Tara Isabella Burton on the Myth of Self-Creation

The Good Fight

Yascha Mounk

News

4.6 • 907 Ratings

🗓️ 2 December 2023

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Yascha Mounk and Tara Isabella Burton discuss the shift in modern societies away from external truths to a new gospel of finding one’s authentic self. Tara Isabella Burton is a writer and novelist. She is the author of Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World. Her latest book is Self Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Tara Isabella Burton discuss the trend towards religious non-affiliation and the rise of à la carte spirituality; the challenges such a world presents for creating community and political solidarity; and whether we can pursue self-creation while also fulfilling our deepest obligations as citizens of a liberal society. This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: [email protected] Website: http://www.persuasion.community Podcast production by Jack Shields, and Brendan Ruberry Connect with us! Spotify | Apple | Google Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk & @joinpersuasion Youtube: Yascha Mounk LinkedIn: Persuasion Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:29.2	Traditions like the new Thought Tradition in America become the sort of new theological account of what it means to be human.
0:39.0	New Thought, which gets founded in the 1860s, it's basically a proto the secret, proto law of attraction.
0:45.1	Runs on the idea that if you just think positive enough,
0:49.1	you will bring health and wealth into your life.
0:51.8	This becomes a hugely, hugely influential cultural phenomenon during the yielded age and at the core of it is the sense that if you just want something badly enough, you can make the universe give it to you and that that is sort of how the universe
1:04.6	functions theologically and while I think New Thought itself is not widely understood now
1:11.0	this kind of language this kind of cultural measma is very much
1:15.0	present over 50% of Americans believe that manifesting works about 20% say they
1:20.2	regularly do it purely anecdotally if we're talking generationally,
1:24.4	all the Zoomers are doing it.
1:27.1	And now the good fight of Yasha tells you about his book.
1:39.0	We are now in part three of the identity trap talking about the applications of the popularized form of the identity
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