Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013) famously said that she was given a great start in life because her family was relatively poor, and because she had good parents. I suspect many young people may have difficulty today understanding the first part of this statement. She meant that the relative poverty of her family gave her the hunger and motivation to improve her standing and make something of her life. Without this sense of lack, she might perhaps not have found her extraordinary drive. Rather than a hindrance, limitations can paradoxically be the opposite – they make you resourceful and creative.
Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) understood this better than anyone. He believed that the unlimited choice, immediate gratification and constant need for external validation that characterises also our contemporary digital society leads to “boredom” and a loss of self. Then a “rotation of crops (one is weary of living in the country and moves to the city; one is weary of one’s land and moves abroad)” is required – a calculated shift in focus or interest.[1] Otherwise, the Kierkegaardian “despair” sets in.
We see this everywhere with so many people now overstimulated, but existentially bored. The more constant and superficial the stimulation, the more profound the “despair”. And, so in the absence of this “rotation of crops”, what ends up lacking is lack itself. In this context, mention is sometimes made of optimal deprivation: limiting choices builds mental toughness.
But when a sense of lack is created at a societal level, it can lead to flawed policy decision-making that can have long-lasting consequences. For example, I am thinking of mainland Scandinavia: societies that up until the 1980s were affluent, ethnically almost entirely homogenous, and safe. There was nothing lacking. The needs of all its citizens had been fulfilled. For socialists at least, it was about as close to utopia as you could realistically get. However, it resulted in large-scale apathy, an unwillingness to work, and a general lack of motivation.
At a personal level, Kierkegaard believed that a lack of lacking would result in the need to create some kind of deprivation: humans are after all a synthesis of opposing elements. He wasn’t wrong, but I think it can be applied at a societal level too.
This resulted in Nordic societies creating a sense of lack: they presumably wanted to create a sense of deprivation, because by filling the ‘lack’ they would then feel good about themselves. They chose to be benevolent, aiming to become humanitarian superpowers in a perverse attempt to create a new global pecking order. It is sort of selfish Christian charity – without Christ. The dominus illuminatio mea (Ps. 27) was totally missing. And, so they opened their doors to ‘refugees’ from the developing world. Once the doors were open, they were unable to close them. Forty years later, these countries haven’t yet fully come to terms with the disastrous consequences of this cosmic shift. The trauma is existential, and its architects have not borne any of the responsibility.
Like Nietzsche, Kierkegaard was a remarkably prescient thinker. Living in the early nineteenth century, he had already foreseen how mindless affluence would pan out an individual level, and he had provided explanations which could account for the herd morality behind cancel culture and the psychology of online trolling. Mindless affluence, a lack of lack, might arguably have even contributed to virtue signalling, irrational altruism and postmodern social justice ideologies that frame the political discourse in much of western Europe. Concomitant with creating a false ‘lack’ is the new secondary reality couched in terms of compassion and justice.
It is no coincidence that the most affluent societies have chosen the path of ‘suicidal empathy’.[2]By fulfilling a (created) lack of something, they feel they now have a sense of purpose – a sense of purpose that, on the face of it, seems rather Christian, even if the ideologues are invariably atheists or agnostics. I say ‘on the face of it’, because the perception of filling a misconstrued ‘lack’ has resulted in cultural degradation for those that built the society. Let’s not forget: the Fifth Commandment tells us to honour our father and mother, the ancestors that built these ‘successful’ societies.
The silver lining (if there is one) in the cloud comes when one realises that a complete absence of material lack might be conducive to making an inward, spiritual turn. Dip into the crude and rather unpalatable online manosphere, and you will soon come across young billionaires living in sybaritic Dubai confessing they have come to the same conclusion. They have accumulated extraordinary material wealth and possessions, but it has resulted in spiritual emptiness, because their lives are devoid of any sense of transcendental purpose. It is almost reminiscent of one of those Arthur Schnitzler one-act plays such as Anatol (1893) where the character’s pursuit of pleasure ends up in self-delusion and in a struggle to find meaning in life.
Kierkegaard would have called this an inauthentic existence. These hyper-materialists cannot reach optimal selfhood because they have failed to integrate the different aspects of human existence. They live for what Kierkegaard called “immediacy” – they live entirely for material pleasures and avoid any meaningful reflection. This normally results in Kierkegaardian “despair”. They are the subjects of an illusory herd mentality which centres around the visual wealth on full display in hyperreal (and increasingly AI-driven) social media.
The social mediatisation of our everyday lives is a quest for external validation. It represents the thinking of the crowd, and it highlights the vulnerability of the people that make it up. Manosphere influencers like Andrew Tate have made the over-compensatory faux-pas: an upbringing of relative poverty in Luton led him to fetishize material wealth. This over-compensation comes at a spiritual cost, because it mistakenly absolutises materialism.
The requisite inward turn that might result from this can open up the path to subjective truth and the search for transcendental meaning. If you can then reach the point where you are prepared to live and die for faith and the paradox that God became man, then you have reached the Kierkegaardian “passion” – an intense subjective commitment that trumps any sense of objective certainty.
