The following is lengthy re-view, but well worth the read!
Professor Herberg was a man of genius before his time! He wrote this book in 1951, published it in 1959. The book is still on the readers list in many Jewish Academies. He was a mastermind in the understanding the evolutionary process of man, a mastermind in theology, a great thinker and philosopher, a man of deep emotion and profound truth. Much of his writings brought tears of sadness to my eyes because of how his prophetic words, sadly, still stand true to this day.
In describing Modern Mans Attempt to finding the Absolute, I give you here, an excerpt of seven paragraphs taken from chapter four:
DELUSIVE SECURITY: THE SUBSTITUTE FAITHS OF OUR TIME
The Burden of the earlier chapters has been to indicate "What man has made of man," what modern man has made of himself and the conditions of his existence. The account, however summarily put, adds up to a fundamental criticism of modernity.
In his effort to refashion himself and the world in autonomous terms, modern man has disrupted the age-old continuities of life -- religion, the family, the community -- and has reduced the individual to a forlorn, fragmentary existence in which he is no more than an insignificant cell in the vast impersonal organism of society. He has drained the universe of value and this deprived himself of all possibility of finding a secure anchorage in reality for the ideas and purposes that constitute significant human life. He has maneuvered himself into a position where the basic and irreducible realities of human existence -- will, personality, freedom -- simply make no sense in his philosophy. In short, modern man no longer possesses any unity or orientation in life. He stands lost, bewildered, unable to understand himself or to master the forces of his inner and outer life. Despairingly, he confronts a universe that is bleak, empty and hostile: "a stranger and afraid, in a world [he] never made."
But life without orientation, existence without unity or meaning, is ultimately impossible, and so modern man strives desperately to relate himself to some overall principle or power that promises to provide spiritual security and yet not violate the basic presuppositions of his thought. This enterprise cannot prove successful; it is doomed to failure precisely because it refuses to make the basic challenge to modern culture, and in its failure it but deepens the spiritual crisis it cannot allay.
Many are the ways in which men endeavor to achieve the unity and meaning they must have in order to live. They may identify themselves with some larger whole -- such as nation, class or race -- and, by absolutizing that, strive to give universal validity to their fragmentary lives. Or they may place their faith in some man or movement to relieve them of the increasingly intolerable burden of existence. Or again they may see the promise of deliverance in some doctrine or idea that somehow holds out the hope of fulfilment without seriously calling into question current prepossessions and prejudices. Perhaps the most influential of contemporary faiths cherished by modern man are those that look to science, psychoanalysis and
*Marxism for salvation.
(* note: In paragraph 8 of this chapter, of which I did not include here, Professor Herberg goes on to say that Marxism was a most potent religion of modern times, but it is a religion that has failed most disastrously. I have provided a link for further study on Marxism, if your curiosity should take you there. )
The science to which men of today look with such hope is not science as a theoretical system but science as a wonder-working technology, the science that has given mankind the airplane, the radio, penicillin and the atom bomb. It is this science that, in the fervid imagination of its publicity men and devotees, promises to usher in the "world of tomorrow" in which all the tasks of life will be performed by their appropriate devices and man left free to fill his vacuous existence with mechanized entertainment. The utopia displayed so luxuriously in the advertising pages of the "slick" magazines may seem too stupid for criticism, but let us not forget that it is but the logical culmination of the view of life that underlies the modern outlook and constitutes the dominant motif in contemporary culture -- the conception of the good life as simply and solely a life of carefree ease amidst material plenty. It is this conception which has led us to exalt large-scale industrialism and to accept as normal the thing-centered, gadget-ridden culture in which we live.
The idolization of scientific technology, which pervades so much of our thinking, has deeper roots than we know or imagine. It has been noted more than once that in the lower recesses of the mind -- ye, of the "modern" mind -- the laboratory scientist takes on the shape of the archetypal wizard or miracle man who has at his disposal the magical means of solving our problems and relieving us of all the difficulties of life. This unconscious imagery, compounded with the popular philosophy of scientism, to which reference was made in the last chapter, expresses itself on the conscious level in an attitude that regards all problems of life to be, at bottom, merely
technical problems capable of solution simply by the application of "scientific method." That ends and values lie in a realm beyond positive science, whose usefulness is limited to devising means for ends already established, and that therefore the fundamental problems of life are in their very nature incapable of scientific solution, is something that seems to be utterly incomprehensible, as much to the modern-minded pragmatist philosopher as to the modern-minded votary of the prefabricated life.
The cult of science is obviously a delusion. It means more of the same thing that has driven mankind into the ghastly predicament in which it finds itself today: further depersonalization, further stultification of man's aspirations toward a worthy and significant existence. Science may prove an invaluable servant, but when it turns master and savior, it inevitably becomes a brainless mechanical monster, imperiling life.
Note: Hence the thread from a previous date: "Does God want to turn us into Borgs?" (A thread, that poses the possibility of becoming over dependant on the machine, in "todays" system of gadets and gizmos. ) Which proves the case ... ignorance is bliss. And so I ask, would it be best to leave it as such, and let the bliss continue to have it's place in the minds of the few?
Each time I read this book, I can't put down. On many occasion, it has been deserving of intensive re-view. I just love it!
