SELF-HATRED, SELF-PROMOTION, AND OIKOPHOBIA

 

 

 

The Ex-Muslim and atheist, Salmon Rushdie, wrote something that reflects our self- hating culture:

·       Consider the following headline: “Mississippi: Atheist faces execution for insulting Jesus on Facebook”.

 

·       The alert reader will immediately recognize this as a piece of fake news. Which it is. I made it up myself.

 

·       But it’s based on a real headline. The recent headline reads as follows: “Nigeria: Atheist faces execution under sharia for insulting Muhammad on Facebook.”

 

Rushdie reasons:

 

·       Now, if it was true, the first headline would elicit universal outrage. It would be front-page news in all the major Western newspapers, and the lead story on the evening news. CNN, NBC, and the BBC would spin the story as a typical example of Christian bigotry. https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/western-media-downplay-ignore-islams-violent-reactions-to-blasphemy?utm_source=LifeSiteNews.com&utm_campaign=fb348b8640-Daily%2520Headlines%2520-%2520U.S._COPY_763&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_12387f0e3e-fb348b8640-401443397

 

Why does this entirely unbalanced and hypocritical reporting characterize mainstream media? Let’s back up a bit. Hated of one’s own culture now seems to be an entrenched and “politically correct” part of the Western worldview – “The West is the worst!” Evidence for this abounds, along with the invention of a proliferating assortment of micro-aggressions, all focused on Western misdeeds. For example, a recent ad for tacos had “culturally appropriated” Mexican dress with sombreros and Mexican accents. However, if this ad had been the work of Western non-Mexicans, the ad-makers would have been charged with “cultural mis-appropriation.” But this ad came out of Japan, where it experienced no backlash whatsoever.

 

Western elites seem to hate the West. This was noted by the former Pope Benedict XVI:

 

·       “This…illustrates a peculiar western self-hatred that is nothing short of pathological. It is commendable that the West is trying to be more open, to be more understanding of the values of outsiders, but it has lost all capacity for self-love. All that it sees in its own history is the despicable and the destructive; it is no longer able to perceive what is great and pure…Multiculturalism, which is so constantly and passionately promoted, can sometimes amount to an abandonment and denial, a flight from one’s own heritage.” (Quoted by Jean Bethke Elshtain, First Things, March, 2009, 36)

 

Using the rationale of “inclusion” and “diversity,” Western scholars have so consistently deconstructed the West, that it is rare to find anyone teaching at a Western university who praises the West. As a result, their students have often committed themselves to radically changing their culture by importing non-Western cultural elements. Sometimes, they accept or even endorse violent change, having been convinced that our “evil” culture deserves to be swept away.

 

Why this dangerous “flight from one’s own heritage?” Some have identified the fatal flaw as our need to feel superior, morally worthier than others. If there had been invading armies at our doorstep, it would be natural to believe that we were the righteous party, and this would have served to unite the country against the common threat. However, where there is no awareness of a common threat, especially when affluence reins, it has been observed that society begins to turn against itself and to identify those parties that are morally inferior.

I just learned of a new term that embraces this phenomenon – “oikophobia,” the hatred of one’s own home or society. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOyD69-ghd0&t=674s&fbclid=IwAR3rZxsjb8CuX8vgp74FJp6RxtK6b5pNjEIu9Vf4jYkHWsvluTf78-jqZiU

 

This video makes the point that “oikophobia” (the love of foreign cultures instead of one’s own) are also forms of “virtue-signaling,” the demonstration that our virtue exceeds that of our fellow-countrymen.

 

Swedish scholar Benedict Beckold argues that oikophobia is predictable and foretells the death of a society, as its internal squabbles undermine any unified effort to address its problems. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hslPNjqcXMk:

 

·       [Oikophobia] reveal[s] a civilization that has stopped believing in itself, that hates itself, and that is therefore unwilling to defend the values of individual freedom, democracy, and scientific and scholarly skepticism that have been handed down to us since antiquity. We are all familiar with this phenomenon, and every single day brings news stories in which oikophobia is involved. To mention just a couple among literally thousands of clearly oikophobic incidents of recent times: this past July the San Francisco School Board voted to remove a mural of George Washington from one of its public schools because of its purported racism; the group leader of American volunteer teachers in Africa some years ago informed the volunteers that residing in a foreign culture had taught her that the United States deserved the 9/11 terrorist attacks because of U.S. foreign policy...Actions and statements of this kind have become perfectly commonplace by now, and we all know about them, but most people cannot explain why things are this way. How can it have come to such cultural self-hatred? The answer lies in an oft-repeated historical process that takes a society from naïve and self-promoting beginnings to self-contempt and decline.

