Daniel: Alright Sophia, I'm going to say the title of a book, and I want your gut-reaction, one-liner review. Sophia: Okay, I'm ready. Hit me. Daniel: Seculosity: How Career, Parenting, Technology, Food, Politics, and Romance Became Our New Religion and What to Do About It. Sophia: Wow. That sounds like the most stressful self-help book ever written. "Congratulations, you're failing at life, and also at the things you do to escape failing at life." Daniel: That's actually a perfect summary! We're diving into Seculosity by David Zahl. And what's fascinating is that Zahl isn't a sociologist or a psychologist. He's the founder of Mockingbird Ministries, a Christian organization, and he's looking at our modern anxieties through a very old lens: the human need for grace. Sophia: Okay, so he's coming at this from a theological angle. That makes the title make more sense. It's been highly rated by readers who feel it perfectly diagnoses a kind of modern burnout. Let's start there. What on earth is 'seculosity'?

Daniel: Zahl kicks off with a brilliant story about his friend Sherry. She grew up in a very strict religious home and said she was moving to a place where "no one's religious but everyone is super religious." Sophia: I think I know exactly what she means. The kind of place where people don't go to church, but they will judge you for not composting correctly. Daniel: Precisely. Zahl uses this to coin the term "seculosity." It's religiosity, but directed horizontally at earthly things, instead of vertically towards the divine. It’s the idea that even as traditional religion declines, our religious impulse doesn't disappear. It just gets rebranded. We still need a "controlling story" for our lives, something that tells us we're okay, that our life matters. Sophia: And what is that controlling story for most of us, according to Zahl? Daniel: It's the desperate, unending quest for what he calls "enoughness." It’s this deep human drive to feel valuable, vindicated, justified. To reach a benchmark where we finally feel like we are good enough. Sophia: Is that just a fancy word for self-esteem? Daniel: It's deeper than that. It's about justification. It's the feeling that your existence is valid. And this drive for enoughness is fueled by what he calls "performancism." This is a key idea. Performancism is the unspoken assumption that you are what you do. Your résumé isn't just a part of your identity; it is your identity. Your successes, your failures, your productivity—that's the final measure of your worth. Sophia: That’s a bit bleak. It’s like taking the pressure of a final exam and applying it to… everything. Your brunch photos, your kid's soccer game, your job title. So that's why we're all so tired? We're constantly on trial, and we're both the defendant and the judge? Daniel: Exactly. He has this devastating quote: "People are suffering and dying under the torture of the fantasy self they’re failing to become." We're haunted by this idealized version of ourselves—the perfect parent, the successful professional, the perfectly mindful yogi—and the gap between that fantasy and our reality is a source of profound anxiety. Sophia: It's the pressure to have it all, but also to make it look effortless. The performance is key. Daniel: Yes. And this is why the book has resonated so much. It gives a name to a feeling that I think a lot of people have but can't articulate. This low-grade, constant pressure to measure up, not to a divine standard, but to a secular one that is, in many ways, even more demanding because there's no forgiveness. There's just the next performance.

Sophia: Okay, that 'fantasy self' idea is powerful. Where do we see this performancism play out most intensely? You mentioned the word "busy" in your roast of the title. Daniel: Busyness is the first and most obvious arena. The stock reply to "How are you?" used to be "Fine." Now, it's "Busy." Or even better, "So busy." It's become a status symbol. He says, "To be busy is to be valuable, desired, justified." It’s a public display of our enoughness. Sophia: It’s a humblebrag. "I'm so important and in-demand that I have no time for leisure or rest." Daniel: Exactly. He quips that "keeping up with the Joneses now means trying to out-schedule them." And he tells this great story about a journalist who went to North Dakota to find people living a simpler, less-harried life. She held a focus group with farmers, expecting to hear about their peace and quiet. Instead, they were just as stressed and overwhelmed as any high-powered lawyer in Manhattan. One woman said the only leisure time she got was waiting for her mammogram. Sophia: Whoa. So it’s not about our circumstances, it’s a mindset. But hold on, some people are just genuinely busy! He talks about that couple, Jen and Ted. Two careers, three kids, an Etsy side-hustle, an aging parent... that's not a performance, that's just survival, right? Daniel: It is. And Zahl is compassionate about that. He's not judging. He's diagnosing a cultural condition. But he argues that the ultimate arena for performancism, where it gets truly dangerous, is parenting. Sophia: Oh, I can see this coming. Daniel: He tells this story that just sends a chill down your spine. A family is in the waiting room for an elementary school admissions interview. The father leans over to his young son and whispers, "Now, remember, be the yourself we talked about." Sophia: Oh, that's brutal. "Be the curated version of yourself that we rehearsed to maximize our chances of social approval." It turns parenting from an act of love into an act of brand management for the family. Daniel: It's the perfect encapsulation of parenting seculosity. The child becomes an extension of the parents' résumé. Their successes are the parents' validation. Their failures are the parents' shame. And the stakes are terrifyingly high. Zahl points to research on "suicide clusters" in affluent, high-achieving areas, where the pressure to perform academically and athletically is so intense that the rates are four to five times the national average. Sophia: It's the "Penn Face" phenomenon he mentions, right? The pressure to act happy and self-assured even when you're crumbling inside. Because any admission of weakness or struggle is a failure in performance. Daniel: Yes. And it creates this profound loneliness. You can't be vulnerable because vulnerability is a flaw in the product. The product being you, or your child. It's a system that promises fulfillment through achievement but delivers anxiety and isolation.

