Can Black Markets Supply Religion?
Perhaps nothing defines the modern era more than the quest to eliminate essential opposites. This began with the successful search for the laws of nature. As it became more and more apparent that physical phenomena were governed, not by divine fiat, but by quantifiable limitations, it occurred to us that we might alter the world to our benefit. Knowing the law is equivalent to grasping the eidos or form of a thing, by which one becomes capable of reconstructing or redirecting that same object or system. We moderns tend to view ourselves as disconnected observers, hovering above a system of natural laws which place constraints on phenomena. We feel these axioms govern the physical world, but do not extend to ourselves. From this godlike perspective, we feel capable of fixing all shortcomings in our surroundings.
What are these opposites we yearn to erase? A few examples: abundance and scarcity, good and evil, life and death, individual and collective, freedom and authority. The ancients considered these to be the poles of human life. That is, we always find ourselves at some point along the line between abundance and scarcity, just as we perpetually struggle with the balance between individual and collective and between freedom and authority. Similarly, life is necessarily informed by the fact of mortality. It is impossible to have one without the other, the ancients said, because each implies its opposite’s existence, just as “up” entails “down” or “in” suggests “out”. When one comes into being, the other emerges simultaneously. Because of this, we also notice recurring human artifacts meant to address the consequences of these polarities. Some of these are: religion, morality, politics, science, art, economics. This is to say that no human society will be found without some form of these inventions, meant to manage the equilibrium between ever-present opposites.
The modern era insists that such poles are not essential facts of existence, but may be eliminated by means of superior knowledge and strategy. This insistence began as a hunch that quickly snowballed into dogmatic assurance as we proceeded to vanquish numerous abiding sources of suffering. With the advent of Enlightenment era thinking and its attendant industrial revolution, humanity unlocked previously unimagined productive capacity and advanced our quality of life beyond the ancients’ wildest dreams. So great were the leaps forward that we began to conclude that it was only a matter of time before we would decisively eradicate scarcity, death, and the quarrels that lead to politics. No one could definitively prove that these were essential conditions, so there was no longer any reason to assume their permanence. To do so was merely antiquated thinking and a rationalization for failure. What we needed was the belief in progress and the disbelief in any enduring limitations.
The result of this paradigm shift was the denial of a fixed human nature. The modern, and postmodern, insists that man’s nature is always malleable. We should never assume limits, they say. They may fairly point to a myriad of recent social changes that were previously thought impossible. To those living three hundred years ago, it would have been unthinkable that within a few centuries women would have attained equal legal rights with men, slavery would be abolished, interracial marriage would receive widespread acceptance, and monarchy would be relegated to the dustbin of history. All of these conditions were taken as unalterable facets of human life, but turned out to be temporary stages. From this the progressives concluded that market economies, politics, religion, etc. were merely stopgaps that would eventually become superfluous as our powerful minds quelled evil in all its forms.
This is a tempting position, and one that I have, at times, fallen into. The proponents of progress indeed have an enormous amount of evidence in their corner. If one looks closely, however, there is also substantial evidence in favor of a fixed human nature, despite their protestations. In just the last two hundred years, consider how often a certain perennial human artifact has been declared irrelevant. Most famously, Nietzsche stated: “God is dead.” While Nietzsche himself was not heartened by Yahweh’s demise, many progressives took this as very good news indeed. “We are longer bound by archaic superstitions that impede progress,” they cheered. “We can finally move on.”
Yet, religion is still a potent force worldwide. It is true that it exists in a neutered and declawed form in most of the modern west, either relegated to the extreme sidelines or persisting only in “sell out” forms such as prosperity-gospel mega churches. On the surface, it appears that religion only takes on desiccated and impotent guises. It certainly plays no obvious role in the governance of society — it is a totally private concern. If one looks closer, however, there is an abundance of religious belief churning below the surface.
For example, many have commented, in the wake of the capitol riots, that Q-Anon holds quite a few characteristics in common with traditional religions. For instance, it identifies concrete embodiments of good and evil and describes an ongoing battle between them in which we mere mortals may participate, if we wish. It is apocalyptic in that it describes a final “day of judgement” (the Storm) in which the evildoers (Hilary Clinton and her fellow devil-worshipping pedophiles) will be dragged out from the shadows and punished and all will be remade in glory. It stars an unlikely hero (Donald Trump) who was improbably chosen for the job and fuels its engine with emotionally charged issues which are non-negotiable to its adherents, such as abortion. The source of the Q conspiracy is a shadowy Twitter account, likely managed by multiple individuals, which dispenses piecemeal insight in the manner of an oracle. These proclamations must often be decoded, requiring a sort of crude hermeneutics to decipher. Dissecting cryptic sayings for their prophetic salience is part and parcel of traditional religious belief.
