Britain was recently described by the Pope's aide Cardinal Walter Kasper as a "third-world country". An amusingly provocative statement, and a rather poor analogy for our country's famine of faith. He subsequently was dropped from the Pope's widely-publicised trip to the UK, 'for health-reasons'. Was he was referring to the fact that we are a secularly-governed society? I wonder if he would then consider India, arguably still considered 'third-world' (if we're using the outdated terminology) the same way?
What I find interesting is the way Cardinal Kasper phrased his poorly-considered aspersion on Britain. The way he so directly compared the value of faith to material wealth.
In the age and culture of unbelief that we find ourselves occupying, how else can we comprehensively descibe an intangiable thing's worth but to compare it with something monetary or material?
Last year, I read American Gods by Neil Gaiman. You've got to read it, it's flipping brilliant.
We follow the protagonist known only as 'Shadow', who has been released from prison to find that his wife has died in a car-accident. Whilst sucking his best friend's cock. Left with nothing, when he's offered a job by a mysterious dude known as Mr. Wednesday he takes it.
I can't be bothered to write a full plot summary, so SPOILER ALERT! Here is the jist of it:
Mr. Wednesday is Odin. And Odin is preparing for war. Old gods vs. new. The old gods are all that you could possibly imagine, from the Egyptian sun-god Ra to the Caribbean trickster Ananse. They have arrived and are sustained in the 'new land' by the fading trickles of belief that still comes from human minds. If someone- anyone- is still praying then the old gods exist, occupying both this world (where they live amongst us in disguise) and the dimension alongside it. Mythology overflowing into our familiar reality.
What makes American Gods truly fascinating however, is the New Gods. The god of television- with her perfect pin-stripe suit and dazzling smile, and Tech Boy- pale and covered in spots, but greedy and murderous. It goes on and on- from the god of Freeways to the Internet- set to become the New Gods' head-hancho.
It's his comparison of religious and corporate iconography that gets me. It's fucking genius. It's human recourse to turn to something beyond ourselves for comfort, distraction, purpose and meaning. It's just that nowadays we do it with Heat magazine instead.
Will Self says it pretty well in The Book of Dave. Set 500 years A.D. (After Dave). Dave is a schizophrenic cab driver in London whose wife buggers off with his child. We follow as he goes slowly mad, eventually creating his own religion based on the London cabbing 'Knowledge'. He has his religion engraved into a metal book and buries it at the end of his ex-wife's garden. Hundreds or thousands (we never know- but pigs have evloved) of years later, his book has been dug up and Davism adapted as the primary religion of the mostly submerged principality of 'Ing'. Everyone chats Mockney (the generic term for a hot meal is "curry" and for breakfast, "Starbucks") and Mummies and Daddies share custody of children, the 'Changeover' reflecting the ritualistic aspects of Dave Rudman's 21st century life.
A parody of modern religion and blind faith, Self "challenges the assumption of whether people should follow something just because it is written in an old book."
Personally, I am agnostic. Or a "fucking fence-sitter" if described by Professor Richard Dawkins.
Just a meandering little thought. Not really sure where this one is going.