culture

Evangelical Christianity All The Way Down

by

Something I’ve seen coming up in a number of podcasts and videocasts are people talking about – and dealing with – just how American (and Western) cultural thinking is a essentially Evangelical Christianity. It doesn’t matter what your religion is, if you grew up in America, you’ve probably got a good shot of fire-and-brimstone apocalyptic evangelism in your head.

The more I think about it, the more I see it. Yes that may be pattern matching, but I think there’s something really there.

There’s a streak of righteous punitive cruelty in American culture. Yes, we’re used to it in the “God hates everyone I hate me types.” But I also see it in people supposedly with progressive or humanist values, suddenly ready to throw out their beliefs to enjoy watching “them” suffer. There’s also a strong belief that people will actually learn from punishment, believed by the people who A) aren’t being punished and B) will probably say that they don’t change their beliefs just because someone threatens them.

There’s a kind of “Divinity-seeking” as well. There’s people, again who are distinctly NOT Evangelical Christians, who are still looking for a Big Daddy to tel them everything. Maybe it’s a political figure, maybe a writer, maybe some activist. They may even claim to have some belief in principles, but those principles are expressed in very anthropomorphic ways. Ever heard someone talk about “what science wants” or “what the economy” desires?

There’s the evangelism. Look, I’m a believer, I’m a guy that likes to speak and preach good ideas. I do enjoy it, but I wonder how much of this is cultural influence, wonder what I’d be with less influence from Evangelism. How many talks on technology, ecology, whatever sound like church services – it’s enough to lead you to find mind-numbing TED Talks soothing.

But most of all, over it all, is the waiting for Judgement Day. America has a huge streak of waiting for/wanting the Big Boom/Big Uplift. Once you think about it it’s hard to not see it everywhere.

It’s in our fear of Nuclear War hanging over our heads for decades – an understandable reaction.

It’s in talk of an Eco-apocalypse, which also includes no small number of people who hint darkly that we deserve it and that they will survive in a new heaven.

It’s in endless speculation about social collapse – and the order that follows. It’s not just racist internet fantasies, it’s people who happily talk about how Capitalism will fall apart and then we get heaven on Earth (without the effort of building it, apparently).

And as of this writing it’s in the speculation on “Artificial Intelligence” which apparently will both kill us all, and lead to an enlightened new world, and also give us AI girlfriends/boyfriends. The apocalypse is a selling point, be it edgy fear of “being so powerful” or talk of utopias (without covering the economic issues of the same). AI evangelism feels so familiar, the God in the Machine indeed.

I’d recommend taking a good look at how much of your life and actions is just repurposed Evangelical Christianity that you absorb like spiritual microplastics. Trust me, it’s worth examining.

Maybe at some point, I might even have to followup on my own experiences . . .

–Xenofact

Creating Across the Centuries

by

Art Connects us, art is part of bigger things.

Digital collage is one of my artistic media, and one that I didn’t expect to become such. I originally picked it up for my work in zines, and then it just became “my thing.” Now I regularly examine public domain art resources, usually museums, for interesting images and such to work into my mashups.

My collage work is, for those aware of it, rather surreal. This originated out of my early zine days, punk, and the Church of the SubGenius. It was honed by an interest in alchemical and spiritual diagrams of yore and the Surrealists themselves. I combine images from across the centuries to create something new – many times something that surprises me as Surrealist work is Rorschach blots in reverse.

Once when poking around for some backgrounds to work with and inspire me, I searched the Welcome Collection, I stumbled across a lot of lovely, colorful prints. These were meant to be part of something called a “Toy Theater,” which I’d never really heard of. So I took a break from my art-searching to learn a little history.

Toy Theaters, to judge by the Wikipedia article I found and the art I had discovered were “a thing” in the 19th century, with interest surviving to this day. You could buy backgrounds and kits at theaters and operas, scripts were available, and there were of course fancier and self-made versions. Imagine going to the theater and then your parents buy you the kit so you can reenact the story you saw!

