(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Consumption is the ideology of our time. Buying has become our favorite hobby – and more: It has become a favorite tool when we present ourselves in the face of others. Both the product and shopping can be understood as identity creation. This is roughly the thesis of Erling Dokk Holm in the essay From God to Gucci recently published by Gyldendal Akademisk. He cuts:
“A vacuum arises when the power of the church weakens, when the labor movement loses its cultural-building power, when hometown poetry is no longer a curriculum in the school system, and when support for the nation-state idea is about to fall. The void must be filled. What moves in is something that can give us a similar sense of security, a similar feeling of being encapsulated in something bigger than ourselves. Consumption becomes meaningful at almost all levels, and it gives the individual an opportunity to confirm that they have value and belonging. ”
The question is what then happens to the remaining human conditions – between citizens and fellow human beings. Has hedonism completely shattered spirituality, fervor, and the ancient authorities? Can consumption give us the meaning that disappeared?
Maybe, but at the same time have The passion of the Christ put their minds to the boil and pulled cinema gangs in pretty substantial numbers in recent weeks. The distribution companies smell like cronies and have now decided to set up the film as well Luther, about the life of the great Christian reformer, in Norwegian cinemas. The royal baptism last weekend has also raised the question of the place of religion in the postmodern society. Religious historian Torkel Brekke showed the book last year God in Norwegian politics that religion still plays a big role.Is it then certain that Gucci rules alone in our culture of abundance?
Our time is also described as a "post-secular" time. The modern
information project was characterized by the belief in reason, rationality, progress and technology. It took over, first for superstitions and myths, later for more comprehensive religious belief systems. It has marked the previous century. Especially in our part of the world has secularism Gradually, its mark on culture and social life. Now, however, this era of modernity is over. Today's culture is characterized by greater volatility and less faith in the big stories. The modern project imploded in the wake of the horrors of World War II. It is natural to think of Zygmunt Bauman's famous book Modernity and the Holocaust. Rationalism and blind faith have played bankrupt as a holistic worldview. It affects the Enlightenment project, and secularism. Even Jürgen Habermas – the German sociologist and philosopher who has described the ideal of domination-free communication – no longer believes that reason alone can guarantee morality.
According to the statistics, religion is back: Around 33 percent of the population say they have a view of life that is almost humanistic without any particular belief in God. Only 19 percent believe the Evangelical-Lutheran faith should be of paramount importance as the state's foundation of values, and a full 59 percent believe human rights are better suited. There is a study conducted by the Hunan-Ethical Confederation that states this. A survey conducted by the opinion polling firm Visendi on behalf of the Norwegian News Agency is even clearer: Only 2,7 per cent of Norwegian people believe in hell.
The church seems to be an "empty ritual shell," to use the words of humanist Lars Gule. But at the same time we see a renewed awareness of the role of religion, both in politics and in society in general. The debate on fundamentalism in Aftenposten earlier this spring is just one example. Another may be the revitalization of value debates brought about by the Biotechnology Act – first in connection with the ultrasound issue, then in connection with the Mehmet case. There, the relationship between religion, morality and politics is highly actualized.
So, have we left God in favor of mammon, or are we moving into a "post-secular" time? Probably both, because religion – understood as the broad and popular Christianity of the state church – is not what religion once was.
The Slovenian, the philosopher and the ideology critic Slavoj Zizek writes in the book The Puppet and the Dwarf – The Perverse Core of Christianity that postmodern New Age and "kind" Christianity characterize our part of the world. For him, culture is characterized by quasi-religiosity rather than consumer ideology. However, we know this form of postmodern and relatively unobtrusive religious attitudes well here at home.
Dokk Holm also sees it: “The Church's ability to create a unified identity offer is weakened, but religion is included as one of several components in postmodern man's construction of his own reality… At the individual level it is difficult not to argue that there has been a significant change in the direction of a more liberal view of what a life can entail. Unlike before, very few live directly under strong religious orders or ties. Religious historians claim that in modern Norway no more than 5 to 10 percent live in such a zealous regime. ”
Instead, Zizek wants to rediscover the materialistic core of the Christian faith. The argument is just as paradoxical as it sounds and fits a philosopher of Zizek's cast. What is important here, however, is that today's religious forms are fully compatible with consumer ideology. The foremost characteristics of the goods are also their symbolic properties. Consumption has become a spiritual pursuit. Consumption ideology has little or nothing to do with materialism.
The two can therefore exist side by side – and do so. What about the classical religion? Is our time becoming post-secular in a more retrospective and "fundamentalist" way?
It is easy to imagine empty lives, spots and well-polished surfaces, rather than solid communities in a consumer culture. The need for a stable and solid view of life may not be met by the purchase of goods, either alone or in combination with the most widespread forms of religion of our time. Parallel to consumer ideology, a pent-up need for firmness, zeal, spirituality and religion in the far more absolutist form has gradually materialized, one might think. That has been the back of the ever-shining medal of consumer ideology. And now maybe the dam is about to burst? This kind of reaction can at least be contoured.
An example taken from the Times Litterary Supplement on April 9: “could it could be argued that the world f humane good sense, clarity and peace promised by modernity, if we only let go of God, has not been forthcomming. Natural science has turned out to be dumb with regard to the values and ende for wich it supplies the means in ever more astonishing, if troubling, abundance. The social sciences far from explaining everything, have no convincing rationale for themselves except as successive rhetorics of power and control and are therefore pathways to nihilism. It should trouble trouble us that one of the gratest succsesses of the so-called collapse of totalizing meta-narratives or of any attempts to establish truth, meaning an value is the production of the ideal late-capitalist consumer, whose objectives stretch no further than aquiring something, rducing it to rubbish, and going on to the next desirable commodity. ”
Another is taken from Morgenbladet on April 3, puts the thought in even stronger relief: "Modern people stubbornly hold on to the right to be uncompromising rationalists, sensitive doubters, naive believers, hard-line materialists, forgiving adulterers dritings on Christmas tables and sentimental lovers of virgin birth in the stable – at once! This is our modern right as such, we have the generosity, but most of all the convenience, on our side. The fundamentalist challenges such convenient liberalism when he demands his right to an either or. He is the ugly fool who presses his index finger right into the difficult pain points of culture. ”
Whether we should listen to him. Yes, that's another question.
