The Comparison Group

Having grown up in an Islamic household, I'm in a position to analyse the idea of the Muslim stereotypes from a unique perspective. I can claim belonging to the Islamic religion because my father is a Muslim and so is my mother once she married into the family. I haven't learnt enough to call myself a genuine practicing Muslim, but I know what I need to know to understand the beliefs and rituals associated with Islam. In other words, I feel a strong enough connection to be insulted by the stereotypes, but I am separated enough to acknowledge why people and the media say and do particular things.

I think people always need a comparison. They need to be able to look at themselves, look to another and find what is good about themselves and bad about the others. The others can be anyone: neighbours, colleagues, and even other ethnic groups. Muslims, for many types of people in the West, are this comparison group. And this is simply because of the media storm and how the media communicates a particular type of image of Muslims. The "bad" that people see in themselves is immediately swamped by the "bad" in the comparison group. A person's "good" qualities can easily shine through if the comparison group's "bad" outweighs one's own "bad" qualities. The media, and even politicians will pounce on this. People are united under the idea that they all have the same comparison group. It can subsequently be used as a weapon.

What is the only comparison we need to make?

Stereotypes are the propaganda of this comparison war. We use them everyday for inane things (quickly classifying foods as healthy or unhealthy) and we use them when we shouldn't. The easiest example of this is using stereotypes to define which type of person you will interact with. This is what maintains the comparison group until it becomes an enduring ideology that is extremely difficult to dislodge. 


Picture: http://pixabay.com/en/girl-train-travel-thoughtful-107163/

Nature as a Religion

An endless mirror reflects the sky, a million crystals shining bright.
One breath of air will shatter the stillness; shatter the sight.
You notice it when you're looking down,
Where the sky ends and the water begins.
A sea above and a sky below,
But only in the uttermost calm.
An eternal abyss that knows no bounds,
Home to the ageless soul.

At the right moment and place, nature can become spiritual, and I believe we all fall prey to the idea of a "dark green religion" (Klassen, 2012) many times in our lives. For many, myself included, during quiet contemplation or observance nature comes to be perceived in a different way. Sitting on the train with a slow soothing song in my ears and my eyes cast to the clouds high above or the orange rays of the setting sun, and that moment takes on a religious feel. I feel my place in the world and how very small it is; how unimportant I am in the "grand scheme" of things. Then I always look around at the other passengers to discover if they've also had this spiritual moment and I find them still absorbed in their books and phones and I begin to realise that I was the only one avidly staring at the sky.

Yet at other times, awe for nature or similar religious moments in respect to nature, require other nearby people to occur. If you're staring out from a great height, from the top of a mountain for example, you need a person beside you to share the emotions that arise when gazing at the enormity of nature and the world in general. It's almost as if you cannot comprehend it without sharing, and isn't that vital to religion? The act of congregating to share the idea of God which is almost inconceivable to the individual.

However this is not religion. These are moments in time that take on a transcendent quality that links a person with their world. Yet I believe these moments are vital to human life. The religious feel of nature at times helps people to understand humility, maybe even to swamp the self-centred being. Nature is one of the last things humans have yet to control fully. It's a god in its own way. This keeps us content, and nature (for the time being), safe.

References:

Klassen, C. (2012). Avatar, dark green religion and the technological construction of nature. Cultural Studies Review, 18: 74-88.

Picture: http://pixabay.com/en/sunset-clouds-railway-station-train-95162/

The Cult of Macintosh 

Campbell and La Pastina (2010) mentioned the concept of a cult following of Macintosh. This cult included three myths: the creation myth, the hero myth (saving users from the reign of the PC) and the resurrection myth. This cult following idolizes Steve Jobs as a "Christ figure". This type of "cult" follows the pattern more of a para-religion than a traditional religion. Much as celebrity culture and "celebrity worship" can be identified as para-religions as they draw many parallels with traditional religions. This includes the idea of higher beings, myths, a separation of the profane and sacred, totemic and symbolic elements, religion as a cultural system, death and resurrection, etc. (Ward, 2011). This all seems relatively similar to the idea of an "Apple" cult. I think even more so than celebrity worship. 

Apple/Macintosh worship has myths (mentioned above), the idea of spiritual higher beings (e.g. the transcendence of technology), the difference between profane (PC-associated) and sacred (Apple-associated), obvious symbols, the technology of Apple associating with almost every aspect of life (social, cultural, etc. The possession of an Apple product shows status), religious congregations (the release of new Apple products), and the list goes on. Apple permeates every aspect of modern life, especially in the Western world. I find myself interacting with people who own Apple products more so than people who affiliate with religion.

