Proplog,
While I hesitate to call all of them cults, I do agree that each social group has a set of glasses through which it sees the world. "Cult" to me implies a charismatic leader or organization that controls; many of these belief systems are voluntary. I would call them maps of reality, paradigms, or myths.
When we are awash in our own cultural myths, it is difficult to distinguish them from reality. As Joseph Campbell says: "Myth is other people's religion."
I certainly do not approve of terrorism or coercion by fear in any form. Still, I can't help but notice that the terrorists did hit symbols that hurt--money and military might.
In The Passionate Life, Sam Keen argues that we have been moving beyond capitalism, which demanded an ethic of postponed gratification, into a myth of consumerism:
The corporate society uses Madison Avenue as its office of propaganda and television as its medium to create icons of eros. The saints of the secular vision--the famous, the beautiful, the powerful, the sexy--promote its view of the good life. Faithful consumers are certain that the longing of the heart will finally be satisfied if they perform the correct devotions--buy the product that has officially been designated this year's "in" style. The implicit promise of the "latest model" is "Consume and be satisfied"--or, in the old language, "Take, eat, this is my body." This corpus, this corporation, serves you the elixir of immortality, or its secular equivalent, the marks of status.
Again, I do not condone the methods of the terrorists, but I have been violently shaken from my political insouciance and am vividly aware that money and power are no substitutes for justice and fairness.
Ginny