Toy Theaters, to an extent, were the same as merchandise and action figures we know from our mass media movies, albeit more personal. You’d assemble your own theater, you might customize it or alter it, you may even have cutout actors based on people you had seen the night before. They were also stages of the imagination.

Despite having scripts and the like, we all know people like to create. I’m sure over the decades that there were romances and battles and skulduggery among casts that would never have met. I’m sure people got silly, had fun, or got serious. They could mash things up, do things there way.

Then, across the decades, I realized they were like me.

Here I was, looking at images of Toy Theater backgrounds, finding inspiration just as someone would unpacking their Toy Theater kit. I combined disparate elements in a fury of inspiration, no different than someone playing with the Theater or taking a stab at the equivalent of fanfiction. There, across ages, I was doing the same thing that those people with their Toy Theaters did – creating my own world out of the parts.

Every artist who’d made these backgrounds and printer who’d printed these prints was having their work still used by people like me. Every parent who lovingly saved their child’s toys, toys which eventually were donated to museums, were seeing their effort live on in how that art was seen and used.

I felt both small and large, part of something bigger but also just me, there, a guy behind a computer playing with graphic programs.

Art, art has so many connections that it lets us feel the largeness of it all. A hundred years ago a family happily assembled a Toy Theater. Now I create strange and wonderful surrealist work. And we’re all the same, part of the same thing.

–Xenofact

Religious Art Without Either

by

My own experiments in surrealist art and how art connects with spirituality have graced a few of these pages. Until I started doing my own art I hadn’t given much consideration to art and spirituality – as most of my interest was written work and meditations. Some art inspired me and I did find “project plan” type diagrams like The Six Realms useful, but I hadn’t thought of it until my own work.

But as I started doing art I started viscerally appreciating the power of art and spirituality. I appreciated my own inspirations much better, as I got them. There’s something powerful about art, bridging all those gaps between feelings and ideas, going where words cannot. The hyperdetailed art of the Six Realms of Buddhism, awe-inspiring pictures of gods, hilarious art of the Eight Immortals – all of those can be rationally analyzed and felt.

Just as spirituality connects things together so does art. No wonder they go together – and are really inseparable.

Which is what brings me to religiously kitschy art. You know the kind, the stuff that is standard, pandering, sometimes pseudo-realistic, and where the message is extremely obvious. The kind of stuff that Queen Coke Francis mocked in one of her videos (also she’s just hilarious and here makeup is on point).

Kitschy religious art kind of fascinates me. It feels dead to me. It’s message is obvious, sometimes in the title or spelled out. The look is often cartoony but without that “edge” where the style brings a benefit of inspiration or feeling, or so realistic it might have well been a photo. The kind of stuff AI churns out because so many people churned it out. I mean I’m talking still work, but I suppose it applies to media like TV.

I always wondered why people would enjoy this art because there’s nothing there. There’s no inspiration to it, nothing to fire you up or inspire you. There’s nothing stylized, no edge to the art to catch on your mind and make you think. It’s just so simple . . .

. . . and then I realized that’s the point.


Kitschy religious art is not about helping you feel or get inspired or go deeper.. It’s about reinforcing what you’re supposed to feel and what others want you to think and feel. In most cases I think about signaling, showing who you are and what you think, it’s not there to help you you think anything deeper.

Which is the point.

In fact, this”art” has to be short of any detail, any extra, any edge. If you take any liberties, get a bit stylish, etc. you risk inspiring people. Anything playful, any attempts to be really artsy risks getting people to feel something, to speculate, to feel something. Kitschy religious art has to avoid any risk because for all you know it might actually do something for you. No wonder so much of it is simple.

Of course this leads me to wonder how kitsch can be used to conceal inspiration or how one might inspire people to put a bit more into their kitsch that may produce deeper thoughts . . .

–Xenofact