In a complex blog post titled “Trump as Desecration,” Burke cites a colleague who argued that Haidt’s conclusion that liberals do not have strong responses to violations of the sacred “seemed fundamentally wrong to him.” The colleague observed “that people can hold things sacred that are not designated as religious, and that many liberals held other kinds of institutions, texts, and manners as ‘sacred’ in the same deep-seated, pre-conscious, emotionally intense way, perhaps without even knowing that they do.”

That was beautiful. And, so true.

Since becoming atheist, and realizing there was no "after this," I've made some very positive changes. I'm taking better care of my body and have lost 40lbs since. I'm also much more "present" with family and friends when I'm around them.

Like many on this site the term 'sacred' is problematic but that's essentially how I try to live. Live my life on a day-to-day basis to the best of my ability while realizing I can't control how others will recognize what I do or don't do. Really interested in the Ernest Becker book zblaze referenced in his own post.

I've told others before that while terrifying at first, being atheist is an awakening to reality. We do not wait for another to act on our behalf, we do not behave out of fear of ramifications in an afterlife, and we do not get second chances after this. Live for what we have now...

Ernest Becker wrote a book called "The Denial of Death" which is a classic on psycho-philosophical synthesis.

To quote from the foreward by Sam Keene:

"Gradually, reluctantly, we are beginning to acknowledge that the bitter medicines that he prescribes - contemplation of the horror of our inevitable death- is, paradoxically, the tincture that adds sweetness to mortality."

His philosophy is a braid woven from 4 strands:

1. The world is terrifying. We live in a creation in which the routine activity for organisms is the killing and eating of others.

2. The basic motivation for human behavior is our biological need to control our basic anxiety, to deny the terror of death.

3. Since the terror of death is so overwhelming we conspire to keep it unconscious. "The vital lie of character" is the first line of defense which protects us from the painful awareness of our helplessness. So long as we stay obediently within our "character armour", we feel safe and are able to pretend that the world is manageable. We repress our bodies to purchase a soul that time cannot destroy; we sacrifice pleasure to buy immortality; we escape ourselves to avoid death. And life escapes us while we huddle within the defended fortress of character.
   Society provides us with the second line of defense against our natural impotence by creating a hero system that allows us to believe that we transcend death by participating in something of lasting worth. Since the main task of human life is to become heroic and transcend death, every culture must provide its members with an intricate symbolic system that is covertly religious. This means that ideological conflicts between cultures are essentially battles between immortality projects, holy wars.

4. Our heroic projects that are aimed at destroying evil have the paradoxical effect of bringing more evil into the world. Human conflicts are life and death struggles - my immortality project against your immortality project. The root cause of humanly caused evil is not man's animal nature, not territorial aggression, nor innate selfishness, but our need to gain self esteem, deny our mortality, and achieve heroic self image. Our desire for the best is the cause of the worst.

The best we can hope for society at large is that the mass of unconscious individuals might develop a moral equivalent to war. The science of man has shown us that society will always be comprised of passive subjects, powerful leaders, and enemies upon whom we project our guilt and self hatred. This knowledge may help us develop an "objective hatred" in which the hate object is not a human scapegoat but something impersonal like poverty, disease, oppression, or natural disasters. By making our inevitable hatred intelligent and informed we may be able to turn our destructive energy to a creative use.

For the exceptional individual, there is the ancient philosophical path of wisdom. Becker, like Socrates, advises us to practice dying. Cultivating awareness of our death leads to disillusionment, loss of character armour, and a conscious choice to abide in the face of terror. The existential hero who follows this way of self-analysis differs from the average person in knowing that he/she is obsessed. Instead of hiding within the illusions of character, he sees his impotence and vulnerability. The disillusioned hero rejects the standardized heroics of mass culture in favour of cosmic heroism in which there is real joy in throwing off the chains of uncritical, self defeating dependency and discovering new possibilities of choice and action and new forms of courage and endurance. Living with the voluntary consciousness of death, the heroic individual can despair or choose to trust in the "sacrosanct vitality of the cosmos."

I have a slightly different take on it. The thought of no afterlife initially instilled in me great sense of urgency. I had to make a difference. I had to leave a mark. It was just absolutely essential. Then over time I would find myself filled with deep regret with every mistake that I made. Way more regret than I probably needed to feel.

Then as more time went on I came to the harsh realization that my generation sucks and we're never going to really make any meaningful contribution to society. It boiled down to this: it was absolutely essential to make a difference yet at the same time, it was absolutely impossible to do so. It wasn't a rock and a hard place. It was a rock and another fucking rock. What else was there left but to feel utterly useless in life?

So I needed to find a different way to think about the no afterlife thing. A way that didn't make me feel so urgent. And then I realized that I was dead for most of the universe's existence before I was born and it didn't seem like such a big deal. No knowledge of suffering as far as I could remember (or not remember). This eliminated the sense of urgency in me. I look forward to death now actually because seriously this place blows.

sacred, precious... any term of endearment for our stay here I think is lovely and I vote in favor.

Luv.