A week in Berlin, then a week in Prague was just about right for calming down. I got to drink decent beer, eat far too much schinken with wonderfully stinky Tilsiter cheese and Danish butter on black bread and reacquaint myself with Central Europe after far too many years. My internal clock is still not synched with local time here at home, and I yearn for more of those stinky sandwiches so I'm not yet anywhere near ready to reengage with the disasters that the Bushits are visiting upon the world, but there was something in Prague that really intrigued me.
You see, according to The Economist's annual fact book, and corroborated by Czech sources, over 85% of Czechs self-identify as atheists. Yet while there, probably much to the surprise and consternation of the American religio-fascists who read this, I witnessed no demons pouring like a pestilence from fissures in the streets, there was no mass bloodletting, and what you might expect to be more like a scene from a Hieronymus Bosch painting was quite the opposite. Women walked alone on late-night streets, children romped in city parks, the mail and phones and Internet worked, neighbor greeted neighbor and stranger alike, people enjoyed the unseasonably warm weather by dining alfresco and with no compulsion to eviscerate or defile the innocent. If the Rapture Index was in the "Heavy Prophetic Activity" range, just three points below "Fasten Your Seatbelts," the Czechs didn't seem concerned. For a country with so much vulnerability, not believing in invisible cloud beings and all, you'd think that Satan would be taking advantage of the absence of righteousness to get a head start on his reign of brutality. It was positively civilized, I tell you.
It's not like they haven't gotten the Word, of course. The Thirty Years' War started in Prague after all, and this part of Europe has had plenty of exposure to Catholic and Protestant fanaticism alike. But the good Czech people have simply opted out, and they aren't scared. What I want to know is why is James Dobson not doing something about this sinkhole of nonbelief, because it seems to completely refute his thesis about the only path to righteous living and being. Doesn't it bother him that there is a whole country that rejects his theology, and in fact all theology as the superstitious remnants of an earlier and far darker time? And these folks are not afraid to clearly and publicly declare this refusal of the Blood of the Lamb, which really must shave the buzz of the saved who await the front row seat for witnessing the unending torments of the rest of us when Christ returns. As Bill Moyers has observed, these loving, gentle people wet their pants at the prospect that come the Rapture, they "will be transported to heaven where, seated at the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents writhe in the misery of plagues—boils, sores, locusts, and frogs—during the several years of tribulation that follow."
But the Czechs just don't give a fuck. It was lovely, simply lovely to be among such people, even if only for a week. And the beer is divine and cheaper than soft drinks. Baby, the Rapture done already come!
5 comments:
Hi Olaf, welcome back!
I see that your post comes at both sides of the issue.
Fundamentally, I think that Americans are very sheltered from “real” life. We work in cubes under fluorescent lights, we drive huge, climate adjusted gas hogs home and park them in huge, climate adjusted one-side-brick faux chateaux. Rather than interacting with our neighbors, we retreat into our houses to turn on the TV and watch crappy shows, turn on the computer and play crappy video games, or read crappy books (like the Left Behind series) or magazines (like People). We eat meals of vitamin-coated cardboard that fill us with empty calories, and we often eat in front of the TV or in our giant cars.
Somehow, we’ve become divorced from nature and culture. In an effort to make life easier and more comfortable for ourselves, we’ve made it sterile and hollow. And it comes with great cost – more than we would ever believe. We are primates, and in our past, hardships made us stronger, family and community bonds helped our survival, and good looking and tasting food was actually good for us. Maybe the Europeans never lost track of that and built their cities and communities around that.
I look at the current obsession with religion in the same way. We’re sad, hollow, guilty, and complicit. Rather than doing the hard work of searching for what’s right and making the appropriate changes in our hearts and minds, we swallow the magic pill and get instant forgiveness, instant atonement, and false joy. And then we keep on living the same sad, hollow, guilty, and complicit lives.
