Sex, Death, Religion

   Modern Western economies have turned sex, death and religion into commercial commodities to an extent unheard of in human history.  The most direct examples, in the case of sex, include human trafficking as well as the pornography and erotic objects industry.  However, there is also the enormous use of sex as a branding for the marketing of all sorts of objects including cars, vacations, alcohol and clothing.  In this case, as Naomi Klein has pointed out in Logo, it is not the object itself that is being sold but rather the sexual idea behind the image created of that object through advertising.

   Death has also been become a commodity marketed for profit. A few major companies in North America control most of what happens when someone dies, including embalming and the casket or incineration and an urn, provision of space for a wake, arrangements for a funeral service and, finally, the internment in a cemetery. The family and friends of someone who dies become the paying spectators of arrangements processed through these multinational corporations.

   Finally, we are witnesses to a commodification of religion. The most obvious example can be found in that of fundamentalist religion marketed through radio and especially television. In some cases the primacy of profit is stunningly obvious. But, on a larger level, fundamentalist or integrist religious expressions, including those in many of the traditional Christian Churches and also in other religious traditions, follow many of the underlying dynamics of the dominant economic model by insisting on the primacy of the individual and the satisfaction of personal needs.

   There are minority movements that react to this. Many reject all expression of religion while highlighting the freedom of individual thought and expression. Some give enormous importance to rational thinking, especially to scientific truth. (Witness Richard Dawkins.) However, in all this they learn toward an isolation of the individual. This has led some anti-religious movements to extremely angry expressions against any form of religion. This sort of thing can be found in the movements surrounding metal music: death metal and industrial metal in particular.  In their view sex is a personal expression of pleasure for self. Death then becomes simply the end of life, a dead stop. The artistic expressions in music and art show signs of severe depression and even tend toward suicide in some cases.

    There is, however, another minority view on these three dimensions of life. It is expressed in the religion of many thoughtful mainstream Christians,  Buddhits and Muslims who struggle to provide a meaningful interpretation of their religious traditions in a contemporary context. In this perspective sex is a participation in the dynamic, creative unfolding of life in which death is an inevitable consequence of a universe moving toward larger and deeper expressions of life. Religion, in this context, is a set of beliefs and rituals that assist in the journey through life so that we keep in touch with those deeper dimensions and  that encourage us to discover and engage with the profound interconnections we have with one another and all  expressions of life on Earth.

   I insist that, in North America, this perspective has become a minority one. Most people are too taken up with the culture around them to devote energy to developing an alternative, even if that alternative is strongly rooted in our cultural and religious history.