Timothy Keller in his book ‘Making Sense of God’ – ‘An Invitation to the Skeptical’ writes:
Ironically, the apparent freedom of secular identity brings crushing burdens with it. In former times when our self-regard was rooted in social roles, there was much less value placed on competitive achievement. Rising from rags to riches was nice but rare and optional. It was quite sufficient to be a good father or mother, son or daughter, and to be conscientious and diligent in all your work and duties. Today as Alain de Botton has written, we believe in meritocracy, that anyone who is of humble means is so only because of lack of ambition and savvy. It is an embarrassment to be merely faithful and not successful.30 This is a net weight on the soul, put there by modernity. Success or failure is now seen as the individual’s responsibility alone. Our culture tells us that we have the power to create ourselves, and that puts the emphasis on independence and self-reliance. But it also means that society adulates winners and despises losers, showing contempt for weakness.31
All this produces a pressure and anxiety beyond what our ancestors knew. We have to decide our look and style, our stance and ethos. We then have to promote ourselves and be accepted in the new space—professional, social, aesthetic—in which we have chosen to create ourselves. As a result, “new modes of conformity arise” as people turn themselves into “brands” through the consumer goods they buy.32 The irony is that the conception of
“a nonsocial . . . conception of reality”33 actually leaves the person more dependent than ever on outside validation and more vulnerable to outside manipulation. This is why we are far more dependent on consumption of fashion and electronics and other goods and products in order to “feel good about ourselves.”
The self-made identity, based on our own performance and achievement in ways that older identities were not, makes our self-worth far more fragile in the face of failure and difficulty. While we claim to have a new freedom from social norms, we now look not to our family for validation but to our chosen arenas of achievement, where we need acceptance and applause of others who are already within those circles. This makes us, more than ever, “vulnerable to the recognition given or withheld by significant others.”34 You have got to be brilliant. You have got to be beautiful. You have got to be hip. You have got to be accomplished. And they have to think so. It is all up to you, in a way that, in traditional cultures, just wasn’t the case.
In Arthur Miller’s play After the Fall, the narrator sees modern life as “a series of proofs”—arguing and proving your smarts, your sexual prowess, your abilities, your sophistication—all in the pursuit of some kind of “verdict.”35 But this a trap, because you will have to fixate on some good thing—like work or career or romance or love—and it will become no longer just another good thing to enjoy. It will become you—the basis of your identity. And that makes you radically vulnerable and fragile. ~Timothy Keller, ‘An Invitation to the Skeptical’. . . Making sense of God’ (New York, NY: Penguin Random House LLC, 2016), 128-130 (continued . . . Modern Identity is Crushing II
