When did we lose our souls?

First God Died, Then Art Died.

"We build things and make things that are soulless. 

Underneath that is, we don't put care into the things. 

And underneath that is we don't actually believe in the soul as a fundamental idea. 

So why would we make things with soul?" - David Perell

At some point we deprioritized building beautiful things. David’s theory is that the World Wars broke us.

They broke our humanity and ultimately broke our belief in the soul.

That soullessness translated into us creating things without care and the world became uglier.

To Watch David describe this in his own words check our this short clip.

I immediately thought of two infamous quotes:

God is dead. - Nietzsche

Art is dead. - Bo Burnham (Attributed to multiple people, so I am going with my favorite. If you have a problem with that please let me know by reposting the podcast on X and sharing it with all of your friends.)

I was curious if the timing would add up. If David’s theory would stack up chronologically with Nietzsche’s quote, “God is Dead. And we killed him.”

At first I was disappointed because Nietzsche wrote The Gay Science in 1882 30 years before the start of World War 1.

And then I found this wild line in the story The Madman.

The madman is running around proclaiming God is Dead. That we are burying him. That our churches are tombs. And everyone is looking at him like he is a madman. They are pestering him with jokes.

And then the text says,

“Here the madman was silent and looked again at his hearers; they also were silent and looked at him in surprise. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, so that it broke in pieces and was extinguished. "I come too early," he then said, "I am not yet at the right time. This prodigious event is still on its way, and is traveling, - it has not yet reached men’s ears. Lightning and thunder need time…”

The madman appeared mad, because the event had not happened yet. The people were not aware yet that God has died.

They were not aware that brother would destroy brother, that we would split an atom and in doing so split humanity.

Split our souls.

What if the lack of beauty in the world is a physical manifestation of the death of God?

Where is the madman now?