Resisting a Culture of Incoherence

Drawing on Weber and Peter Berger's "sacred canopy" framework, the essay argues that modernity's differentiation of value spheres (politics, economy, arts, religion) makes fragmentation the default condition of selfhood — and that three cultural mechanisms mould us inside that condition: narrative scripts (the American Dream, etc.), mimetic models (Girard and Luke Burgis), and habituation. The author's research with Christian corporate professionals — who described themselves as "mercenaries" at work while leading lay ministries on Sunday — anchors the argument that recognising these forces is the first step in resisting them. Note: byline not visible to me in the page's metadata; the framing strongly matches sociologist Andrew Lynn's faith-and-work research.