Rushdooney on psychology & the death of the modern

"The modern era, which can also be called the age of humanism, has been rich in it's promises to man: cradle to grave security, equality, a rich life for all, the abolition of poverty, ignorance, war, disease, and even death it's self. Year in and year out, modern man has had the message of nearing Utopia dinned into his ears. He has believed it. Man has become inpatient with respect to all problems, and a revolutionary rage at delays is increasing in evidence. This impatience is not helped by the growing collapse of the humanistic age. Material progress there has been, but man finds himself increasingly engaged in deadlier wars and with the world and himself, facing deadly problems of air, earth, food, and water pollution, and progressively suicidal in his own impulses.

The increasing prominence of psychology is an important sign of the times. When man becomes a problem to himself, psychology comes into its own. As man's inner problems grow, his ability to cope with the outer world and it's problems declines. Thus, a psychology-oriented age is an age in decline, unsure of it's self, and incompetent in the face of it's responsibilities. It is significant that modern man talks so much about "alienation"; his position of modernity isolates him from God and man and leaves him a prisoner of his isolated ego."

"Humanism calls for perpetual revolution, because, with every man his own law, and with evolution producing new hieghts each generation, freedom from the past is a neccesity. But this perpetual revolution is the deliberate destruction of the capital of a civilization, and it's consequence is the ultimate impoverishment of all."
(the capital of civilization means all the knowledge, scientific, historical, philosophic, artistic, political etc.)

"If a religion is isolated from its world and confined to it's church or temple, it is irrelevent to that world because it is not its motive force. The religion of a culture is that motive force which governs human action in every realm and embodies its self in the life, institutions, hopes, and dreams of a society."

"The modern age gives every evidence of approaching death. This is a cause, not for dismay, but for hope. The death of modernity makes possible the birth of a new culture, and such an event is always, however turbulent, an exciting and challenging venture. The dying culture loses its will to live. A new culture, grounded on a new faith, restores that will to live under very adverse circumstances."
-Rousas John Rushdoony, in the One and the Many