Notes from: The Congregation in a Secular Age by Andrew Root
The Art of Manliness Podcast 8 Jan 2024

We usually define "secularization" as fewer and fewer people going to church, seminaries are closing everywhere, etc. Charles Taylor thinks that's not quite right. Really what's in the DNA of what it is to be a late modern person isn't that people are less affiliated, what it really means is that belief itself becomes contested. One could say that belief is "fragilized." You're very aware that there are people living with different belief systems, and they're functioning okay. Or you're very aware that you can go a long way without really even thinking about which one you believe. You can even hear pastors say things like "I'm taking a break from God for awhile." That you can say that and people don't find it completely incoherent. God becomes a kind of option. And even if you're a nonbeliever or something else, your belief system is fragile. Even unbelief can become fragilized.

Sociologist Hartmut Rosa argues that modern citizens most often locate that good in optionality, speed, and reach, which creates a phenomenon he calls “social acceleration.” If you have enough money, then Tokyo is within reach. It is havable. No Medieval person would ever think that that was even possible, that you could somehow have the world, that you could reach it across time a space so quickly to be able to kind of suck the marrow of its goodness out. Rosa's point is that if we're not really careful, this becomes a deep temptation that boomerangs on us.

We seek stability through growth (and accept embedded growth obligations), which leads to feelings of depression, exhaustion, and discombobulation. We collect possibilities while not knowing what we’re aiming for, and we’ve traded the burden of shoulds for the burden of coulds. Social acceleration has shifted the horizons and significance of time. Time has to be hollowed out to be sped up, and the solution to the ill effects of social acceleration isn’t just slowing down, but finding more resonance.

We're like painters who keep getting our easels set up the right way, buying new paintbrushes, mixing colors, and then mixing them again, and hearing that there's a new kind of paintbrush and going and buying that, and then moving our easel again, and we're all into the various accoutrements of painting but what we never do is paint. So we want to give our kids all these resources, all this access to a good life, but we never tell them what it means to live a good life. The most content it takes on is "live your dream, whatever your dream is." So we're driving around the state for all these activities so that you could live whatever dream you want to in the future. So there's a kind of contentlessness of this.

You carry the burden of living an authentic life that is measured by you yourself.