only increase world misery.
And the one and only goal of politics should be: TO DECREASE WORLD MISERY. The political paradigms we have in place seem to be doing the exact opposite.
Now, one could argue that I’m hoping for a post-political world instead of a strictly atheistic one, but I disagree. I think there’s an important distinction.
Political atheism is a personal and tangible act of will. Possible in the individual sense.
Post-politics is a large sweeping trend resulting in millions of people forsaking the very idea of politics itself. Possible only when it reaches a point of no return where citizens forget utterly or hate completely — the political past they came from.
However, a post-political world does house the attribute of an atheistic one.
They are not mutually exclusive. It is my opinion though, that a post-political world is not attainable in the near future and can only arise from social forces unguided and unlooked for.
There is no healing that can be done, no personal growth that can be attained, while one lives in contempt.
So, if politics is a god that a troubled society prays to, then I want nothing to do with that god. And if others want to live in a world where the only tenet is disbelief in dysfunction, then I say, ‘good, join and revel in the freedom from worshipping at the altar of senseless systems.’
“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” — Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Okay, so disentangling yourself from your own beliefs. Got it.
But what about morality? What about doing the right thing? Isn’t the other “side” engaging in actions that cause verifiable consequences on the children of the earth, on the future?
The answer to that doesn’t matter anymore. Don’t fall into that trap. There ARE NO sides. Only an inability to work together in shaping the world. We need to stop thinking as opposing groups. Our planet and actualization as a species depend on it.
Don’t get me wrong, this is not about meeting evil halfway, about compromising positions. We’re past that as an even viable option. We need to fundamentally alter the way we connect with others, how we approach things like harmony, empathy, and the pursuits of happiness.
Let me put it this way:
It’s like a shouting match between a bunch of people while their house burns down. Without strong and decisive movements tethered in empathy, we will burn down with our planet. All the while, arguing.
Our separate views of morality, distinct and drifted away, now resemble little sunk cost fallacies. Ideas of the world and of ourselves that we have invested so many BELIEFS in, that even if we recognize deep down that we could never get back our emotional down payment — it wouldn’t matter. It’s human nature to fight to the death for what one believes in.
But if everyone does that. We are dead.
So leave your political beliefs in the old world. Let’s agree that we’ve all really messed things up and each of us take ownership of the pain we’ve caused to the world and others. The days might be dark, but we can start over.
We can leave the temples that don’t favor empathy, love, and clear solutions in the desert of intransigence.
We can start today.
How?
By becoming a POLITICAL ATHEIST.
