Everything Is F*cked(29)

Now that I’m older, though, I get the whole dress-up-for-Jesus thing. Despite what I thought at the time, it wasn’t about my parents (or God) torturing me. It was about respect. And not to God, but to the community, to the religion. Dressing up on Sunday is about virtue-signaling to the other churchgoers, “This Jesus stuff is serious business.” It’s part of the us-versus-them dynamic. It signals that you’re an “us” and that you should be treated as such.

And then there are the robes . . . Ever notice that the most important moments in life are always accompanied by somebody in a robe? Weddings, graduations, funerals, court hearings, judicial committee hearings, open heart surgeries, baptisms, and yes, even church sermons.

I first noticed the robe thing when I graduated from college. I was hungover and on about three hours’ sleep when I stumbled to my seat for commencement. I looked around and thought, holy shit, I haven’t seen this many people wearing robes in one place since I went to church. Then I looked down and, to my horror, realized that I was one of them.

The robe, a visual cue signaling status and importance, is part of the ritual thing. And we need rituals because rituals make our values tangible. You can’t think your way toward valuing something. You have to live it. You have to experience it. And one way of making it easier for others to live and experience a value is to make up cute outfits for them to wear and important-sounding words for them to say—in short, to give them rituals. Rituals are visual and experiential representations of what we deem important. That’s why every good religion has them.

Remember, emotions are actions; the two are one and the same. Therefore, to modify (or reinforce) the Feeling Brain’s value hierarchy, you need some easily repeatable yet totally unique and identifiable action for people to perform. That’s where the rituals come in.

Rituals are designed to be repeated over a long period of time, which only lends them an even greater sense of importance—after all, it’s not often you get to do the exact same thing that people five hundred years ago did. That’s some heavy shit. Rituals are also symbolic. As values, they must also embody some story or narrative. Churches have guys in robes dipping bread in wine (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

Most religious practices are developed for the alleviation of guilt. You could even say that that’s really all prayer is: miniature episodes of guilt alleviation. You don’t pray to God to say, “Fuck, yeah. I’m awesome!” No. Prayer is like a gratitude journal before there were gratitude journals: “Thanks, God, for letting me exist, even though it sucks to be me sometimes. I’m sorry I thought and did all those bad things.” Boom! Sense of guilt absolved, at least for a while.

Ideological religions handle the guilt question far more efficiently than spiritual ones. Nations direct people’s feelings of existential guilt toward service—“Our country gave you these opportunities, so put on a damn uniform and fight to protect them.” Right-wing ideologies usually perceive necessary sacrifice in terms of protecting one’s country and family. Left-wing ideologies usually see necessary sacrifice as giving up for the greater good of all society.