Faith = Illness. Why I’ve had it with religious tolerance.

So what’s a nice Jewish boy like me writing such a seemingly sacriligious comic book for Vertigo? My last column in Arthur magazine may cast some light on this issue.

Okay, so let’s get into this God game.

I think it’s time to get serious about the role God plays in human affairs, and evaluate whether it’s appropriate to let everyone in on the bad news: God doesn’t exist, never did, and the closest thing we’ll ever see to God will emerge from our own collective efforts at making meaning.

Maybe I’m just getting old, but I no longer see the real value in being tolerant of other people’s beliefs. Sure, when beliefs are relegated to the realm of pure entertainment, they pose no real danger. So, a kid believes U2 is really a supergroup on par with The Beatles or The Who. That’s *his* problem, and it doesn’t really do a lot of harm to anyone except those of us who still stop by MTV occasionally to see what might be playing.

When religions are practiced, as they are by a majority of those in developed nations, today, as a kind of nostalgic little ritual – a community event or an excuse to get together and not work – it doesn’t really screw anything up too badly. But when they radically alter our ability to contend with reality, cope with difference, or implement the most basic ethical provisions, they must be stopped.

Like any other public health crisis, the belief in religion must now be treated as a sickness. It is an epidemic, paralyzing our nation’s ability to behave in a rational way, and – given our weapons capabilities – posing an increasingly grave threat to the rest of the world.

Just look at the numbers. A FoxNews poll (no doubt inflating these figures) claims that 92% of Americans say they believe in God, 85% believe in heaven, and 71% believe in the Devil. (That’s right – the guy with horns and a tail who presides over hell. The DeNiro character in Angel Heart, Pacino in Devils’Advocate and the one who tricks people into signing contracts on Twilight Zone.) Given FoxNews accuracy, we can cut these numbers in half, yet are still confronted with a deeply frightening prospect: half the people amongst who we walk and work every day believe some really fucked up shit. They’ve taken the metaphors of the Bible or Dante’s Inferno and gone ahead and decided that these images and allegories are *real*.

Add to that the more reliable polls finding that 35% of Americans say they are “born again” – a particularly modern phenomenon that came only after the charlatan rabble-rousers during the Great Depression – and you get a picture of a nation hoodwinked into a passive, childlike, yet dogmatic relationship to the myths that were originally written to sustain them, spur their motivation to social justice, and encourage continuing evolution.

As I’ve always understood them, and as I try to convey them in my comic book, the stories in the Bible are less significant because they happened at some moment in history than because their underlying dynamics seem to be happening in all moments. We are all Cain, struggling with our feelings about a sibling who seems to be more blessed than we are. We are always escaping the enslaved mentality of Egypt and the idolatry we practiced there. We are all Mordechai, bristling against the pressure to bow in subservience to our bosses.

But true believers don’t have this freedom. Whether it’s because they need the Bible to prove a real estate claim in the Middle East, because they don’t know how to relate something that didn’t really happen, or because they require the threat of an angry super-being who sees all in order behave like good children, true believers – what we now call fundamentalists – are not in a position to appreciate the truth and beauty of the Holy Scriptures. No, the multi-dimensional document we call the Bible is not available to them because, for them, all those stories have to be accepted as historical truth.

Forget the fact that this is pretty much impossible to do. The Bible contradicts itself all over the place. There are even two different creation stories! (One in which Eve is created at the same time as Adam, and another where she is grown from his rib. And they’re less than a page apart.) Forget that the myths of the Bible had already been understood as mythology by the pre-Biblical cultures from which many of them came. And forget that the Bible comments on its own stories, as stories, directly! On numerous occasions, the narration asks its hearers whether they get the joke.

That’s because, for the Torah’s first hearers (Torah is the first five books of the Bible), all those jokes really were jokes. They understood that Jacob’s sons weren’t really the fathers of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, but parodies – racist parodies, at that – of the qualities that had come to be associated with each of these existing groups. They understood that the “plagues” against Egypt were literary desecrations of the Egyptian gods. (Blood desecrates the Nile, which was a god. Locusts desecrate the corn, a god, and so on.)

That the Bible could be understood metaphorically helped people relate to its “God” metaphorically, as well. It’s not that God is some character who really exists, but a way of relating to the events in the world as they unfold. No one can grasp this, however, if they’re stuck believing.

So I think it’s time those of us who have transcended this primitive approach to collective storytelling to speak up. This liberation from belief systems is precisely what the Bible is about. A people liberate from the death of a creationist model of reality and go out into the desert to write their own laws.