 

According to Beckold, oikophobia is a predictable outcome once a society becomes affluent and comfortable:

 

·       So oikophobia is a natural outgrowth of the way cultures, and certainly Western cultures, develop. It occurred in ancient Greece, in Rome, in the French and British empires, and now in the United States. https://quillette.com/2019/10/07/oikophobia-our-western-self-hatred/

 

Is this process of self-aggrandizement and decay inevitable? Almost! It seems that we have been designed with a quest for self-mastery. Just look at the zeal of children as they begin to walk and acquire new skills! However, our conscience begins to kick-in and we become aware of our selfishness and self-centeredness, instead of other-centeredness. However, in our quest to fulfill ourselves, we ignore and suppress our feelings of guilt and shame. These painfully condemn us to such an extent that we feel as if God Himself is condemning us.

How do we live with these life-controlling feelings? If we do not confess our sins to God and experience His forgiveness, these feelings will become so intense that they will coerce us to cover them up with positive affirmations, accolades, successes, and joining an idealistic cause to prove our worthiness against the assaults of guilt and shame. Our feelings of unworthiness and impending condemnation can become so intense that we might practice self-deprivation and even self-punishment (cuttings, burnings) to, at least momentarily, restore our feelings of worthiness:

 

·       The physical pain of cutting not only diffuses negative emotion, but it can also create a sense of calm and relief. Because it works almost instantly, cutting is highly reinforcing—some even say addictive. Individuals who cut describe the sensation as an escape or a release of pressure, similar to how people suffering from bulimia describe purging.  https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-be-yourself/201610/self-injury-4-reasons-people-cut-and-what-do

 

It is estimated that 20% of women and 14% of men practice self-harm. Why would cutting release pressure? Why wouldn’t spending money or taking a walk suffice? Could it be that we know that we deserve punishment and therefore punish ourselves? When asked why they self-harm, many claim “I dunno!..after I cut, I felt better.” https://aeon.co/essays/how-self-harm-provokes-the-brain-into-feeling-better

 

Research affirms the sense of relief that many experience:

 

·       People who self-harm, writes [Carrie] Arnold, have “learned that, while the pain peaks with self-injury, it then comes down the other side. The physical pain lessens – as does the emotional pain.” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/theres-scientific-reason-why-self-harm-makes-some-people-feel-better-180953062/

 

However, when we accidentally cut ourselves, we usually don’t feel relief. Why then would the “cutter” feel relief? Evidently, the relief derived from cutting is not strictly biochemical. There is also a psychological component that informs us that we deserve punishment. Therefore, when we punish ourselves, we feel that the price self-atonement has been paid. However, the relief is only temporary, like a drug fix. Why? Cutting and drugs do not address the underlying psychological problem.

 

What is this underlying problem? Alienation for the Creator, who wired our pesky conscience with its feelings of guilt, shame, and condemnation! From a Christian perspective, we need to listen to these feelings. Our temporal feelings and relationships mirror higher things – our relationship with God and our eternal fate.

 

If this analysis is correct, then God has given us our conscience to call us into a loving and eternal relationship with Him. This is what the Cross is about. Christ died for us, proving His love and assuring us that He will accept us if we simply acknowledge what we already know in our heart – that we are sinners who need a Savior.

 

Instead, the Western rejection of the God, who had once elevated the West, has made the auto-immune response of Oikophobia and its self-contempt almost inevitable.

 

 

Our Absurd Attempts to Fill the Emptiness

The French mathematician and philosopher Rene Pascal had observed that we have a God-shaped vacuum within, which demands to be filled, and God promises to intimately fill it:

• I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the LORD… I will plant her for myself in the land; I will show my love to the one I called 'Not my loved one.' I will say to those called 'Not my people,' 'You are my people'; and they will say, 'You are my God.'" (Hosea 2:19-20, 23)

King David also anticipated this eternal and divine filling of the vacuum:

• You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand. (Psalm 16:11)

Closer still, looking towards this salvation, we can savor the presence of our Savior:

• Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls. (1 Peter 1:8-9)

However, it is not just Christians who long for this painful emptiness to be filled. Rather, the entire history of humankind testifies that we have been desperately trying to fill the void by proving our significance or worth. We have sought money, power, accomplishments, influence, and popularity in a futile attempt to fill the vacuum.

