Contemporary Industrial Societies - Essay Example

Today Western societies are preoccupied with democracy, liberty, and observance of human rights, which we may tend to view as symbols of modernity. Among other things, these universal concerns are manifested in numerous public debates devoted to the issue of how to harmoniously reconcile interests and demands of groups of people with various world views and cultural traditions in frames of a single social formation. Not surprisingly, the question of ensuring and protection of freedom of religion is one of the chief tasks for any democratic country, each of which may develop its own approach to tackling of this issue. However, what seems to be common for all contemporary democratic industrial societies is their profession of the strict adherence to the secular principles as a practical means of enabling the true religious plurality to exist within a civil society free from intrusion from the side of state. Still, it seems that to say that because of the mentioned situation contemporary industrial societies are completely secular would mean to remain at a somewhat superficial level of penetration into the subject. Indeed, the principles of secular social organisation are apparently quite fitting for demands of democratic way of life, but what about the rich religious heritage that has been forming for millennia in every society, and has penetrated and influenced so many aspects of our being Let us take a closer look at what we can and what we cannot mean by claiming that contemporary industrial societies are secular. First of all, we should point out that the notion of secularism may have different definitions in application to religious life. One of them can be related to the formal organisation of society and state policies that to a large degree are formally devoid of the need to rely upon support of a church or to include religious matters into their scope of competence and action (Bielefeldt 2005, p.11). In frames of this narrow definition, however, religious institutions can still retain a significant influence on state policies if religion continues to constitute an important and visible part of the dominant culture of a society, like is the case for example with the Catholic Church in Italy (Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor 2005). On the other hand, we can think of a wider definition of secularism as the quality of the culture of society in which the general sentiment is shifted towards secular values, and concerns about freedom of religion are mostly limited to the protection of free operation of religious denominations within the civil society (Madsen et al. 2001, pp.15-40). As it usually happens, of course, these two approaches to the definition of secularism are ideal, and in reality there are cases when in a society with traditionally strong religious culture visible grass roots protests against what is felt as an excessive penetration of religion into the everyday life are voiced, as well as there are instances when in a pluralistic society secularised, if we may say so, from the bottom up some state institutions adopt pro-religious policies for certain purposes. Still, I believe that by usage of this dichotomy between the formal secularism and the secularism as a cultural tradition we may better answer our question about the extent of secularisation of contemporary industrial societies. Speaking about social patterns of contemporary industrial societies, to the list of which we include the mentioned type of developed democratic countries, we have to admit that most, if not all, of them subscribe to the principle of secularism as a necessary tool of public policy to manage the increasing complexity of modern social structures which, facing tendencies of globalisation and growing interdependency with the culturally diverse international sphere of activities, in this way are given an opportunity for self-regulation. This secular principle is closely connected with the principle of the separation of church and state, which in its turn is related, but not identical, with the right for the freedom of religion. Indeed, many countries, the United Kingdom among them, have an official religion but guarantee freedom for other religions, and some countries that have no official religion or religions may discriminate against members of religions deemed to lie beyond the mainstream, or even against active atheists. In this way, it is not the exclusion of religion from the consideration that characterises secularism in contemporary industrial societies, but the separation between church and state that is viewed as a consensual and a politically correct way to either procure the protection of state policies and often educational institutions from the interference of religious beliefs, or even to protect religious beliefs themselves from the impact of state policies, which in this case can be quite ironically qualified as pro-religious secularism as long as we remember that in our previous discussion we mostly ascribed to the notion of secularism anti-religious tendencies. So, we can see that from the point of view of formal social institutions contemporary industrial societies can indeed be called secular, but with the important reservation that secularism does not always mean the same thing, and in most cases only delineates spheres of political and religious influence, while at the same time not diminishing the social importance of religion. When considering the definition of secularism as not merely an official policy but a mental quality imbedded into culture of a given society, we enter an ambiguous terrain full of controversial tendencies that may defy a simple answer to our question. What is clear, thought, is that during several last centuries, and even during the last centenary alone, societies undergoing industrialisation have changed so much in their cultural and religious values and world views that what today may seem for many to be completely compatible with religion would be considered secular, or even utterly profane, in the past. To the list of such developments closely connected with the processes of the development of industrial societies we may attribute feminisation, drastic changes