Capitalism - the Ultimate Religion
October 1, 2010 at 5:48 pm
(This post was last modified: October 1, 2010 at 7:05 pm by Existentialist.)
Authoritarian, inconsistent, making claims to be universal, dependent on sacred tenets, elevating a tiny number of individuals to the status of prophets, saints and celebrities who hold the gaze of the hypnotised masses; highly dependent on elaborate metaphor, hugely adept at propaganda, deeply secretive while claiming to be transparent; revering of many godlets but worshipping the one true god Capital above all others. Capitalism: the elephant in the atheist room, the unquestionable religious force that we must all bow down to in seeking our livelihoods, relationships, political compromises and moral choices. Like all religions, isn’t capitalism simultaneously oppressive and liberating, and required to calculate a narrow net benefit to its subjects lest they cast it aside? Have the new atheists: Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris and the sects that follow them really made any significant progress in relieving the psychological oppression of people by a narrowly-focussed clergy? Or is it more that the celebrity atheists have a limited and temporary role to play as pawns in this supreme religion’s grand scheme, partly to reinforce a particularly concrete version of enlightenment rationalism in the suppression of human emotion, imagination and artistic freedom, partly to create conflict between diverse flocks on the basis of piffling intellectual abstractions, but mainly to divert attention away from attacks on the population by the vested interests of Capital whose short-term aim is to direct massive resources away from the people and use them to feather the nests of the already privileged?
Isn’t it a reasonable conclusion that right wing elements throughout the West appear to be able to enforce swingeing cuts, while the atheist world has next to nothing to say about it except a cursory mention that this new deputy prime minister appears to be a non-believer, or that new leader of an opposition party hasn’t been to the synagogue for a while, claiming these deeply uninteresting personal choices by nonentities are evidence of huge secular progress and the need for another round of more-of-the-same megaphone science which wholly focusses on the illogicalities of minor superstitions? Is not capitalism the true battleground of atheism, rather than footling around with old battles that were already won centuries ago by Galileo, Newton and Darwin?
Isn’t it a reasonable conclusion that right wing elements throughout the West appear to be able to enforce swingeing cuts, while the atheist world has next to nothing to say about it except a cursory mention that this new deputy prime minister appears to be a non-believer, or that new leader of an opposition party hasn’t been to the synagogue for a while, claiming these deeply uninteresting personal choices by nonentities are evidence of huge secular progress and the need for another round of more-of-the-same megaphone science which wholly focusses on the illogicalities of minor superstitions? Is not capitalism the true battleground of atheism, rather than footling around with old battles that were already won centuries ago by Galileo, Newton and Darwin?
