A lofty goal: to one day be excommunicated from the Church.
And to work hard toward said goal by producing a body of work that challenges organized religion and its underlying folly, righteous fanaticism, and inherent bigotry.And to be instrumental in the fall of what preys on the human spirit in the name of righteousness, power and social control.And to be part of the rise of something spirited and aspirational.
In other words, the aim is to take it to the narrow-minded and push the envelope. Apply pressure to whatever doesn’t add up and force the fanatics whose life depends on dogma-cum-poison to take a moment and be offended. Let them lash out against those who speak truth to faith, showing their true colors. Let them strike the skeptics and critic(al thinker)s out of their club in the name of their holy untouchables. (Leaving on our own initiative would defeat the purpose.) Let them purge the criticism, and in doing so reveal the extent of their backwardness, the dead end of their sanctimonious approach.
Let them also defend the obsolete, laying bare the swamp behind their worldview, their rotten core and the wishful thinking that so easily degenerates to prejudice, self-righteousness and oppression.
Let them rage against the art and science that helps people process the world. Let them shake their godly fists at the research and canons that cite facts and figures – that expose the malignancy behind blind faith and total obedience. Their approach contravenes both the present and the future, all in the name of tradition, denying civilization the chance to connect with the sublime in a more convincing and substantial manner than their dated doctrines.
Let them be offended, self-righteous insecuritarians they are, with their precious and hallow disposition, to show us – and the rest of the world – what they’re made of. Let them go down in history for what they are: despots, zealots, persecutors and stiflers who operate under the guise of humility. Overbearing, arrogant, entitled cultists whose sense of security comes from making others like them. They pretend to be special by right of appointment, labeling their critics blasphemers and deviants. They refuse to update their textbooks (infallibility is at the core of their tenets) priding a mindset that litters the trash cans of history. Their stubbornness betrays neither virtue nor commitment to a higher purpose; just fear – that’s what drives them: the insecurity to register the data and embrace the future; an unwillingness to abandon the obsolete for the sake of what’s been updated and verified, timely and overdue. They refuse to catch up, their creed won’t allow it, and will do everything in their power to retrofit the future to their tradition’s requirements. They’re pathologically stuck to their archaic version of reality, in the name of which they make up all kinds of excuses, doubling down on their intransigence in fiery displays of faith.
And they gradually turn into case studies, cultural artifacts, social curiosities, and, in the end, a joke.
And, soon enough, into just another bone along evolution’s highway.
In other words, yes, let’s gather and perform rituals in tongues we hardly understand, based on principles derived since before the middle ages, in the name of almighty invisible beings of the male persuasion – and their winged companies – whose presence no one can doubt, criticize or make fun of, and in whose name the pious get mad at whoever takes their name in vain. Let’s come together in matrimony under their auspices and be subjected to their rules.
Let’s also not tax the faiths at all, and let them get away with abuse and murder, if need be. Let our entire culture and the lives we lead be built around these relic institutions and their customs, despite it being 2020, and call it an informed choice.
Or – here’s a crazy idea – we could ditch the celestial high fantasy for a metaphysical and extraordinary doctrine that fits with the times and makes more sense – a cybernetic, supertechnological, interfacing narrative, for example. Something that involves simulation programs, holograms, matrices and/or spaceships. Something that could in theory be possible – a Demiurge of timely proportions. Is that too daft to consider?
I see, yes, let’s just stick to the narrative of the bearded overlord dude in the sky and his winged companions, plus His butt-ugly goat-faced horned antagonist who stirs the flames of hell below. That’s where the future’s at.
Behold: the tragedy of tradition-cum-ideology that degenerates to an idée-fixe that fixates entire peoples, including sound and otherwise intelligent individuals, on a mythological doctrine of cultural significance that won’t adapt, no siree.
A lofty goal indeed, to expose the folly and sanctimoniousness, the cultural monopoly and overall damage caused by the doctrinaire among us – how they promote psychological dwarfism by keeping the narrative captive, retarding spiritual progress across the globe. It’s a privilege to tear up those masks, one at a time, in a manner that forces them to cast us out of their exclusive club, turning them into the instruments of their own revelation.
The choice is theirs. They can drop their bad habits and re-access their critical minds to reassess their position and move ahead, engaging the future, not the past. Reconnect with the progress made during the past few centuries, ditch what is now adolescent in spiritual and socio-psychological terms, and transplant their faith to something that resonates with what we know, and in line with where we’re headed, not where we were once upon a man on the cross.
There’s always a choice.
From your socratic Spin Doctor,
Eyes open, mind sharp.
PS – To mark the intention, here’s the trailer for The Last Temptation of Christ, a film based on the novel by Nikos Kazantzakis, mighty champion of the cause of deep liberty – a liberty that goes beyond words to reach into a person’s core existence; liberty from collective folly – even the well-intended kind; a freedom that lets one pursue truth and happiness in terms of the future, not tradition and all things bygone.#fullcircle