Optimal deprivation implies restraint. You are giving up, say, the instant gratification of material goods to achieve something greater. It is the same with the spiritual practice of kenosis (self-emptying). Through the Eucharist, a worshipper is aligning his or her heart with Christ’s ultimate sacrifice, making themselves spiritually prepared to receive the mystery of the Holy Gifts. By removing distractions and imposing restraint, you are creating intentionally a poverty of spirit – that blank space which can be filled with God’s grace.
In short, the meaninglessness of the aesthetic end-game might, in accordance with his schema, lead to the Kierkegaardian ‘ethical’ and ultimately the ‘religious’ where deeper “commitment” and responsibility is required. Then, principles will replace impulses. If this happens at a societal level, then that presumably leads to a bona fide more compassionate and harmonious community – one based on truths, and not fabricated moral righteousness.
Kierkegaard believed that you cannot live a fulfilled authentic existence if there are no limitations. In order to do so, you need to separate yourself from the crowd conformity, which in the above context means detaching yourself from the myth perpetuated online and elsewhere that material wealth leads to full satisfaction.
As every leader knows, to stand apart from the crowd requires an inner strength. It is not about being contrarian for its own sake; it is a matter of creating genuine convictions through questioning mass societies’ pre-packaged opinions. These convictions, Kierkegaard believed, can lead to the kind of spiritual independence necessary for making authentic choices. And only authenticindividuals can make meaningful contributions to society.
But what about societies on the brink of civil war where the time for meaningful contributions has passed? Kierkegaard would have surely encouraged those dissidents fighting nihilistic policy-making and digital repression to continue resisting the crowd and in doing so let their inner freedom provide a psychological anchor.
Just as people write things on X that they would never say in person, he believed the emerging mass media of nineteenth-century Denmark published articles they would not express face-to-face. As dissidents, we must avoid this kind of cowardice. Kierkegaard would task us to challenge, say, the tyrannical strategies of the EU and its nation-states not by forming mass counter-movements, but by building resistance through lots of one-to-one conversations that encourage genuine reflection and personal accountability. By owning our decisions entirely and by not creating a false lack, Kierkegaard would have believed we are less likely to succumb to a passive, unfulfilled state.
As Thatcher understood better than most, if you fulfil every desire, then you don’t know how to face a challenge. And when you know how to deal with challenges, you build character. We are told the same thing in the Book of Romans (5: 3-5).[3] There is surely an important lesson here for parents in all affluent societies. But it also helps explain how the cultural and societal vandalism currently reshaping contemporary western Europe all began.
[1] Either/Or. Edited by Victor Eremita. 1992. London: Penguin.
[2] Gad Saad. 2026. Suicidal Empathy. Broadside Books: Massachusetts.
[3] “3 And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces [a]perseverance; 4 and perseverance, [b]character; and character, hope. 5 Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) understood this better than anyone. He believed that the unlimited choice, immediate gratification and constant need for external validation that characterises also our contemporary digital society leads to “boredom” and a loss of self. Then a “rotation of crops (one is weary of living in the country and moves to the city; one is weary of one’s land and moves abroad)” is required – a calculated shift in focus or interest.[1] Otherwise, the Kierkegaardian “despair” sets in.
We see this everywhere with so many people now overstimulated, but existentially bored. The more constant and superficial the stimulation, the more profound the “despair”. And, so in the absence of this “rotation of crops”, what ends up lacking is lack itself. In this context, mention is sometimes made of optimal deprivation: limiting choices builds mental toughness.
But when a sense of lack is created at a societal level, it can lead to flawed policy decision-making that can have long-lasting consequences. For example, I am thinking of mainland Scandinavia: societies that up until the 1980s were affluent, ethnically almost entirely homogenous, and safe. There was nothing lacking. The needs of all its citizens had been fulfilled. For socialists at least, it was about as close to utopia as you could realistically get. However, it resulted in large-scale apathy, an unwillingness to work, and a general lack of motivation.
At a personal level, Kierkegaard believed that a lack of lacking would result in the need to create some kind of deprivation: humans are after all a synthesis of opposing elements. He wasn’t wrong, but I think it can be applied at a societal level too.
This resulted in Nordic societies creating a sense of lack: they presumably wanted to create a sense of deprivation, because by filling the ‘lack’ they would then feel good about themselves. They chose to be benevolent, aiming to become humanitarian superpowers in a perverse attempt to create a new global pecking order. It is sort of selfish Christian charity – without Christ. The dominus illuminatio mea (Ps. 27) was totally missing. And, so they opened their doors to ‘refugees’ from the developing world. Once the doors were open, they were unable to close them. Forty years later, these countries haven’t yet fully come to terms with the disastrous consequences of this cosmic shift. The trauma is existential, and its architects have not borne any of the responsibility.
Like Nietzsche, Kierkegaard was a remarkably prescient thinker. Living in the early nineteenth century, he had already foreseen how mindless affluence would pan out an individual level, and he had provided explanations which could account for the herd morality behind cancel culture and the psychology of online trolling. Mindless affluence, a lack of lack, might arguably have even contributed to virtue signalling, irrational altruism and postmodern social justice ideologies that frame the political discourse in much of western Europe. Concomitant with creating a false ‘lack’ is the new secondary reality couched in terms of compassion and justice.
