ST #46: Nihilism, Consumerism and the Islamic Antidote — Part 2 | Imran Hussein (2021-12-10) ​

0:00:12 assalamu alaikum brothers and sisters
0:00:14 welcome to the second episode of this
0:00:16 sapiens thoughts video series
0:00:19 where we're discussing nihilism
0:00:20 consumerism and the islamic antidote to
0:00:23 the problems that come about because of
0:00:25 these two ideologies
0:00:27 now in this episode i want to go into
0:00:30 the history and the origins
0:00:33 of nihilism
0:00:34 and why and really discuss and
0:00:36 understand why it's so rampant today
0:00:40 and for this we need to go back and look
0:00:42 at european history especially over the
0:00:44 past thousand or so years now we have to
0:00:46 remember
0:00:47 that europe
0:00:49 was
0:00:51 led by christianity and the christian
0:00:54 church dominated almost every sway of
0:00:57 human experience in life whether it was
0:01:00 education
0:01:01 economic social whichever way you look
0:01:03 at it the christian church dominated and
0:01:06 in the 14th century
0:01:08 we know we had the period of renaissance
0:01:10 the renaissance took place and this was
0:01:12 a time where the europeans
0:01:14 rediscovered the classical tradition
0:01:17 rediscovered the greek civilization and
0:01:19 the works that they produced and the way
0:01:21 their way of living and so on and so
0:01:22 forth and they were mesmerized and by
0:01:25 the way all of this information a lot of
0:01:27 this information and knowledge came
0:01:29 through the muslims because they had
0:01:30 preserved the works of the greeks and
0:01:32 done more work on top of the work that
0:01:34 they had done but nevertheless this was
0:01:36 a time when the europeans
0:01:38 started to rediscover the classical
0:01:40 tradition and they were really inspired
0:01:42 by this they wanted to go back to those
0:01:44 times and obviously
0:01:46 because the church the christian church
0:01:48 dominated europe at the time there was a
0:01:50 lot of struggle there was a lot of back
0:01:51 and forth now we can i want to refer to
0:01:54 these as two camps you had the christian
0:01:56 church and you had what you could what
0:01:57 we can call now as the free thinkers the
0:02:00 ones the people that wanted to discover
0:02:02 new things inspired by the greeks wanted
0:02:04 to you know study the physical world do
0:02:07 the science you know study medicine and
0:02:09 do all of these amazing things
0:02:11 now there was a struggle that began in
0:02:13 around the 14th century and this
0:02:15 continued on and during this time you
0:02:18 know we saw there were certain christian
0:02:19 theologians
0:02:21 who try to bridge the gap between
0:02:22 religion and rationality
0:02:25 other christian theologians who
0:02:26 completely rejected rationality for
0:02:30 example martin luther a protestant
0:02:31 reformer he referred to reason and these
0:02:34 are his words he referred to reason as a
0:02:36 the greatest enemy that faith has
0:02:39 and we can see that a lot of christians
0:02:41 the majority of christians were against
0:02:42 the free thinkers as we're referring to
0:02:44 them now those that wanted to explore
0:02:46 and and discover new things
0:02:48 but but this battle continued over the
0:02:50 centuries and then in the 16th century
0:02:52 we had the scientific revolution
0:02:55 which eventually this and many other
0:02:56 things led to the period of
0:02:58 enlightenment in the 18th century now
0:03:01 the period of enlightenment is a very
0:03:02 interesting time in history because this
0:03:04 was you can say the time where the
0:03:06 tables fully turned
0:03:09 in the favor of the free thinkers
0:03:11 the thinkers of the enlightenment
0:03:14 wanted people
0:03:15 to have a new vision a new purpose they
0:03:18 wanted to people to break free from the
0:03:20 dogmas of the church they wanted people
0:03:21 to discover the world to discover new
0:03:23 things to progress
0:03:27 now we have to i want us to keep some
0:03:29 context in mind here there's something
0:03:30 important that we need to keep in mind
0:03:31 which is that
0:03:34 the european people are coming from a
0:03:36 background
0:03:37 of what they would see as oppression
0:03:40 intellectual oppression to be more
0:03:42 specific
0:03:43 and now they finally have freed
0:03:45 themselves of these shackles and they