I have read several articles comparing modern day religious fundamentalism to addiction, and I think that they’re right. Just like the coke head that only “parties on the weekend” and doesn’t notice when her work/home performance begins to suffer greatly, fundamentalists can very easily explain away amazing, bizarre, and horrible things done in their name because they are so attached to the magic pill.
Religion is the opium of the masses. How true. But when the arm of salvation turns out to be a pick pocket, who among us will notice?
Hi Jennifer!
Great points, and I agree that there is some correlation between addiction and extreme religious belief. Let me make clear that I think religion is fine, but that it is largely a private matter between oneself and one's own conception of the divine. Being fanatically religious is not a problem until it starts pushing against the liberty of others.
There is a huge backlash coming, I think, and the tragedy is going to be that a lot of good people who happen to personally embrace Christ's teachings are going to be made to suffer for the sins of the theo-fascists who are more fascist than actually religious. It would serve them well to be vocal when they disagree with the Dobsons and Falwells as the extremist power freaks that they are.
Yes, I also agree that religion has its place. Growing up as a scientific mind in the Bible Belt, I have been told more than once that "I'm goin' to hell!" (Hey, at least I'll have good company!) Of course, that made me chafe at first, but then I realized that this situation was simply one in a long line of pronouncements from extremists, and I wanted to know what on earth would make somebody so sure of something that they couldn't quantify or prove. That's the mystery of faith, I suppose.
I have sensed that the country's religious fervor has taken on the taste and quality of a Bible Belt tent revival, and so I'm very well skilled in avoiding conversations that involve Jesus. "Jesus loves me? Great. Have I told you about my last trip to the Gynecologist?"
I also see that this country's leaders are very skilled at controlling the population through fear, intimidation, and moral/ religious issues. Probably the majority of Christians are horrified at the prospect of the Terri Schiavo circus, but the atmosphere is so intimidating and repressive that scant few would speak out even to their closest friends.
But getting back to your original post, perhaps the Europeans have a better connection to their "center?" Their minds are on things that truly matter, while we are distracted with all of the bright, shiny objects in our culture? (Like, who is this Jessica Simpson person anyway?)
Education has a lot to do with, I think, and in most of Europe the primary and secondary education systems, despite their traditional structure, seem to put great store in analysis. Although they are certainly consumers of pop culture, they seem to have a deeper culture generally that gives it context so that they are not so easily distracted from stories of a national policy of torture by the trial of a pop star.
Also, Henry Miller was of the opinion that Europeans purged themselves through war so often that they didn't have the energy to engage in the cannibalistic behavior that we exhibit in our version of capitalism which requires a kind of manic pacing out of fear of missing the next big thing. They have learned that the good meal in front of you with your dear friends right now is what matters more than some abstraction of salvation in this life or the next. We, on the other hand, are easily moved to react rather than think, believing that dwelling in even the common daily pleasures of food and friends and sex and drink is singul and indulgent because it distracts us from some higher purpose, namely stoking the consumer leviathan.
Finally, there is a fundamental skepticism among most of the Europeans I know of any assertions by authority, chief among them the idea that all must be sacrificed to the god of the free market. The bloodbaths of religious war and empire and nationalism have pretty much insulated them against cheap demagoguery that worked so well there in the last century and works so well here now.
Of course, these are some large generalizations on my part based on mostly subjective observation, because we can see the whole continuum of belief and behavior in both Europe or the US. The distribution is quite different in each place, however, so the trends seem pretty distinct.
I better stop before I get wrapped around the axle and don't know what the hell I'm trying to say.
Just a quick note on your point about education, Olof. You may have seen this already, but it is a list of the "ten most harmful books of the 19th and 20th centuries" compiled by the conservative website, Human Events. Pay particular note to the entry written about John Dewey's Democracy and Education:
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=7591. According to the website, Dewey "disparaged schooling that focused on traditional character development and endowing children with hard knowledge, and encouraged the teaching of thinking “skills” instead." Focus on thinking "skills"? Clearly the work of the devil! Between that and the evils of feminism, utilitarianism, and the audacity of some intellectuals to question the merits of capitalism, it is really a wonder the rapture hasn't come already!
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