Consciousness is a miracle. The fact that I can say these words to you, and that you can listen, is completely improbable and miraculous. Sometimes it is tempting to believe that a god sent the miracle, and you should believe that if you want to, but of course there isn’t any evidence to support that belief. It’s a belief based purely on faith. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Or right, either. Carry on however you like, but don’t expect me to necessarily see it your way.

The dark side of the miracle is that everything dies—that consciousness and even sensation do not persist indefinitely. Spiders die and leaves die. Relationships and networks die. People die, empires die, whole species die. More to the point, you will die and I will die. The miracle of experiencing, the miracle of knowing and being, always has an expiration date, and no one ever knows when for sure the expiration will happen–just that it surely will.

In the neighborhood of ten thousand YBP (the actual date varies widely across spaces, times, and cultures), humans collectively made a fateful decision, to stop moving and hunting and gathering, and settle down. The decision had some benefits, and everyone sees that clearly, but no one likes to talk about what we lost in the process, and what we lost was huge.

We committed ourselves to believing that embarking on the path of progress, and “civilization”, was the right thing to do. In any case, within a matter of a few generations, whether it was right and good or not, the decision became increasingly irreversible, for almost everyone.

Also within a few generations from settling and piling up food surpluses into granaries and cattle pens, inequality became permanent. Some people had a lot. Some people had nothing. We began to take it on faith that this was a natural state of affairs, and built ourselves extended belief structures, like the infamous one called The Divine Right of Kings, whether we called them pharaohs or sheriffs or shahs or oligarchs or senators or His Excellency.

***

Generally speaking, the first kings were total despots who had no reason to believe in equality, in liberty, or in justice for all. Rule over the poor or weak, by the rich or strong, was all just a part of god’(s) plan (the names of the gods changed all the time, but not the purpose of gods). The more wealth and property you had, the more self-evident it became that you were blessed by divine favor, as opposed to the less fortunate in the same river valley, and certainly as opposed to those barbarians in the next valley over—to say nothing of the stupid and illiterate mountain dwellers, who everyone freely hated.
Over time, absolute despotism seemed to yield somewhat to other ways of seeing the civilized human situation. We call these other ways by fancy names, like monarchy, feudalism, capitalism, communism, fascism, socialism, and thousands more. “Democracy” became a huge favorite, because it claimed to support rule of the people, by the people, for the people, which sounds absolutely great.

But which people? Well, for starters, property-owning males with a pale skin. Not slaves, certainly, not women, not children, not blacks or refugees or sharecropping renters.

Modern fans of democracy will say: We freed the slaves! We even gave those women the right to vote! Progress! Progress! Any day now we will even get around to tapping the granaries and feeding the poors! You have to be patient! This way of believing, this democracy of Ours, isn’t perfect by any means, but it IS Better than all the others …

To which I say: You’re right. On paper. It sounds so much better than rule by the rich and strong. I salute and support everything you profess to believe in.

***

But when I wake from dreaming and open my own eyes, what I see is a species for whom nothing meaningful has changed in the ten thousand years since the first cities and the original sinful inequalities emerged. I do see a world of highly evolved public relations skills. I hear a sweet lovely rhetoric, raised to an absolute art form by pretty and educated people, well-dressed, well-groomed … charismatic, and … inevitably self-interested and selling you on this point of view because it benefits them, for you to become a believer too.

Let me put it to you another way. When two nice Mormon boys come to your door in skinny ties and white shirts, it’s a pretty simple thing for most of us to say No Thanks, I’d rather not believe in the revealed truths of Joseph Smith and the angel Moroni and in the practicality of wearing magic underwear to get myself to some theoretical heaven someday. And this isn’t Mormon-bashing—take any peddled belief that seems alien to you, in Xenu or Allah or the god of gods called Apollo, or Zeus. The point is, it’s easy to say, um, No and No a thousand times, and not only No but Never.

But when every parent you’ve ever known has one way or another nurtured a belief in you, when every teacher you ever loved was on board, when every single news anchor you ever admired, or hated for that matter, is preaching the same essential doctrine, give or take a few tweaks, it’s very much harder to resist falling for their story and their worldview. It’s much easier to believe that you’re in fact thinking for yourself, while at the same time being completely encased and enmeshed in the theory of Progress, and the Doctrine of Civilization.

It’s easier still to believe that you live in a democracy, and only a little bit harder to dispute some points on the edge of things and say: of course the capitalists are lying to us, but thank the atheist god that at least Karl Marx saw clearly, and had it right.

Civilization is the most successful cult of in all of recorded history, and whether you believe that the best prophet is Marx or Jesus or Jefferson or the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, as is your right, you’re still in the cult in the same way that a fish is in water, and so am I, six days out of seven.

***

What you need to do, to fix it, is to stay in school.

Staying in school, and out of jail, will bring you to a better job.

A better job will make you richer.

Being rich will make you happier.

And if you take all that on faith, and at the end of your days you’re still not happy, well, stop being selfish—take it to the next level and realize that at least you left this world a better place, for the children—didn’t you?

The secret name of god in the cult

Let me whisper it to you

Is Progress.

We lay down our burden and lay down our lives

In the holy name

Of Progress … Amen.