Arts, religions

We generally exempt the arts and religions from any responsibility for environmental harm. In principle, artistic and cultural activities do little damage: churches, cults, musical instruments, books, sculptures, paintings, cinema have little impact on natural balances.

Nevertheless, art and religion are the two main pillars of culture. They form and maintain our relationships with the universe and our earthly environment.

Let us take the Catholic example of the Eucharist: the bread, flesh of Christ, and the wine, blood of Christ, make the dimension of the sacred sound in the minds of the faithful. Whatever the reasons that led Christ to choose these Oblates, the rite repeated regularly for generations ended up covering the two holy foods with sanctity and removing the questions that they might raise.

The bread – the good daily bread, consecrated by Sunday prayer – appears above all suspicion, while the cultivation of cereals is now one of the main sources of destruction on the planet, and gluten causes serious diseases, not to mention the acrylamide and other genotoxics. The wine – the bottle dive, raised by Rabelais to the rank of oracle – bears an overwhelming responsibility in terms of violence and family drama.

For the past two millennia, religion has supported food artefacts that deserve serious questioning. The sacralization gang that was and is still lent to them has certainly played an important role, at the level of unconsciousness, in the delays taken by medicine to call into question the food traditions, or even by the public services to take measures against drunken driving…

The example is a little trivial, but the demonstration scheme is fundamental: art and religion are the two main markers of the advancement of a culture. All the elements which they endorse directly or indirectly benefit from a safe conduct, so that the critical mind is put in dull. It is not a conscious process, but an impregnation that goes back to childhood, to the attitude of parents, teachers, friends, whether they are believers or atheists, lovers of art or rustres. In spite of them all share the same common denominators, and defend under the label of the noble or sacred the same system of values, whose institutionalized reflection is also found in the media.

Knowing that these values lead to the planetary impasse, it remains to question the reasons that have led men, for many millennia, to give art and religion the places of choice that have made them our directors of conscience. The shift in consumerism and its false promises at least testifies to their inability to preserve us from the most terrible illusions…