Authentic Anti-Modernity

It's not doing the opposite of the culture. It's transcending it

Photo by Laura Rivera on Unsplash

It is no secret American culture has gone through radical changes in recent decades. Institutions people thought set in stone have been altered. Social media has made us both more connected and more isolated than ever before and allowed us to silo ourselves in internet echo chambers. Moreover, the culture is rapidly secularizing. Church and family, once thought in many corners to be the bedrock of society, seem to be dwindling to the background.

For some Apostolic Christians this can be very frightening. The idea the world is collapsing in our shift to a more post-modern secular liberal culture has led some people to adopt radical stances explicitly against the cultural changes and focus on one era of the past, like the 1950’s, as the ideal. In Catholicism, this can take the form of certain iterations of radical traditionalism, where individuals may hole themselves up in communities and internet silos that get continuously more extreme in their stances contrary to the liberalization and secularization of the culture. After hanging out with some Orthodox friends, it seems the Orthodox may quite possibly have their own version of rad-trad¹ Catholic young men, in the form of certain Orthobros. Though their stances on certain issues may be different, their mindset is similar.

This fear and reactionary behavior leads to many “traditional” Apostolic Christians who are Catholic or Orthodox, as a friend put it, not because they love Jesus and find the Mass or Divine Liturgy to be the best way to worship him, but because they hate “modernism” or modernity, however they define it. They make sure to do and think whatever the opposite of what the modern secular-liberal culture does. The modern secular-liberal culture prizes democracy. They are monarchists. The modern secular culture praises feminism. They bluntly reject all forms of all feminisms without a hint of nuance and laser focus on St. Paul’s exhortation for wives to submit to their husbands and ignore his command for husbands to die to their wives. The modern secular culture celebrates Pride and sexual and gender identity. They call anyone who experiences same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria “perverse” or a “plague”. The modern secular culture rejects the death penalty. They reject the Church’s consistent life ethic and valorize the death penalty. I could go on, but these behaviors and stances are not Christian fidelity. They are not even authentic anti-modernity, but instead a form of pseudo-anti-modernity, for these people are ultimately still allowing the secular liberal culture dictate their own actions.

As much as I do not want to write about The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand again, for neither Marxism nor Objectivism are at all compatible with Christianity, this novel happens to demonstrate my point the most. In The Fountainhead, we see the architect Howard Roark, the individual, in his struggle against “second-handers”, those who do not innovate, who are unoriginal, who conform and lack integrity. Two such second-handers are Peter Keating and Lois Cook. The fact Peter Keating, an architect, is a second-hander is obvious from the first go; he pilfers Roark’s ideas, never designs anything at all original, deceptively manipulates his way up the career ladder without displaying any real talent in the field of architecture, and, most importantly, behaves in such a way that he is whatever his interlocutors want him to be and never himself. The fact Lois Cook, an author, is a second-hander is less obvious. She rejects societal conventions and deliberately dresses unfashionably. When she meets with Peter Keating to commission him to design her new home, she requests her house defy all architectural conventions of the day and be “ugly”. Her writing is a mockery of English prose. Though unlike Keating, Lois Cook does not apparently externally conform, she is just as much a second-hander as he is, for society’s consensus is still the standard for how she lives her life. Instead of writing books in the popular format and behaving conventionally, she monitors society’s trends to ensure she does the exact opposite and fails to transcend the mindless mass, as Roark does. Through that, she is still internally conforming as much as Peter Keating is.

Those who practice pseudo-anti-modernity are the same. They still use modern society’s conventions as the barometer for their beliefs and then believe the exact opposite. They are just as much second-handers, and modern, in that they let modernity rule their lives and fail to actually transcend the modern secular culture and follow Christ. Moreover, as many of them are acting out of fear due to cultural shifts, it is also a failure to even trust Christ.

If we are to truly not allow the modern secular liberal culture to not rule us, then we must not do its opposite, but transcend it and have faith in the words of Bl. Julian of Norwich that “all shall be well.” I am not out to say social media is the worst thing in the world, for I did experience benefits from it when I used it (I’ve since deleted it and am never going back), but both modern secular liberals and pseudo-anti-moderns seem to be quite interested in fighting out ideology wars online. Rad-trads and Orthobros are known for how much time they spend online, and it is not to their benefit. Spending less time on social media, but really straight up deleting it, is to dissent from the online divisive modern world that has defined the last decade. Those not on social media are not allowing the current cultural milieu to rule their lives. They also have a much easier time recognizing it is the people and events in front of them they should care about the most, and not worry about something weird an old high school friend did a thousand miles away.

Additionally, within a few months of deleting social media, I realized I had gone through a worldview detox. Ideas spread on social media the way gasses diffuse through a room, and we mindlessly inhale them the way we mindlessly inhale the oxygen or carbon monoxide that could have entered our living space. I am a firm believer in intentionally reading articles with views one disagrees with, but there is a difference between that and subconsciously consuming ideas passed on through advertisements and images.

There are some who even take this a step further and have gotten rid of their smartphones, which forces them to engage with others on a personal level, to have in the flesh incarnate experiences with others. These people without smartphones, and I am not one and probably will not be, are the ones who are living in greatest rebellion to our modern world, for how much of modern life requires a smartphone? We have QR code menus at restaurants, we cannot imagine life without Google Maps, Apple Maps, and Waze, we are addicted to having computers in our pockets so we can look up anything we want to whenever we want, and I know my parents like the GPS services on my phone for when I go biking, hiking, or running so they are able to know I have not died. These people who eschew smart phones, however, have learned to prize the real human interpersonal connection of a face-to-face conversations and a life free of binging distractions that modernity has denied us.

Additionally, not falling into the trap of fearing modernity and feeling the need to oppose it in all aspects of our lives requires trust that Christ is in control. When I moved into an apartment to live by myself for a period of time, I was very deliberate in making nailing a Byzantine crucifix on the wall in a perfect spot for a TV and using that space to make an icon wall be one of the first things I did. I have a good friend who once worked in extermination, and he spent a large amount of time in people’s homes viewing people’s living rooms. He described the interior decor of most white American living rooms as set up the way a traditional Roman Catholic church is set up, with all attention directed frontwards toward the altar; however, in these homes, the altar would be the TV. The families who had their living rooms set up so people could hang out and talk were typically either Indian or Catholic. Our technocratic modernity isolates us and removes the spiritual dimension of our lives. How we choose to arrange our living spaces can defy that and recenter us on what is most important. Do we have our spaces arranged for prayer and communion with other individuals?

Unlike being mean on X, formerly known as Twitter, or Reddit, etc, deleting social media, ditching one’s smartphone, and rearranging one’s living spaces are all actions that are done, not words, ideas, or feelings. These are also not the only ways to defy “modernism”, but what the other ways would have in common would be that they do not lie in adopting and opposing ideology, but instead in deliberately choosing to live differently and trust God. It is what we do that ultimately dictates what we believe and who we are.

1. Radical Traditionalist