You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World

by Alan Noble

Once I am liberated from all social, moral, natural, and religious values, I become responsible for the meaning of my own life. With no God to judge or justify me, I have to be my own judge and redeemer. This burden manifests as a desperate need to justify our lives through identity crafting and expression. But because everyone else is also working frantically to craft and express their own identity, society becomes a space of vicious competition between individuals vying for attention, meaning, and significance, not unlike the contrived drama of reality TV.

If I am my own and belong to myself, the first and most significant implication is that I am wholly responsible for my life. This is both an exhilarating and terrifying thought. And it’s not just that I am responsible for my personal survival, for food and shelter and so on. I also need a reason to live. I need purpose and direction. I need some way to know when I am failing at life and when I am succeeding, when I am living ethically and when I am not. I must have some way of determining on my deathbed that I lived a good, full life.

We have many other ways we speak of justifying our lives. We want to know that our lives “made a difference,” “told a good story,” “meant something,” or that they were “full” or “rich” or had a “lasting impact.” However we frame the challenge, according to our contemporary anthropology, we each have to find some explanation for our life.

The great difficulty is that if we are our own, then our moral horizons cannot be given, only chosen. And that means that the only assurance we can ever have that we are living morally must come from within ourselves.

We strive to independently define our identity, but we are always dependent upon others for the recognition of that identity. The resolution of this tension is simple but idealistic: we want everyone to recognize and affirm our identity precisely as we define that identity at this moment in time. No one has the right to define me, but in order to have an identity, I need them to see and affirm me. And in order to get people to see me, I need to express myself—a lot. The more people who witness and affirm my identity, the more secure I feel. I believe this partially explains the glorification of fame (and infamy!) in our times. We are shaped by the logic of the attention economy, where attention to ads, apps, articles, images, videos, trending topics, and so on is a measure of value.

And the terrifying thing is that everyone else in society is doing the exact same thing. Everyone is on their own private journey of self-discovery and self-expression, so that at times, modern life feels like billions of people in the same room shouting their own name so that everyone else knows they exist and who they are—which is a fairly accurate description of social media. To be recognized is to draw the gaze and the attention of others. To be affirmed is to draw their positive gaze. But if we are all responsible for creating and expressing our own identities, then everyone is in competition with everyone else for our limited attention, and no one is secure enough in their own identity to ground us with their approval.

The problem is that meaning doesn’t feel subjective. In fact, what gives meaning its ability to carry us and make sense of the world is its weightiness outside of your head.

You have probably heard someone make a moral claim based explicitly on the way it makes them feel, and perhaps you thought they were being overly sensitive or emotional. But MacIntyre argues that most of us are operating as emotivists; even when we appeal to “impersonal criteria,” it is a mask to cover our personal preferences. And if we belong to ourselves, all we ever have is our own perspective, whether expressed explicitly or behind a mask of objective standards.

Once we accept that morality has no objective existence, we tend to privilege moral judgments that can be supported by data because data (and specifically “efficiency”) are the closest things we have to universal values or a common good.

As Steven Pinker has argued, “human dignity” is a squishy phrase used to smuggle in all kinds of baseless taboos and prohibitions.29 We can count the number of victims of sexual violence, but we can’t measure the loss in human dignity that occurs when a person sells their body. We can’t even agree that human dignity is a thing, or that prostitution is an affront to that dignity. If we are each responsible for our own moral laws, then we have no right to impose a value like “human dignity” on another person, even if we believe it’s for their own good. But measurable harm is a different matter altogether. Once you can quantitatively demonstrate the harmfulness of a behavior, then you can regulate it.

While quantified morality is the closest thing we can have to a shared morality, even it remains optional. Even when we know the evidence-based reasons to behave in a certain way, there’s nothing objectively requiring you to accept the conclusions of data.

One reason you may choose to adopt a moral position that contradicts our best data is that it is useful in expressing your identity. When morality becomes a matter of personal perspective, individuals can make moral arguments in order to show the world the kind of person they are.

Humans cannot be truly human without freedom, and freedom means that no one can control me, coerce me, obligate me, or limit me. As we shall see in the following chapters, this understanding of freedom as limitlessness has shaped the way our society structures itself. What these implications have in common is that they all come with a responsibility: the responsibility to justify our existence, to create an identity, to discover meaning, to choose values, and to belong.

to the degree that our society has largely adopted the belief that we are our own and belong to ourselves, we all feel the Responsibilities of Self-Belonging.

To live authentically means to justify your own existence, to express your identity, to interpret meaning for yourself, to judge according to your own moral compass, and to belong where and only where you choose.

