The West’s large-scale apostasy from Christianity has produced widespread cultural changes – and not the ones we were promised. It turns out that humans are built for belief. Take away our faith in God, and we’ll transfer it to something else.
Even normies are starting to notice the bizarre spectacle of weird cults popping up everywhere.
This blog’s exploration of the Pop Cult and the Death Cult has gained a fair share of attention. The latter has even hit the mainstream.
But despite their best efforts, neither of the two dominant secular religions have filled the void left by Christianity’s suppression. Nature abhors a vacuum, so additional materialistic faiths are throwing themselves into the breach.
Let’s explore three cults that have gained mindshare in the current infosphere.
Remember that to qualify as a religion, a group must have three elements:
- Cult: a consistent body of rituals for public worship
- Code: a set of moral rules
- Creed: a canon of shared myths that defines a shared identity
- An origin story
- Ritual laws for the here and now
- Eschatology of the End Times
With the definitions out of the way, let’s dig into …
The Mammon Mob
Frequent readers will remember these Captain Capitalist dollar jockeys from my posts on student loans. Mammon worshipers once cloaked their devotions in political and economic terms, but their laissez-faire theories’ increasing divergence from observed reality has laid bare their cultic status.
Baby Boomers are overrepresented among Mammon Mobsters, but you’ll find Market supplicants among College Republicans raised on Sean Hannity and even Lefty bugmen of the yuppie variety.
Cult: Pay constant tribute to the sacred Market™. Hear sermons from personal finance prophets to maximize profits. Shun and ridicule the poor ,who have been found unworthy. Perform the good works of removing all obstacles to the Holy Market such as immigration laws, protective tariffs, and Section 230.
Code: Thou shalt amass as much material largesse as possible. Thou shalt not feed the hungry, clothe the naked, or shelter the homeless, because TANSTAAFL.
Creed: The Market is an all-knowing, all-powerful god that human beings exist to serve. Yet it lavishes great rewards on those who please it with corporate tax breaks and foreign aid to Mideastern countries.
Origin Story: In the beginning was the state of nature, where life was nasty, brutish, and short. But then the Invisible Hand showed the go-getters how to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and establish a market-based meritocracy.
Ritual Laws: Buy the dip! Make regular contributions to your Roth IRA and/or 401(k), plus indexed funds or ETFs using dollar cost averaging. Minimize your tax burden. Avoid contact with the unclean who pull down less than $35K per annum.
Eschatology: Mammon Mobsters believe with moral certainty that if they implement the perfect corporate tax rate, then Ronald Reagan will return in glory to usher in the new and eternal 1987.
Sure, the Mammon Mob sounds rather harmless. But it lulls more normies away from real dissident causes than any other cultural force. And those tend to be the people best positioned to relieve the DR’s ongoing resource problem, for obvious reasons. That’s the main reason why nothing major will change until the Mammon Mob loses its death grip on mainstream Conservatism.
The Mammon Mobsters aren’t the only pseudo-political cult peeling off effective dissent from the global Death Cult. Dissidents also must contend with …
Lolbert Lollards
Yep, it’s time to pick on the Libertarians again. Because when is it not?
Lolbert beliefs have some overlap with Mammon worship, but the former has always given off weird cult vibes from day one.
The following will explain why.
Cult: Oppose any and all restrictions on urges originating below the belt. Display the Gadsden flag on poles, bumpers, and sacred tee shirts. Always go armed and make sure everyone knows it.
Code: Anything goes! Except when people you 90% agree with violate a Death Cult taboo. Then cancel them while invoking your right to free association. Convenient!
Creed: Freedom is absolute. Even freedoms that contradict each other. Why? You decide! Because freedom is defined by the individual with no reference to restrictive external reality. Which implies that nothing, including the choices of sovereign individual will, have any meaning. But we don’t think about that.
Origin Story: In the beginning, individuals were free. Then a group of them got together and formed a government for the sole purpose of oppressing everyone else. If the sovereign individual is man’s natural state, how did such an unnatural hierarchy not only form, but dominate? We don’t think about that, either.
Ritual Laws: The NAP, which governs all interactions between free individuals. Except those the State has outlawed, as mentioned above.
Eschatology: The advent of crypto will, at long last, allow sovereign individuals to form voluntary societies based on smart contracts – on unclaimed islands, or perhaps abandoned deep sea oil rigs. Then everyone will be free to smoke all the party drugs and bang all the underage hookers, because there’s no age of consent if there are no laws. What will keep any organized country with a professional army and supporting industrial base from conquering Lolbertopia on day two? We don’t think about it.
Say what you will, at least the Lolberts try to deny their nihilism. Even sadder are those who embrace it.