It appears that such thorough para-religions are forming in the 21st Century that are coming closer and closer to the idea of a traditional religion. Yet the fact that we need traditional religions as step-ups to understanding the divine, the sacred, and the profane (e.g. associating the iPhone upon its release with images of Jesus and the Virgin Mary and not as a stand alone divine creation), means traditional religion will continue to act as the foundation of any new religious movements. 

References:

Ward, P. 2011. Gods behaving badly: Media, religion and celebrity culture. London: SCM Press. Ch 3: Para-Religion

Campbell, H. A., & La Pastina, A. C. (2010). How the iPhone became divine: new media, religion and the intertextual circulation of meaning.  New Media and Society, 12: 1191-1207. doi: 10.1177/1461444810362204.

OMG: One more initialisation and I'm ditching humanity

What is religion in the modern world? For many it's faith. For others it's income. For some it's culture, commodity, or even a phrase cast carelessly into conversation. This phrase, "Oh my God" is a curse of disgust, surprise, fear, incredulousness (and yes this is a word), and has boiled down to nothing more than initialisation in text message. We say it because it's something to say to project our feelings without having to rely on subtle cues and words. It's a similar issue with swearing. The ease of substituting a curse word for a coherent explanation of anger means we are becoming lazy. It means eloquence is quickly becoming outdated. But that's beside the point. Seeing "OMG" for some reason makes me sad and angry simultaneously. It has literally lost all meaning. Some say "God help me" without actually appealing to God. We appeal to luck or to some other universal force. Or we don't even think about it as we say it. I know I don't. I'm just exuding any emotional turmoil through voiced words.

The fact that God is so simplified in our society; the fact that we substitute cheap words and emotion for faith and spirituality, means this is the prime time for religions to cast their recruitment nets. For example the Scientology advertisement (and I won't even touch the fact that there are advertisements for religions), listing the things that life is ("It's harmony... it's tears of joy... it's questions and answers and I don't knows...") appeals to the emotions with fast images and striking language. We don't really care what they're "selling" but we feel inspired, we want to find out more. This is done while barely touching the name of the religion or explaining what it is. There's no real belief in the advertisement or passages to faith. The viewer is simply connecting with the ad  because of the words and the images. Mara Einstein's (2011) article doesn't really cover this aspect of religious branding. The question of why are we susceptible to religious advertising is an important one that needs to be researched further. Cheap words and emotions are substituting real faith and we may all fall prey to it at some point in the future.

References:

Einstein, M. (2011). The evolution of religious branding. Social Compass, 58: 331-338

The Complexity of Religion

Pete Ward (2011) discussed the idea of Para-Religion in his book, Gods Behaving Badly. In the scope of the modern world, celebrities and celebrity "worship" are often thought of as religious. However the idea is disputed in the literature especially concerning the definition of religion and what it entails. Depending on the definition, celebrity culture can or cannot be seen as religious. Ward (2011) attempts to find middle ground, calling on the term, para-religion to describe celebrity "worship". Fundamentally, this term means we can draw parallels between traditional religions and the celebrity culture.

This term is rather constructive and helps provide clarity through the chapter as Ward goes on to discuss what makes up a religion, using various sources to corroborate these aspects. What does a religion require? Spiritual beings, myths and rituals (the ritual often seeming to come first), the process of dying and rising, a distinction between the sacred and profane... Ward goes into more detail about what else is classed as religion, exploring the idea of congregation and en masse worship down to the individual and their needs.

We can see from this article that things in society commonly referred to as "religious" (and Ward gives the examples of baseball, rock and roll, and Coca Cola - but we could extend this to, e.g. sport in Australia) are much more complicated than we think. Perhaps it is the idea that lay people themselves are starting to attribute less complexity and more profanity to religions that is the cause of diluted religion in the modern age. In the past, religion was the highest form of study in early universities. In the early Western world, one was not considered a truly proficient scholar until they had studied Christianity and the Bible (Perry, 2011 p. 159-160). Now religion is a social and cultural tradition. While at school we are taught about the different religions, and attending a private school will most definitely see education combined with religion; however, there is no place for this in the adult/working world. We've lost many of these aspects of religion, mentioned by Ward (2011), in the common person, and perhaps it is for this reason that the lines between traditional religion and popular religious movements is blurred or unrecognisable to many people.

References:

Perry, M. 2011. Western civilisation: A brief history. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Ch 7: The flowing and dissolution of Medieval civilisation, p. 157-180

Ward, P. 2011. Gods behaving badly: Media religion and celebrity culture. London: SCM Press. Ch 3: Para-Religion.