Tara Isabella's Reed incisive work of non-fiction Strange New Rites: New Religions in a Godless Culture looks at how the digital world has changed spirituality in America and how it's now shaping culture and politics. Reed provides the historical context between conflicting impulses towards religious belief in America: the institutional vs the intuitional. Online life allows anyone to find meaning, purpose, community, and ritual among the like-minded. While the spectrum of belief emerging is wide ranging, they all share a fundamental distrust of institutions and are embracing alternative belief systems. These communities reflect both progressive and reactive impulses driving cultural discussions.
The 21st Century has witnessed a dramatic rise in "nones" who check the "spiritual, but not religious" box on surveys. During the 2000s secularism and atheism appeared to be on the rise with bestselling polemics and viral YouTube clips by Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins "destroying" religious thinkers in debates. Yet the past ten years have revealed there's a deep spiritual hunger among Millennials and Gen Z. The famous Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan predicted the global village we now see appearing in digital and real life. Reed writes of a new generation of "remixers" combining and blending various spiritualities to suit their own personal tastes. Practice traditional Catholic liturgy by morning, some meditation on your Headspace App after a stressful work day, and maybe experiment with Tarot cards over the weekend.
What I like about the book is that it reads like Sci-Fi film from the 70s that never got made. We're now in a world where a pop culture phenomenon can evolve into religious ones based on Star Wars or Harry Potter. Reed traces the mass popularity of Harry Potter contributing to a rise in beliefs in magic, witchcraft, and astrology among millennials. In recent years Potter fandom even turned on author J.K. Rowling for her controversial views on gender, of course it's nothing new for fandoms to turn on a creator. Reed writes, "Stories now exist not to teach us or inform us, but serve us." (87). In other words, fan service. While online toxic fan culture has been written about ad nauseum, there are some compelling possibilities in this new landscape, a chapter is dedicated to the Sleep No More experience, an interactive version of Macbeth that gained popularity a decade ago. Blurring the lines between creator, audience, and culture does hold untapped possibilities.
Tom Wolfe's famous essay on "The Third Great Awakening" took a satirical approach to new spiritual currents during the 1970s, in some ways we're living in a more streamlined version of it. SoulCycle promises physical fitness and inner piece, only asking in return your heart and soul - and money of course. The same with various self-care products whether Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop or hyper-masculine products hawked on extreme right-wing outlets. Dating Apps offering services catered to specific tastes make huge profits. There's always a profit angle whether selling customized beads or dropping $200 an hour for a therapy session with Dr. "clean up your room" himself - Jordan Peterson. Megachurch pastors make millions of tax-free dollars, Hollywood celebrities moonlight as entrepreneurial influencers.
Yet it's not like the 1970s either. Tribes forming and coalescing on various web platforms are influencing and changing political culture. Reed sees three distinct groups: the social justice left, the atavistic right, and the libertarian minded "tech-utopians." The "Gamergate" controversy from 2014 when angry dudes launched online verbal attacks on female video game designers and journalists marked one of the first notable confrontations. "Gamergate" was mere preliminary to the 2016 election, hailed as a victory for reactionary forces everywhere raging at the social justice movement, yet at the same time gave the social justice movement a common enemy to resist.
Reed identifies religious thinking since the three groups have specific visions of the future. Right wing atavists, in their white supremacist world view long for an apocalypse, wanting the world to revert to a pre-modern ethos as preferable to a technological/ gender fluid civilization. Techies believe advances will pave the way for immortality and a capitalist paradise, maybe even the colonization of Mars (it will be Total Recall).
Social justice activists hope for a future almost free of injustice based on race, gender, or sexuality. The "call out culture" of social justice, a mass attack on social media towards someone expressing regressive views is according to Reed, the mark of a religion. Maybe? While the atavistic right revels in being overtly racist and sexist, triggering and harassing progressives defines their own identity. Right wing violence has spilled into the real world from self proclaimed incels (young men who blame feminism for all of their problems) and conspiracy theory fueled white supremacists. The January 6, 2021 terrorist attack on the Capitol marked a dangerous escalation, a point when a reactionary movement embarks on political violence.
Much of the divide also comes down to the classic nature vs nurture debate, or biology vs sociology. Social activists believe (aligning them with liberals) identity is shaped by social conditioning, while those on the right believe biology is fate. Yet much of their reasoning rests on pseudoscience rooted in 19th Century racism. Silicon Valley technocrats are lost in Sci-Fi fantasies, oddly emulating the antagonists of those stories.
I don't think Reed is equating social justice activism with right wing extremism, since the goals of each are quite different, but many make the equivalency, arguing social justice is just as illiberal as the right (I would argue that's a false equivalency) One is rooted in the darkest forces of the past, the social justice movement is a continuation of the Civil Rights Movement in that both fight against injustice. That doesn't mean any movement, even if working for just purposes, should be above criticism.
Reed seems both fascinated and anxious with the growing tribalism in America, pondering if fragmentation become the driving narrative of the coming decades. Did the election of Biden signal a rebirth of the center? What does the center even look like in this swiftly evolving landscape? Class is often left out of the conversation, a subject Reed also avoided, but it does warrant more coverage in this sociological puzzle. While a lack of economic opportunity does translate into reactionary politics gaining traction, it also begs for alternatives to capitalism. There's so much static these days, Strange Rites is a work that rises above the static.