0:03:47 want to discover the world and learn
0:03:48 about the world so you can understand
0:03:50 the psychology here that
0:03:52 these people would naturally have an
0:03:54 aversion towards religion because of
0:03:56 what they know about religion the
0:03:57 experiences with the christians and they
0:04:00 didn't want they would now want to free
0:04:01 themselves completely of this however
0:04:03 what's very interesting is that the
0:04:05 enlightenment thinkers didn't become
0:04:07 atheist
0:04:08 immediately or the time you know when i
0:04:10 mean atheists i mean you know the type
0:04:12 of new atheist that we are aware of
0:04:13 today such as richard dawkins and sam
0:04:15 harris they didn't completely reject
0:04:17 everything
0:04:18 and this is why some of the academics
0:04:20 when
0:04:21 if if asked you know the were the
0:04:22 enlightenment thinkers atheists you know
0:04:25 as in the new atheists that we know
0:04:27 today they would say no if you would go
0:04:30 to them and ask them whether they
0:04:31 believed in god they would acknowledge
0:04:32 most of them most of the thinkers and
0:04:34 philosophers of the enlightenment period
0:04:35 would acknowledge
0:04:37 that god exists however there would be
0:04:39 what you would call
0:04:40 natural they were following what was
0:04:42 referred to as a natural theology
0:04:44 so they would believe in god that there
0:04:46 was a cause a creator behind the behind
0:04:49 nature and the physical world
0:04:51 however they wouldn't ascribe it to or
0:04:54 lean towards christianity or religion as
0:04:57 it was understood at the time
0:04:59 however this did lay the foundations you
0:05:01 know or the the the fertile ground for
0:05:04 the advent of new atheism and so on and
0:05:06 so forth but again something we'll
0:05:07 discuss as we go along so the key thing
0:05:09 i want us to pick up here guys
0:05:11 is
0:05:12 that the enlightenment
0:05:16 period
0:05:17 allowed human beings
0:05:19 to now express themselves and their
0:05:21 intellects
0:05:22 and engage the rational faculties in
0:05:24 studying the world in understanding the
0:05:27 world in developing the physical world
0:05:30 because one of the
0:05:31 ideas
0:05:33 that was proposed by the enlightenment
0:05:35 thinkers
0:05:36 was of progress material progress what
0:05:39 they wanted human beings to do was to
0:05:41 have a new vision
0:05:43 which was
0:05:45 to create a worldly utopia essentially
0:05:47 paradise on earth
0:05:49 now it's very it's a very interesting
0:05:51 concept because prior to this the idea
0:05:53 was
0:05:54 that we were to attain paradise in the
0:05:56 hereafter
0:05:58 that we were living in this world a
0:06:00 world of pain and suffering and
0:06:02 hardships
0:06:03 and trials
0:06:05 and we had to live in this world and get
0:06:07 through this life but ultimately there
0:06:09 was paradise the eternal world and
0:06:11 that's what people were aspiring towards
0:06:13 however the enlightenment flipped the
0:06:15 script if you like and took paradise
0:06:17 from the hereafter and brought paradise
0:06:19 to the here and now so what the idea was
0:06:21 that we as human beings our new purpose
0:06:23 now is to progress in the world
0:06:26 create a worldly paradise and that's
0:06:28 what our focus and vision is
0:06:30 professor leo damrosh in a course on the
0:06:34 enlightenment he
0:06:35 stated that one of the focuses of the
0:06:37 enlightenment was to turn away from the
0:06:39 vertical plane and then to focus on the
0:06:41 horizontal plane again summarizing what
0:06:43 i'm just saying which is that it was
0:06:45 taking people away from focusing on the
0:06:48 hereafter
0:06:50 and the spiritual reality of the world
0:06:52 and focusing on the material reality of
0:06:54 the world the physical
0:06:56 reality the plane of here and now this
0:06:59 was a very important shift in psychology
0:07:02 and thinking that took place at the time
0:07:04 of the enlightenment
0:07:05 now considering this and understanding
0:07:07 this
0:07:10 we can start to appreciate
0:07:13 why god and the idea of religion
0:07:16 was not conducive to the objectives of
0:07:19 the enlightenment
0:07:21 because if people were thinking about a
0:07:23 hereafter another life to come an
0:07:25 eternal life of bliss and peace and
0:07:27 tranquility well they wouldn't fully be
