A modernist malady

Alienation that comes of the objectification of oneself is a modernist malady. 

The ancient world's version of that loss of self is paganism. The over-riding of reason with atavistic passion and the ecstatic loss of self in blood lust and sexual lust are the hormonal equivalents to the extremes of abstraction an alienation from the material realm produces by engendering a fetishism. 

In the history of the Jewish people, that alienation happened by a too-fine refinement of the spiritual system into scholarship and away from the material. The Arabs also suffer from an alienation from the material, in their dependency on extractive economies. Their customs and their dedication to the values of the ancient world then makes them subject to the ancient world's malady of loss of self – paganism.