Photo: AFP/Sam Yeh via CNA
Gods and myths are as vulnerable to the ravages of societal change as we are. Karl Marx famously wrote of life under capitalism: “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned”. Where sacred truths once explained the nature of the world, the foundations of those truths are shaken by the development of capital. Once an essential part of the life-world, the change in production and social structure removes the impetus for religion. As a result, it would seem that even deities are relegated to the status of services.
The Taiwanese sculptor Lin Hsin-lai houses an immense collection of Taiwanese deity figures. These are the objects of worship for believers who seek a variety of protections and blessings in their lives. However, these figures are increasingly likely to be discarded or destroyed as followers lose faith or even blame the deities for failing to protect them. A certain ideology is clearly mapped onto the cartography of religious meaning the figures once held. Where they were once deities, they are now service providers. Failing their task at protecting their owners results in dismissal. Lin holds that it is possible to maintain these ways in the modern day. He repairs and rehouses the figures to the best of his abilities.
It is difficult not to feel a connection between his diligent efforts to uphold these figures as deities and resistance against the assimilating influence of capitalism more generally. Is it possible to preserve this culture in the face of the “creative destruction” of capital? It is difficult to say where the future of these deities lie.
Photo: AFP/Sam Yeh via CNA
But what remains when these are lost? We can see across the world that capitalism generally does not replace religion so much as it subsumes it. The religious instinct becomes another driver of mass consumption, or alternatively a way to assuage the guilt associated with engaging in mass consumption. No such incorporation appears to be taking place with these figures. While they are collected, they are certainly not “collectibles”. It does not even appear that their value as cultural artefacts is considered, as the article about Lin suggests they are simply being given away at no cost.
Perhaps this partial extinction is an intermediate step in the development of deity worship. It is possible that the space these deities inhabit survives in some respect in their adherents, and that the loss of interest in deities is temporary.
For the time being, however, it is a bleak that even gods must contend with the gig economy.