Psychodogma

The world was once cohesive, the story goes. Before social media and Silicon Valley, before 1968 and the Space Race, before the atomic bomb, before the Storming of the Bastille and the whole Enlightenment, Western culture was unified under the backdrop of Christendom. Amid its cultural differences, remained a common vision of the world. Life expectancy in the pre-modern world was about half of what it is now, but your purpose and place in the cosmos were largely known, shared, and agreed upon. But this “enchanted” world ostensibly succumbed to the individualism of modernity—new theories, developments, beliefs, and technologies fractured and fragmented our shared meaning. We can think for ourselves—yes—but in the wake of world wars and revolutions (political and sexual), we are left to decipher the meaning of life as lonely individuals.

And while the world is much more “enchanted” than some say, one finds that the tropes about modernity exist for a reason. There is little doubt that our lives are increasingly fragmenting, deeper and further away from anything embedded and given in life. If we are united with others, it is with disparate profiles around shared interests online, but not much else. Alienation, polarization, and radicalization: these are the terms which we so often reach for to describe our culture and personal relationships.

As we try to cobble together some kind of vision for life and the world, we discover that, in a fragmented culture, spectrums of identity exist for every kind of political, spiritual, and philosophical view known to man. And every time we move up, down, across, or off these spectrums, there is a kind of conversion story. A story about someone joining a traditional religion, someone deconstructing and becoming “spiritual, but not religious,” someone becoming a MAGA populist, a Bernie Bro, a crunchy-homesteader, an anti-capitalist, postliberal, trauma-informed, RedPilled, techno-optimist, gentle parent, etc.

Some of these are belief systems and movements and some are online fads and trends. Yet, in a fragmented culture untethered from deep relationships and traditions, we look for “collective effervescence” wherever we can. As Tara Isabella Burton has argued, practices like wellness and self-care, online fan forums, activism, and both woke and anti-woke ideologies have their own sort of religious meaning and ritual.

But we don’t just wake up one day and decide to become committed members of our preferred in-groups and movements. We convert. Or we at least talk about these experiences as conversions rather than mere stages of development.

That’s what this newsletter is about.

30,000-foot overviews about identity and modernity, such as this, hardly do justice to the phenomena we experience on the ground, 30,000 feet below. On the ground, it looks and feels disorienting. We might find ourselves as passive bystanders to culture—even our own lives—sliding into mind-numbing scrolling and listless entertainment. We wonder why we have no time for hobbies, have stopped going to church, and spend no time with friends. Or we might find ourselves as the horribly curious and informed—constantly foraging for things to refine our ideological views. As kids, if you told us that we would grow up to care so much about entertainment and politics online and so little about seeing friends in person, we probably wouldn’t have believed you, but here we are.

Much of our niche expressiveness and performativity is a result of cultural fragmentation. Without any kind of common vision, we are just as likely to become, for a variety of reasons, secular liberals who listen to NPR and The Daily, or “Musk-eteers,” who “feed off Twitter, podcasts (especially "All-In" and Joe Rogan) and follow independent reporters, led by Bari Weiss, through social media or newsletters.” 

So how do we convert and become committed followers of our favorite ideologues and in-groups?

In David Brooks’ recent work, How to Know a Person, he recounts Vivian Gornick’s 1987 memoir, First Attachments.

Gornick’s story not only captures the kind of grief that results after the death of a spouse but also the grief that results when one’s way of life dies. Gornick’s mother could no longer enjoy the status that made her life happily distinguished. 

When life undoes us, and what distinguishes us is taken away, everything seems helplessly earnest and trite. If we ever feel duped, our disillusionment can make us “primitive and all-encompassing.” We adopt a cool and ironic air—a jaded cynicism toward our past life. Everything and everyone is prone to become props in our dramas.

Many of these dynamics are wrapped up in our conversion stories. Prior to our conversion, we see ourselves as naive pawns. Post conversion, we have “seen the light” and can righteously look at our former affiliations as “sheep,” “bigots,” “woke,” “problematic” (insert your epithet of choice). If they aren’t the problem, they’re part of the problem.

