In their series of animated essays, The School of Life have contemplated what great books do for the soul, how to merge money and meaning, and what philosophy is for. Now comes a wonderful animation that builds on School of Life founder Alain de Botton’s book Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion (public library) to explore what comes after religion and how we can begin to address the deeper existential yearnings which led us to create religion in the first place — a meditation that calls to mind Sam Harris’s recent guide to spirituality without religion and the broader question of how we fill our lives with meaning.

Transcribed highlights below.

Fewer and fewer people believe nowadays. It’s possible that in a generation, there simply won’t be religion across Europe and large sections of North America, Australia, and Asia. That’s not necessarily a problem — but it’s worth thinking about why people made up religion in the first place.

[…]

We may no longer believe, but the needs and longings that made us make up these stories go on: We’re lonely, and violent; we long for beauty, wisdom, and purpose; we want to live for something more than just ourselves.

Society tells us to direct our hopes in two areas: romantic love and professional success. And it distracts us with news, movies, and consumption. It’s not enough, as we know — especially at three in the morning. We need reminders to be good, places to reawaken awe, something to reawaken our kinder, less selfish impulses — universal things, which need tending, like delicate flowers, and rituals that bring us together.

The choice isn’t between religion and the secular world, as it is now — the challenge is to learn from religions so we can fill the secular world with replacements for the things we long ago made up religion to provide. The challenge begins here.

For more on this slippery but vital question, see Alan Lightman on finding transcendent moments in the secular world and Mary Oliver on a life well lived.