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 It means eloquence is quickly becoming outdated.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
No comments:
Post a Comment