Where once divinity stood as the axis of moral authority, today the self has assumed that throne.
To invoke the self is to sanctify it—rendering personal identity not just significant, but sacred (individualism). In this inversion, provocation becomes heresy, not against God, but against the inviolable ego.
The modern offense is no longer blasphemy toward the divine, but insult toward the self-consecrated individual.
This shift reveals a profound reorientation: the transcendental has collapsed inward, and critique of others now trespasses upon what has become the most protected domain—one’s self-defined holiness.