the village idiot

The difference between religion and a culture of consumerism is that one nails a person's mind to the cross of an ideal, and keeps it hypnotized with "a happily ever after" love story about God - one filled with death, danger, betrayal and intrigue, eternal punishment and reward, sacrifice; and all of it in the name of love, at least according to the God who is said to have written it and stranded us all here to begin with - and the other eats us alive.

The similarity is that both put us in debt, one to a God - or in practice, a "belief system" based on the love and authority of a single concept of what countless different people throughout human existence may mean by the word "God": a word we use to describe an infinity abstract ideal that vaguely seems to resemble ourselves and especially our ideas, that everyone admits no one can clearly define, just as much as they all "humbly" admit God is impossible to fully understand, but they are all  nevertheless proud to admit they each understands it better than most, which is why they subscribe to the particular "belief system" that they do, and with enough devotion to kill and die for it if necessary, rather than ever deny they could ever be wrong to "believe" that their own "belief system" was the one "true" God - and the other to a bank.   

One nails our ideals to a cross, one that betrays the promise of an eternally evolving life by crucifying it to a belief, and the other to everything we own, all of which owns us even more. 

In such a culture, Capitalism is simply an economic religion that is similar to a broken clock, when you think about it, because in the same way a broken clock is right twice a day, Capitalism convinces enough people to believe that provides the most wealth and freedom to the most people, even though it really only truly "enriches" about 2% of a society, and only to the differing degrees of disadvantages that 2% can successfully use the political system to ramrod down the throats of the other 98%, without upsetting too greatly the apple cart of inequality such a political system was intentionally designed to create. 

Religions - including and especially the secular pseudo-scientific ones of today like race, politics, and economics, that have largely eclipsed the theistic religions of the past, because they are far more effective at control through the division of thoughts and resources  - all work together to help maintain the status quo through different means of control, even as they all war among themselves about the best means to use, with Christianity being an epic mythology that keeps us focused on the pocket-watch of a utopian afterlife being swayed back in forth in front of us by an almighty watch maker.

In truth, of course, what is being swayed in front of us is a man murdered on a crucifix, and when it is just the crucifix everyone knows the murdered man is implied, by a priestly class of hypnotists who swarm like ants over the earth spreading the nectar of their queen, and telling us "it's all part of God's plan." And even though they tell us" it is all part of God's plan," we must pray incessantly that he will change it anyway, to remake in the world in the image of our own ideas.

And since Jesus himself pronounced "the poor you will always have with you," all those prayers are meaningless, since there's no point in imagining we are clever enough to come up with a system that could be any better than the one we already have, even though we must believe we are clever enough to understand an intelligence infinitely greater than our own, and with enough clarity to avoid being thrown justifiably into an eternal lake of fire for being an idiot.