You ever get that weird, hollow feeling while scrolling through your phone in a checkout line? It’s not just boredom. It’s actually a symptom of something much deeper that sociologists have been obsessing over for more than a century. We’ve basically flattened the world. Everything feels the same—just content, just data, just tasks. This brings us to the core of an idea that sounds academic but is actually super personal: the sacred and the profane.
Back in 1912, a guy named Émile Durkheim—basically the father of sociology—dropped a book called The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. He argued that religion isn't just about believing in gods. It’s about how humans divide the entire universe into two camps. There’s the "sacred," which is set apart, forbidden, and awe-inspiring. Then there’s the "profane," which is just... everything else. The ordinary, the mundane, the stuff you do to survive.
Honestly, we’ve mostly lost that distinction today. And it’s making us miserable.
What Mircea Eliade Got Right About Your Living Room
If Durkheim defined the terms, Mircea Eliade made them feel alive. In his 1957 work, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, he explained that for "archaic" humans, the world wasn't just a big pile of rocks and trees. Some places were "charged" with power.
Think about it this way. To a modern person, space is just math. One square foot is the same as another. That’s why we build cookie-cutter subdivisions. But for someone experiencing the world through the lens of the sacred, a specific mountain or a certain hearth in a home was the "center of the world." It was where heaven and earth met.
When you lose that, you get what Eliade called "existential fluidity." If no place is special, then no place is home. You’re just drifting. This isn't just some dusty theory; it’s why we feel so disconnected when we live in apartments that look exactly like a million other apartments. We’ve turned our sanctuaries into profane boxes for sleeping and checking email.
The Problem with "Productivity Culture"
We live in a world that is almost entirely profane.
Everything is measured by utility. "How does this help my career?" or "Is this a good use of my time?" Even our hobbies have become "side hustles." When you treat your rest as "recharging for work," you’ve profaned your rest. You’ve turned it into a tool for the economy.
True sacredness is useless.
That sounds bad, but it’s actually beautiful. A sacred ritual doesn't do anything in the material sense. Lighting a candle, saying a prayer, or sitting in total silence doesn't produce a widget or increase your ROI. It exists for its own sake. It’s a "break" in the linear time of the profane world.
Why Sunday Isn't Special Anymore
Historically, the "Sabbath" or a day of rest served as a hard boundary. It was a fence around a piece of time. Inside that fence, the rules of the world—buying, selling, striving—didn't apply. Now? We shop on Sundays. We answer Slack messages on Saturdays. We’ve let the profane leach into the sacred time until there’s no difference between a Tuesday afternoon and a Sunday morning.
The result is burnout. Not just physical exhaustion, but a "soul weariness" that comes from never being in a space that feels "set apart."
How We Try to Fake the Sacred (and Fail)
Humans are hardwired to look for the sacred. If we don’t find it in traditional ways, we try to manufacture it.
- Celebrity Worship: We treat famous people like "sacred" beings. We obsess over their lives as if they’re avatars of the gods. But because they’re just regular, flawed people, it always ends in disappointment.
- The "Aesthetic" Life: We try to make our coffee or our desks look "sacred" for Instagram. But the second you take a photo to show it off, it becomes profane. You’re using it for social capital. It’s no longer set apart; it’s a marketing tool.
- Political Tribalism: Many people treat their political identity as a sacred cause. It gives them the "us vs. them" feeling that used to come from religious ritual. But politics is the ultimate profane activity—it’s about power and negotiation. When you treat it as sacred, you stop being able to compromise.
Real-World Examples of the Sacred in 2026
It’s not all doom and gloom. You can still see the sacred popping up in "secular" life if you know where to look.
Take the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in D.C. If you’ve ever been there, you’ve felt the shift in energy. People speak in whispers. They touch the names. They leave offerings. Even people who aren't religious at all treat that wall as sacred ground. It is "set apart" from the rest of the city.
Or think about a wedding. The reason we wear uncomfortable clothes and follow specific scripts is to signal that this isn't a normal party. We are stepping out of profane time and into a moment that is supposed to be eternal. When people try to make weddings "casual," they often find that it feels less significant. The "inconvenience" of the ritual is actually what makes it feel real.
Breaking the Cycle of the Mundane
You don't need to join a monastery to reclaim the sacred. It’s about boundaries.
If your bedroom is where you sleep, work, eat, and watch Netflix, it’s a profane space. It’s just a room. But if you decide that you only sleep and read in that room—no phones, no laptops—you start to "set it apart." You create a sanctuary.
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It’s the same with time. If you have a meal with your family and everyone puts their phones in a basket in the other room, that meal becomes a ritual. It’s no longer just "consuming calories." It’s a sacred communion.
The Scientific Side of Awe
Psychologists like Dacher Keltner at UC Berkeley have studied the feeling of "awe," which is essentially the secular version of a sacred experience. Their research shows that when we experience awe—whether looking at the Grand Canyon or hearing a symphony—our "self-interest" shrinks. We feel more connected to others. Our stress hormones drop.
Basically, our brains need the sacred to function properly. Without it, we stay in a state of high-alert, "profane" anxiety.
Actionable Steps to Reclaim the Sacred
Stop trying to optimize everything. Efficiency is the enemy of the sacred.
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If you want to feel less like a gear in a machine, you have to create "zones" that the machine can't touch.
- Create a Physical Boundary: Pick one corner of your home. It can be a chair or a small table. No electronics allowed there. None. Use it for five minutes of silence or reading a physical book. Over time, that space will start to feel different.
- Ritualize the Boring Stuff: Instead of chugging coffee while checking email, make the brewing a process. Notice the smell. Use a specific cup. Don't look at a screen until the cup is empty. You’re turning a profane habit into a sacred moment.
- Find "Thick" Community: Profane communities are based on transactions (LinkedIn, networking groups). Sacred communities are based on shared values and "useless" togetherness. Join a choir, a local sports team, or a volunteer group where the goal isn't to "get ahead."
- Protect Your Time: Choose one day, or even just four hours, where you are "off grid." No shopping, no chores, no work. Just existence. It will feel uncomfortable at first because we are addicted to being productive. Lean into that discomfort.
The world will always try to pull you back into the profane. It wants you to be a consumer and a worker 24/7. Reclaiming the sacred is a quiet act of rebellion. It’s the only way to find a "center" in a world that feels like it’s spinning out of control.