Societies define, reinforce, and pass on certain values, but perhaps more importantly, they provide the scaffolding for people to flourish according to those values. If human life requires the pursuit of authenticity, then we need a society that allows us to explore, redefine, and express ourselves. Society’s role here is not only reactive, however; it also forms us. By equipping us to pursue this vision of the good life, society also reinforces this vision of the good life. As a result of this mutual reinforcement, it is exceedingly difficult for us to envision an alternative to bearing the Responsibilities of Self-Belonging.

Society does provide us with a way to determine who deserves our compassion, however. We ought to show compassion and offer aid to anyone who suffers or is inhibited because of factors beyond their control. The philosopher Michael Sandel associates this view with “luck egalitarian” philosophy.2 This conception of justice “bases our obligation to help those in need not on compassion or solidarity but on how they came to be needy in the first place.” While luck egalitarianism emphasizes personal responsibility with an expansive enough view of history, biology, and the environment, it’s possible to view almost anyone, or no one, as a deserving victim. There are factors beyond our control at work in every action we take.

The important thing is that we establish that someone deserves our compassion. And this is exactly what we witness in our public discourse about justice and equality. We argue over all the ways someone has been disadvantaged in order to decide whether they are worthy of our compassion, to decide whether they are the oppressor or the oppressed. In this debate, disadvantages take on social capital. As Sandel notes, “Liberals who defend the welfare state on the basis of luck egalitarianism are led, almost unavoidably, to a rhetoric of victimhood that views welfare recipients as lacking agency, as incapable of acting responsibly.” Quite rightly, Sandel finds this philosophy to be immoral. It assumes that we are capable of establishing with certainty who “merits” our compassion and who doesn’t. But the real world is more complicated than that. It also leads to a “rhetoric of victimhood” and creates perverse incentives to commodify our disadvantages, to leverage them for social gain. Rather than lead to a more just and compassionate society, we turn suffering into another arena for competition.

humans long to have someone look into their face with loving acceptance. The “well done” spoken by a parent to their child does not lose its importance with age. It only grows exponentially as we become more aware of the profound moral complexities of the adult world, when the stakes change from sharing a toy with your sibling to risking your job by speaking out against an injustice.

None of this is entirely new. Photography is nearly two hundred years old. But what is new is how cheap, easy, and fast it is to capture an image of myself and project it to the entire world via a “profile” that explicitly represents me. There was only so much self-expression you could convey when a photograph required you to hold perfectly still for fifteen minutes. But today the possibilities are endless, and nearly effortless. The average preteen in America has the same basic tools for publicity that only the biggest Hollywood stars had sixty years ago. Where the paparazzi or celebrity gossip magazines used to publish every major life event in a star’s life, Facebook allows every user to make the same announcements. Instead of being asked by a pesky reporter to share our opinion about a recent political story, we share articles on Facebook with our personal commentary. These tools for professional self-expression are only multiplying, providing new ways of sharing our thoughts, feelings, voice, body, interests, and values with the world. And with every piece of information we share, we define and validate our identity.

Everyone wants to be affirmed. We desire to be looked directly in the eyes by some authority figure (a father, mother, teacher, God) and told that we are accepted and loved. The beauty (efficiency) of social media is that we can quantify affirmation. When you post a selfie on Instagram, you can receive direct and specific feedback through likes and comments. You can track the number of people who have viewed a Facebook or Instagram story, or the number of people who clicked on your Twitter profile through a specific tweet. You have endless combinations of preferences and brands and values with which to craft an interesting and popular identity, endless opportunities to share that identity, and concrete ways to measure your affirmation. And here is the critical point: our society is designed for humans who must define and express themselves.

We need ways of understanding the meaningfulness of life that are as varied as our lives. But the power of meaning is that it feels as if it transcends our personal experience. It feels as if it is grounded in some reality beyond us. I do not experience joy at a beautiful sunset as a primarily or exclusively subjective experience. It feels as if I am taking part of something greater than me. Here is the challenge for modern people: we need experiences of meaning that feel like they resonate beyond us, beyond our heads, but we need them to remain optional. They can’t actually demand us to interpret the experience in a specific way. I need to feel like my love for my wife is objectively good and real and yet still something that I choose and can un-choose if I wish. And society has happily obliged.

Think about the near-universal experience of being rejected or dumped by someone you love. Why do so many people immediately turn on sad music? Because we want our experience of loss to mean something beyond our head. We want that feeling of rejection or loneliness or alienation to resonate, to be as big and objective as it feels inside of us.

In the absence of a shared system of values, humans gravitate toward values that are quantifiable.

