Why Does Losing Religion Make People Feel Insane?

Robert Greene says a deep sense of spirituality, of something larger than you that lives inside you, that you are part of, and that guides your life, is lost, and that loss is part of what is making people insane right now.

Plenty of people are still religious, yet the deeper feeling of something beyond a single life has dropped away, and with it a very important part of life. Religion was an anchor, and now the anchor is gone. He is not claiming to be a believer. He is noting the phenomenon. The world looks like a madhouse. People are going berserk, disconnected from their bodies, their lives, and their environment. The loss of God, the death of God, and the death of religion was a very painful moment in history and in the psyche. Getting back to a transcendent experience can help meet a very elemental need.

Discoveries in science carry a deep spiritual component. Studying the human brain, learning about the cosmos, and learning about the Big Bang is a spiritual experience, without a claim that a creator arranged it. Some of the old feeling can be recovered in the modern world. Organized religion is not required, but feeling part of something much larger than an individual life is a critical part of experience.