Everything Is F*cked

(medlm) #1

(or grape juice) and feeding it to a bunch of people to represent the body of
Christ. The symbolism represents Christ’s sacrifice (he didn’t deserve it!) for
our salvation (neither do we, but that’s why it’s powerful!).


Countries create rituals around their founding or around wars they’ve won
(or lost). We march in parades and wave flags and shoot off fireworks and
there’s a shared sense that it all signifies something valuable and worthwhile.
Married couples create their own little rituals and habits, their inside jokes, all
to reaffirm their relationship’s value, their own private interpersonal religion.
Rituals connect us with the past. They connect us to our values. And they
affirm who we are.


Rituals are usually about some sacrifice. Back in the old days, priests and
chiefs would actually kill people on an altar, sometimes ripping out their still-
beating hearts, and people would be screaming and banging on drums and
doing all kinds of crazy shit.^38


These sacrifices were made to appease an angry god, or ensure a good
harvest, or bring about any number of other desired outcomes. But the real
reason for ritual sacrifice was deeper than that.


Humans are actually horribly guilt-ridden creatures. Let’s say you find a
wallet with a hundred dollars in it but no ID or any other info about whom it
belongs to. No one is around, and you have no clue how to find the owner, so
you keep it. Newton’s First Law of Emotion states that every action produces
an equal and opposite emotional reaction. In this case, something good
happens to you without your deserving it. Cue guilt.


Now think of it this way: You exist. You didn’t do anything to deserve
existing. You don’t even know why you started existing; you just did. Boom
—you have a life. And you have no idea where it came from or why. If you
believe God gave it to you, then, holy shit! Do you owe Him big time! But
even if you don’t believe in God—damn, you’re blessed with life! What did
you ever do to deserve that? How can you live in such a way as to make your
life worthwhile? This is the constant, yet unanswerable question of the human
condition, and why the inherent guilt of consciousness is the cornerstone of
almost every spiritual religion.


The sacrifices that pop up in ancient spiritual religions were enacted to
give their adherents a feeling of repaying that debt, of living that worthwhile
life. Though back in the day, they’d actually sacrifice human beings—a life
for a life—eventually, people smartened up and realized that you could
symbolically sacrifice a life (Jesus’s, or whoever’s) for the salvation of all
mankind. That way, we didn’t have to keep cleaning blood off the altar every
other day. (And the flies—don’t even get me started on the flies.)^39

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