Looking back on What We've Lost: The Beginning of a Series on Religion in Post-Modernity

If we're to be truly serious about being serious, which is to say about being Human, it's time we start taking religion seriously. I do not mean in a dogmatic nor literalist sense, but in a sense much more, well, serious. In the same sense we take our own lives and deaths seriously. I know this a shocker coming from me. Kevin Patrick Cullen, the once militant atheist. But roads change people, and people change roads. They're fraught with detours, forks, exits and entrances, back alleys, one-ways, wrong ways, potholes and dead ends. This is the nature of the road. And it's allowed me to take some detour and forks, find myself drunk and sleeping with the dogs on back alleys I could have never imagined. And here I am, to write my requiem to that road. Should this blog take the path I envisage for it, that requiem will reveal all that is to be revealed. But before embarking, we need to lay down some basic principles so that the events that took place, the hearts the were broken, the scars that were formed, the bruises that bloomed, the hangovers that crippled can be placed in their rightful contexts. And that context is religion. I cannot think of a more appropriate one. Let me outline here what I believe the essential ingredients of religion are and why they're so fundamentally prime to the human condition:

1.) An origin myth. An Eden. We all have our Edens. For most its our childhood. And if not our childhood, our imagined, ideal childhood. And whether real or imagined, it's still been lost. Is there not a place to which we all long to return? Why then the crippling grip of Nostalgia? Maybe it was that one perfect Christmas as a kid when Santa brought you exactly what you'd pleaded for. Or maybe it was just some perfect day sitting in the park, the sun hitting you at just the right angle, from just the right distance, not too hot, not too bright, the wind playing through your air. A life without an Eden is unimaginable.

2.) A Fall. If you're reading thing, I'm sure you at least have a cursory understanding of the book of Genesis. Religious and non-religious alike, this story is inscribed on our heart from the day we're born. And are our lives not fraught with Falls? Our ejection from the magical land of childhood and into the adult world of work and bills and backaches and responsibilities–is this not a Fall of sorts? The Earth, suffering from large scale pollution, yes, the Industrial Revolution: Is that not a Fall? Modern art, menstrual blood smeared canvasses and men defecating on stage–is this not a fall from Rembrandt and Michaelangelo and even Dali? 3.) An eschatology. A telos is imperative. We all have our telos, our ultimate aims. Even if it's simply walking to the pub–it has a telos. To get a pint. To chat up a girl. And with all eschatologies, it must envisage a suiting end. In the case of the man walking to the pub, perhaps it's to get black out drunk. Perhaps it's to get laid by the girl he is chatting up. Whatever the case, an eschatology that promises either Hellfire or victory or a return to Eden is as fundamental to religion to our own lives. We crave a fitting conclusion. (Why do you think the series finale of How I Met Your Mother left so many fans with a sense of disgust and wasted time? And on the contrary, why do you think Breaking Bad is acclaimed at the best television series ever? The former violated the sanctity of our eschatology; the latter fulfilled it.)

4.) A hero. Jews have Moses; Christians: Jesus Christ; Muslems: Mohammed. A hero is essential. Is there a single movie, a single novel without a hero? Do we not all, in some vague way, imagine ourselves the heros of our own live's journey's? Does the man at the pub chatting up the girl in an attempt to get laid not consider himself heroic when waking up in morning next to her? Even simple grammar has heroes. A well constructed sentence should, at minimum, have a subject and a predicate. Is the subject not a hero tasked with carrying out even just a basic verb? 5.) A diametric opponent. Evil, Satan, Doomsday (in the case of Superman); a religious narrative collapses without an opponent (and Superman, at its core, is a fully religious narrative). This manifests in our own lives as well. What are we living for if there is nothing to fight? This doesn't have to be on a grand epic level. It could simply be conquering one's vices and addictions, one's overbearing middle manager at work, one's own limitations, or a toxic, abusive partner. Nemesis drive the plot forward (bringing us back to eschatology), and there cannot even be a plot without a nemesis, however big or small. Again I refer you to books and film: Is there a single story without someone or something that must be overcome? And how much more motivated do we in our own lives feel when we come upon someone or something unjust and our own skillset endows us with abilities to conquer it?

6.) Transfiguration. My reading of religion is not as deep as I'd like it to be, but I get the sense that transfiguration is vital to any divine epic. These transfiguration can be awful–as in Lot's wife being turned to a pillar of salt. Or they can be transcendent, as in God becoming flesh. Transfiguration pervades every aspect of our own daily lives as well: We graduate college and become a "Master". We get a job and become a teacher or doctor or engineer. We've been changed from babies to men. We get married and we change our names. We become Mothers and Fathers. We are always becoming. We transfigure every day.

7.) Redemption. This is perhaps more pronounced in Christianity than in other religions, but I still deem it an essential component. But anyone living, anyone breathing and thinking and feeling–now I will be audacious and make a claim that might backfire–craves redemption. Perhaps they hate their job and are looking for their true calling, a profession that will allow them to be them, to stop with the fake smiles, the sham, the overall fraud. Perhaps they're mired in an unhappy relationship and are waiting for it to end, waiting for their true "soul mate" to rescue and redeem them. Or perhaps that man who went to the pub to chat up a girl and get laid now worries about an STD and is furiously scrubbing his member away in the shower, in a sort of ritual cleansing, hoping to rid himself of any potential diseases that may have clung to him, making vague pronouncements of "never again" while trying to shake his hangover (which is yet another micro act at redemption seeking).

1-7.) Rituals. And this is perhaps the most important. And the mostly profoundly human. I will not begin to enumerate the rituals of religion here for purposes of space, time and sanity. In fact, all of concepts 1-7 are encompassed by ritual. Each is an iteration of ritual. Ritual is the set that contains all sets. I daresay life is impossible without ritual even at its most primitive. Most of our rituals are so deeply embedded into our everyday lives, we wouldn't even know we're engaging in them. Eating meals together, socially–something only found amongst humans in the animal kingdom, is perhaps the starkest of these rituals. Shaking hands, waving hello with an open palm, kissing on the cheeks. Birthday cakes, "Happy New Years!", bird seed thrown on the bride. Sport itself is something of a secular apotheosis of ritual. Our timetables, our work schedules, our team time and TV time–this is all ritualistic behaviour. But what happens when there's a breakdown in ritual, that vitally human need? Streaming internet television services no longer necessitate families congregate around the holy altar of the TV at specific times on specific days to communally watch a show. Our new gig and digital economies have disrupted the very concept of timetables and work schedules. And the data show we are just not eating together anymore. What happens in a world where ritual is lost? Or are they not lost but simply manifesting in new, strange, foreign ways?

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So there, there's my rough outline of the fundamentals (not to be confused with Fundamentalists) of religion as they manifest themselves. Is it not difficult to note their absolute importance to even the most mundane aspects of our daily, post-modern lives? But what happens to Man in the absence of these rituals and traditions and beliefs and fundamentals? What happens to him in a post-modern world that is ever increasingly voided of religion and the sacred and these concept and rituals that once gave him such a well-grounded orientation in the world. (And pay close attention to these words: "Grounded" and "Orientation". Do not pass over them so glibly. They'll play a major recurring role in this blog series. And the roots of these words go deep. These are big, mighty trees, my friends. Gander at them as though they were Redwoods for a while. Let their magnitude overwhelm you.) Over the coming days and weeks, I want to look at various aspects of our post-modern world, and evaluate how these fundamentals of religion are re-asserting themselves. Sometimes in beautiful ways, but more often in grotesque, perverted, degrading ones. And I want this to be a meditation on what has been lost. And what this all means.