It’s analogous to the story of America, in fact, where a bunch of people leave religious oppression in order to write a Constitution as an evolutionary document – something that, instead of being believed in forever, is understood to be an ongoing process. A participatory event.

Right now, America’s true believers are locking down its laws along with its Bible. They are fighting the science of evolution because it accepts that things change over time – and such change is incompatible with static, everlasting truths. They are doing to today’s progressives the very same thing that the Bible’s Egyptians were doing to the Israelites. And they’re doing it in the name of a God who they believe they’ll meet when they die. This is the very mindset and behavior the Bible was written to stop.

Perhaps the best way to kill their God, in fact, is to take charge of the Bible. It is – in my own opinion as a media theorist – the Greatest Story Ever Told, and deserving of our continued support and analysis. For my part, I’m writing Testament, which I hope will bring these stories – told both in their Biblical context and as a near-future sci-fi fable – to people who might never have stumbled across them before.

For others – especially our friends involved in the occult arts – I’d hope they consider using some Bible imagery and characters in their work and rituals. They’re just as potent as anything in the Mahabharata, and far more resonant with the Western popular culture in which most of us actually grew up. For those of you looking for an authentic tradition in which to base your art, music, or fiction, consider the themes of revolution, universal justice and mind expansion as they’re depicted in allegories from Eden to Babel and characters from Joseph to Jesus.

By appropriating these characters and metaphors as our own, we instill them with the power they require to release the stranglehold that true believers have over the myths built to help us face the truth, instead. Their success in making the Bible seem like a sanctimonious tome is just another testament to the deleterious effect of surrendering one of the best books ever written about sacred magick to people whose lives depend on ignoring the possibility of escape from the nightmare of eternal bondage to a vengeful deity.

The more we can make its mythology relevant to our present, the more easily we’ll bring those who believe in it out of the past.

Testament: "Pick of the Month"

Comic Buyer’s Guide has just dubbed Testament issues #1-#2 their “Pick of the Month” with a generous 4-star review by S.A. Bennett.

From the review:
“…it’s clear novelest Douglas Rushkoff has created the most assured and original project to emerge from Vertigo since Sandman. It’s nothing short of amazing that something this innovative and good has (so far) mostly slid under the radar of critical appreciation. But readers should be forewarned: This is rich in sex, violence, and political and religious commentary sure to make at least some unhappy.”

Issue 5 is hitting the shelves of the comic store next week, and a trade paperback collection of the first five issues is due in July. Issue 6 goes back to “Creation,” giving new readers a good starting place to orient to the whole series. Like I’ve said before, this has been one of the most rewarding projects I’ve had the pleasure of working on, and I have you to thank for selling out the last couple of issues and keeping this series alive and well for a good time to come.

TV after Advertising (and Advertising after TV)

Next month at an annual media and marketing bluff session known as the “upfronts,” TV executives will once again try to sell thirty-second spots of their airtime to advertisers for even more ludicrous sums than last year. Amazing, all concerned are remaining remarkably sanguine in the face of growing evidence that TV ads just don’t (and maybe never did) what they’re supposed to. Unmeasurable in effect, expensive to create and broadcast, and easier than ever for viewers to avoid using DVRs like TiVo, television commercials are fast becoming an obsolete form of media. This is a good thing for both television *and* marketing.

TV may, indeed, owe its very existence to its ability to promote then-fledgling national brands to shoppers more used to buying from people they knew. Mass production required mass marketing which, in turn, needed a mass medium through which to communicate. To keep our attention, advertisers created short entertainments, like the Jack Benny Show or Howdy Doody. These shows were free to watch not so much because the airwaves were considered public space, but because the content was provided by advertisers.

The implicit contract was that in return for this free gift, we would sit through the sponsors’ ads. But the emergence of cableTV, payTV, VCR’s and, now, DVR’s, has introduced viewers to television without advertising. Whether we fast forward, delete, or simply pay for the ad-free Sopranos, we’re watching TV on our own terms. And we don’t want to go back. Television has finally become a medium in its own right. We’d rather pay for good programming – be it HBO for us or Noggin for our tots – than get commercially sponsored junk for free.

Broadcast networks can’t be expected admit that the dollars spent advertising over their airwaves are increasingly less effective – not before next month’s “upfronts,” anyway, where advertisers will be asked to pony up huge sums in advance for the privilege of being TiVo’d past during next season’s prime time schedule. But in an effort to keep their skeptical clients, many advertising agencies have jumped off the TV bandwagon in order to promote what they believe is the next wave of advertising opportunities.

