Please enable JavaScript.

Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.

Taylor's Buffered Self and Nova Effect (Nova Effect (The nova effect…

- - - - The social life is seen as sacred in the enchanted world. To break ranks or blaspheme is not an individual's business alone. It is a detriment to the community. (How Not, 30 and A Secular Age, 41-42)
        
        "The Great Disembedding" (A Secular Age, 146) is the shift in the view of society from an integrated collective to an atomised, individualised collection of self-sustained persons. [USE THIS PHRASE, I LIKE IT]
        
        The triple embedding: "Human agents are embedded in society, society in the cosmos, and the cosmos incorporates the divine". (A Secular Age, 152)
        The Disembedding is the reversal of the "'triple embedding' of premodern societies". (How Not, 44)
  - - - Relation to Sartre's Existentialism
        
        Compare this idea of the self being buffered against substantial meaning with Sartre's idea that, without God, we must make our own meaning. Not only are we not influenced by God or the spirits, we are totally accountable for our decisions and our destiny.
        
        Sartre says in Existentialism is a Humanism: "We are left alone, without excuse. That is what I mean when I say that man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because... from the moment that he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does." (Existentialism, 29) This is the negative side of the buffered self.
      - The buffered self is the result of an "unprecedented primacy to the individual". (A Secular Age, 146 and How Not, 44)
      - "[T]here arises in Western societies a generalized culture of 'authenticity', or expressive individualism, in which people are encouraged to find their own way, discover their own fulfillment..." (A Secular Age, 299)
      - Youths now "suffer from a lack of strong purposes in their lives..." (A Secular Age, 303)
        This is the catalyst for the search of meaning which posits many within the cross-pressure.
        The buffered self's "very invulnerability opens it to the danger that not just evil spirits, cosmic forces or gods won't 'get to' it, but that nothing significant will stand out for it." (A Secular Age, 303)