An idol is constructed with anything abstracted from the living experience of human beings. My understanding- of the negative kind of idolatry- includes any ideology that is afforded a priority over and against the life and welfare of people as they are- right here, right now. No religion, philosophy, or anything rooted in the human consciousness is immune to misuse as idolatry, Buddhism as much as any other. At a more immediate level, advertising and consumerist culture is replete with uses of the power of idolatry to manipulate people. But idolatry, like memory foam, takes the form of whatever is impressed in it. This can, and evidently does, include supposedly critical philosophy. It is especially apparent (in keeping with the very shallow and pretentious nature of neoliberal culture) in new political, social, cultural and religious forms. Whatever appears in consciousness belongs there. I’m certainly not denying the value and place of intellectual creativity. However when emphasis on the products of the mind is such that the living tissue that is inseparable from them suffers, then I consider that idolatry in the negative sense. This following is an allegory I threw together two years ago in disillusionment at what I was seeing from ostensibly independent news and political media. I wish I could say it's no longer relevant! Unfortunately, I've seen so many good and promising efforts in the aforementioned devolve into plain, boring and profoundly harmful new iterations of shallow celebrity contrarianism, controversy mongering, click-baitery, pretence and hypocrisy.
The Viper
‘I followed the gleam of a pale moon to a cemetery. At it’s centre appeared to rise a great pillar, a shadow against the green lunar light. I approached, and saw that it was not a pillar, but an immense serpent, hideous, with eyes of jet, it’s lolling tongue blue, dripping reddish venom. Forking, the tongue pointed east and west.
A low moaning echoed from the rotten soil, for the dead were not at rest. Poor souls!-they were troubled still by the stinking poison which lay gathering in pools, soaking through the grim earth beneath the viper. Unseeing though the eyes of the beast were, nonetheless, I knew it was ware of me.
The surface of the right eye shimmered in an insane light-
unwholesome, hateful.
That of the left reflected dully the disc of the moon as a hollow phantom-
lifeless, empty.
I knew then that all those now lying dead had been drawn from either side, towards an eye, there to drink deadly deceit from the tongue.
No other choice had been presented them. No sane middle way was countenanced.
Gazing on the grinning visage of the abomination, I heard it speak in my thought. It muttered its sibilant mantra;
“Here be truth”
Here, in me is the revolutionary force!
Though I am a poisonous thing,
clutch me to thy trembling and weakened breast,
for I spit powerful words!
I summon the hurricane and the zeitgeist both,
See in me what, whom, thou will’t.
I am more than contradiction – yea,
both more and less,
For I am incoherence embodied in aesthetic,
I am thine own IDOL,
Betray thyself,
Follow my way”
The dead groaned beneath my feet
“ heed it not. It lied”.