That’s how we get outrageously popular, expensive, yet ultimately ineffectual alternative media campaigns such as semi-pornographic Internet spots of Paris Hilton eating a Hardee’s burger while she washes a car in her bikini, Jerry Seinfeld teaming up with Superman for online American Express ads dubbed “webisodes,” or Chevy and Converse asking Internet users to edit or upload their own ads.

Hardee’s seems to have ignored the fact that sales (against the year before) were worse while their Paris Hilton ads were running than at any other time during the year. This data didn’t stop them from revamping their whole Internet strategy around the teenage boys who furiously emailed the clip to one another. It should surprise no one that boys can be counted on to admire a half-naked Paris Hilton whether or not they ever buy a burger.

Likewise, I saw my first Amex-created Seinfeld webisode on the same day I learned that my Platinum card no longer granted me access to an airport lounge. I’ll get my Seinfeld on TV, thank you. My credit card was supposed to offer a different set of privileges. On Chevy’s website for user-edited SUV ads, the clever protest spots *against* SUV’s are, not surprisingly, getting the highest hit counts. And while Converse may be breeding the next generation of advertising executives through its more successful video uploading campaign, all this activity has nothing to do with creating or supporting a culture of sports or physical activity. They’ll end up selling a lot more Apple iMacs and Sony Handycams through this popular interactive media stunt than sneakers.

That’s because, as Marshall McLuhan taught us, the medium really is the message. TV sells TV, Paris Hilton sells Paris Hilton, and sneakers sell sneakers. TV’s liberation from advertisers shouldn’t have sent brands running to find a new unrelated medium on which to promote themselves; their panicked migration to the Internet, cell phones, or movie product placements only bespeaks a lack of faith in the selling power of the products, themselves.

These days, consumer goods are their own best media. Just as the Starbucks coffee cup and cafe experience sells more coffee than any TV or billboard advertising campaign, the shape of a automobile chassis or placement of its cupholders sells more cars than all that indistinguishable footage of cars taking turns on desert lakebeds. Great products are their own billboards, and satisfied customers (not to mention passionate employees) are their best spokespeople.

The “word of mouth” that today’s hippest marketers covet – whether they call it viral marketing or cult branding – only really happens when people actually like a product enough to share their experiences with other people. And we consumers don’t do this because we care so much about the brand we’re promoting. We do it because our recommendation earns us a certain kind of respect from our friends – our expertise is a form of “social currency.”

True enough, in a culture where most of us are looking for excuses to interact – for conversation starters at the water cooler – marketers can still make ads on the Internet or beyond that give us something to talk about. But the companies who want us talking about their products instead of the entertainments they happen to be sponsoring now have an opportunity to take a great shortcut and communicate to us directly through the quality of their products.

In this sense, the Internet is not a threat to marketers, but a boon. Interactive media, more than just offering audiences a chance to skip ads or download ad-free programs, gives its users the ability to compare products’ prices and attributes, learn about the companies making them, and even share this information with others via blogs, bulletin boards, and sites offering consumers’ ratings of products.

For those willing to invest their products with qualities worth talking about, this new form of promotional media becomes essentially free. As for TV viewers, well, they’ll learn that just like the consumers of any other product out there, you get what you pay for.

Many things

It’s been a while – I apologize to those who (for whatever reason) don’t feel you have enough media in your lives without the occasional online rant from me.

I’m making some major changes in my life and schedule, though, which should afford more time for updating and sharing. Most notably, I’ll be reducing my teaching schedule by about 80% – returning to what they call “adjunct” status – in order to dedicate more work time to my comic, a graphic novel, and a screenplay. I’ve also turned down a few extremely lucrative writing gigs in order to do more of the fun and meaningful stuff. I figure if the universe is being cooperative enough to let me survive doing what matters to me, I shouldn’t second guess it.

I’ve got a lot to report on, here. I’ll break it up into several posts, so that there’s something new every day for a while.

My favorite link of the last few weeks is Aaron Naparstek’s contribution to GM’s do-your-own SUV commercial. Surely the advertising agency that came up with this campaign understood that giving real people the opportunity to create their own SUV ads would end up being less about a Chevy SUV’s great features, and more about the power of interactive media to give real people a voice. At best, campaigns like these – or Converse’s website where kids can upload their own sneaker commercials – sell alot more Handycams and iMacs than they do sports shoes. More anti-SUV ads are being charted via Honku.org.

(In the meantime, the logic surrounding the White House’s classified information leaks has actually surpassed 1984 for its circularity. I’m amazed, really. Either I’m getting older/smarter, or the government is really getting dumber. I’m thinking that going into public service might actually be necessary for those of us who still care about the prospects for developing a working democracy this century.)