[The remarks below sound like a draft for three different articles, jerry-rigged to become one blog post. Since I got stuck writing it, I eventually decided to post the draft. Make of it what you wish!]
Is monotheism necessary for progress? After all, Western modernity started out as a monotheist cultural sphere. Maybe monotheism has certain traits which "prime" people for modernity. There is only one god, only one truth, and hence only one science and only one scientific truth. There is only one government, not 1,000 different petty power centers, and modern society (despite "free speech" and "pluralism") must be relatively homogenous. Hence, only one culture. Indeed, all of the world must become One, using the one science and the one true method of social engineering. Indeed, the entire universe is assumed to be governed by uniform natural laws.
There is a connection between modernity and the Protestant Reformation (which attacked Catholicism for being too polytheist). Of course, at some point Christian monotheism was discarded in favor of Deism, and then atheism. But would progress have happened without monotheism? Not "progress" in general, but the kind of specific progress that lead to Western modernity, a unique civilization in world history. No polytheist culture modernized on its own, without Western influence. Some monotheist cultures didn´t modernize, though. Perhaps monotheism is a necessary but not sufficient condition?
Modernity prides itself on being based on rational thinking. Gradually, the superstitions of the Middle Ages were replaced by science and social engineering. It wasn´t the Wiccans who discovered the germ theory of disease! The world was disenchanted. The Reformation transitioned into the Enlightenment, and then into the modern scientific age. But is modernity really based on rationality? I think it´s obvious that it isn´t. It really is based on the almost proverbial "will to power". This "Faustian impulse" wants unlimited expansion for humanity, or rather a certain portion of it, first to the whole planet, then to the entire universe. Faustian Man becomes the new monotheist god. Modernity becomes both all-knowing, all-powerful and (in some versions) omni-benevolent. Pascal trembled before the vastness of space. Faustian Man wants the vastness of space to tremble before him! He wants to *create* strange new worlds.
This is clearly irrational. Indeed, it´s just another superstitious religion, an immanentized and badly mutated form of Protestant Christianity. Sometimes the similarity is obvious: the Singularity is really the Rapture, the communist classless society really the Millennium. But even in its Social Democratic, centrist liberal or neo-conservative versions, we are clearly dealing with a substitute for the old discarded religion. The Faustians are constantly shadowed by anti-civilization groups which whisper in their ears that Faustian Man is mortal. But even these groups (like Caesar´s slaves) are part of the triumphal march of Progress. Their real function is to "remind" Faustian Man that the only alternative to limitless expansion is apocalyptic destruction - therefore Progress must continue forever! Even the dissidents mimic the dominant paradigm, for instance by trying to get a mass following in the modern metropolises, or by lobbying elite groups that have become thoroughly modernized.
It´s probably true that we wouldn´t be where we are today without this fundamentally irrational Will to Power. But where *are* we today? Had the question been posed a century ago, the answer would have been simple: we are still progressing. In 2022, this is no longer so obvious. And even apart from this, unlimited expansion in time and space is (surprise) impossible. Humans can´t even journey to Mars, let alone leave the solar system. We can´t transcend our "misgendered" biological bodies while on Earth. Very clearly, we can´t live forever. And no, there is no substitute for fossil fuels. Which are a limited resource.
Modernity´s most positive trait - it´s boundless self-confidence - have turned out to simultaneously be its most negative trait, too. Maybe the conceit was "necessary", somehow, but within a century or so, the party will be over. Perhaps it already is. Behind the secular-monotheist facade, society is slowly but steadfastly decomposing into a myriad new "identitites", some old, some new. This postmodernist pseudo-polytheism is clearly a mark of decadence and decline, not classical pagan robustness, and will die together with its host. Can modernity somehow be saved? Perhaps its still possible to draw out its existence, by pragmatic jerry-rigging and a new ideology (we could call its rolemodel Jerry Rigg rather than Faust)...
