Rieff expresses this thinking as follows: Culture and sacred order are inseparable, the former the registration of the latter as a systemic expression of the practical relation between humans and the shadow aspect of reality as it is lived. No culture has ever preserved itself where it is not a registration of sacred order. There, cultures have not survived. The third culture notion of a culture that persists independent of all sacred orders is unprecedented in human history.7 Rieff’s central point here is that the abandonment of a sacred order leaves cultures without any foundation.
