Before we discuss what it might mean to adopt Thanatism as your personal faith, I think we must first address a key question–why adopt a faith at all? I mean, traditional faiths have had a somewhat mixed record throughout history, and people are leaving them in droves. Perhaps the idea of any faith, even one grounded as firmly in reality as Thanatism, is but a quaint idea from a bygone era.
I’m actually hugely sympathetic to this line of thinking, and I suspect it’s probably the biggest reason someone would decline to join us. The biggest problem I see with this line of thought, however, is that without considering these matters deeply, you’ll end up participating in the default faith of your society. Those of us who have grown up in the increasingly secular societies of the world might challenge this notion, but I would argue that there is actually an incredibly strong, yet seldom discussed faith that has gained a massive foothold in societies both religious and secular. If we were to create a Greek labeling for this faith as I’ve done with Thanatism, I believe we might rightly call it “Ergonism” or in English, “Workism”.
Ergonism tells us that we must find our meaning as humans through our work. It is espoused by parents and governments of all faiths and dispositions and implicitly adopted (or at least attempted) by most all of us. Although there is no doubt that humans derive a great deal of meaning from work, I believe that we’ve developed a culture where we actually invent work that doesn’t really need to be done for the sake of perpetuating the faith of Ergonism. Given how valuable meaning is to us as humans, there is little doubt that this unreflective pursuit of meaningless work has resulted in a great deal of human unhappiness, and as such, might merit some reevaluation.
To begin to understand how Ergonism has developed, I’d like to look briefly at how work has changed throughout history. When we, as humans, lived in the fertile tropics of this world as hunter gatherers, depending on what you classify as work, we worked about 20-40 hours a week. As we settled down into agrarian societies, the resultant population explosion resulted in us working more and in more specialized ways. And during our rapid industrialization and colonization of the world, our population growth and insatiable love of property and material wealth led to near limitless work.
What about the 21st Century though? Populations throughout industrialized economies are actually shrinking. We have conquered and inhabited nearly every habitable place on earth. Advances in technology have radically increased our productivity and in fact increasingly render entire swaths of our economies functional with minimal human effort. In response to this, surely humans have learned to relax and enjoy our newly built technological paradise?
One would think so, but one would be wrong. Most humans work as much now, if not more, than they ever have. The question is why? Although there are no doubt many reasons, I believe one of the most important is that our social and personal values are still determined by our level of productivity. In other words, we’ve worked to create work, so that we may each justify our existence to others and ourselves.
This is Ergonism left unchecked, and although it may or may not be a good faith, I would argue that in general, we haven’t chosen it, but rather have inherited it unthinkingly. And that’s the point. No one is without the core beliefs that act as a faith in their lives. We don’t get the option to be faithless. The only question is whether we’ve ever stepped far enough outside ourselves to recognize our current faith for what it is and to weigh it against the alternatives.
So as you get up this morning, and you ship your children off to be raised by state-funded institutions, while you and your partner go on your separate ways for the majority of your day to accomplish tasks that are ever less relevant to our collective survival, I might ask you to consider what faith drives your life and whether you might want to consider an alternative. I certainly wouldn’t claim that Thanatism will free you from this somewhat inhuman existence, but I will tell you that it will create the spiritual space for you to consider what you’re doing and why. And perhaps in that space, you individually, and perhaps should enough of us look frankly at our own mortality, we collectively, will at least be able to consider our alternatives.