"His perfect kingdom of killing, suffering in vain
Demands devotion, atrocities done in his name "
NIN - Heresy
Interesting word "Deva" starting in the dankest murk of prehistory (likely as one of our endless catch-all terms for supernatural beings) then with the rise of Zoroastrianism diverging along a dividing line between West and South Asia. On the east side, the various
priesthoods of the Indian subcontinent kept Deva an overwhelmingly positive or even beneficent figuration. On the west side the successive
Iranian faiths came to regard Daeva as maleficent demons.*
Angels on one side, devils on the other, what's in a name? I won't pretend to dissect the whole etymological/historical conundrum, but I'll go out
on a limb here and speculate both aristocracies must've been well
served by this semantic schism in securing their local rabble's automatic
enmity toward the other side of the fence as devil-worshipers or god-killers.
Religion is many things: delusion, self delusion, mass delusion, crass delusion, a tool of social control, unearned entitlement, a for-profit enterprise, but for the moment let's focus on its role as justification. While I haven't followed Sam Harris' podcast too closely since he paywalled it, earlier this year a full-length episode #300 focused on Meg Smaker, whose documentary Jihad Rehab was struck down by the Sundance festival's newly burgeoning censorship board in a particularly odd fit of woke insanity** before it had a chance to air. I highly recommend the interview as a whole, Smaker herself being quite an interesting person and her description of the wokeysition's intimidation campaign against anyone involved with the film a prime example of 21st-century America's peculiar insanity. As to the topic at hand, her interviews with former Jihadists yielded one unexpected conclusion: religion did not predominate among their motivations for joining a religious war, instead falling equally among a clutter of thrill-seeking, community pressure and good old-fashioned moolah. Mullah moolah.
Perhaps spurred by the Jihad Rehab kerfuffle, Reuters fed me an article back in February confirming the U.N. found roughly the same answers from Muslim terrorists in the Sahel, with money even more important given the region's infamous poverty. Now, I'm not one to rely on the probity of braindead superstitious murderers and would-be mass-murderers, but given their geographic and sectarian disparity and the fact many of them would have been isolated in various prisons prior to their interviews, I'll accept the unlikelihood of collusion in some nebulous deceit. Let's take them at their word. Religion does not overwhelmingly motivate these young men to join religious mass murder.
First off, yes of course religious beliefs did not initially motivate them because most true believers in the supernatural don't have the first fucking clue about whatever faith they subscribe to, not rhetorically or dogmatically, not historically or philosophically, and especially not factually. It makes their parents and neighbours happy to believe the same nonsense, so they believe it.
Second off, yes, we already know religious wars are driven by the interests of tribal leaders whipping their peasantry into a frenzy on religious pretexts for personal motives. When discussing some of the more casual feminist propaganda saturating our media, I even juxtaposed the witchcraft trials against the immensity of death and destruction caused by the Thirty Years' War during the same time period, in which religion proved as always a ready and enthusiastic tool for the ambitions of the rich.
So what if Jihadists were not originally motivated by a conscious adherence to religious demands? If they hail from theocracies, joining a charismatic military leader is identical to joining a crusading bishop anyway. If glory and adventure are synonymous with religious promises of supernatural favor in the recruit's mind, if they believe prosperity comes from their big magic sky-daddy, the distinction is moot! Is a get-rich-quick scheme predicated on gettin' in good with the fairies up in the clouds an "economic" motivation? Full stop?
Perhaps unlike those few of you reading this, I actually was subjected to official, state-sanctioned religious indoctrination in grade school. Ironically, it rather precipitated my switch to atheism, especially via supposed iron-clad arguments like Pascal's Wager. Even at nine years old I quickly called bullshit (mentally, not publicly) on the notion of making myself believe something for pragmatic expediency. You believe stuff that makes sense, not the other way around, like, duh!*** But most naked apes never reach even that basic level of reasoning. Speech evolved from animal calls, expressions not of ideas but primitive instinct or emotion (angry roars, plaintive meowls, drawling trills of horniness) and most humans will merely vociferate whatever may retroactively justify their impulses, and then will further retroactively claim their vociferations to possess some real-world justification. Let's fuck. Why? 'Cause God is love, babay! What? Yes of couse God exists. How could he not, when my wiener doth wax with love o'er-weening?****
For one last example, let's take a recent Associated Press article on one Philippine village's unusual Easter celebration re-enacting the crucifiction with actual nails.
First, note the most wildly inaccurate Roman LARP costumes ever! You call those plumes?!?
Second, I'm amused at the repeated mention of the Catholic church's consternation at this unlicensed spin on their copyrighted sympathetic magic rituals. Yes, when the Vatican's trying to stop heretics from being strung up, we truly do live in a topsy-turvy world.
Third, South Asia is hardly unaccustomed to festivals in which devotees of this-and-that pierce their bodies with needles, swords and hooks, be they Hindu, Taoist, Buddhist or whatever. The particular supernatural justification to mortification is simply made to fit, and be honest now Pope&Co., you do tend to ramble on and on about the importance of those Nine Inch Nails, don't you?
After all, that's the advantage of the supernatural, isn't it? Precisely because it is nothing, because it is literally make-believe because it has zero basis, faith can be made to fit anything. Any profiteering, any neurosis, any crime, any war, any oppression. Devotees will claim it also props up good works, but good doesn't generally need an excuse, a pretense of Almighty sanction. You can be nice without permission. It's when it comes to the physical and mental mutilation of self and others that the saints come marching in. So I find it worrisome to hear Sam Harris hum along with downplaying religiousity's influence in Jihadist recruitment. Yes of course young men want money, adventure and respect, and precisely because of that you need to knock down the idiotic gibberish promising them money, adventure and respect for slaying the infidels.
Until religion is viewed as shameful primitivism, what else can you do with the rabble, constantly ensure you're their top brainwasher? Look at the Catholics scratching their heads at Filipino antics. Geez, take yer eyes off the yokels for one GodDamn minute and they start nailing each other to posts! Or, across the pond, outlawing abortion. The public is stupid, yes, but a public finding justification for its stupidity in the supernatural is doubly dangerous. You should have selected for a more intelligent public before it was too late, before you got eight billion imbeciles with a deva of each brand on their shoulders justifying all their worst impulses requiring constant perfect authoritarian control because they can't be trusted not to jump on the first idiotic notion feeding their monkey impulses. You should never have expected to be able to control such overwhelming mass of stupidity by simply altering the wording of sermons. Society's better minds should not and cannot be expected to devote every second of their existence to marching the morons.
And now it's too late.
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* Weirdly enough, the word "devil" itself has a different etymology from Latin/Greek, despite Ahriman as religious antagonist looking likely as partial inspiration for the Abrahamic Accuser.
** Can't claim to have watched it myself, but from Harris' comments and as Smaker herself emphasized, a documentary displaying Jihadists as ordinary schmucks instead of rabid heathens should, if anything, have pissed off the religious/militarist right wing and been embraced by the supposedly multicultural left.
*** Yes, even as a pre-teen I was a pedantic little snot.
**** Yes, you may borrow that line. Let me know how it goes. *wink-wink*
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