Art critic Amanda Hess writes for the New York Times on the phenomenon of themed pop-up “museums”, “mansions” and “laboratories” that function mostly as Instagram selfie backdrops: The central disappointment of these spaces is not that they are so narcissistic, but rather that they seem to have such a low view of the people who visit them. Observing … Read more“The Existential Void of the Pop-Up ‘Experience’”
Worker THX-1138 confesses to the prophet OMM in this scene from George Lucas’s 1971 dystopian science fiction movie THX-1138. The Amazen Kiosk, a very widely lampooned 2021 publicity stunt mental health initiative from Amazon.com, Inc.
Ed Simon writes for Aeon on the subject of Paganism:
Gore Vidal’s 1954 dystopian satire Messiah is the story of a religious movement that forms around a charismatic undertaker named John Cave. Cave’s central message is, simply and profoundly, that people should not be afraid of death; not because they could look forward to an afterlife of eternal bliss in paradise, but rather because oblivion means an … Read moreCavesword: A Nontheistic Religion of Radical Death Acceptance in Gore Vidal’s “Messiah”
Any readers intrigued by the mostly inchoate phenomenon that I optimistically refer to as Poetic Faith – the notion and practice of creating one’s own religion, as a work of art – should track down Alan Moore’s story Grandeur & Monstrosity, which appears in the graphic narrative anthology “God is Dead: the Book of Acts; Alpha” … Read moreAlan Moore’s “Grandeur & Monstrosity”
I’m reading Carole Cusack’s excellent Invented Religions: Imagination, Fiction and Faith and am delighted to have discovered the Hot Tub Mystery Religion, intriguingly described in this 2003 Reason.com article by Jesse Walker: Atheists have long regarded religion as, at best, a collective work of art, but in the last century that view has grown popular with churchgoers as … Read more“Inside the Spiritual Jacuzzi”
In 2017, Burning Man’s theme was “Radical Ritual,” and the Burning Man Philosophical Center project produced a series of essays and interviews exploring the place of ritual in modern society. Here’s a section from Larry Harvey’s introductory essay: Is Burning Man a Religion? “The practical needs and experiences of religion seem to me sufficiently met by … Read moreThe “Radical Ritual” Series
Somewhere between the rock-ribbed skepticism that is satisfied with saying “no” and the credulity of true belief in the supernatural – or maybe not between those poles, but the third point in a triangle – is the sentiment of poetic faith expressed in legendary singer/songwriter Don McLean’s haunting Sister Fatima. Lyrically inspired by the text of … Read moreSister Fatima
My new article for OnlySky Media, Oscar Wilde’s ‘Confraternity of the Faithless’ discusses Wilde’s notion of “agnostic ritual” and its modern interpretation via the Oscar Wilde Temple art installation/secular ritual space: More than a century after Wilde’s death, the artists David McDermott and Peter McGough opened a joint immersive art project/secular ritual space, The Oscar Wilde Temple, … Read moreMore on “Oscar Wilde’s ‘Confraternity of the Faithless’”
Professor Stephen Asma writes for Aeon on the potentials of a science of the imagination: Philosophers like Ernst Cassirer and psychologists like Jung focused on the ritual or visual symbol (rather than literal language) as a way of enacting meaning. Images, objects and rituals of mythopoetic cognition are imperative rather than indicative. If we’re immersed, then a dance … Read moreImaginology