Perhaps there is no sight quite as ludicrous as humanity in pursuit of something – some recognition, house or piece of clothing – that will satisfy but never finding it. Yes, we find it for a few moments, but then, again dissatisfied, we hunger for more. When the richest man of the world was asked, “How much more money will you need to be happy,” he answered, “Always a little bit more!” Such satisfaction is always elusive.

In The Significant Life, attorney George M. Weaver provides many examples of the absurdity of our quest for self-importance to fill the crying vacuum:

• Salvador Dali once said, “The thought of not being recognized [is] unbearable”…Lady Gaga sings, “I live for the applause, applause, applause…the way that you cheer and scream for me.” She adds in another song, “yes we live for the Fame, Doin’ it for the Fame, Cuz we wanna live the life of the rich and famous.” (7)

Writer Gore Vidal had been very transparent about this:

• “Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.” (58)

Clearly, this drive for significance tears at friendship, dividing apart instead of bringing together. Comedian Al Jolson had also reflected our pathetic condition:

• According to his biographer, “He once had a team of performing elephants fired because he thought the audience liked them too much.” (59)

For some, the closest they can come to immortality is the acclaim of the crowd. Even the fantastically successful never outgrow this quest. Napoleon laughably boasted:

• There is no immortality but the memory that is left in the minds of men… History I conquered rather than studied.” (12)

People attempt to fill the vacuum of insignificance in many different ways, even those who seem to have made it. Weaver cites President Lyndon B. Johnson as an example of this:

• According to one commentator, “It is a curious footnote to history that long before he ran into trouble, Johnson had turned central Texas into a living monument to his heritage and his journey to the summit (the L.B.J birthplace, the L.B.J. boyhood home, the L.B.J. state park, the L.B.J. ranch and more).” (22)

If the vacuum had been created to be satisfied only by a divine relationship – a relationship with our Maker and Savior - filling the vacuum on our own is merely another form of masturbation.

Our attempt to fill the vacuum can appear even more absurd:

• In 2005 Joseph Stone torched a Pittsfield, Massachusetts apartment building… After setting the blaze, Stone rescued several tenants from the fire and was hailed as a hero. Under police questioning, Stone admitted, however, that he set the fire and rescued the tenants because, as summarized at trial by an assistant district attorney, he “wanted to be noticed, he wanted to be heard, he wanted to be known.” (44)

Evidently, this drive for significance is so powerful that it can overrule the moral dictates of conscience. One mass-murderer gunman explained in his suicide note, “I’m going to be f_____ famous.” (45)

How pathetic but also how human! Some have the resources to pursue significance in a socially approved way; others do not. Is there really much of a difference between these two groups?

This drive for significance can even override all other considerations. On December 8, 1980, Mark David Chapman, a zealous fan of the Beatle, John Lennon, first obtained his idol’s autograph before gunning him down. He explained:

• “I was an acute nobody. I had to usurp someone else’s importance, someone else’s success. I was  ‘Mr. Nobody’ until I killed the biggest Somebody on earth.” At his 2006 parole hearing, he stated: “The result would be that I would be famous, the result would be that my life would change and I would receive a tremendous amount of attention, which I did receive… I was looking for reasons to vent all that anger and confusion and low self-esteem.” (47)

Absurd? To the max! But are we more rational? Superficially, we might look better than others, but are we really better? Both groups are narcissistically pursuing an impossible goal and have rejected a God who has promised to elevate us in a way that only He can. Instead, we have opted to go our own way, even if it means addiction to things that cannot satisfy. Perhaps we are all Mark David Chapmans struggling to fill the vacuum with whatever the available means, even if it means social disapproval:

• More than two hundred people confessed in 1932 to the kidnapping and murder of the infant son of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh. (50)

The need for self-importance is so powerful that people are willing to pay almost any price for it. However, observing the meaninglessness of this pursuit, some have converted this absurd quest into a quest for virtue. It might take the form of a moral-crusader.

The religious leadership of Jesus’ day also sought to fill the vacuum, but with impressive religious displays instead of the real thing – the unshakable love that comes from God, the source of all being and self-definition, the one who can definitively tell us who we are and affirm it. Jesus continually exposed the do-gooder perversion:

• "Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full… And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full.” (Matthew 6:1-2, 5)

Instead of courting God, they courted the approval of man to their own detriment. While God offered us an eternal marriage where we would find fullness of joy, we rejected this offer for the immediate but fleeting esteem of man.

What if we considered our pathetic condition - pursuing things that can never satisfy but enslave and addict? What if we were able to see that our absurd strivings are universal? Perhaps we might see that we have lost our way.

