Category: Religion
Thoughts on God and the Machine.
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.