Category: Thinking

The more I learn about the rise of and wran­gling among the var­i­ous near-East­ern mys­tery cults of thou­sands of years ago (and to be clear, Chris­tian­i­ty is the cult that won out) the more par­al­lels I see with con­tem­po­rary cults of per­son­al­i­ty, espe­cial­ly with social media influ­encers. Pythago­ras had a gold­en thigh, Apol­lo­nius of Tyana lev­i­tat­ed, Simon Magus had all man­ner of signs and por­tents asso­ci­at­ed with him; Jesus could mul­ti­ply food, et al.

They’re essen­tial­ly brands com­pet­ing for fol­low­ers based on who has the best super pow­ers. I’m start­ing to get kind of worn down learn­ing about all of this, because the more I read and lis­ten, the more clear how the foun­da­tion­al ele­ments of this behav­ior have dri­ven the devel­op­ment of west­ern civ­i­liza­tion, to the detri­ment, destruc­tion, and icon­o­clasm of ancient Euro­pean cul­tures. The pop­u­lar­i­ty of these cults took hold in Greece, and when the Roman Imperi­um con­vert­ed, Chris­tian­i­ty (despite bru­tal internecine con­flict) had the resources and pow­er to turn cun­ning and blade to assim­i­late or crush their com­pe­ti­tion.

We are still obsessed with super pow­ers, and pow­ers greater than our­selves answer­ing our calls for help. A cult of per­son­al­i­ty requires its fol­low­ers to depend on the leader for guid­ance, ratio­nal­iza­tion, sal­va­tion. I’ve been try­ing to leave that sort of depen­dence behind me.

I need to focus my research on what rem­nants have sur­vived from the oral tra­di­tions that Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies have done their best to erad­i­cate. If I decol­o­nize myself with­out some sort of anchor in a cul­ture that is appro­pri­ate to me, all that would remain would be hol­low.

I don’t think you can make a self with­out a sense of past, and I don’t think, no mat­ter how sec­u­lar or empir­i­cal you are, that you can engage ful­ly as a human with­out accept­ing an ethos that at some lev­el is reli­gious.