Adam and Eve lost their way. They had sinned and refused to confess it. Instead, they took matters into their own hands and thought they could escape God’s scrutiny and cover their shame with fig leaves. We have been doing this ever since. However, our fig leaves are dollars, PHDs, possessions, and recognition. Should we not instead be asking:

• How can I escape my jail of meaningless striving? How is it that humanity is characterized by the same futility? Is there any remedy? What must I do to connect with the Savior? What response does He want from me?

According to the Bible, the way up is the way down, humbling ourselves to confess our sins, recognizing that we are utterly incapable of filling our own vacuum. Here’s how the Apostle John put it:

• If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives. (1 John 1:8-10)

Confessing our sins is also to confess that we are unable to fill our vacuum. When we humble ourselves in this manner, He will lift us up.

Sweden and the Costs of Self-Promotion

When trying to prove that atheism is fruitful, atheists appeal to the “atheistic” country of Sweden for support. (Obviously, they can’t invoke the militant atheistic communist nations!) That’s why I was delighted to meet an engaging Swedish woman at a hostel in Krakow, Poland, who I assaulted with a series of questions.

She quickly dismissed that assertion that Sweden was atheistic, affirming that most Swedes believe in God even though they aren’t church-goers. Nevertheless, she acknowledged that the Christian faith was continuing to shrink away from the Swedish public arena. Even though not a Christian, she acknowledged that the public disappearance of the faith was associated with the growth of social ills:

• The youth have been taught to think that they are #1 and that they can do all things. Consequently, they can’t deal with setbacks.

She explained that their unrealistically high expectations have not prepared them for failure. Besides, failure undermines the very foundation of their self-concept and therefore, it is too painful to endure. It boldly tells them that they are not superior.

This made me think that Sweden was not very much different from the rest of the West, although it might have played a pioneering role. But why do we find this tendency so prevalent in the West?

It seems that when a culture minimizes God, a vacuum is created – a vacuum that needs to be filled. If the West can no longer rely on God, what then can it rely on if not the self! If God is no longer the answer to our hopes, then we are forced to pick up the reigns. Our dreams and hopes must now be fulfilled by us.

While this “captain of my ship” orientation is greatly esteemed, the costs are seldom considered. Yes, there are costs! My Swedish friend noted a few of them – alienation, loneliness, and the breakdown of community.

However, at first glance, there seems to be no causal link between these social ills and believing in oneself. It would seem that self-trust and self-esteem might even provide some extra confidence in navigating the threatening waters of social interaction, but this might not be the case. A study performed in the U.S. about 18 years ago found that only 10% admitted that they lacked a friend to whom they could share their innermost concerns. When the survey was repeated 15 years later, that percentage had climbed to 25%, despite higher reported levels of self-esteem.

What can account for such a troubling upturn? Self-esteem costs! When we attempt to fill the God-vacuum, we have to deny and suppress disturbing truths about ourselves. These truths clearly tell us we are not gods and can’t trust in ourselves. Instead, we fight an ongoing battle against our perceptions in order to believe the unbelievable about ourselves. It becomes too painful to acknowledge that we have weaknesses and failings that we have not been able to overcome. Consequently, we suppress the painful and accentuate those things that bring us psychological comfort.

This is not guesswork. Many surveys have demonstrated that the mentally “healthy” live lives of self-delusion. For instance, in one study, the subjects were asked to rate themselves according to numerous characteristics. Then others who knew the subject well rated him. The subject’s rating was almost always higher than those who knew him best.

How would a heightened self-image affect relationships and alienation? Here are several thoughts:

1. If we are in a constant battle to define our artificially high self-image, we might feel threatened by how others would regard us and isolate ourselves. Defensiveness interferes with relationship formation.

2. It is hard to relate to someone who doesn’t share the same reality, namely, our self-image. This would produce dissonance and consequently, social isolation. Just think of the problems trying to relate to someone who thinks that they are the next Einstein.

3. When someone is engaged in trying to heighten their self-esteem, we will either feel coerced into helping them or we will also feel the need to prove ourselves in face of such arrogance.

4. If we feel superior to others, we will not value them sufficiently.

5. In contrast, humility is self-accepting and non-coercive. It esteems the other. It also allows our associate to lay down his guard and to be himself.

It is hard to play God. It also seems to be costly. We are not equipped to play God but rather to be the beneficiary of His mercy. Therefore, Jesus warned:

• “For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Luke 18:14)

Consequently, to reject God is to reject ourselves and the hope of real attachments and community.