religion (?) 2.0 | a discussion

Since God kicked it (as it were), those of us who didn't believe in him/her/them anyhow have been provided with little else in the way of ritual and emotional consolation, except perhaps the endless selection of books on the self-help shelves of the (proverbial) local bookshop.

Capitalism’s attempt to address these very problems through buying STUFF ("this laptop will perfect your work/life balance!", "this app will get you laid!" etc.) doesn’t quite fulfill its many promises to that end, either.

And those of us who look to other individuals to address our emotional needs overlook the sad irony that not only is there no one-person solution to the complexity of human emotional fulfillment, but we rarely trust solutions provided by single individuals anyhow, relying often on thumbs up/star/review systems before we are willing to even contemplate making concrete life changes we didn't come up with on our own.

Possible topics to bounce around:

• Religion for atheists
• Individuals vs. crowds: we all need to believe in something or someone, what happens when it’s no longer ourselves?
• growing up religious: the battle scars
• growing up NON religious: the battle scars
• the romanticism of heroes: do one-size-fits-all deities actually exist?
• and really, has anyone actually read a HELPFUL self-help book on the subject of spiritual enlightenment?