Reading this excellent, heartbreaking news piece about a major American corporation's capitulation to terrorists got me thinking.
I'm not a hater or anything, but Religion must be dismantled.
Ancient societal orders from less technologically advanced, more barbaric times and places, must be vanquished from our culture if we ever hope to live in a dignified, safe, and free civilization. This has nothing to do with personal, spiritual beliefs.
If a person wants to believe in God, Goddess, Gods, Goddesses, Ghosts, Demons, Wraiths, Familiars, Tulpas, Golems, Totems, Spirits, "Quantum Metaphysics," Astrology, Elves, Orcs, Jedis, Smurfs, Dragons, Wizards, Witches, The Magi, Gnomes, Trolls, Grays, 5th Dimensional Super-Minds Who Exist Outside of Space/Time, Fnord, Reincarnation, Universal Consciousness, Leviathan, The Illuminati, Saints, Demigods, Angels, Snorks, Pokemon, Xeenu, Crom, The Earth Spirit, The Kracken, Avatars, Archons, Deadites, Faeries, Freddy Krueger, Freddy Mercury, The Dreamtime, Leprechauns, Astral Projection, The Nothing, Higher Spheres of Existence, Swamp Thing, Vampires, Imaginary Friends, Living Ideas, Werewolves, The Boogie Man, Messiahs, Ancient Ones, Gnosis, The Scary Thing In The Basement, or any other totally fun or frightening ideas that have never had a shred of supporting evidence for their existence here on Planet Earth, then that is every person's individual right, no matter how silly, especially when they costume up for it and throw parties. Respect. I get it.
For years, a hobby of mine was reading about these things and pretending like I was a part of them. There wasn't a lot to do in the suburbs when it was too cold to bicycle (and when it was warm out, it was fun to pretend that a flying, fire breathing dragon or a conscious, predatory black hole was chasing me when speeding up and down hills), and my unfortunate formal education growing up left huge gaps in intellectual fulfillment. I got into as many myths and stories as I could. I did this because I was a child, and children's brains learn important life lessons and values through metaphor, be it through the story of Siddhartha, Osiris, Beowolf, The Wizard of Oz, Dune, or The Matrix. We use imagination to make sense of the world, to relate to it, and to each other, and it is important to engage in imagination, using lateral thought, even sometimes as adults, when solving problems large and small in scale.
But these beliefs can no longer be the glue of tribal identity that binds people together in society if we ever hope to live in peace with each other. We already have something like that in an early stage of development: the democratic government that we were lucky enough to have figured out for us before we were born. We all get to think we're as special as we want to think we are, connected to whatever higher power we'd like to imagine is watching out for us and helping us get through this life's journey. Or not. We can, each of us, be theists, deists, atheists, dreamers, wishers, deniers, followers, loners, rebels, or heretics if we feel like it. If it sates our temporary and long term emotional appetite. We don't all have the same life experiences or challenges, or brains, so we each have our own solutions: the beliefs formed around what it takes to get through the day. But we do not impose these beliefs on others, or threaten the rights of others to speak, cry, laugh, entertain, and we do not forcefully interfere with each other's attempts at putting things in perspective, be it for themselves or for the public.
But this happened last night in America. The threats of superstitious, cowardly terrorists has intimidated a major power from exercising the freedom of speech guaranteed to us all by law.
And this isn't the first time that this has happened here. People fear the violent reaction of the unreasonable more than they value their own courage.
I put forth this solution:
In order to dismantle the world's most barbaric religions without personally attempting to condescendingly persuade anybody about what idols, if any, to hold in their minds, we need to make sure that peoples' governments aren't ruled by elite oligarchs who hoard most of the resources, making most people feel as if there is nothing to live for outside of fantasy and domination; under governments so inefficient that personal security must be sought through imaginative means.
Thomas Paine, after bringing down the Crown, next wanted to destroy the Church, but it isn't enough to try and appeal to peoples' reason. We are controlled by our emotions. We feel the need to place the joy and suffering of ourselves and others into a context that we can deal with emotionally, and the people cleverest at prescribing an emotional solution will have our loyalty. That is a part of our nature which will probably always be with us. To lessen the threat of criminals and terrorists taking hold of our society, we need to lessen the suffering of humanity. To do that, the aristocrats must lose their control of the world's governments. Religion will not be dismantled by force, or by boorish persuasion. People will let go of it when they don't perceive a material need for it, and they'll still be able to believe in whatever sprite, alien, Sky-Parent or monster piques their fancy when dealing with personal, as opposed to societal, crisis. And then people, as individuals, will be easier to reason with than a legion united by a common superstitious fear of a conceptual figurehead who shall not be trifled with. When Religion is so tiny that it may as well be gone, far fewer people will be ready to commit murder on its behalf.
We have to make serious, fast progress here in America, where the terrorists are gaining cultural ground.
(The title of this post isn't "Organized Religion Must Be Dismantled" because Religion is by definition organized. I hate when people say that. "I'm Spiritual" is what you ought to say when you say you believe in higher, lower, or sideways powers. Or "I Delve Deeply Into Symbolic Thinking And Get Stuck." "I'm Religious" means "I do like these people do which makes us one." Again: I respect your hobbies and your spiritual beliefs, as long as the bonds of our common civilization are not formed by them.)