Poiesis and the Rising Anti-logos

I've mostly dealt with the concept of a mimetic reality in which Christ is the Logos after which the cosmos is derived and meaning is found in discovering the Logos in creation forever.  There is however there is an adverse perspective that denies God His place. The godless man finds the idea of re-creation appealing for he too abides in this same pliable world as the Christian, yet he sees the world as an extension of only himself. He believes that reality is a projection of his own phyche outward into senseless matter- that any meaning derived from the world is a mere impression himself. Perhaps this is not stated precisely nor understood in light of a comprehensive cosmology (as the mimetic model allows), but it is an enticing concept; that one can simply make oneself anew and the world around ought to follow. The modern man does not search the creation for the image of Christ, but rather attempts to consistently project his own personage outward, impressing his own image on the world.

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This relates to the concept of poiesis, the inversion of mimesis.  Poiesis originally meant "to make" but ultimately developed to mean "to bring something into existence which did not exist before".  If mimesis extracts the meaning and reason inherent in the world from the object to the subject, poiesis is to press meaning from onto the world from the outside, exclusively from the subject back onto the object. This idea of the world- that mankind has the ability to create any reality he chooses- stands antithetical to the mimetic worldview.  Mimesis longs to embody the Logos, while poiesis denies that any such foundational Reason exists. The result is a kind of desperate self-projection of an individual to make himself known and the world must conform to his own self-image, each man becoming his own logos.  

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In recent times, this concept has been bound to word "identity". We consider ourselves as prime knower and our own "hidden" (internal) image must be discovered by the self and made known externally.  This is why ones own self-expression (the external performances of ones inward perspective) is viewed with the utmost importance in our culture.  Furthermore, since such value has been ascribed to the internal or psychological self, any external dissent of that self-expression is regarded as an attack to ones own personhood.  If ones authentic self is the prime knower, the entire system in no way needs to tether to any part of reality.  In fact, reality can ultimately become the accuser of the internal self, presenting the individual with a definition of himself that shatters his own perception.  Thus, all reason seemingly inherent in the world must have been put there by some archaic system and is therefore only a social structure that can be discarded and made a new.  The result has lead to rejection of reality as a whole; one can define his own purpose, desires, interests, sexuality- all of reality entirely- leaving man as god over all things.

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But definition is not the final step for the modern man, he must transform the world around him in his own image, embodying the anti-logos in the world.  In order to accomplish this, the world too must conform to his self-image and all performances of self-expression must be affirmed. This is why there is an emphasis on ones family, friends, school, church, workplace, etc. having to affirm all performances of ones inward identity, because anything less is an attack on their expressions of their "true selves". This is the fulfillment of the words of St Paul, that man can exchange the Creator for the creation, God for self, the Logos for the anti-logos.  And it is not as the mimetic view in which creative activity that is the means of transforming the world, but infinite affirmation so that the each self can maintain his own reality and it be left unchallenged.

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I write this not as an attempt to provide a general cultural commentary, but rather to try to explain how the adverse of a mimetic reality is understood and embraced by the culture. Its influence is far-reaching and shapes much of our own sense of self and the world, even with a foundation in Christianity. However, Christ makes all things new and the heritage of modern thought still remains embedded in a fundamentally mimetic experience.  This is the fundamental truth of the world, even if modernity retaliates against it.  Christianity has been (in large part) the bulwark against the poietic experience in generations past and it will continue to shine the Light of Christ in the darkness. It is only the last several generations in which this divorce of the individual from the Church in regards to identity has taken hold of our ideas of selfhood and value. Perhaps, with much prayer and participation in the life of Christ, our sense of value will be found not in our own concept of self, but that we can embody another saying of St Paul: it is no longer I that live, but Christ in me.