How Nations Pray Without Gods

After uploading The Ballad of a Fading Empire, a friend reached out—and soon we were talking politics, philosophy and metaphysics. As he transitioned from texts to voice notes, I began to panic. Doubts crept in about my ability to respond with the same eloquence—and, ultimately, substance. But, as I listened, as I began to grasp what he was trying to explain, I knew I could not turn away from this conversation.

He spoke of metaphysics. I sat with my realism. He had a God. I had questions. We met somewhere in the static.

Power, truth, and geopolitics

His argument was that truth isn’t relative. That ethics, when divorced from something deeper—something metaphysical, spiritual, eternal—begins to wobble. Becomes arbitrary. They stop being true and start being useful, and from there it’s a short walk to “might makes right; might makes truth.” He pled his case calmly, if passionately: systems built on revolution alone, with no anchoring beyond the state itself, will always veer toward utility over morality. What’s “good” becomes effective. What’s “true” becomes what the powerful decide.

And I don’t completely disagree.

On the global stage, power often outweighs principle. States don’t act from faith or virtue. They act from interest, from survival, from projection. Geopolitics isn’t a sermon—it’s a strategy. And in that strategy, truth is often a prop, not a pillar.

At some point, we brought up China. Not in a hostile way, but in a way that made me think about what it means to build a state on revolution, on statehood itself—without leaning on metaphysics. I pointed out that even in systems that don’t anchor themselves in religion or god, ethics still seems to operate. Human rights might not be universally enforced, but they’re universally discussed.

Yes, states often adopt a human rights framework for image, for trade, for legitimacy. But even that implies that these ethics have weight. Performative or not, they’re still performing for something.

And isn’t that interesting? Even when not enforced, ethics haunt the room.

I’m not convinced that requires god. Maybe just a conscience.

I've read the theories. Realism doesn’t ask whether something is right, only whether it works. And that’s not error—it’s a framework.

But frameworks can crack too. And I think that’s where he and I begin to part ways.

The limits of metaphysics in politics

I do not consider myself religious, nor do I subscribe to a specific metaphysical framework—even after having gone through a Buddhist phase in my teens. I’ve always found peace in ambiguity, in knowing that I may never truly understand the grand mechanics of the universe (and being okay with that). My ethics are self-made, constructed through lived experience and a deep belief in decency, even without divine instruction.

With that said, I still respect metaphysical frameworks. I understand the desire to anchor truth in something absolute, immovable, untouched by time or politics. I am not anti-faith—if anything, I see the power it can have in shaping people, cultures, and stories. But if I, as one person, wrestle with the burden of meaning-making in the absence of belief, how much more dangerous is it when entire governments claim divine—or even democratic—justifications for their actions? The moment a state assumes a moral high ground; it no longer needs to question its decisions; it sanctifies them. Power becomes virtue. And that’s where belief, stripped of humility, turns lethal.

So, no. I don’t believe that God, or any deity, should form the foundation of political systems or global structures. Belief is sacred precisely because it is personal. And in the same way I wouldn’t want someone else’s god governing my body or choices, I don’t think a nation—let alone the international order—should be built on the divine.

Meaning doesn’t need to be metaphysical to matter.

It can live in memory. In language. In history. In pain.

It can live in people—in what we carry, protect, fight for.

I believe in ethics, but not because they were handed down from above. I believe in them because I’ve seen what happens when they’re absent—we all have. Dignity shouldn’t be conditional because harm is real, even when it’s not written in scripture.

Human rights, to me, are one of the clearest examples of non-religious ethics that still carry global weight. They weren’t handed down by prophets—they were written by survivors. People who saw what the absence of rights looked like and tried to universalize their protection.

And while their enforcement is uneven, their existence matters. Their power doesn’t come from divinity—it comes from memory, witness, and resistance.

For me, the moral foundations of a political system should not come from a sermon—they should come from a shared, living understanding of what makes us human.

Building intention without absolutes

I don’t think systems need gods. But I do think they need intention.

We can’t build nations solely on power, or efficiency, or ideology. What we need, maybe, is a politics of deliberateness. One that asks not just can we do this? But should we? —and why? A state that builds only for the sake of building is no better than one that prays only for the sake of praying. Both are motion without meaning. Both are sound without sense.

This is why I’m wary—not just of theocracy, but of hyper-pragmatic governance too. When the state becomes the end and the people the means, we lose sight of what politics is supposed to protect. China isn’t soulless—but it’s a reminder of how ethics can be bent, edited, or omitted when tied too closely to utility.

Systems need soul—not divinity.

The conversation lingers

The conversation didn’t convert me—it wasn’t meant to.

It didn’t break me, either.

What it did was give shape to thoughts I hadn’t yet articulated, and language for a resistance I didn’t know I was allowed to have—not to him, but to the idea that belief must be universal to be real. That meaning must be metaphysical to matter.

I walked away still unsure of many things—but not of my voice. Not of my grounding.

He had his God, I had my questions.

And sometimes, questions are their own kind of compass.

Belief doesn’t have to rule the world to shape it.

Sometimes, it’s enough that it shapes us.