{"id":37155,"date":"2012-07-30T00:12:15","date_gmt":"2012-07-30T07:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=37155"},"modified":"2014-12-30T15:35:41","modified_gmt":"2014-12-30T22:35:41","slug":"the-doom-of-a-blasphemous-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2012\/07\/the-doom-of-a-blasphemous-culture.html","title":{"rendered":"The Doom of a Blasphemous Culture…"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u2026is not that it becomes all badass and Goth and dark and scary and cool with lots of umlauts and heavy metal aesthetic and intellectuals with severe glasses discussing Bergman films in cafes.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s that it becomes unbearably lightweight and brainless:<\/p>\n

For instance, behold the Missionary Church of Kopimism<\/a>\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cSince 2010 a group of self-confessed pirates have tried to get their beliefs recognized as an official religion in Sweden. After their request was denied several times, the Church of Kopimism \u2013 which holds CTRL+C and CTRL+V as sacred symbols \u2013 is now approved by the authorities as an official religion. The Church hopes that its official status will remove the legal stigma that surrounds file-sharing.<\/p>\n

All around the world file-sharers are being chased by anti-piracy outfits and the authorities, and the situation in Sweden is no different. While copyright holders are often quick to label file-sharers as pirates, there is a large group of people who actually consider copying to be a sacred act.<\/p>\n

Philosophy student Isak Gerson is such a religious file-sharer, and in an attempt to protect his unique belief system he founded The Missionary Church of Kopimism in 2010. In the hope that they could help prevent persecution for their beliefs, the Church then filed a request to be officially accepted by the authorities.<\/p>\n

After two failed attempts, where the Church was asked to formalize its way of praying or meditation, the authorities finally recognized the organization as an official religion. The Church\u2019s founder is ecstatic about this news, and hopes that it will motivate more people to come forward as \u2018Kopimists\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that more people will have the courage to step out as Kopimists. Maybe not in the public, but at least to their close ones,\u201d Isak tells TorrentFreak. \u201cThere\u2019s still a legal stigma around copying for many. A lot of people still worry about going to jail when copying and remixing. I hope in the name of Kopimi that this will change.\u201d (http:\/\/torrentfreak.com\/file-sharing-recognized-as-official-religion-in-sweden-120104\/<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\u201c\u201cFor me it is a kind of believing in deeper values than worldly values,\u201d said Isak Gerson, a philosophy student at Uppsala University who helped found the church in 2010 and bears the title chief missionary. \u201cYou have it in your backbone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kopimism \u2014 the name comes from a Swedish spelling of the words \u201ccopy me\u201d \u2014 claims more than 8,000 faithful who have signed up on the church\u2019s Web site. It has applied for the right to perform marriages and to receive subsidies awarded to religious organizations by the state, and it has bid, thus far unsuccessfully, to buy a church building, even though most church activities are conducted online.<\/p>\n

As regular church attendance drops among the 9.4 million Swedes, the Church of Sweden has been selling off disused churches, but it has not yet responded to the Kopimist bid.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have something similar to regular priests,\u201d said Mr. Gerson, 20, who claims a permanent link to the divine through a Nokia smartphone. \u201cWe call them ops, or operators, and their task is to help people with things like meetings. There are not that many rituals. We are a tolerant community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked whether he believed in God, Mr. Gerson replied: \u201cNo, I just believe in our values. It\u2019s just a belief in holy values.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Kopimists rose out of Europe\u2019s growing piracy movement, which was born in Sweden about a decade ago. In elections to the European Parliament in 2009, the country\u2019s Pirate Party got 7.1 percent of the vote, though in national elections the next year its share plummeted to less than 1 percent.\u201d (http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/07\/26\/world\/europe\/in-sweden-taking-file-sharing-to-heart-and-to-church.html<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I can\u2019t help but think of Screwtape\u2019s lament over the insipid fare modernity provides hell\u2019s banquet table in Screwtape Proposes a Toast<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Also, this poem by Chesterton comes to mind:<\/p>\n

THE SONG OF THE STRANGE ASCETIC
\nG.K. Chesterton<\/p>\n

If I had been a Heathen,
\nI\u2019d have praised the purple vine,
\nMy slaves should dig the vineyards,
\nAnd I would drink the wine.
\nBut Higgins is a Heathen,
\nAnd his slaves grow lean and grey,
\nThat he may drink some tepid milk
\nExactly twice a day.<\/p>\n

If I had been a Heathen,
\nI\u2019d have crowned Neaera\u2019s curls,
\nAnd filled my life with love affairs,
\nMy house with dancing girls;
\nBut Higgins is a Heathen,
\nAnd to lecture rooms is forced,
\nWhere his aunts, who are not married,
\nDemand to be divorced.<\/p>\n

If I had been a Heathen,
\nI\u2019d have sent my armies forth,
\nAnd dragged behind my chariots
\nThe Chieftains of the North.
\nBut Higgins is a Heathen,
\nAnd he drives the dreary quill,
\nTo lend the poor that funny cash
\nThat makes them poorer still.<\/p>\n

If I had been a Heathen,
\nI\u2019d have piled my pyre on high,
\nAnd in a great red whirlwind
\nGone roaring to the sky;
\nBut Higgins is a Heathen,
\nAnd a richer man than I:
\nAnd they put him in an oven,
\nJust as if he were a pie.<\/p>\n

Now who that runs can read it,
\nThe riddle that I write,
\nOf why this poor old sinner,
\nShould sin without delight-
\nBut I, I cannot read it
\n(Although I run and run),
\nOf them that do not have the faith,
\nAnd will not have the fun.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Could there be a more boring doom than making your life be about cyber-piracy? People will of course reply, \u201cDon\u2019t be so humorless. Obviously they don\u2019t seriously believe that CTRL+C and CTRL+V are sacred symbols.\u201d Of course they don\u2019t. And yet the State, instead of saying, \u201cHa! Cute! There\u2019s the door.\u201d actually treats this like a serious issue in religious pluralism. In short, they declare belief in the sacred a joke.<\/p>\n

But there are real sacred things\u2013like God and human dignity. When you deny the reality of the sacred altogether or elevated trivial crap to a an ultimate \u201choly value\u201d, you blaspheme. And when you blaspheme, you make yourself vanishingly small and trivial.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2026is not that it becomes all badass and Goth and dark and scary and cool with lots of umlauts and heavy metal aesthetic and intellectuals with severe glasses discussing Bergman films in cafes. It\u2019s that it becomes unbearably lightweight and brainless: For instance, behold the Missionary Church of Kopimism\u2026 \u201cSince 2010 a group of self-confessed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[39],"class_list":["post-37155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-whiskey-tango-foxtrot"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Doom of a Blasphemous Culture...<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"...is not that it becomes all badass and Goth and dark and scary and cool with lots of umlauts and heavy metal aesthetic and intellectuals with severe\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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