“We must recognize that we face a great contest. At stake is the understanding of personal identity that supplies moorings for the conservative virtues, and lies at the root of any distinctively Western tradition” (Abraham Joshua Heschel, 1907–1972)
Cultural Marxism is the foundational paradigm for individuals endeavouring to center their identities on a humanist refabrication of the original model. In the present anti-religious social landscape, personal identity derived from traditional religious or biological principles is no longer fashionable.
Instead, identity is sought through populist ideologies such as race, sex-gender, political tribalism, victimhood movements, New Age paganism, and scientific humanism – all in the name of a relativist version of “social justice.” However, “social justice” – the war-cry of identity activists – cannot impart personal identity. The reason is that “social justice” is a nuanced, fabricated, ideology; free of constraint and detached from a definitive moral authority.
To the contrary, meaningful identity is an inalienable natural law principle. Even so, the established source of identity – that of humankind made in the image of their Creator – is considered superfluous by today’s ideologues. The latter propose instead that humanity, and its society, requires to undergo a process of technological, political, ideological, and religious re-creation – one that will remedy supposed defects in the original model – and more properly reflect the progressive agenda.
For instance, the ideology of critical race theory, as an iteration of the social justice cause, promotes emergence of a romanticised anti-racist individual. Race theory thus represents a form of personal and social utopianism. To disagree with race theory proponents is to be labelled a racist. Denial becomes paradoxical as the more vehemently one denies being a racist, the more racist one appears to be. It is reminiscent of an irrational Kafkaesque scenario, itself emblematic of totalitarianist judicial trials of a past era and not unlike certain scenes in George Orwell’s 1949 dystopian masterpiece, Nineteen Eighty Four.
The Polish philosopher Ryszard Legutko contends that totalitarian regimes “are nourished by the belief that the world cannot be tolerated as it is, and that it should be changed: the old should be replaced with the new.” This doctrine purportedly justifies intrusion into the social fabric of society, seeking an ideological re-fabrication. Society would then enter a completely new era, giving life to the homo novus, a ‘new’ person, one ideologically constructed to appease the prevailing theory. In so doing, the biblical concept of a “new creation” is bypassed in favour of an idealist assemblage: the ultimate aim of secular humanism. Realistically, this intent is a chimera, an unrealisable dream, one which first emerged in the Edenic Garden in the form of heretical intent, eritus sicut Deus (to be like God), and thus inexorably destined for failure.
Inevitably, there are religious overtones to any proposed society consisting of homines novi (new persons). Historian Alexis De Tocqueville observed that the spiritual philosophy behind the French Revolution of 1789-1799 endorsed, “the regeneration of the whole human race. . . and became a sort of new religion, imperfect, it is true, without God, . . .but still able, like Islamism, to cover the earth with its soldiers, its apostles, and its martyrs.” The French uprising was a class struggle with its own civil religious doctrines, just as critical race and gender theories are marked by their own virtuous secular doctrines to suit the cause.
Legutko further explained that the anarchist structures of both Marxist-Leninist Communism and the extreme liberalism of the French Revolution do, in fact, have a theology. He claims that they are not “without God,” because they both “embody the secularised soteriology of the Enlightenment, the narrative of Progress.” Nothing of value is to be discovered, according to dogma of these revolutionary movements, outside of their political systems to which uncompromised loyalty is demanded.
But then again, a religious system without God cannot be other than a secular humanist composition, a demonstration of practical atheism, as is the political and ideological religion of emergent neo-Marxist woke ideologues who seek an extraneous, materialist, solution to the personal identity crisis in society. This ethical and religious divide is a clash between the established authority of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and a post-modern, populist, and relativist paradigm striving for perfection, a new identity, and a new secular dispensation for humankind.
Deconstruction of the patriarchal concept of creation and a subsequent disparaging of the imago Dei (image of God) identity of humanity, is indispensable to this effort to advance post-modern identity ideology. The purposed endgame of transgenderism, for example, is total eradication of biological sex-gender distinctionsbetween natural-born male and female – all in the name of an idealised, but complex quest for freedom of identity without restraint.
Professor Russell R. (“Rusty”) Reno points out that “transgenderism has tremendous metaphysical significance as a symbol of successful rebellion; Its open warfare on the body promises final victory.” In its essence and most frequent applications, this is also a war upon womanhood – an attempted erasure of femininity and the characteristics attached thereto.
In this way, gender self-identifiers endorse the dualistic theory of an ethereal spirit contrasted with an insignificant material body- a theory emanating from ancient Greek pagan Gnosticism. Here, history professor Glenn Sunshine explains transgenderism as “an explicit neo-gnostic rejection of human bodies, treating them as largely irrelevant to our identities. Instead, who we really are is determined by some non-observable, non-objective, non-empirical, secret knowledge known only to ourselves, but to which everyone else and reality itself must adapt.”
Stated otherwise, an esoteric form of homunculus (a person created by alchemy) resides within every person and constitutes the real, true, self which awaits expression. To be expected, a certain class of the male gender is ready to exploit this vagueness and take unfair advantage of those striving to be classified female. This is seen in male transgenders demanding access to women-only spaces in clubs, bathrooms, sports and prisons.
The deep aim of extreme feminism, as a movement, is a quest for personal, authentic, identity attained through by-passing traditional binary gender parameters. It is revealing that leading sex-gender proponent, Judith Butler, has as the sub-title to her popular work, Gender Trouble, that of Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. It is ironic, as well as self-destructive, that this theory seeks to destroy the inherent beauty of a feminine identity as biologically and irrevocably conferred at birth.
Butler’s argument, and those of earlier feminists, is that women lost personal identity and freedom through social factors, these qualities being subverted by misogynistic men, and thus drastic remedial measures are required to regain their true persona. While there may be some truth to this postulate, the overall outcome is that extreme feminist gender theory is powered by a deep ressentiment against men. For these feminists, personal identity is only restored through freedom from all traditional sex-gender roles, without any regard for physiological realism.
Misandry towards the male gender and animosity towards the Creator as a father figure, with his definitive ethical, moral, binary biological sex, and the corollary of heterosexual marriage, is the stimulating animus behind not only extreme feminism, but all secular humanist construction. Once the Creator’s father figure is deconstructed, neutered, androgenised, or feminised, and the ensuing imago Dei of humankind dispensed with, individuals are free to identify with either sex as they chose, and to ignore their biological binary sex. This fabrication creates a vacuum in which ideologies promoting claims of self-identity, contrary to the reality of biological binary sex evident at birth, are possible.
This concludes Part 1, wherein conditions giving rise to a fabricated identity have been examined. Part 2 will explore how the post-modern search for personal meaning manifests in the transhumanism movement – to which the American Founders would have recoiled.