Merry Christmas, first of all. (See how I’ve started with a perfect example).
In the Neu, we like to think of ourselves as liberated, enlightened, secular individuals. Free of needless ceremony and unscrupulous superstitions. After all, we survived the Enlightenment. We’re the end point. Sure, some of us may still believe in phantasmal ghosts or the success of unchecked liberalism, however, we aren’t sacrificing harvests to appease the invisible governor of our lives, whose existence, by nature, we can never be sure of. We don’t do that anymore, right?
Yes, it is true that we like to see ourselves at the end of the road, to look at history as a progressive path of incremental awareness, increasing little by little at each stop, always progress. And in our hubris we like to believe the ride is over, that we’ve learnt what we need to know and the rest is extra credit. This is the zenith of human achievement. How can we possibly go beyond the moon? How can we improve our existing systems? How could we ever produce better art? These are all reserved to the realm of science and speculative fixion.
Part of this goes back to Mark Fisher and Fukuyama. Both men saw this, though in different ways, as a nearly insurmountable task—that is trying to overcome the malaise of the Neu and imagine beyond.
There is a quote equally attributed to Jameson and Žižek that goes “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” In many ways this is true, but let’s extrapolate that broader and apply Fisher’s hauntology to say: it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of the out of joint modern, of this prison we’ve built, and all the tidings and traditions linked to it.
Paganism
The term Pagan is a nebulous one at best. It originates from Latin with a lot of historical variation, beginning with “country” or “district”, progressing to “rustic”, before finally landing in the Christian tradition as “heathen”.
Even now the term is geschichte-verfolgt in a number of different ways. There’s the uncivilised interpretation, the magick religious interpretation, and of course the classical Christian reading still remains. I’m more interested in looking at the word’s original meaning and conflating it with a similar term “secular”.
If we, give me the benefit of the doubt, use this term pagan interchangeably with secular, then we can discuss the modern religion and the baggage of religious rituals which follow us around.
Modern Paganism
As we can expect from nearly everything in society, this Paganism springs out of economic conditions. What does this mean for our religion? Well, it means it too must adhere to economic norms.
The paganism of today is that of consumption, conformity, indifference, and comfort. Our religion is distinct from others in its approach to deity, but it is no different in its demand for complete subservience. If Muslim (Al-Muslimūn in Arabic) means submitters to God, then the new religious disciples are Lilrabih, those who surrender to profit.
For our God is the system which we built and the apparatuses which sprung from it. In America, the constitution is God, the stock market, the founding fathers, the idea of the nation, the ‘good hearted’ corporation, ‘freedom’ itself. All an elaborate pantheon of rulers who must go unquestioned and worshiped without fail. And our Jupiter, our Zeus, seated on the throne and never touched is capitalism itself. Welcome to Olympus.
Rituals
Naturally, this must mean our worship conforms to the teachings of the modern religion, that it enhances the market, that it legitimises the unquestioned word of god.
This is where the nasty tentacles sneak in to warp everything into a conforming conglomeration, all with shared characteristics, and stripped of geschichte-verfolgt identity.
Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Ressurexion Day. All originating from religious sources, specifically Christian sources, and all co-opted by these tentacles into a uniform basis: consume. There is still the polished veneer of meaning adorned on these days. Christmas is for the birth of Christ. Easter is for his ressurexion. Valentine’s is for romantic love and maybe reverence for a dead saint. But in practice, all these days are allocated for sales.
You must buy presents. You must buy candy and flowers and balloons. You must buy chocolate and eggs. Buy a tree. Buy lights. Buy ham and wrapping paper and cards.
Sure, there’s a nice sentiment behind the secular visage too. “It’s about family” or “it’s about love” or “it’s about thankfulness”. But in the end, the goal of each is clear, and it’s equally clear why mighty Zeus has allowed these to continue in their existence. These are rituals worthy of his praise.
Birthdays are much the same. It seems absurd even on the surface. Why celebrate a trip around the sun? All you have done is managed to not die, is that worthy of praise? This celebration finds its modern roots in the Romans (unsurprisingly, they were notorious for pointless ritual). Back then it was only for aristocrats, but with the advent of ‘shared liberties’ it was adopted by the average person.
Of course, now it is allowed to exist because it propagates the economy. That’s more cards to sell, plastic to produce, cake to bake. Even better, it serves as a distraxion and momentarily makes the average person believe they matter, that they’re more than a cog serving everyday a new invisible governor.
Some might argue Olympus is ruled by ideology (I’m looking at you, Althusser). There is merit to this case, but even ideology is commodified by almighty Zeus.
Look at the media that pervades us. All of it is allowed for by our lightning lord. The upsurge in anti-capitalist media, in film and literature, was allowed by the gods, and only exists to cater to a new demographic, one which feels it’s making a difference by consuming supposedly subversive content which all the same is allowed to exist. An almighty god would not allow insolence as religious practice. There are no heretics to this religion, no true pagans. Our religion IS the heretical.
Religion in Battle
Some might argue the cure to this epidemic is to return to the old religions, just as the pagans in Mecca or below Mount Sinai, stripped of their golden calf, became again the faithful. But even these faiths, though not animate in the same way as us, serve the mighty Zeus.
At the emergence of merchant produxion during the tail end of feudalism, indulgences and the Enlightenment collided within a few centuries of each other, to interweave the modern evolution of religious institutions and growing capital of the world, not to mention the use of ideology as moral forgiveness for capital driven ventures: colonialism, slavery, etc.
If the modern Christian church does not worship Zeus, then why do they have a subscription service? Why coffee shops and campuses? The newest buildings? A full-time staff? Is this not the mark of a business and not spiritual devotion?
I don’t mean this as a critique of the religion itself, that would be pointless. I only mean to point out that the institutions, those parts of the religion which have ingratiated themselves into the Olympian society, must too follow the rules.
Other Rituals
If we ever stopped to think about what we were doing, much of these performances would seem utterly absurd. Think of funerals, perhaps the most strangely hypocritical of all rituals. You gather to throw a party for someone who is dead, and in doing so, waste the time of living bringing them ever closer to their own celebration.
Some might argue it’s a great way to connect with distant family or to express and overcome grief. Both of these are true, but they are also the veneereal film that applied to all other worships, they are the secular cover for the absurdity behind these acts.
These too serve Zeus. They sell coffins. Plots of land. Cremation services. Reception reservations. It might not be as egregiously clear, but they too are rested on strange ulteriors.
I don’t suggest we throw all of these away. Throughout history rituals have been important factors of life. If we turn our eyes to Walter Benjamin, we might see how rituals have served as the basis for human progress and have, in fact, slowly been eroded by the Neu. I don’t entirely agree, though it’s true, our rituals lack the ephemeral quality that elevated those of the past, the pure spiritual devotion. We do our rituals out of habit and obligation, not because we have entered into them introspectively and come out believing they are of merit.
I instead suggest something similar to Husserl. We must examine these, not go about them because they are a formulation of the current Natural Attitude. We should believe they serve a purpose and are substantial to our existence, and they very well might be. Christmas could change a life forever or bring about feelings of supreme joy, this is nothing to scoff at.
Just don’t let the light of Zeus guide you into a corner darker than ever before.
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