Author: Tomás Barceló
If we have killed God, let us not commit the naivety of believing that heaven has been left unoccupied. Man may topple an idol, but he cannot endure an empty throne. Who sits there now?
A god is known not by the temples he raises, but by the sacrifices he demands. We always offer something precious in exchange for something we believe to be even more precious. Wherever we see constant, organized renunciation, there is an altar. And where there is an altar, there is divinity, even if we do not know how to pronounce its name.
For a time it was said that this new god was money, and perhaps it was. At the end of the twentieth century we sacrificed years, homes, vocations, and roots, convinced that the sacrifice made sense because the god answered with economic prosperity, social ascent, and well-being. The altar functioned as long as the promise of prosperity seemed credible. But something broke at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and the promise evaporated. And we killed that god too, and once again the throne was left empty.
Today we have accepted becoming poorer without great protest. We have surrendered hope as well. We feel deeply dissatisfied with the world we live in, yet at the same time we are incapable of imagining a better one. And, with a docility that would have astonished earlier generations, we have also consented to growing restrictions on our freedom. To what strange god are we offering our wealth, our hope, and our freedom in sacrifice?
It is a new god—viscous, blurry, and hard to name—one that offers only the poisonous fantasy that “it is not your fault.” Its liturgy is simple: lower your arms, let yourself be overcome by discouragement, and mutter under your breath that other people are wicked. For this blurry and terrible god does not take upon himself the guilt he promises to remove from us; instead, he makes us hurl it at one another. And though we suspect he is lying, we accept the bargain.
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