Y-ilists
The last and smallest of our three subcults, this one is notable for having peculiar commonalities with and differences from the first two. Like the Mammon Mob, its members mostly hail from a particular generation. It also shares the Lolberts’ denial of objective truth. But in a notable similarity to the Death Cult, its adherents tend to project their faults onto their enemies.
In short, Y-ilists are what happens when a generation raised on Nickelodeon realizes there are fewer days between them and the grave than between the original NES launch and today.
That doesn’t mean all members of Gen Y join this generational cult. The midlife crisis does present Ys with a choice: Return to Christ, or slide into nihilism. Some, by the grace of God, find a lifeline.
Many of the others wind up submitting to the anti-belief system described below.
Cult: Spout slander, libel, and calumny under the aegis of edgy 90s humor. Swarm to eDrama like a shark to chum, and ridicule men of real accomplishment to forget your own insecurities for a fleeting moment. Keep the gnawing emptiness at bay with constant social media threads and nightly drama streams.
Code: None. Except convoluted and arbitrary anathemas governing online conduct that we impose on others and dispense ourselves from as convenient.
Creed: The Boomers promised you a bright future of low-work, high-pay employment, a loving family right out of Leave It to Beaver, and a cushy retirement. But every day since college it failed to materialize, and now you know it never will. Pretend not to care hard enough, and maybe you’ll believe it. Taking jabs at others might take your mind off the pain for a while. Nobody will notice if you disguise your sniping as jokes. Nothing matters in the end, anyway. Really. It doesn’t. At all.
Origin Story: America was a paradise where the cool kids were free to play vidya, troll noobs, and pirate movies all day, every day. Then Boomers, Millennial journalists, and closeted Zoomers ruined everything. Now we’re all riding the express train into the abyss, and there’s no going back ever.
Ritual Laws: Snark at all costs. Hide your true feelings behind an impenetrable façade of glib indifference. Never miss a chance to engage in effeminate gossip. Draw no line that isn’t arbitrary, and never take a stand without leaving room for a 180 heel turn. A friend is just someone you haven’t yet betrayed for eFame and superchats.
Eschatology: This is it. We had a good run, but the show’s over, folks. Get the last laugh if you can. Then tip your waitress, put the chairs on the tables, and get the lights on your way out.
In consolation, the Y-ilists do more harm to each other and themselves than to anyone who’s making a difference. And like the other two cults, their relevance has a built-in egg timer.
The main takeaway is the same as for the Pop and Death cults: There is no substitute for Christianity. Refuse to worship the Creator, and you will be doomed to worship far inferior creatures.
Goes beyond analysis into action
“In consolation, the Y-ilists do more harm to each other and themselves than to anyone who’s making a difference.”
What is Jim Metokur?
The most prominent, but far from the only example
Every member of Gen Y knows someone in real life who is just as nihilistic as Jim, though often there will be no mask for the despair (i.e. instead of “this is a clown world and let’s enjoy the ride as it all burns” you’ll have “oh man why does nothing make sense anymore nothing will be good again why can’t I just play video games forever and forget about everything.”)
Not all of Gen Y is like that of course. Some have a renewed faith and others (sadly, probably more) are Pop Cult members supreme. (I swear if I run into another old high school acquaintance I haven’t seen for years and all they do is ramble on about the MCU….)
Except everything Jim is known for has been a moral stance.
Whatever the guy may say about himself, he is clearly not a nihilist.
He and his imitators just copy Jon Stewart’s old shtick of hiding their moralizing behind a clown mask. That way they never have to answer uncomfortable questions about their stances.
Where does the cringe Dave Portnoy/BRCC barstool conservative” fit in? Pop Cult?
Those guys aren’t cultists. They lack the necessary conviction. What they are is cynical mercenaries paid by Con Inc gatekeepers to steer normies who’ve taken their first dose of the red pill away from dissident politics.
In hindsight, I don’t know if I ought to have posted this comment. It’s a bit too close to gossip for my tastes, despite my efforts to reduce that. Could you delete it, Brian?
Done.
Thanks.
So many Y-ilists on social media. It’s like they MUST keep their edgy cynical 90s facade going to keep the grift alive. And it’s sad because most are talented and smart enough to find sincere success if they return to God.
Few modern phenomena are more beautiful than a Y who escapes his nihilism and devotes his life to Jesus Christ.
I don’t get this hatred of Jim. He’s never misled anyone about who and what he is. Despite the constant attempts to force him to the front of the (righteous) angry mob.
It is perfectly acceptable to refuse the call to action and live in your corner. He’s never pretended to be anything else nor aspired too.
Imagine equating wanting someone to have eternal life with hatred.
Hatred was not necessary to see that Jim was a vile person who existed to mock and to rant about others whether or not they deserved it, and half of the people whom he insulted either carried on with their lives or were already ruined. How is it “perfectly acceptable” to spew so much venom with useless results and for nothing but self amusement?