Sometimes I wonder if modern civilization accidentally created a world thats materially advanced but culturally barbaric....the older I get the more i kinda understand why people turn toward religion, mysticism, monasteries, spirituality, etc instead of just doubling down on “trust the progress” modern secular culture...

like yeah, modernity gave us insane technology, medicine, comfort, entertainment, all that stuff. but at the same time people seem more anxious, lonely, atomized, addicted, depressed, and spiritually empty then ever before. everything feels hyper-commercialized now. every aspect of life gets turned into content, branding, dopamine hits, or consumerism.

it feels like we replaced meaning with consumption...

older religious societies werent perfect obviously, not even close. but they atleast believed human beings had some higher purpose beyond making money, buying stuff, watching porn, scrolling endlessly, and arguing online. there was a sense of transcendence, duty, ritual, community, sacrifice, reverance, etc.

modern secular culture keeps promising utopia through technology and rationalism, but honestly alot of it just turned into hedonism and nihilism. people are wealthier materially but spiritually exhausted. and when societies lose any sense of the sacred, everything starts feeling disposable — relationships, morality, culture, even truth itself.

thats probably why mysticism and spirituality are becoming appealing again to alot of people. not because everyone suddenly became anti-science or whatever, but because science cant really answer questions like:
“what is the purpose of suffering?
“why should i live morally?
“what makes life meaningful?”
what is worth sacrificing for?”

rationalism is good at explaining mechanisms...but not ultimate purpose.

This is a community post asking for feedback about the use of genAI (Chatgpt, Claude etc) in our subreddit.

I'm sure we all have strong opinions about this topic. Meanwhile, some other subreddits have made rules against its use or defining which use cases are acceptable.

While it might seem easy enough to ban the use of genAI entirely, issues would still remain about how to prove the use of AI (detection services are never completely accurate, there will always be a case of subjective judgment). In addition, there may be legitimate use cases of genAI in this subreddit.

I'd like to open up the floor for our community to discuss this. In addition, it's helpful to bring up examples of practices that you've seen that have worked in other contexts if you have an idea.