0:07:29 focusing on
0:07:31 the here and now and and they therefore
0:07:33 won't have the motivation to do what had
0:07:35 to be done to attain a worldly paradise
0:07:39 so going back to this idea of progress
0:07:42 and creating paradise on earth you know
0:07:45 this entailed economic growth
0:07:48 exponential economic growth and
0:07:50 professor karen higgs in her book
0:07:52 collision course she highlights that the
0:07:54 lead up to
0:07:56 this economic growth took
0:07:59 place in three stages essentially the
0:08:01 first stage lasted about five or six
0:08:03 hundred years where the europeans
0:08:05 colonized
0:08:06 other places around the world and this
0:08:08 brought in a lot of money to europe and
0:08:10 the second stage was which lasted about
0:08:13 250 years when which she refers to the
0:08:15 stage of
0:08:16 coal coal based industry and this
0:08:19 allowed for the industrial
0:08:21 revolution to really take off the third
0:08:22 stage is that she refers to as the
0:08:24 oil-based growth which has been taking
0:08:26 place over the past 130 years or so and
0:08:29 all of this has brought brought in a lot
0:08:31 of money into europe which allowed for
0:08:32 the consumerist system to really take
0:08:35 off
0:08:36 and it's very interesting because the
0:08:38 more people consume the more businesses
0:08:41 grow the more businesses grow the more
0:08:43 employment increases the more people go
0:08:45 into employment into these factories
0:08:47 which produce more goods
0:08:49 for the consumers and the consumers keep
0:08:51 consuming more and this leads to the
0:08:52 growth of the gdp of the country which
0:08:54 is essentially a marker for economic
0:08:57 growth
0:08:58 so at the end of the day was and the
0:08:59 reason i'm sharing this what's very
0:09:01 important to understand here is that
0:09:02 economy money is the key driving force
0:09:05 here it's not individual well-being
0:09:08 right although that was the idea
0:09:10 proposed what we were told is
0:09:13 creating a worldly paradise is going to
0:09:16 lead to happiness for human beings
0:09:17 essentially but that's not what's
0:09:19 happened and we're going to explore this
0:09:20 much further in a lot more detail
0:09:22 and it's important to also realize that
0:09:24 many of the thinkers of the
0:09:25 enlightenment period and the centuries
0:09:26 that followed
0:09:28 took
0:09:29 offence almost through religion and the
0:09:31 idea of religion because it was a
0:09:33 hindrance to the growth of economy
0:09:36 marx for example refer to religion as
0:09:39 the opium of the people now there's many
0:09:42 ways to understand this particular
0:09:44 statement but one of the ways to
0:09:45 understand this and one of the things we
0:09:46 could take from this is that he realized
0:09:48 and understood
0:09:49 that religion created a psychology
0:09:52 which from an economic standpoint
0:09:54 created
0:09:56 tame human beings meaning that
0:09:59 human the human that was religious and
0:10:01 believed in god and believed in the
0:10:02 hereafter if they weren't doing too well
0:10:04 economically socially they were fine
0:10:07 with it because they understood this
0:10:09 wasn't the only world the real world was
0:10:11 to come paradise was to come and this
0:10:14 made people comfortable in the
0:10:15 situations even if they had less but
0:10:17 this wasn't good from an economic
0:10:19 perspective because it didn't give that
0:10:22 that human motivation now to change
0:10:24 their condition
0:10:25 so this was a problem
0:10:27 so this was a
0:10:29 sort of a brief history on the origins
0:10:31 of nihilism in particular but by
0:10:33 extension consumerism as well and what
0:10:35 we're going to do in the next video guys
0:10:37 is we're going to move on to looking at
0:10:38 the direct relationship between
0:10:41 this
0:10:42 modernism now and nihilism this turning
0:10:45 away from god and nihilism
0:10:48 so before you guys click on the next
0:10:49 video and watch it if it's up already i
0:10:52 want to know your thoughts in the
0:10:53 comment section below i want to get your
0:10:55 thoughts on how or what you think the
0:10:56 link is between turning away from god
0:11:00 and nihilism
0:11:01 so let me know your thoughts in the
0:11:02 comment section below until next time
0:11:04 take care assalamu alaikum