Somehow I had never made the connection between capitalism and modern evangelical protestantism. That puts a few things into a new perspective! I left the faith of my childhood in large part due to the hatefulness of the messaging, which to me stood in stark contrast to what I was also taught about love, and forgiveness and ya know, not casting the first stone! It also explains how I've ended up catholic-adjacent, for want of a better term. The mystics spoke to me, from a time before this modern experiment began.
The particularly tricky thing with teasing apart the pervasive narratives of capitalism is that they are largely drip-fed through culture rather than wielded by a singular authoritarian overlord. My experience with people leaving coercive religious communities is that it often happens when they start to doubt the goodness or authority of the explicit mouthpiece of that script — whether it be a spiritual leader, an institution, or a particular view of a religious text.
The problem with capitalism is that there is no one figurehead that is demanding we do this or that; it's simply so all-encompassing and integrated into every area of our lives that it feels a bit like deciding to take a break from oxygen for a bit in that the consequences appear to be "natural". "If you don't work, you don't get paid... what did you expect?".
Somehow I had never made the connection between capitalism and modern evangelical protestantism. That puts a few things into a new perspective! I left the faith of my childhood in large part due to the hatefulness of the messaging, which to me stood in stark contrast to what I was also taught about love, and forgiveness and ya know, not casting the first stone! It also explains how I've ended up catholic-adjacent, for want of a better term. The mystics spoke to me, from a time before this modern experiment began.
The particularly tricky thing with teasing apart the pervasive narratives of capitalism is that they are largely drip-fed through culture rather than wielded by a singular authoritarian overlord. My experience with people leaving coercive religious communities is that it often happens when they start to doubt the goodness or authority of the explicit mouthpiece of that script — whether it be a spiritual leader, an institution, or a particular view of a religious text.
The problem with capitalism is that there is no one figurehead that is demanding we do this or that; it's simply so all-encompassing and integrated into every area of our lives that it feels a bit like deciding to take a break from oxygen for a bit in that the consequences appear to be "natural". "If you don't work, you don't get paid... what did you expect?".
Big fan of the mystics!
Also, there's a strong argument that capitalism was foregrounded by the rise of "the Protestant work ethic", so there's shared history there.