October 19, 2014 (Sunday)

I came across the following passage in Jonathan Spence's The Search for Modern China which gave a snapshot of life during the Cultural Revolution in China:

"Before every meal, the Chen villagers held what was almost a religious service for Mao, reciting some of his quotations, singing verses from the Red Guard anthem "The East is Red," and offering a little prayer aloud:

We respectfully wish a long life to the reddest red sun in our hearts, the great leader Chairman Mao. And to Vice Chairman Lin Biao's health: may he be forever healthy. Having been liberated by the land reform we will never forget the Communist Party, and in revolution we will forever follow Chairman Mao!"   " (Spence, 553-54)

The ritual was strikingly similar to the Muslim prayers recited in my middle school every morning. The ideological indoctrination carried out in totalitarian, Communist regimes have been compared to the substitution of man in the place of God, the leader in lieu of the prophet - and the zeal of the ideologues often outmatch the devotion of the religious followers. Some religious people therefore discredit Communism, whether in theory or practice, because of its perceived usurpation of some God's rightful position as the object of devotion. From an agnostic position, such comparisons could also work against organized religions. For instead of seeing leader idolatry within the totalitarian Communist regimes as the usurpation of some God's rightful position, however, I see it as evidence for the potential and fact of using religions, especially the organized, Abrahamic kind, as the ideology and methods for total control of a society.

The above passage also sparked the idea of improvising ritual (whether religious or not) as a way to escape, at least psychologically, from the total control of some earthly authority. I recall the time in the last year of my high school when I felt really pressured to submit to school authority. More than a few times when that pressure was almost emotionally crushing, I brought out quotes of Nietzsche and recited them to the quiet, dark night, repeatedly, for repetition is the constitution of ritual. Generally speaking, by making new rituals, a space unmolested by power, one uncharted by laws, is created. There one may find respite from, and the key out of the kind of morality caging the Nietzschean beast.

Amin.