All this attention focused on crazy christians and their mean interpretation of what passes for god inside their teeny little pea brains and cruel, miniscule hearts, prevents us from shining the light on what most people really worship: The Religion of Things, or as future Anthropologists will refer to it as--Walmartism.
This is the only light in the average consumer's mind. It compels us to accumulate just for the sake of accumulating. On the rare occasion when the guilt of too much creeps in, when we start throwing out still usable clothing, food, and other goods to make room for more, then greed becomes a valid substitute, and we chant "I have more than you do, nyah nyah nyah."
The inevitable byproduct of such a shallow belief system makes life cheap because anything we can't buy has no value. On a personal level, this devaluing of humanity makes friendships and other relationships transitory. We stay in them as long as they provide something of value: prestige, envy, sex, dual incomes. To stay together for any other reason loses all value in a consumer society. Relationships are interchangeable, something we can take back and cash in for a refund to "buy" something better.
Once this value has been diminished in the individual, then it becomes easier to sell the public on such concepts as loosened safety standards in the workplace that result in industrial accidents, dangerous vehicles, poorly maintained public transportation, and a crumbling infrastructure.
From there it is not a large step to disenfranchising entire segments of the population because they have little value. We turn these human beings into nameless cannon fodder, household servants, and lowly worker bees for the industries required to produce more crap and cheap food to stuff our already full mouths with until we nearly explode from greed.
And once humans are so completely devalued that we turn our heads so as not to see the homeless, the hungry, the abandoned, the dysfunctional and discarded because it makes US feel bad to see THEM, it is barely a walk across the street to convince us to sacrifice the young and poor in wars that are not fought for ideals or defense anymore. Our greed has grown so great that it now allows us to stand by in complacent, overstuffed approval at large scale looting expeditions conducted by those who already have so much, they have to invade entire countries, kill thousands of innocents people, to even feel the slightest thrill anymore.
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