https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/reflections/2021/04/the-very-devil-of-a-thing-to-comprehend/
If you haven’t heard of Cardi B, the rapper responsible for a sexually graphic hit that earned her a meeting with a fawning Joe Biden immediately before the recent US election, there is little chance another rising star will elicit a nod of recognition. This one goes by name of Lil Nas X and he has taken things to a whole new level. In this case, a level of Hell, and I mean that literally. A self-described children’s performer, Lil Nas X — real name Montero Lamar Hill— has recently released a music video of himself sliding down a stripper’s pole to perform sexual acts upon the Devil, seated upon his satanic throne (above). For this he has been praised by academics.
The question is, how have we come to this point as a culture, and in particular a Western nation? A time when—just as in ancient Israel—someone like the Biblical prophet Isaiah could lament those in his day who call evil good and good evil, who traded darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter (Isaiah 5:20). The answer is somewhat complex.
In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote a book called, The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud. Rieff’s thesis was that the West had rejected God and in His place sought to create a society where the individual was liberated to indulge in the freedom of one’s own sensuality as an integral part of the pursuit of personal happiness. However, with the ‘therapeutic’ replacing the transcendent moral order traditionally provided by religion, this has only led to the triumph of what I refer to as “therapeutic totalitarianism”.
Just over 50 years after Rieff’s work was published, we’re starting to perceive ever more clearly the bitter fruit of such a Prometheanism endeavour, i.e. the idea than the individual human has unlimited and godlike potential to re-create the world to accord with one’s own passions and desires. For an excellent analysis and contemporary application of Reiff’s work, see Carl. R. Trueman’s, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism and the Road to Sexual Revolution. Another, even more prescient contribution in this regard is Rod Dreher’s, Live Not By Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents (Sentinel, 2020). Dreher explores how “the menace of totalitarianism” is still a very real threat to Western society. As he explains:
The term totalitarianism was first used by supporters of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, who defined totalitarianism concisely: “Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” That is to say, totalitarianism is a state in which nothing can be permitted to exist that contradicts a society’s ruling ideology.