The fluidity of ethics in the modern world could lead to a condition called “anomie,” a lack of social norms to guide our behavior and life. And this is where I believe the power of numbers rescues a great many people from a moral aimlessness. Specifically, the modern value of “technique” gives people a way to function in society without getting lost in our own personal preferences.

Whenever we use reason to create methods to achieve efficiency, we are practicing technique. For Ellul, one defining characteristic of technique is that in the modern world it subsumes all values under efficiency.

An interesting example of this can be found in the field of “leadership,” a broad category that has come to include everyone from CEOs to pastors. Why are leaders encouraged to care for the well-being of their employees? Why do experts recommend allowing workers to have regular breaks, and encourage office parties or other social activities? We’ve heard the answer a million times: treating workers well increases productivity. A happy worker is a productive worker. Note that this method of leadership appears to be motivated by a value higher than efficiency: the welfare of fellow humans. If workers are taking coffee breaks, they’ll have less time to work, so isn’t management really putting “people before profit”? And yet the rationale for giving them breaks is not that it is good for them as human persons, or that it would be immoral to overwork people made in the image of God. Far from it. Kindness, respect, and love are utilitarian means to maximize efficiency.

It should seem odd to us that managers can openly admit to treating their employees humanely primarily to increase profits (especially because it raises the question of what they’ll do when humane policies decrease profits), but we’ve become so deeply committed to technique that none of this phases us.

We use this same logic to justify our leisure outside of work. It’s okay for me to nap because it’ll help me be more alert so I can finish this task. It’s okay for me to watch this game because I need to give my brain a rest. It’s okay for me to spend time with my kids because data shows that reading to children is the most effective way to improve their vocabulary and lifetime earnings. It’s okay for me to go for a run because it will improve my health. And so on.

There are considerable problems with our justice system, but left out of this logic is the question of whether there may be some nonquantifiable moral reason for opposing prostitution. This question is not worth answering, however, because if it cannot be measured, we cannot publicly debate it. You define human “dignity” one way and I define it another, but we can both follow the data that points to a measurable reduction in harm.

There is no space in contemporary life that has not become subject to the dominion of rational methods for achieving maximum efficiency, from the marriage bed to art and warfare. That’s not to say that we never prioritize other values—we certainly do—but our one agreed-upon value in nearly every sphere of life tends to be efficiency.

In the absence of universal values, we turn to efficiency, and in the absence of a vision of the common good, we turn to identity politics, the organizing of political coalitions based on religion, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, or cultural preferences.

Instead of a common good, we have billions of private goods. The best we can do is join forces with other people with intersecting identities. Identity politics is one way that society offers us a vision for political action in the absence of a common good. If we are radically our own, we can’t hope to build a political vision that encompasses the entire nation, or even a local community. But we can form collective action groups to defend our private interests.

When we see ourselves as our own, however, it is difficult to even conceive of a common good that looks like anything other than John Lennon’s “Imagine”: vapid, incoherent, and unimaginative wishful thinking.

It has never been easier to be socially “connected” to people without the necessity of actually connecting with people.

contemporary pornography puts the individual user at the center of the universe. We have a godlike freedom to pursue any fantasy we wish. We can consume the most intimate human experience, taking in image after image after image, amassing a collection of human intimacy so vast and diverse that you come to feel that by rights you should have access to anyone’s body for your own pleasure. That’s one reason why young people—particularly young women—are so often pressured into sending nude photos and videos of themselves to their boyfriend or girlfriend. When so many bodies are so widely available for (primarily) the male gaze, exposing yourself can feel like the ante everyone pays to play the game.

with over one million people selling content on top of an already vast market of pornography, one body simply isn’t worth that much. Nobody’s body is worth very much—which makes it even easier to imagine that you deserve to see whatever fantasy you desire.

To cope with the inhumanity of our society, we develop newer and better techniques, which, being based on a false anthropology, only extend that inhumanity in new ways, requiring further coping techniques.

Implicit in our society is the promise that you can become a fully realized human if you: 1. Accept that you are your own and belong completely to yourself. 2. Work every day to discover and express yourself. 3. Use all of the techniques and methods perfected by society to improve your life and conquer your obstacles. If you adjust to living in this habitat, you will be happy. And if you aren’t a fully realized human, it’s either because there’s some injustice in the environment (an inefficiency), a flaw in your will to improve (another inefficiency), or some natural/biological hinderance (also an inefficiency!). But society is self-correcting: collectively, we are purging the injustices, improving ourselves, and overcoming the burdens of the natural world—a process we call “Progress.” Our hope in Progress lets us overlook the brokenness of society. But by its own standards, our society cannot fulfill its promise. The gods are mute. And those who make them become like them.

