Some will argue, probably with good reason, that religion in the
civilization of illiteracy is but another form of consumerism,
or at least of manipulation. No matter what the religious
occasion, and if it is still indeed of religious motivation, the
market celebrates its highest results in anticipation of
holidays (the former holy days). The 40,000 car dealerships,
many designed as car cathedrals, and almost 35,000 shopping
malls get more visitors during the holiday season than do
churches. In addition, even ceremonies whose significance is
fundamentally different today than during previous periods,
generate more business than religious awareness. The language of
ceremonies is entrusted to consultants in marriage, confirmation,
baptism, bar mitzvah, and death. Texts related to circumstances
of practical experiences different from those of our day are
written and read, or, to be more precise, performed without
either understanding what kind of pragmatics made them necessary
or realizing the discrepancy between past and present
pragmatics. This is why they ring so hollow in our day.
When permanence is exalted, faithfulness promised, acceptance of
biblical or other precepts (of the Koran, of Far Eastern
pantheistic religions) ascertained, literacy and religion are
only mimicked. Talaba, the 100 rubles (or whatever the currency
of choice) per month paid by Shiite missionaries from Iran,
brings many Tadjiks, Uzbeks, and Turkmenians to the new
religious schools of Islam. Chances are that a higher bidder
from another religion would spoil the game. Under the new
pragmatic circumstances of human self-constitution, change,
variety, self-determination, individualism, negation of
authority, divine or secular, and skepticism are decisive for
reaching the levels of efficiency demanded by a dynamic scale of
existence.
Today's world is not one of generalized atheism. It is, rather,
one of many partial religious literacies, sharing in some basic
symbolism, although not necessarily in a unifying framework for
its consistent interpretation. Many do not believe, for reasons
of science or convenience, in the religious explanation of the
origin of the universe and life. Or they do not care for the
message of love and goodness embedded in almost every current
manifestation of faith. They see in every religious book the
handwriting of some groups who, in order to impose their values,
invented the image of a supreme force in order to achieve, if
not authority, at least credibility.
We live in an environment of compromise and tolerance, infinite
distinctions, fast sequences of failure and success, challenged
authority and generalized democracy. In today's huge and
ineffective social mechanism, in the integrated and networked
world, individual failure does not affect the performance of the
system. Illiteracy, while dangerous under circumstances
characteristic for the pragmatic of the recent past, only
marginally affects the levels of efficiency reached.
Religiosity, of consequence in the same pragmatic framework,
plays no role whatsoever in the illiterate practical
experiences of human self-constitution. Calling such assessments
heresies, as some might be inclined to do, does not really
answer the question of whether religious law can still serve,
alone or together with other laws, as the binding tie of
community-as it does not address the broader issues of whether
literacy can serve as the binding tie of community. Because of
their pragmatic nature, characteristics of religion and
structural characteristics of language are fundamentally
similar. If we want to understand the condition of religion
today, we have to specifically address the pragmatic
circumstances of self-constitution within the civilization of
illiteracy.
In the events of tele-evangelism there is no place for literacy.
But the video church, and computer-aided religion, the bible on
CD-ROM, or CD-I, the vacation village for believers, and
religious tourism are mainly forms of entertainment. Their
validity is divorced from the concept of the exalted individual,
critical in the context of a small- scale community.
Consequently, the religious dimension of transcendence is
annihilated. Ours is the time of the eternal instant, not of some
vague eternity promised as reward after the present. Partially
banalized through abuse of the word, concepts such as dignity,
decency, and human values have become the clichés of the video
church, with as many gospels as there are preachers. Religiosity
today differs from the religiosity of previous pragmatic
frameworks insofar as it corresponds to the accentuated
insularity of the individual.
