Christianity, Carles declaims, functions as a kind of in-group clique for upper-middle class youth discovering the boundaries and prerogatives of their privilege:
In high school, it seems like there is usually a ‘group of Christians teens’ who love 2 get together and talk about God, play acoustic guitar, and gather in some1′s parent’s huge, upper-middle class house [via being able to buy a huge house due to low property values in suburbia].... Since these kids are usually white and rich, they love 2 ‘drink and fuck’, and just try to seem ‘holier than thou’ cuz they chill out in youth groups while some 24 year old counselor bro ‘talks about God’ with them + throws down some Jack Johnson-like acoustic duets. Hella ‘inauthentic’ cuz tweens just wanna be teens–they don’t rlly care about God.Religion bears no moral or ethical precepts with it; it merely expresses belonging and hierarchy -- but of course, as Carles suggests, this is nothing new. He wonders whether youth can be the measure of any cultural phenomenon -- "Are teens ‘authentic followers/fans’ of any trend, brand, band, or religion?" -- suggesting that they are a bellwether for cultural change, but not its agent. These youths may not care about God, but in this they are merely emulating longstanding religious practice, organizing society to protect and preserve status. Of course religious piety has long been a shabby cloak for northern-hemisphere imperialism and white ethnocentrism, as Carles is quick to point out: "Feel like I woulda turned out to be an authentic member of God’s white army if my parents ‘manned up’, gave up their middle class jobs, and chilled out in Central America teaching ‘dumb Mexicans’ about the way of the Lord/white man." In other words, religion is a mode for reinstantiating racially based power without openly exposing the contingency of that power. Often it operates outside of economic power or in opposition to it, but it relies on the same cohort of proletarians as its basis.
But this critique of the sublunary uses of religion in a fallen world should not distract us from Carles's more incisive and trenchant critique of religion on its own terms. Carles introduces the idea of God's silence with a seemingly trite jest: "Sad that my church doesn’t have the social tools to help me deal with real life/teen issues. Wish I understood why life was so unfair." The issues associated with youth -- identity formation within the existing social matrix as one comes to terms with inflexible hierarchies and the absence of meritocracy -- are all transmogrified religious concerns: Has God created souls as equals? Does God sanction the superiority of one group over another, despite what foundational documents of the American state proclaim? How can religion acclimate us to social reality while nourishing our sense of our own relevance? Carles's chief insight is that religion has surrendered the authority to resolve these contradictions by colluding with consumer capitalism, integrating with it rather than opposing it. God fails where Wal-Mart triumphs.
Carles suggests that "authentic alts are post-god" -- that have survived the existential crisis posited by god's absence to live in roiling state of metaphysical indifference, in which the heavenly firmament and its mysteries have been supplanted by technological doodads and the mechanistic rationality which finds its apotheosis in precision targeted marketing and the nichification of consumers. The notion of what is "unfair" is no longer salient in a realm where it "seems like God really needs a twitter account" to make his Word bear any authority. Who shall be the prophet for the digital flock when the decentered structure of the network permits no one to lead but everyone to follow?
This is amazing. x
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