From the Greeks and Romans to the Incas and Aztecs, idolatry was the norm in the days of western antiquity across the globe. In today’s secular world, the sophomoric argument can be made that things haven’t changed, that we still worship idols. While the author agrees with the notion that idolatry remains a common practice, this essay will explore how idolatry has undergone a transformation.
Idolatry in its infancy was a way to pay homage to nature and her processes. Just like how abstract concepts like delayed gratification and morals were spread through symbolic parables; idols and talismans symbolized natural concepts like the rising and setting of the sun, changing of the seasons, and weather patterns. The ancient peoples didn’t literally believe in The Boy Who Cried Wolf or The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing, rather they believed in the truths that these parables symbolically articulated. Similarly, they did not worship the idols and talismans, they paid homage to the natural processes they represented.Â
After a long period of this practice, idolatry saw a reclusion as the Abrahamic religions spread throughout the western world - pagan practices and their idols were erased or syncretized into Abrahamic dogma. The Abrahamic religions reigned as the predominant cosmology for centuries until Nietzsche articulated the rise of secularism by declaring that God is dead.1
As the cultural hold of Abrahamic religions declined in the west, idolatry saw a resurgence in a manner fitting for a modernized, secular world. However, the new idols look much different than those of our ancestors. In a world where its inhabitants became disconnected from nature due to the rise of an industrial economy and their own nature through an emerging attention economy, we came to idolize the man-made powers that shape our life just like how our ancestors idolized the natural powers that governed agrarian societies. These modern idols look like money, comfort, status, and even ourselves. The result is an inverse of our ancestors: their idols were material objects that symbolized abstract processes while our idols are abstract ideals that have a material impact on our senses.
If the author were to make a leap of faith and assume that the ideals we value have a direct impact on our wellbeing, this philosophy has been detrimental for the modern man and even worse for the modern woman - depending on how you measure it.
Let’s consider how two paradigm shifts in our collective worldview could have led us here.
As the world became mechanized through the Industrial Revolution, people were rewarded with improving efficiency. Either the engineer who built the machines, the tycoon who utilized the machines, or the laborer who was a cog amongst these machines; they were all incentivized to create a more efficient output. In a world where efficiency is rewarded, we see a shift away from thinking about the abstract or metaphorical and towards the concrete and literal - there is no time to philosophize, develop metaphors, or consider the abstract - we must focus on building widgets faster!Â
When society rewards those that solve concrete problems, we see a rise in utilitarianism (i.e. the belief that value is derived from usefulness) and a decrease in what we’ll call metaphor literacy. Symbols or metaphors become viewed as inefficient, so we see less of them. With less of them present, our ability to distinguish between metaphor and the literal atrophies - since we are so focused on hammering nails, we fail to recognize screws when they appear. This can lead to mistaking the map for the territory like Fundamental Christianity does. Fundamental Christianity involves the belief that everything written in the Bible is literal fact rather than accepting the truths it can offer to those with the metaphorical literacy to understand them. In other words, we see a shift away from venerating abstract processes through symbols and towards a worship of the material.
Not long after The Industrial Revolution and society’s inhabitants became much more literal-minded, we saw a Digital Revolution in which the economy focused on attention. In a society that highly values attention, everything’s value becomes a derivative of its potential to generate attention. In other words, production becomes centered around captivating eyeballs and generating clicks, while maintaining the focus on efficiency leftover from the Industrial Revolution. When industries can efficiently capture people’s attention, consumers rarely get a break to question what they see. Rather than contemplating why something is good, bad, or valuable; our inhabitants of this world accept sweeping statements about the world that tend to be intellectually bankrupt: X is good, Y is bad.
By accepting different ideas without considering why, we see a fragmentation of belief systems - Belief A is completely disconnected from Belief B. The result? People upset about children killed by domestic terrorists in school shootings but not by illegal immigrants. Or people upset about violations of bodily autonomy in the case of mass vaccinations but vehemently oppose such autonomy in the case of abortion. Depending on what reality tunnel they inhabit, their beliefs become subverted by whatever captures their attention best. And since algorithms are incentivized to capture attention, we see a diabolical feedback loop of consumption and further fragmentation of their beliefs.
Pair this fragmentation with an affinity for the material brought to us by The Industrial Revolution and we can observe two tendencies emerge: 1) conflating that whatever feels good must be good and 2) the belief that something good can be separated from its drawbacks.
The result of these tendencies is our modern idolatry of those abstract ideals that bring us material pleasure. It is the worship of money that can bring us goods while failing to venerate the work needed to earn it. Or the chase of feeling loved while rejecting the vulnerability and challenges associated with love. It is the worship of something that makes me feel good morally without considering the implications of it. Ralph Waldo Emerson described this tendency to be as foolish as seeing a mermaid and trying to separate the naked woman from her serpent tail. In a lustful pursuit of her top half, you would of course kill her whole by separating her into two parts, leaving you with something much worse than what you tried to avoid. Such is the path of the modern idolator who lustfully chases ideals that bring him material pleasure while attempting to avoid the strings attached.
Before these ramblings get too long, the author will attempt to say more by closing with a handful of questions:
Where are you prioritizing efficiency where you maybe shouldn’t?
Can you identify the flip side or opportunity cost of what’s valuable to you? Do you willingly accept this?
Do you only value ideals that lead to your material gain? In other words, are you a modern-day pagan?
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Please excuse this bastardized version of history as this paragraph is missing significant amounts of nuance