From Ken Francis, journalist and author of The Little Book of God, Mind, Cosmos and Truth, at New English Review:
The atheist Karl Marx—whose belief in moral autonomy and non-belief in Hell was his opium—said that religion was the opium of the people. But nowadays, it seems technology, consumerism and opiates have replaced that for many.
But, Francis says, they do nothing to alleviate boredom.
Another philosopher, Martin Heidegger, renowned for his bleak writings, wasn’t optimistic about boredom and the technological age. He believed we might be stuck in the darkest night for the rest of human history. But some of his solutions to this problem are weak if not transient and ultimately in vain.
He encouraged getting involved in local concerns and other meaningful events; things like friendship, backpacking into the wilderness, running, drinking the local wine with friends (he might’ve been onto something with the latter!), and dwelling in the presence of works of art. All these practices are marginal precisely because they are not efficient.
But without God, they are not only marginal, they are ultimately meaningless. Even Heidegger, deep down, seems to have been aware of this. In an interview with Spiegel, in 1966, he spoke of the dangers technology poses to our civilization: He said: “Philosophy will not be able to bring about a direct change of the present state of the world. This is true not only of philosophy but of all merely human meditations and endeavours. Only a god can still save us.”More.
See also: Terry Scambray: Fascism is simply a branch of communism
and
History prof talks to Michael Medved about the evolutionary roots of Nazism Of course Nazism is rooted in a Darwinian view of life. Few things are easier to demonstrate. But it is one of those fact bases that get howled down by people who don’t want to confront where their philosophy of life has been and can so easily return.