The infamous, ‘Ok…what kind of American are you?,’ scene from Alex Garland’s Civil War not only depicts one of the film's most suspenseful moments, it strikes eerily close to home. It touches on a number of escalating anxieties Americans feel about each other.

Many others have contributed their own theories as to the rise of polarization. In her work on identity politics, Liliana Mason has demonstrated that old divisions, such as Protestant/Catholic and southern/non-southern, have disappeared in American politics. These have been replaced by larger ideological commitments. Derek Thompson has suggested that different voices in new media have prevented us from regaining any sense of a monoculture, Ezra Klein’s Why We’re Polarized seeks to explain polarization from a cognitive standpoint, and Jonathan Haidt has helped cue people into the influence of social media. “The polarization spiral between the left and the right has only gotten more intense in the last three years,” Haidt said in 2022. He goes on to show surveys and data on how people in both parties believe violence against each other is at least “a little justified.” 

As trust in institutions, traditions, and in each other wanes, we search deeper (usually online) for our ideal communities, for enclaves of true believers, for the people who’ve done the research. For the ones who get it. 

While fragmentation is happening everywhere, it is perhaps no more obvious than in media. The ubiquity and hyperconnectivity of digital media has made us more aware of the different kinds of political, spiritual, and cultural identities we can inhabit. We don’t normally refer to ourselves simply as “liberal” or “conservative.” Such terms need to be qualified now more than ever as to what kind of liberal and conservative we are. But it would be wrong to think that media only makes us more aware of different positions. As Derek Thompson observed, 

Thompson elaborates more as to why he thinks people are attracted to consuming this kind of content. What is the psychological reward of defining yourself against the normies? For those who don’t feel like they have status, power, or a theory of how the world works, the polarized vision of us vs. them “gives all of that and more,” Thompson argues.

I think Thompsen’s analysis is largely right. Even if we don’t consciously tell ourselves that “they” are lying to us, we are more likely to assume that someone behind a closed door somewhere has everything figured out. Reality is someone’s master plan. But it’s never ours. 

If every media voice vies for your attention by telling you the other voices are withholding the truth, if distrust and fragmentation are life’s default without some kind of restraint, there may be no end to our psychodramatic conversion experiences. There is always a new pundit or ideologue to help us pull back Oz’s curtain.

As the dogmas to which we subscribe become more peculiar and niche in the face of life’s revelations, we tend to see people where they fall on the spectrum of our subscriptions or identities. Are they in alignment with us, in proximity to us, or are they antithetical to us? 

Deep down, we probably know our labels for each other don’t come close to constituting a whole person; nevertheless, we reduce our past, our friends, family, and colleagues—what little embedded attachments we have left—to props in our dramas. 

Psychodogma is my attempt at investigating the stories we tell about the things we believe and the groups we belong to. As far as I know, Psychodogma is a name I made up. It’s a not-so-clever riff off of “psychodrama” and Dorothy Sayers’s “the dogma is the drama.”

While I don’t wish to be anyone’s autobiographical editor, this work is also my plea to tell our stories in ways that recognize the tragedy and comedy of life—to resist the irony and cynicism that pervade an increasingly fragmented culture.

I have spent the majority of my career working in media. I’ve observed story after story of those jumping back and forth between the identities of late modernity. Over thousands of projects largely surrounding philosophy and theology, I have taken note whenever I see someone’s earnest enthusiasm turn to disaffection and disillusionment.

I’m also not just a bystander—I’ve navigated my own shifting beliefs, both religious and political. I have burned bridges when I shouldn’t have and became a zealous initiate when I knew better. I have drunk deeply of our “age of anxiety and fragmentation,” and have found it wanting. But I know that our stories don’t have to end there.

If you’re interested in examining the stories we tell about the things we believe and the groups we belong to, please consider subscribing and reading along. Here is a list of what is coming next at Psychodogma:

• How Prestige Bias Shapes Our Online Behavior

• Why Tech is Woo

• The Privilege of Cynicism 

• The End of Therapy Speak

• What Crypto Communities Misunderstand About Institutions

• The Glass Ceiling of Performativity Has to Do with Money