The Cult of Self is Destroying Us
How Narcissism, Consumerism, and Hyper-Individualism Are Unraveling Society
Assalamualaikum, friends, freaks, fellow travelers. Buckle up. This isn’t just a blog post. It’s a transmission from the frontline of the American soul, where truth has been mugged in a dark alley by the Cult of the Self, and decency is bleeding out on the curb, whispering Auden poems while Instagram influencers walk by.
Chris Hedges, that noble defector from the Cathedral of Mainstream Media, dropped a philosophical depth charge on us recently in a conversation hosted by Zaytuna College in Berkeley. What started as a polite discussion about morality and law detonated into a sweeping indictment of late-stage capitalism, American narcissism, digital derangement, and the metaphysical rot beneath our democratic veneers.
Let me decode it for you.
Imagine a society where selfies are scripture, TikTokers are prophets, and the algorithm is God. That’s where we are. Chris Hedges didn’t put it in those exact terms, but he might as well have. The Cult of the Self is our state religion, and it’s got all the dogma you need: self-aggrandizement, manipulation, lying, and the complete inability to feel remorse.
We’re not talking about an individual pathology here. We’re talking about a full-blown societal collapse into narcissism. A nation of walking LinkedIn profiles with curated trauma and designer morality. Your suffering has to be brandable, your truth tweetable, your conscience monetizable.
And in 2025, it's even worse than ever. The lines between identity and illusion have disintegrated completely. Performative activism is the new religion, powered by likes, laced with corporate sponsorships, and driven by algorithms that prey on insecurity like vultures circling a rotting soul. There's no going back to how things were. We've crossed the Rubicon. Society is not just post-truth—it's post-soul.
Hedges invokes Karl Polanyi, Marx, and his own Calvinist pessimism to paint a stark picture: corporations have swallowed the state. The logic is simple and psychotic. Reduce the cost of labor, increase profit. Exploit the earth, your neighbor, your mother’s memory if need be. Just make it to Q4.
And the kicker? Even if the CEO has a moral pulse, it doesn’t matter. The machine doesn’t care. Chevron knew about climate change in the ‘70s. Exxon knew. They knew. And they kept drilling because it’s about profit, not posterity.
Universities? Bought and sold. Hedges taught at Princeton. He’s seen the humanities defunded, replaced by corporate vocational training. Philosophy departments axed. Ethics downgraded to electives. We’re building weaponized underwater robots for the Navy while ethics professors are Ubering to pay rent.
If Marshall McLuhan and Aldous Huxley had a hate-child, it would be Instagram.
Social media is not about connection. It’s not about truth. It’s not about community. It’s about performing the self. Or as Hedges puts it: Life the Movie. We are actors in our own biopic, broadcast 24/7 on TikTok Live, praying for validation and drowning in dopamine.
And what happens to morality when it becomes performative? It dies. Because virtue isn’t sexy. Compassion doesn’t get clicks. Justice doesn’t trend. We’ve traded soul for spectacle. Our moral compass replaced with a ring light.
Hedges says the rule of law is neutral. It can be a tool for tyrants or a shield for justice. What matters is the moral contentof a society. Without a deeply inculcated sense of virtue, the law becomes just another weapon for the powerful. A noose for the poor. A paper shield for the oppressed.
And where does morality come from? Hedges says: religion, education, democratic participation. But all three have been hollowed out. Religion retreated into self-help spirituality. Education became corporate training. Democracy became a televised blood sport between two factions of the same oligarchy.
Let’s talk religion. Not megachurch evangelical performative Christianity, with its fascist cosplay pastors and televangelist snake oil. Hedges calls them heretics, and he’s right.
He’s talking about real religion. The kind that puts the widow and the orphan first. The kind that got Martin Luther King Jr. killed. The kind that marches barefoot for justice. The kind that says, “It’s not about you, it’s about us.”
But that religion? It’s dying. Churches are being sold off. Seminaries closing. Mosques and synagogues struggling to keep youth engaged. We live in a metaphysical vacuum. And into that void slither the death cults: Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Instagram gurus, and consumer capitalism dressed in the robes of self-empowerment.
You want advice? Hedges gives it to you straight. You can’t teach morality. You have to live it. You have to embody it in a world that doesn’t just reject it, but actively punishes it.
He got pushed out of The New York Times for opposing the Iraq War. Good riddance, he says. If the price of a career is your soul, then burn the resume.
What does resistance look like?
Live for others.
Tell the truth.
Confront evil.
Don’t confuse careerism for courage.
Find a community.
Unplug. Unperform. Be real.
Freud had it right. Thanatos, the death instinct, is loose in America. You see it in our addiction to war, porn, opioids, hate, and endless, vacuous spectacle. We are a culture flirting with self-annihilation. And the algorithm cheers us on.
But Hedges doesn’t give up hope. Because he has faith. Not optimism. Not platitudes. Faith. That the good draws to it the good. That resistance matters even when you lose. That truth echoes, even in the silence of exile.
The essay ends with a nod to W.H. Auden’s September 1, 1939, written as Hitler invaded Poland:
*"May I, composed like them / Of Eros and of dust, / Beleaguered by the same / Negation and despair, / Show an affirming flame."
That’s it. That’s the gig. Be the ironic point of light. A candle in the pornographic fog. A whisper of conscience in the shout of madness.
Hedges recalls Rabbi Abraham Heschel’s words: "I prayed with my feet." Marching beside King on the Sabbath, he showed the sacred and the political are one.
So if you’re wondering what to do in this deranged dystopia of selfies and surveillance, start there. Find your feet. And pray with them. March. Speak. Resist. Refuse to become what you hate. Don’t build a monument to yourself. Burn it. Use the ashes as ink. Write truth.
And when they ask what you believe in, don’t point to your curated bio. Point to your bruises. Point to the friends you didn’t abandon. Point to the light that never sold out.
Because in the end, that’s what faith really is.
A flame. In the wind.
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Until we meet again, let your conscience be your guide.
I'd add, love your neighbor and seek to find common ground and understanding with them, because they're not your enemy.
The oligarchs and overlords are the ones to direct your resistance against. Left, Right, Red, Blue....it's all nonsense when your true oppressor couldn't give a flying fuck about politics. It's money and power that they thrive on, and pitting common folk against one another with political parties and labels just makes their end goals easier.
Also, dismissing Capitalism or Socialism or any "ism" is just not relevant in a world where ALL the systems are rigged by the powers that be. We no more have true "Capitalism" then we have "Socialism", "Communism" or any other systems of the world, as intended by the philosophers that created them. We have Oligarchy and a corrupt system that's gamed to centralize power and money in the hands of the few.
Think with your heart....