> Some people actually don't worship anything, and don't care about it.
I certainly don't disagree. Wallace's proposition is still provocative, uses a broader than religious definition of worship and lays a marker that when one examines one's own viewpoints there are belief structures to be found.
To be fair, I'm only going by your quote, so I don't know if it was quoted out of context.
That said, from only the quote, I find that it's a bad leap to go from saying that everyone has some beliefs, to saying that everyone worships something.
I think at this point some clear definitions of how Wallace uses the words is needed to even make sure we discuss the same thing.
Using standard definitions, off course, anyone still capable of thought (so ignore people that are brain dead and other edge cases), will need to make decisions based on partial information all the time. So someone might come to accept that the sky is blue or the earth is round, and won't continue digging deeper into it. Do they know without a doubt that it is true, probably not, but they can "believe" it to be true for practical purposes.
But that belief need not be firmly held, it can simply be based on whatever data they currently know and freely change as more data is revealed to them.
Now to jump to worshipping, you need an externality and the belief in that externality as something to trust in and follow, revere and adore. You need something that you can listen too in order to predict what actions will lead to the future you desire, and to listen too as what future you were meant to arrive at or other such things.
And that's where I'm saying no, some people don't need any externality for that. Some people don't need to believe in a higher meaning or purpose, some people are happy not knowing what the purpose of life if any is, or that there is one to begin with. Some people are happy just living life and being guided by their innate desires and their own thoughts and ideas. They don't need answers to "why do we do what we do, why do we exist, what happens after we die".
Similarly, some people don't worship anything. There is no externality they adore and revere in, that they delegate their life too, and their full trust in.
"Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings. They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing."
The type of worship and belief discussed goes beyond the spiritual or existential or external.
Okay, well I'd say that picking such a broad definition for worship and building a case on this idiosyncratic use of it feels like a stretch to me. At least it seems it can't really be used in a context where the normal definitions of worship, beliefs and meaning would be used like what I spoke of in my parent comment.
So I'd consider that quote was effectively pulled out of context.
I certainly don't disagree. Wallace's proposition is still provocative, uses a broader than religious definition of worship and lays a marker that when one examines one's own viewpoints there are belief structures to be found.