Superanimism
The world is chaotic. Some say this proves nothing is sacred. Others point to this very chaos as proof of God.
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HEAR: “The Avatar’s Love” from the Avatar: The Last Airbender soundtrack.
READ: Brian Eno on NFTs, “NFTs seem to me just a way for artists to get a little piece of the action from global capitalism, our own cute little version of financialisation. How sweet – now artists can become little capitalist assholes as well.”
VIEW: Look, you’ve probably already watched it. But whether you haven’t or you have, it’s never a bad call to watch the masterpiece that is Avatar: The Last Airbender. The whole series is now on Netflix.
No. 58: Superanimism
I’ve been reading a lot of George Eliot, a writer whose religious background seeps heavily into her storytelling. This isn’t so surprising for a Victorian era writer. For a modern writer, yes. But for a woman who lived during the mid-1800s? A liberal sprinkling of the holy spirit is to be expected.
Why, though?
It seems to me the further back you go in history, the more prevalent believers in God — or Gods — become. Art and culture from the 1800s, for example, focuses heavily on religion, spirituality, chastity, and other traditional and conservative values. There were free spirits that broke the mold, but these were the wild and weird ones, certainly no where near the norm. Go back a little further, to the 1600s and 1700s, and you have whole communities based on religion, like the pilgrims that founded our country.
The trend isn’t exclusive to Christians.
A look at once-thriving indigenous communities, too, leaves us wondering where that beautiful superanimism of the past went, when the trees and the living mountains and the rivers and the animals were the purest embodiments of spirits. Aztec temples have fallen to ruin and become tourist attractions. The Indian nations have been reduced to reservations. Rain dances are performed out of tradition instead of with the whole-hearted belief that the movements of a man’s body can make water fall from the sky.
The point? It seems that as time goes on, the less religious we become.
Is it a coincidence that the decline in amount God-fearing believers seems to have begun at the start of the modern, industrial age? It’s at this time, perhaps, that money became our God. Or when our fragile race witnessed the power and destruction of machines, which seemed far from natural and the opposite of sacred. It could have been, too, that greed and evil were put on display like never before in an increasingly globalized world, causing those who would have believed to lose hope in goodness and love.
Truth is, I don’t know the cause, but it seems safe to say: there are fewer believers now than ever. And I wonder if this lack of believers breeds more non-believers. In other words, perhaps people today rely on the general sentiment that nothing is sacred to support their conclusion that nothing is sacred, there is no God, and believing is futile. Chaos, destruction, death, war, sickness, and evil are all used as reasons not to believe, while these same realities might be used as strong evidence to amplify our belief. Maybe we’re on a slippery slope in our relationship with God, the spirit world, or whatever you’d like to call it. Maybe it’s vicious cycle. Maybe.
But then, despite our relatives from the past being more devout, weren’t those earlier ages horrifying bloodbaths of human suffering, when wrongs committed against innocent people were more frequent and on a greater scale? Didn’t kings and queens keep torture chambers? Didn’t crusaders march into foreign lands and slay women, children, and infants (after being pardoned for whatever sins they might commit by priests)? Weren’t women seen as mere objects? Weren’t there slaves?
Though we may be a Godless bunch now, I’d venture to say we are more brotherly, more tolerant, more loving, more peaceful, more healthy, more considerate, and more respectful to each other than ever before. Perhaps a side effect of the mass renunciation of God has led people to realize they have nothing if not each other.
One of the reasons I love George Eliot, besides her pointed and eloquent writing, has to do with the way she delightfully strikes a balance between the devout past and the brave future. Her characters don’t simply believe, they struggle to believe. The self-righteous are tested not only against the rules of traditional religion, but by the various moral and ethical measures that make a person good.
The sentiment of the past seemed to say: I know this world looks chaotic, but in fact, if you look closely, there is a sacred order.
The sentiment of the present and the future seems to say: I know they would have you believe there is a sacred order to this world, but in fact it’s all chaos.
For me, and for Eliot, it’s somewhere in between: That it’s impossible to tidily explain this chaotic world — with its daily miracles and tragedies — is the greatest evidence that all is sacred. ♦
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