Key 23 is no more—a black hole in the Internet—but back in 2004 I started a group blog with a number of Internet denizens to explore occult themes, the surviving counterculture, and the swiftly dominating cyberculture. Below is an article from that experiment—posted and backdated here for historical accuracy. Broken links removed.

Religion is a wonderful and dangerous thing. Throughout time immeasurable religion has turned the poor into the rich, the blind into the sighted, and the lost into leaders through the sheer power of faith.

Religion, however, is only an idea - a faith based on an intricate map of values, culture, and history. It becomes dangerous when followers become servants; or when worship wanders from the infinite design into a more human form. How often do we find ourselves removing our eyes from the divine in order to chance a glance at a coming savior? How dangerous has this become?Douglas Rushkoff had a recent post in his blog that had me contemplating the role of the savior in the divine scheme of things. Doug stated:

Where [Grant Morrison and I] seemed to connect most was in our shared sense that Aristotle's narrative arc - the male heroic narrative - no longer adequately describes our experience of this world. It's something I've been thinking and speaking about for a long time, but it was very rewarding for Grant to respond so favorably to this notion. He's experienced it, himself, in his work as a comic book writer trying to move past current expectations for superhero characters [Re: Animal Man, Seaguy]. I confront it, myself, as I try to help people conceive of more emergent narratives for human history - to break our addiction to stories with endings or intrinsic, pre-existing meaning.

Doug talks of relenquishing the heroic narrative - a bold suggestion that I compared (in a comment on his blog) to being on par with Nietzsche's "God is Dead" statement. He wants to throw away the heroic narrative because he believes that it no longer applies to our current culture. I see a different reason.

Far from Archilles or Gilgamesh, many modern heroes of a sort can be found in religious literature. And with the prophet - and hero - Mohammed looming over not just the docile Muslim countries, but also the extremist cells, you have to wonder how much better off we might be if we were to drop our search for a savior and focus on the work at hand.

Do we really need a savior? The governing ideal is good for a great many reasons, much in the same way that God is the ultimate police officer in many Western religions. But the drawback in recent years has been an ignition of zealous actions.

In Club Zero-G, Doug takes great strides in trying to make us take responsibility in the shaping of reality. However, with us always looking towards the messianic phenomenon, we seem more content with letting someone else do that shaping for us… and that's when things get dangerous.