The Secular-Materialist Mind Model: The Crisis of Meaning in Modern Civilization

Abstract Modern civilization is largely organized around a secular–materialist conception of reality in which the physical world constitutes the ultimate ontological ground. Within this framework, meaning, value, and purpose are treated not as intrinsic features of existence, but as secondary constructions arising from biological, social, or psychological processes. This paper examines the internal architecture of the secular-materialist mind model, analyzing how its metaphysical assumptions shape human self-understanding, knowledge production, moral reasoning, and institutional design. Rather than approaching secularism as an ideological opponent, the analysis treats secular-materialism as a coherent civilizational operating system, one that has generated extraordinary technical capacity while simultaneously producing structural instability in the domains of meaning, justice, and human orientation. The paper argues that contemporary crises of identity, governance, and psychological fragmentation are not accidental failures of implementation, but logical consequences of a mind model that reduces the human being to a product of nature rather than a mission-bearing agent within it. The study offers a diagnostic account of these limits without proposing a replacement framework.