It is no coincidence that the most affluent societies have chosen the path of ‘suicidal empathy’.[2]By fulfilling a (created) lack of something, they feel they now have a sense of purpose – a sense of purpose that, on the face of it, seems rather Christian, even if the ideologues are invariably atheists or agnostics. I say ‘on the face of it’, because the perception of filling a misconstrued ‘lack’ has resulted in cultural degradation for those that built the society. Let’s not forget: the Fifth Commandment tells us to honour our father and mother, the ancestors that built these ‘successful’ societies.
The silver lining (if there is one) in the cloud comes when one realises that a complete absence of material lack might be conducive to making an inward, spiritual turn. Dip into the crude and rather unpalatable online manosphere, and you will soon come across young billionaires living in sybaritic Dubai confessing they have come to the same conclusion. They have accumulated extraordinary material wealth and possessions, but it has resulted in spiritual emptiness, because their lives are devoid of any sense of transcendental purpose. It is almost reminiscent of one of those Arthur Schnitzler one-act plays such as Anatol (1893) where the character’s pursuit of pleasure ends up in self-delusion and in a struggle to find meaning in life.
Kierkegaard would have called this an inauthentic existence. These hyper-materialists cannot reach optimal selfhood because they have failed to integrate the different aspects of human existence. They live for what Kierkegaard called “immediacy” – they live entirely for material pleasures and avoid any meaningful reflection. This normally results in Kierkegaardian “despair”. They are the subjects of an illusory herd mentality which centres around the visual wealth on full display in hyperreal (and increasingly AI-driven) social media.
The social mediatisation of our everyday lives is a quest for external validation. It represents the thinking of the crowd, and it highlights the vulnerability of the people that make it up. Manosphere influencers like Andrew Tate have made the over-compensatory faux-pas: an upbringing of relative poverty in Luton led him to fetishize material wealth. This over-compensation comes at a spiritual cost, because it mistakenly absolutises materialism.
The requisite inward turn that might result from this can open up the path to subjective truth and the search for transcendental meaning. If you can then reach the point where you are prepared to live and die for faith and the paradox that God became man, then you have reached the Kierkegaardian “passion” – an intense subjective commitment that trumps any sense of objective certainty.
Optimal deprivation implies restraint. You are giving up, say, the instant gratification of material goods to achieve something greater. It is the same with the spiritual practice of kenosis (self-emptying). Through the Eucharist, a worshipper is aligning his or her heart with Christ’s ultimate sacrifice, making themselves spiritually prepared to receive the mystery of the Holy Gifts. By removing distractions and imposing restraint, you are creating intentionally a poverty of spirit – that blank space which can be filled with God’s grace.
In short, the meaninglessness of the aesthetic end-game might, in accordance with his schema, lead to the Kierkegaardian ‘ethical’ and ultimately the ‘religious’ where deeper “commitment” and responsibility is required. Then, principles will replace impulses. If this happens at a societal level, then that presumably leads to a bona fide more compassionate and harmonious community – one based on truths, and not fabricated moral righteousness.
Kierkegaard believed that you cannot live a fulfilled authentic existence if there are no limitations. In order to do so, you need to separate yourself from the crowd conformity, which in the above context means detaching yourself from the myth perpetuated online and elsewhere that material wealth leads to full satisfaction.
As every leader knows, to stand apart from the crowd requires an inner strength. It is not about being contrarian for its own sake; it is a matter of creating genuine convictions through questioning mass societies’ pre-packaged opinions. These convictions, Kierkegaard believed, can lead to the kind of spiritual independence necessary for making authentic choices. And only authenticindividuals can make meaningful contributions to society.
But what about societies on the brink of civil war where the time for meaningful contributions has passed? Kierkegaard would have surely encouraged those dissidents fighting nihilistic policy-making and digital repression to continue resisting the crowd and in doing so let their inner freedom provide a psychological anchor.
Just as people write things on X that they would never say in person, he believed the emerging mass media of nineteenth-century Denmark published articles they would not express face-to-face. As dissidents, we must avoid this kind of cowardice. Kierkegaard would task us to challenge, say, the tyrannical strategies of the EU and its nation-states not by forming mass counter-movements, but by building resistance through lots of one-to-one conversations that encourage genuine reflection and personal accountability. By owning our decisions entirely and by not creating a false lack, Kierkegaard would have believed we are less likely to succumb to a passive, unfulfilled state.
As Thatcher understood better than most, if you fulfil every desire, then you don’t know how to face a challenge. And when you know how to deal with challenges, you build character. We are told the same thing in the Book of Romans (5: 3-5).[3] There is surely an important lesson here for parents in all affluent societies. But it also helps explain how the cultural and societal vandalism currently reshaping contemporary western Europe all began.
[1] Either/Or. Edited by Victor Eremita. 1992. London: Penguin.
[2] Gad Saad. 2026. Suicidal Empathy. Broadside Books: Massachusetts.
[3] “3 And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces [a]perseverance; 4 and perseverance, [b]character; and character, hope. 5 Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”