Declaring that religion is gone because it is banished from the public square is like saying that no one does drugs because they are illegal. We can arrange things such that there is no legitimate market for certain goods, but for the ones that people really want, there will always be a black market. I would argue that there is a thriving black market for religion and that the popularity of Q-Anon, Flat Earth theory, Antifa, the Russia investigation, etc. are all ersatz varietals available on the black market. We may officially profess that God is dead, but the booming trade in bootleg spirituality says otherwise.
Similarly, modernism has denounced the existence of the Good as any kind of objective measure, preferring to limit such talk to the various individual perceptions of the Good that, successfully, power the market economy. Any glance at current political discourse demonstrates that the notions of Good and Evil have remarkable staying power — and not just relative good and evil but absolute good and evil. Politicians and activists routinely brand their opponents as the embodiment of pure evil, and portray themselves as messengers of the light. Since we have denied any objective existence to such standards, we are required to take these assessments on faith from our chosen prophets. There is no exemplar to which we can compare them, so we are left to choose based on emotional appeals devoid of truth. These appeals are paradoxical because they assert the existence of absolute good in a culture which steadfastly denies its existence.
As with other wares peddled on the black market, the counterfeit version of politics, economics, religion, etc. carries no quality guarantee and no customer service. Should a product prove to be defective, or even downright harmful, there is no recourse. If one were to try to complain, mainstream society would treat them as a criminal for purchasing such merchandise in the first place. It reminds me of an episode of Cops I saw years ago where the police respond to a complaint of a robbery at a truckstop. The man who called 911 greets the officers upon their arrival and explains that he had $20 stolen from him. After questioning the suspect, it becomes clear that the caller was attempting to purchase methamphetamine from the suspect, and felt that he had been shorted. The cops end up arresting both men.
It is the same for phony religions: there is no recourse because authentic religion itself is prohibited. There is also no quality control because there is no standard as to what is acceptable religious practice. It is all equally contraband and so is difficult to decipher what is reasonable and what is preposterous. It must remain in the shadows for fear of public shame or reprisal, and so one cannot discuss it in the public square. This leaves its practitioners to fend for themselves.
It appears to me that the underground persistence of such concerns indicates that they are essential components of the human experience. Whether or not God exists or a certain economic system is ultimately preferable does not matter so much as the endurance of the questions. The emergence of black markets indicates that we have not liberated ourselves from their influence, but have merely repressed them. Festering beneath the surface, they lurk out of sight, forgotten by the intelligentsia, only to detonate seemingly out of nowhere. Like Jung’s shadow, everyone practices such repression, refusing to acknowledge their own references to the Good and assailing the same idea when invoked by others.
Likewise, the endurance of both politics and the economy indicates that our tremendous progress has not solved the problem of scarcity or achieved equilibrium between governance and freedom. The utopian attempts we have made at eliminating these tensions have all ended in mass starvation and violence. While we have certainly eliminated a great deal of scarcity, we simply fabricate new shortages to lament. It is almost as if we cannot live without these opposites, like we only feel “in tune” when pulled in both directions. There must be something to fight against, some existential threat against our established structures, in order for us to thrive. We still yearn for the age-old battle between good and evil, to repel the barbarians at the gates. We cannot live without the day of judgement on which all will be set right. It is as if we know, deep down, that we are not gods, and that we do not wish to be gods — it is too great a responsibility. Wherever people search for God, there will be prophets, even if they must lurk in the back alleys.
The only way to eliminate these perilous commodities is to draw the eternal questions back into the light. We must give up on our longstanding moratorium, beginning to take these matters seriously in the public square. The present moment calls for the humility to admit that we have not defeated scarcity, that death still awaits us, that our grandiose attempts at fashioning a heaven on earth have not been successful, even if they have been fruitful.
In place of the Sisyphean task of snuffing out essential polarity, we should promote a more appropriate analogy: that of an asymptote approaching its curve. An asymptote is defined as: “a line that continually approaches a given curve but does not meet it at any finite distance.” This line may forever draw closer to its curve, but by definition will never meet it. I would argue that human nature is the same, always capable of approaching perfection, but never of intersecting with it, at least in the physical plane. This does not preclude progress, but merely sets a more humble expectation for our endeavors, drawing its energy from the inexhaustible challenges of scarcity, transcendence, and coexistence as experienced against the backdrop of mortality and history.