in standards of fashion, relaxed attitude to the issues of homosexuality, and many others. So, one of the first conclusions that we can make is that the notion of what a secular society is like is very relative, and is prone to change along with transformations that organised religion has to undergo in order to adapt to the dynamically changing circumstances of the modern world. At the same time, throughout history industrial societies have been powerfully influenced by the expanding scientific knowledge and technological prowess, which, without any doubt, presented the greatest challenge for religion that had to accommodate new world views or risk losing integrity. Truly, it is hardly a coincidence that it was the Western world where rationalised philosophy, industrial revolution, and the conditions for the emergence of atheism that perhaps for the first time in history could completely justify itself appeared (Martin et al. 2005, pp.186-217). Thus, despite the continuing and inevitable presence of religion, contemporary industrial societies may be already considered secular because of the removal of social and cultural mechanisms to compel people to be religious (Jacoby 2004, p.34), which is still a long way to go for many developing countries of the world. But paraphrasing a saying that the universe hates a void, we can suspect that the soul of Homo sapience, who has spent all the previous period of conscious and civilised existence along with religious beliefs, equally can hardly remain vacant. Indeed, many scholars have pointed out that in modern societies where religion has lost its former strength such social institutions and phenomena as science and technology adopt some qualities of religion by promising a better, safer, and happier life for people (Szerszynski 2005). At the same time, while not discounting this interesting and for sure to a certain degree truthful observation I think that there are finer levels on which the substitution of traditional religion with new values occurs in contemporary industrial societies. For one, we may consider the great changes within Western societies caused by the rise of consumer capitalism that shifted emphasis from production to distribution, so that the distributor got a higher role than the manufacturer and the consumer, because the growing production required adequate sales. Therefore, it has become necessary to spur consumption by products replacement, when the notion of obsolescence artificially shortens economic cycles in different markets. As a side effect, to the material concerns of people a new factor of mass concern had been added - the visual confirmation of the social status (Mills 1967). Another related development was the subordination of visual art to the capitalistic institutions. In part, this has been done through sacralisation of the art and isolation it in museums, where works of art serve as modern icons (Howes 2005, pp.318-334). Now, such trends influenced cultural frames of our perception because we almost never perceive the world immediately but rather sense it stereotypically. Thus, design arts that exploit our cultural stereotypes began to be employed for the promotion of sales, which turned the figure of the designer, a modern visual artist at the conjunction of cultural and material spheres of our reality, into the driving force behind consumer capitalism due to her ability to satisfy the mentioned concern about status among consumers. Indeed, the designer creates the magic and almost sacral visual appeal of products that makes them prestigious and satisfies the human striving to worship and get in contact with objects that may be likened to icons and other symbols of religious significance, only with the added function of helping individuals become socially recognised and respected in accordance with certain characteristics of a consumed product (Giddens 1991 p.38). Therefore, even in the sphere of consumption that in industrial societies seems to be purely secular there are processes that approximate it to the realm of religious experiences. With all this said, we can conclude that we can agree with the view that contemporary industrial societies are secular, but we should not forget that as most other things in our world today the notion of secularism is being constantly updated, and is gaining a multitude of meanings even in a formalised political field of application. Besides, the inborn inclination of humans to strive for spiritual experiences and connections with the world works to transform many of the less formalised social phenomena traditionally not associated with religion, such as some schools of psychology or technological developments like Internet and computer games, into activities that in their influence on people are in many ways identical to religion. And who knows, maybe in the not so distant future these areas of activity will also have to be separated from any regulation and external 'secular' influence. Sources Bielefeldt, H. (2005) The Liberal Concept of Political Secularism, University of Oslo, www.humanrights.uio.no/studier/forskerkurs/heiner- bielefeldt--liberal- secularism.pdf (24 July, 2006) Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (2005) Italy - International Religious Freedom Report 2005, U.S. Department of State, http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2005/51560.htm (25 July, 2006) Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Stanford University Press Howes, D. (2005) Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Culture Reader. Oxford: Berg Publishers Jacoby, S. (2004) Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism. New York: Metropolitan Books Madsen, R., Sullivan, W., M., Swidler, A., Tipton, S. M., (Eds.) (2001), Meaning and Modernity: Religion, Polity, and Self. Berkley: University of California Press Martin, D., Heelas, P., Morris, P, (Eds.) (2005), Religion, Modernity and Postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Mills, C., W. (1967) 'Man in the Middle: The Designer', in Mills, C. W. Power, Politics, and People: The Collected Essays of C. Wright Mills, Oxford University Press Szerszynski, B. (2005) Nature, Technology and the Sacred. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Read More