i think i'm acting out my mps through facebook profiles, which is hilariously pathetic. so laugh. but i pose a question of some seriousness:

is anglo-american civilization the first civilization in history to have an actual materialist religion?

no. there was previously confucianism.

not to say that the like catholic church or something wasn't materialist, but it still derived it's power from magic. and buddhism may have seemed more materialistic, but it's still deriving consequences from moral actions, by some kind of positive magic.

i think confucianism fits, though.

well, maybe the romans, actually. maybe there was actually a time before theological religion was dominant. so, maybe the first...no, i can't salvage the question.

i'm talking about culture, by the way, not power per se. well, social power, i guess, but not necessarily invested in any particular hierarchy. the mindset that dominates thinking regarding social behaviour, but placed on a footing where it's no longer questioned. i just bullshitted a sociological definition of religion, would you look at that.

even in "secular societies" that sort of social code exists, as derived in some abstraction from the religious law. up until recently, we could talk of anglo-american social values as having been abstracted from christian ones, through however many reinterpretations for however many motives, or through organic shifts in public attitude that yearn towards a different structuring. likewise, you could talk of the more liberal arabic states as having social laws that reflect abstractions of islamic values, and etc.

but is the united states empire (and satellites) now beyond that abstraction and into a really materialist idea of social ordering?

i mean, there's been an appropriation of some of the symbols, but that's a fundamental part of any religious shift in any region. odin carries on as santa claus, the greek mysteries within christianity, stories of great floods in judaism. so, we still have jesus, but it's now a materialist jesus that enforces the laws of social darwinism, wrapped up within (sometimes falsely applied) market rhetoric.

whatever abstraction that was once attached to god seems now to be attached to finance. i mean socially, through the attitudes that exist.

i'm a loud supporter of atheism, but that's kind of not what i had in mind.

anyways, the question does appear foolish. but it is hinting at something that defines the character of the culture of the existing global hegemon, and stands out relative to other recent empires.