In An Age Of Uncertainty—An Analysis (11 December 2022) by Lawrence Davidson
Part I — Coping With Uncertainty
All historical times are ones of uncertainty for somebody. Our time is certainly no exception. The American Psychological Association in a 2017 study found that over 60% of adult Americans felt “significant stress”over the future of the nation. 56% percent said reading or listening to the news stressed them out.
In terms of promoting uncertainty and stress, here is how my last sixty odd years have gone: low military draft number (means high risk) in the 1960s, race riots not far from home, voluntary (long story) exile in the 1970s, largely an under-employed academic through the 1980s, a brief hiatus of stability in the 1990s and early 2000s, only to be confronted with the trauma of 9/11, the stupidity of the George W. Bush presidency, the multiple dangers of the Trump presidency, capped off by the worldwide pandemic.
While the personal details might differ, this ubiquitous anxiety was also felt by tens of millions of other Americans. It gets much worse if you are not white or live in a region where poverty and civil unrest lead to even more horrid forms of chronic instability.
How does one cope? One generic answer to this question is to seek out an ideology that purports to both explain the causes of your discontent and offer some form of community or friendship circle that makes it all more bearable. For most, this means some sort of religion, though as we will see, this is not the only way to go. Organized religious belief, particularly various forms of evangelical Christianity are spreading in the high anxiety realms such as Latin America. However, oddly, that is not the case in the West generally and the United States in particular.
Part II — Organized Religion in “Free Fall”
The traditional route, represented by organized religion, to emotional stability and companionship in the face of uncertainty is apparently failing in the U.S. This odd fact was pointed out in an April 2021 article appearing in Salon, entitled “Church membership is in a free fall.” The piece cites a 2021 Gallup poll which tells us that “only 47% of Americans polled in 2020 belong to a house of worship, which is the first time that number has fallen below half of the country since they started polling Americans on this question.” This is a sudden occurrence. According to the same poll administered in 1999, 70% of surveyed Americans belonged to a “house of worship.” It is only since then that things have gone into “free fall”—by a “whopping 23 percentage points.”
This has not happened because uncertainty has gone away. It has happened despite uncertainty and that is the peculiar factor. Nor does it seem to indicate a move toward atheism or agnosticism. In a 2017 Gallup poll, 87% of Americans report a belief in God. The Salon article concludes that there has been a “dramatic increase” in those who see themselves as “spiritual,” but are disillusioned with “organized religion.” Why so?
According to the article we should “blame the religious right.” Here are the reasons given for this conclusion: (1) “The rise of megachurches with flashily dressed ministers who appeared more interested in money and sermonizing about people’s sex lives than modeling values of charity and humility.” (2) “These religious figures and the institutions they lead are hyper-political.” (3) “In an age of growing wealth inequalities, with more and more Americans living hand-to-mouth, many visible religious authorities were using their power to support politicians and laws to take health care access from women and fight against marriage between same-sex couples.” (4) Then these churches supported Donald Trump—“showily praying over him and extorting their followers to have faith in a man who literally could not have better conformed to the prophecies of the Antichrist. It was comically over the top.” Gallup’s polls show a precipitous drop in “religiously affiliated Americans” during the time of the Trump presidency—“dropping from 55% of Americans belonging to a church to 47%.” The Salon article then adds this salient point: “To be clear, the drop-off in religious affiliation is, researchers have shown, likely less about people actively quitting churches, and more about churches being unable to recruit younger followers to replace the ones who die.”
Part III — The Substitution
So here is the situation. We have a growing population of young Americans who are disillusioned with evangelical Christianity and Christian nationalism largely because of the corruption of values and contradictions these religious movements have fallen into. These Americans have not automatically joined the mainline churches available to them. Yet these folks are reportedly still “spiritual.” So, what is their substitution? What is it that they are using to at once satisfy that spiritual impulse and cope with ubiquitous uncertainty?
What follows will at first sound far-fetched to those among us who believe in a scientific understanding of the world and the creatures, including humans, who are part of it. According to a 2022 YouGov Poll (YouGov is an international research data and analytics group headquartered in London, UK), “While a growing share of U.S. adults are religiously unaffiliated, there is one belief that appears to unite a significant share of them: astrology.”
Astrology dates back at least to the second millennium BCE. It reflects the belief that the placement of the sun, the moon, and the planets within the “12 Zodiac sections of the sky” at the moment of one’s birth, has predictive value—both as to your present behavior and your future. To get this information one has to draw up horoscopes that calculate how the positions of the planets affect those born under specific astronomical conditions. “Astrology expresses complex ideas about personality, life cycles, and relationship patterns through the shorthand of the planets and zodiac symbols.”
There is absolutely no scientific basis for this belief but that does not seem to matter. An article on “the New Age of Astrology” in The Atlantic says that “a prevailing attitude among many of the people [who use astrology]—is that it doesn’t matter if astrology is real; it matters if it’s useful”—a somewhat convoluted proposition. However, this statement is revealing as we shall see below.
Here are some of the YouGov Poll’s findings: (1) 27% of Americans, including 37% of adults under 30, say that they believe in astrology. (2) About half of Americans (51%) say they don’t believe in astrology and 22% are unsure. (3) Education does not have a great impact here.“ Among Americans with a high-school degree or less, 29% say they believe in astrology, which is a similar share as among Americans with a college degree (28%).” (4) Looked at according to race, the numbers come out as follows: 25% of white Americans say the stars and planets predict behavior. 31% of Black and 32% of Hispanic Americans say the same. (5) How about voting for someone who “deeply” believes in astrology [i.e., Ronald Reagan]? 46% of American believers say it would make no difference to them. By the way, according to Reagan’s astrologer, Joan Quigley, she was “responsible for timing all press conferences, most speeches, the State of the Union addresses, the takeoffs and landings of Air Force One” among other things.
Part IV — The Persistence of the Irrational
The belief in astrology has much in common with the belief in religion and that is why this substitution works well for so many. Both are certainly “useful” given the anxiety inherent in modern life. Both astrology and religion supply a storyline purporting to explain conditions and events. Simultaneously, both supply a community that upholds that story. Within those communities, confirmation bias restricts paying attention to counter evidence, and soon one becomes surrounded with enough other believers that all appears logical.
Most believers don’t seem to care about scientific proof, but are reinforced by positive personal experiences. True, religions can be manipulated in disastrous ways. Yet they have survived, nonetheless. On the other hand, astrology has proven rather benign over the centuries.
Despite notable scientific accomplishments in early China, Baghdad, Spain, and parts of Africa, science did not displace earlier faith-based cultures. Even in such periods of scientific spurts, the majority of the populations often used technology to handle controllable material problems where they could, and faith to supposedly get a handle on problems which they could not control. Today science has become more ubiquitous in most societies leaving people dependent on associated technology but otherwise emotionally alienated. The old “spiritual” needs are still there.
From the point of view of the intellectual who trusts a scientific approach, astrology and religion are, perhaps necessary, practices of self-deception. Such practices might give you friends and an exciting story to tell. However, in the end it can give you little or no insight into reality. However, for most people indifferent to science and its methods, the line between real and unreal has become blurred. And, it would seem the numbers who can not quite tell the difference are growing.