As long as the viewer is only a digit away on his or her remote
control from a pornography channel, from the latest quote on the
stock market, of from a commercial message-for denture adhesive,
gastric relief, and home pregnancy tests-it is difficult, if not
impossible, to distinguish between sanctity and triviality,
righteousness and venality. The global community of tele-viewing
is splitting into smaller and smaller groups. And TV, as a
pulpit of missionary activity, reveals itself as only
syntactically different from the missionary work of
advertisement. Mass religion proves to be as impersonal as the
market. In effect, it severs the relations between religion and
the mysterious, still unexplained aspects of human existence. A
virtual reality package can be as good as the performance of
having the blind see, and the cripple leave the wheelchair to
enter the 100-meter dash. The virtual cathedral, the stadium, and
the mass audience addressed in front of the camera are
themselves of a scale inadequate to both the teaching
disseminated and the nature of religious experience, no matter
how far the effort to change the vocabulary goes.
The language of the books is rooted in experiences to which the
tele-viewer no longer has a direct relation. They cannot be
substituted in a medium adapted to change and variety. The
categories that religious discourse centers on-faith, goodness,
transcendence, authority, sin, punishment-were established in a
pragmatic framework totally different from that of the present.
Today, existence offers variety, immediate satisfaction, and
protection from the whims of nature. The sense of danger has
changed. The equity accumulated by the church in these categories
may be enough to entitle claims of ownership, given people's
inertia, but not to maintain them as effective means of
affecting current practical experiences. It might well be true
that three out of five Americans now believe there is a hell,
and that people in other countries share the same assumption,
but this has no bearing on their self-constitution in the world
of quickly changing scenarios for fulfillment outside faith.
Networking and distributed work are better synchronized with the
pragmatics of high efficiency of our day. Software for
interactive multimedia keeps track of a person's religious
patterns, and provides prayer and interpretation integrated in
the same package.
In its attempt to adapt to a new framework of human activity,
religion adopted social causes (renouncing its metaphysics),
scientific terminology (renouncing agnosticism), or the means of
entertainment (renouncing its asceticism). With each step
outside the boundaries of religion, the transcendental dimension
is sacrificed. This dimension is embedded in the medium of
literacy through which religious practical experience became a
fixture in society. When the word does not satisfy, believers
resort to other means of expression, some older than religion. It
is not unusual to have a religious celebration during the day in
some Catholic churches in Brazil, and at night, on the same
altar, a chicken sacrificed to Yemenyá. The literate
celebration, of European import, and the illiterate sacrifice to
which a different group of believers connects, are impossible to
reconcile. In this framework, freedom of choice, as vulgar or
trivial as those choices might be, takes precedence over
authority. In Brazil, "Graças a Deus!" is paired with the
practice of African cults (Candomblé, Umbanda, Macumba), just as
"Allah-hu-akbar" is with shamanistic or Buddhist celebrations in
Azerbaidjan and Kazakstan. These are particular expressions of
religion in the civilization of illiteracy, as much as TV
evangelism is. For as much as religion was submitted to the word,
performance always seems to get the upper hand.
To blindly ascertain permanence against the background of change
would only further undermine religious practice. This is why the
new religions focus on the immediate and produce the reward as
fast as it is expected. The continuous proliferation of new
religious denominations, soon to be as many as there are people
who constitute the networks of human interaction in today's
pragmatic context, reflects also the ability of the church to
adapt. But this was not religion's reason for being in the
first place, and will not represent more than what actually
happens when we all wear the same shoes, or shirts, or hats but
read a different label on each, when we all eat the same food
that is only packaged differently, when we all vote for the same
politics (or lack of same) while maintaining party affiliations.
When each has his or her own god, God ceases to exist.
With the end of the civilization of literacy, partial religious
literacies emerge, developing their own languages, their own
organizations, their own justification. The heterogeneity of the
world, its intrinsic relativity, and its dynamics of change mark
religious practical experiences in ways not dissimilar to those
of scientific, artistic, political, educational, moral, and many
other experiences. Consumption of the language of religion in
ceremonies and holidays that promote the expectation of more
and cheaper, on which the quest for unlimited satisfaction of
needs and desires is based, does not qualify anyone as religious
or literate. Neither does secularism for that matter, no less
illiterate, and no less subjected to the same expectation of high
efficiency which undermines the core of any religion.