(I'm on a new kick. Over the next few weeks, I want to explore a topic which has previously caught my attention, but had never thought to write on. I'm still in the process of reading and note taking, which could mean I would cancel the whole idea after further exploration. But I don't think that is likely; there are too many trails already laid out which beckon the hiker in me. So without further ado, I’ll plunge ahead. Fools rush in, as they say.
You’ve heard them and read them. Doubtless you’ve told them. They are stories familiar to us, and the characters we know by name: Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, Sleeping Beauty. And if we have read these or other fairy tails, we are also acquainted with a peculiarly fairy-tale predicament - to be under a spell.
In fairy tales this is a serious problem. Everyone rushes to the spellbound person, but no one is able to end the enchantment. Only later in these stories do we learn the secret of breaking the spell. In the meantime, the poor man, woman, or child is in the clutches of whomever the spell-caster was.
This phenomenon is not limited to fairy tales, of course. In the movie The Matrix, the protagonist learns that people throughout the world are living a staged existence, fooled into believing that all is normal, when in fact they are prisoners of the Matrix.
It would be tempting at this point to say that, fortunately, we all are free from such a fate. But that would not be the truth. There is another spell at work, even now, even as you read this sentence.
The name of this spell is variously stated and debated, but one stands out by virtue of its extensive appearances. This is a spell called the “Social Imaginary.”
The Social Imaginary is a phrase coined by Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor in his book, A Secular Age. According to Taylor, the social imaginary is a way of constructing meaning and significance without any reference to the divine or that which is transcendent. It is the set of assumptions by which unbelieving people live their lives, without any conscious need for God. It is a world without windows, an “indoor” experience of life where there is no outdoors to be seen.
The roots of this social imaginary can be traced back to thinkers whose writings have exerted a huge influence on our Western culture over the past two hundred years. A Charles Darwin. A Sigmund Freud. A Karl Marx. And there are additional voices which have carried their ideas forward first to universities, and then in the life and institutions of society.
What each of these figures brought to the table of human discourse varies; but their cumulative effect has been to imagine a world without God - where life began on an entirely natural basis; where morality is simply the product of society, often arbitrary and over-authoritative; and where meaning and significance can only be found within each individual as we are guided by our own desires.
This is the social imaginary which invisibly binds many. This is the spell which exists to this day.
But it is not the case that people live by these assumptions because they have been personally chosen or logically deduced. It is called a social imaginary for a reason. It is a story inferred from a series of assertions about life, humanity, and God. Its familiarity renders it invisible. Its utility lies in the fact that it presents a version of life where fulfillment and happiness can be found without any God to interfere in our affairs. And that utility has made it a household essential.
It is this “faith” which fascinates me enough to attempt to articulate its main dogmatic points. If we were to spell out the various assumptions which maintain the social imaginary of our secular world, what would they be? And for what purpose should we even bother to examine it?
The answer to the latter is not as partisan as we might expect. The nature of the social imaginary is such that, though it binds many, it has the influence to affect all of us. It’s the air which we breathe. It’s the ocean on which we are afloat. And it can be as invisible to us as it is to the world.
And it’s coming soon to an email notification close to you.