Ideological Drugs.

I’ve seen the needle and the damage done.
Neil Young, Harvest.

Marx famously compared religion to opium, because opium has a double effect. It relieves pain and is habit forming. Marx probably had in mind those faiths that promise an end of time followed by a new beginning, a new Temple, another coming, a Mahdi, and a heavenly afterlife in an eschatological paradise. Such promises are a comfort for all those living miserably under oppression of some kind or another. Their agony can be made bearable by the belief that an extraterrestrial, all-seeing, almighty and just being will set things right in the hereafter. But, once the creed is assimilated, it becomes the centre of existence, a life-line, “milk-blood to keep from running out”.

Religion is a crutch and a monkey. But so are other ideologies, even the most materialist. Communism promised a brave new dawn, and hooked millions. Capitalism promised infinite eternal growth, and hooked billions. And once hooked, what is there left to do but to go on believing, paying the Man because there is no alternative. The downtrodden need hope of some kind to get them through the day, if for not now, for future generations. Otherwise what is the point, why not just go berserk?

Hope and habit keep noses to the grindstone. Backed up by varying degrees of violence, they help to contain the “dangerous classes”. The faith (credulity) they depend on holds back the most disadvantaged sections of society from running amok. Hope and habit are the cornerstones of oppression and inequality. But who can blame the users when there’s “a little part of it in everyone”?