Daniel: And if our personal lives are these high-stakes arenas for self-justification, it's no surprise our public lives are too. This is where Zahl's chapter on politics is so sharp and feels incredibly relevant. Sophia: This feels very of-the-moment. How does politics become a religion? I thought the problem was apathy. Daniel: That's the paradox. He argues that politics now provides the things religion used to: a sense of belonging, a clear sense of righteousness, and a grand sense of meaning. For belonging, he tells the story of a college intern who drops out of school to work on a campaign, telling his parents, "I found my people." The cause was secondary to the tribe. Sophia: The tribe is everything. And the easiest way to bond a tribe is to have a common enemy. Daniel: And that's where righteousness comes in. He tells a story from Halloween night in 2016. In his liberal university town, there were signs for every candidate, but only one house had a "Make America Great Again" sign. He says that house was treated as if it were genuinely haunted. Parents whispered and steered their kids away. The political sign had become a mark of moral contamination. Sophia: And social media is the cathedral for this new religion. Outrage is the currency, right? The story of Cecil the Lion is a perfect example. We get to feel righteous and morally superior by tweeting our anger at a dentist in Minnesota, all without having to do anything that costs us. Daniel: Zahl calls it a "guilt management system." Public outrage allows us to feel like we're on the right side of history, to transfer righteousness to ourselves by condemning the sins of others. It’s a powerful, and addictive, form of self-justification. But like all the other seculosities, it doesn't deliver. It just leads to burnout and deeper division. Sophia: So what's the way out? If work, parenting, and politics are all just traps, what are we supposed to do? Daniel: This is where the book's conclusion is so important. He uses a powerful analogy of being caught in a riptide. Your instinct is to fight it, to swim against the current with all your might. But that's what drowns you. The only way to survive is to stop fighting, to let go, and let the current carry you out until it dissipates. You have to surrender. You have to be rescued.

Sophia: So the whole book is a diagnosis of how we try to save ourselves, and the conclusion is... we can't. That feels a bit bleak. What's the 'what to do' part of the title? Daniel: The answer, for Zahl, is not more 'doing.' It's the opposite. It's grace. It's receiving something you haven't earned. He tells the beautiful, true story of the writer Mary Karr. As a teenager, she was deeply depressed. After a particularly bad episode, she offhandedly mentioned a craving for plums, which were out of season. Her father, without a word, got in the car and drove all night from Texas to Arkansas to find her a bushel of plums. Sophia: Wow. Daniel: Karr writes about that moment of unearned, extravagant love, saying, "That’s how you acquire the resolution for survival... You don’t earn it. It’s given." That, for Zahl, is the counter-narrative to performancism. It's a love that isn't contingent on your performance. Sophia: This is where his theological background really comes through. And it's where some readers, especially non-religious ones, might feel the book offers a solution that doesn't apply to them. It's a common point of criticism I've seen, that it's a great diagnosis with a very specific, faith-based prescription. Daniel: Absolutely. He's not hiding his perspective. His argument is that the problem is fundamentally spiritual, so the solution must be too. But I think the final question he leaves us with is universal, and he borrows it from the writer Walker Percy, who, when asked why he believed in God in this day and age, simply replied, "What else is there?" Sophia: Meaning, what else can account for the mystery and the trouble and the delight of life? Daniel: Exactly. Percy said, "Life is too much trouble, far too strange, to arrive at the end of it and then to be asked what you make of it and have to answer 'Scientific humanism.' That won’t do." Zahl's point is that if all our secular striving for 'enoughness'—through our careers, our kids, our politics—ultimately fails and leaves us exhausted, then where do we look for hope? Sophia: That's a powerful question to end on. It forces you to look at your own life and ask: What is my 'seculosity'? What am I relying on to feel 'enough'? And is it actually working? Daniel: A question worth sitting with. Thanks for exploring this with me, Sophia. Sophia: Anytime, Daniel. Daniel: This is Aibrary, signing off.