The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self

Reading it as well.

It's brilliant. Trueman does a great job of making a lot of complexity in modern life seem easy to understand. It's also a bit scary, but thems the breaks.

Man, I really like Trueman. He’s such a great example of what a Protestant should look like. Seriously.

I’ll check this out over the break.

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To follow Rousseau is to make identity psychological. To follow Freud is to make psychology, and thus identity, sexual. To mesh this combination with Marx is to make identity--and therefore sex--political. (250)

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Ding ding ding

He nailed that sequence.

Awesome. I'm taking some classes through Founder's Ministry. Trueman is teaching a class this summer that I'll take.

The Rise and Triumph of the Ancient Ethic: Biblical Ethics in the Modern World

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You will enjoy it.

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I think I will

Why not post your summary?

If I get back to my computer I might...

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It's brilliant. Trueman does a great job of making a lot of complexity in modern life seem easy to understand.

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It’s uncanny. It really is stunning how good he is at explaining our societal struggles.

A bit more on this book:

In The Rise of the Modern Self, Carl Trueman makes heavy use of Charles Taylor (A Secular Age) and Philip Rieff (The Triumph of the Therapeutic) to explain how we went from somewhat normal to now, in just twenty years.
Yes, I know the world wasn't perfect two or three decades ago (some here will disagree ), but the West was much saner then on a grand scale.

First we have an article that summarizes Rieff's contribution, then I've included a bit from Trueman's book:

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“Where there is nothing sacred, there is nothing” (Deathworks, 12).

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Rieff indicts an array of cultural elites—but especially Freud, Joyce, Picasso, and Mapplethorpe—for their role in poisoning society. “The guiding elites of our third world,” he observes, “are virtuosi of de-creation, of fictions where once commanding truths were”

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This continues into the present of course...

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Of course, the attempt to construct a religionless society is as absurd as the attempt to reach God with a physical tower. As Reiff notes, “Culture and sacred order are inseparable. . . . No culture has ever preserved itself where there is not a registration of sacred order”

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The third-world perspective abolishes truth, leaving only desire. Yet desire proves to be as fierce an authority as any god—and jealous to boot...So the throne on which God once sat doesn’t remain empty; it’s simply filled with the more erratic god of desire.

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The chief desire in our American third-world culture is sexual, and this desire demands freedom of exercise. You may believe or disbelieve in the existence of God, but you must never question the dogma of absolute sexual freedom, nor restrict its public exercise.

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...Enter all things LGBTQ+

Full Article

For a more comprehensive treatment of the state of our modern world, with a heavy focus on historical background,
I highly recommend The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self.
This book is so good and so true, I'm surprised we're able to read it.
I thought the section on Deathworks, credited to Rieff's 2006 work, was astonishing. I'll add pics.

Just got my copy yesterday. Very excited to start it.

Bought a new highlighter and page markers just for the book

I look forward to reading about that. I’m 80% into the book.