The above image was done with stable diffusion using the prompt 'a religious ritual of pfizer.'
Humans co-evolved with human religion. Religious rituals were some of the first psychosocial technologies put into use by our species. When compared with all of history, our culture's secularization is a very recent and very strange development. My personal belief is that people are innately religious, and their unconscious religious inclinations have not disappeared. They've merely found expression in secular activities.
Nearly all public discourse sounds religious to me. By that I mean that nearly all of this conversation's participants promote ideas that are grounded more in mythology than in anything rational. And many of our most prominent talking heads are simply religious zealots, whether their religion is Christianity or Pfizerism. The beliefs underlying their views are sometimes contradictory and logically unsound, but they act in accordance with those beliefs no matter what.
Trust in God, they say, and I wonder what world they live in that they think the deity that created it is trustworthy. Trust the science, they say, while in the same breath denying the validity of all scientific findings that call the propaganda they saw on the news into question. This folly comes in many flavors, but its mechanics are relatively universal. And our culture is filled with zealots unconsciously attempting to enact religious rituals that don't produce their desired results, because society isn't structured to deliver such results.
Consider coming of age. In nearly every culture in human history, coming of age was defined by a sacred process wherein a child went through a special ordeal and was subsequently recognized as an adult by the community. This general process is deeply embedded in our collective psyche. Nearly every child unconsciously expects this process to occur, and when it doesn't, many attempt to make it happen by going through special ordeals of their own devising.
No matter what happens in these special ordeals, the person undertaking them is never subsequently recognized as an adult by the community. How could they be? Even adults are not treated as adults in our system. We may be sovereign beings, but our sovereignty is denied by our control regime as a matter of course. The overall effect of this is a large population of adults who are perpetually trapped in adolescence.
We add fluoride to drinking water knowing it reduces IQ. We add glyphosate to the food knowing it impairs cognition. We use toxic chemicals everywhere knowing they disrupt hormones, which negatively impacts clear thinking. So does the insufficient sleep that about 1 in 3 adults get.
In 2000, 1 in 150 kids had autism. By 2020, that figure was 1 in 36. As autism rates have gone up, mental health has been deteriorating quickly. About 80% of the population can now expect be hospitalized or prescribed medication for a mental health condition at some point, and the medical system usually makes matters worse because it creates new socioeconomic difficulties.
In a society of cognitively impaired perpetual adolescents plagued with mental illness, there may not be much hope for considered, rational discourse leading to solutions for the many problems we face. If we want to get to a place where such discourse is even possible, we first need a great deal of healing. The physical dimension of this is obvious. But the psychological dimension is just as important and easier to approach.
Along with coming of age, there's another ritual embedded deep in our psyches. This is the ritual of death and rebirth, which we all experience countless times in countless moments of transformation. Traditional religions all encourage transformation in various ways. What would it take for culture as a whole to be positively reborn?
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Read my novels:
- Small Gods of Time Travel is available as a web book on IPFS and as a 41 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt.
- The Paradise Anomaly is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- Psychic Avalanche is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- One Man Embassy is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- Flying Saucer Shenanigans is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- Rainbow Lullaby is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- The Ostermann Method is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- Blue Dragon Mississippi is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
See my NFTs:
- Small Gods of Time Travel is a 41 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt that goes with my book by the same name.
- History and the Machine is a 20 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt based on my series of oil paintings of interesting people from history.
- Artifacts of Mind Control is a 15 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt based on declassified CIA documents from the MKULTRA program.
So beautiful, and impactful! Wow. If your personal belief is that people are innately religious, what does religion mean to you?
I'm not an expert on religion, nor do I have much experience in that world, but what seems clear to me is that religion was almost always linked to community: gathering together, collective rituals, giving back, service, a sense of shared purpose. I wonder what society would look like if we had a strong sense of community without all the religious zealots in all their different forms throughout society.
To me, community means more than something sentimental. It's about reviving local power. The restoration of public lands and public institutions. More public spaces to gather in our cities and towns, and less corporate takeover with housing and business. More infrastructure for sharing/gift economies. And so much more...
I see religion as technology that taps into our biopsychosocial mechanisms to synchronize our activities and progresses in the context of community. This tech is embedded in us and seeks expression even in the absence of its community context. Learning to harness this inner technology may be the key to building a better world together.