One reason society fails to fulfill its promise is that a society premised on the sovereign self has no discernable ends, only an ever expanding and ever demanding number of means. The goal of our striving cannot be reached because it is self-defined. The image of our fulfilled life is forever shifting.

To be “true to myself” is to be “true” in an unconventional way. To be true to yourself is categorically different from being true in an empirical or logical sense because there is no external or objective way to judge or reassure ourselves. How can you ever be sure that you are being true to yourself? How can you ever know if you are being authentic? You are utterly alone in your judgment—sovereign, but alone. And to make matters worse, you cannot trust yourself. The human mind is capable of tremendous self-deception. Maybe you are least true to yourself when you are trying to be like yourself!

To make matters worse, the Responsibilities of Self-Belonging require godlike powers to sustain, leaving us exhausted, tired, burned out, and finally bored. We are always becoming a fully realized human and never arriving. Nobody ever arrives because there is no destination outside ourselves to arrive at. If we are our own and belong to ourselves, then we are always only who we are.

Society cannot fulfill its promise because it never really offered a clear goal. In this sense, the promise of society is more like a warning: You will keep searching, keep expressing, keep redefining, keep striving for your autonomous personhood until you die.

Society also fails to fulfill its promise because the Responsibilities of Self-Belonging end up being profoundly dependent on other persons. As we saw in chapter two, justification pulls us out of ourselves to seek validation through stories or some other external source. Identity always assumes an other to whom we are presenting ourselves and from whom we seek affirmation. Meaning inherently feels external or it isn’t worth the name. Our desire for justice implies values that transcend individual biases. And by definition, belonging is relational. To be our own and belong to ourselves we must do the impossible work of holding ourselves up while relying on others to hold us up, which is exhausting.

Perhaps the most significant way society fails to fulfill its promise is that in a world where we all take the Responsibilities of Self-Belonging seriously, we experience escalating and spreading competition, not peace or self-actualization. Everyone must strive to make their personhood visible and affirmed. Everyone must define their identity against everyone else. Everyone must pursue constant self-improvement.

Busyness feels satisfying to the affirming. They may even feel a sense of moral justification when they are exhausted and overwhelmed. There is a rightness to it. That’s not to say that they exactly enjoy being busy all the time, but it does feel less distressing than rest. Knowing that they have productively used every moment of the day to improve themselves and their world and move toward some larger goals keeps away most of the guilt of life and fear of inadequacy. They must work hard so they can play hard, but there is nothing in-between.

The resigned are often wrongly accused of not taking life seriously enough, of not growing up: a failure to launch, an inability to accept responsibilities, and so on. For at least a decade this is how some lazy pundits have described millennials and now describe Generation Z. The standard explanation is that a generation raised on positive self-esteem and participation trophies is too fragile and sensitive to exist as adults in the “real world.” My experience teaching millennials and the following generation has taught me that this is far from true. When a young person stops coming to class, binge watches Friends for thirty-six hours, and can’t seem to get out of bed, it’s almost always because the student cares too much, not too little. They don’t choose to tap out of life because they think winning is meaningless. They tap out because they are taught that winning means everything and they cannot envision any path to winning.

Resignation has the greater pull on us because the anthropology that shapes our society presents no actual ends for human existence, no purpose, only an increasing number of means. Justifying your existence is not a definitive action, it is an ongoing process. You’re always journeying and never arriving. If you’re responsible for meaning in your life, you can never cease the labor of creating and sustaining moments of significance. If you’re responsible for defining and expressing your identity, you can never cease expressing, never cease discovering and fine-tuning your identity. Because your personhood is irreducibly complex, there is never an end to your searching. If you are your own, you can never stop evolving and progressing and perfecting yourself through technique. The perfectibility of human life through rational methods of efficiency is the bedrock of modern public values. If you are your own and belong to yourself, you belong nowhere and everywhere at once. You will perpetually struggle between your autonomy and the desire to surrender to a larger community of belonging. Resignation is the natural posture of a people with no ultimate ends to pursue.

This is precisely why one of the most common experiences of modern life is fatigue and burnout, and why Ehrenberg identifies “inadequacy” as the defining feature of modern depression: “Becoming ourselves made us nervous, being ourselves makes us depressed. The anxiety of being oneself hides behind the weariness of the self.”22 We experience life as weariness in part because we suffer from the anxiety of being our true self.

The binary tension of existentialism is that on one hand, autonomy grants the individual godlike powers of self-creation, even as on the other hand, autonomy damns the individual to eternal self-preservation,