It's because of the emotional pietism in modern culture, which has been reborn in liberalism and romanticism (and here I mean the 19th century German ideology).
I love when people use terms in their proper way. I feel I could even use the phrase 'fundamentalist' with you and you'd think of that specific school of thought and ethics rather than the common usage (something like fanatic)
They are very much dedicated to emotional-trigger words and God-replacement concepts like 'liberty' and 'love' which, being universally appropriated, are rendered content-less beyond some general cultural trend.
Love has been drained more than any other concept. Liberty suffers too, more at the hands of extremist liberals than anything ironically enough...
The point of that paragraph being that people have FAITH in democracy, egalitarianism, 'science', 'love' and so forth but do not deploy them as concepts so much as psychological reactions and associational cues.
But X presidential\prime ministarial canitate will save us. He will bring CHANGE! He is FOR US! His policies? What do I care about his policies. He Cares for us man! He supports our policies!
That kind of thing, and the fact that 'spreading democracy' has lead to the encumbrance of horribly radical Islam in the new 'democracies' we're supposed to celebrate really annoys me.
Any attempt to deal with these concepts logically and analytically irritates and confuses them because it draws out their insubstantiality. Like any worshipper of idols they are twice of defensive of imaginary, human-pleasing Gods as they are of the Lord.
Yes, well said.
I'm not trying to demonize-by-psychologizing here, but this is a real tendency even in people who are dedicated Christians. This is why we have so many doctrinally conservative Christians who can't differentiate righteousness from the Republican Party; they're trying to run two incompatible religions at once.
Yeah. Media is a powerful tool to promote group think among much larger groups than was possible in the past. We've got to stand on our personal presuppositions rather than the ones culture tells us to stand on. We stand on scripture, on Jesus Christ Our Lord.
But that rabbit trail leads very far from modern ideals in the long run.