finding wisdom at dusk

Calasso calls the eager denizens of this new world, practitioners of this tautological bid for control, Homo secularis. “Unlike Vedic man,” Calasso explains, “who was born with the burden of four rnas, ‘debts’—to the gods, to the rsis, to ancestors, and to mankind in general--Homo secularis owes nothing to anyone. He stands by himself. He has nothing behind apart from what he himself does. There is an inevitable sense of uncertainty, since he rests on something unstable—and perhaps insubstantial. The pleasure of arbitrary will is marred by the lack of substance.”

This “substance” which Calasso understands to be lacking in the world Homo secularis has created might be called renunciation. But it might just as easily be considered the meaning, the world, gained from that renunciation. Or, the ardor gleaned from sacrifice. In what Calasso calls “the new cult of the society,” happiness is all. But in taking the secret of happiness from outside of happiness (or bringing the meaning of the world back from outside of the world, as Wittgenstein expresses a similar notion), happiness has been destroyed. Calasso writes that “… the secularists are not happy. Nor do they feel relieved of great burdens. They feel the insubstantiality of all that surrounds them. At times, they recognize something ominous in it. But in what respect? The same insubstantiality exists in they themselves. Personalized.”

Here.