A New Pantheon

Why invent a new Pantheon? For one, it is a habit with deep ruts in the Western tradition to cherrypick from a minority of those who lived in what is now Greece. Another reason is that if one surveys the old gods versus the way things are, one may find that something is lacking or not quite right. In particular Hermes is the god of merchants and thieves, among other things—polytheism plurals, while one is pretty close to zero. There is the Robin Hood type (see "Iron Monkey" (1993) for the same thing in Chinese) even if modern-day America is more about stealing from the poor and giving to the rich. So thieves, merchants, etc. can be good. Spammers by contrast have never been good. At some point the deity "Odin All-Anus" was invented to represent them. There's only so much "brother, have you heard the good word of bitcoin?" one has to pressure wash off the mail server before one sours on spammers; I once remarked to a co-worker that it would be divine justice if a Porta Potty fell from a truck and hit one, and the co-worker replied along the lines of "good, hit them with another". Alas for karma not working that way. That coworker did waste a bunch of time trying to remove a spam that automatically became an Apple calendar event impossible to remove from the calendar of a user whose time was also being wasted. Probably one could have rejected the meeting, but that would verify the address to the spammer, possibly a bad idea, and would not address any root cause.

My definition of spam is rather broad, so "ads in the start menu" definitely has the stench of Odin All-Anus about it. Steve Jobs apparently remarked that Microsoft has no taste, but rumor has it that one can find ads all over modern-day Apple offerings. Probably the profit potential makes such hard to resist. Some in the unix camp like to imitate Microsoft (for example, FVWM suddenly looked like Windows 95) so Ubuntu was not above placing ads into a system update process. Again, this is perhaps too broad a definition of an ad, or spam.

Top dog meanwhile in modern day deities is that of Mammon, from which much else flows, or supoosedly trickles down. Where else did the corruption that is "prosperity gospel" come from, versus the avowed inability of the rich to fit their sports utility vehicle through the needle's eye? Or why must Russia bribe Orthodox clergy to its side? If their position was strong, they wouldn't need to grease it with money. When in Rome…

> Most modern (and especially most American) Christians are quite accustomed, for instance, to thinking of Christianity as a fairly commonsensical creed as regards the practicalities of life. On the matter of wealth, they take it as given that, while the New Testament enjoins generosity to the poor, it otherwise allows the wealthy to enjoy the fruits of their industry or fair fortune with a clean conscience. Common sense tells them that it is not wealth as such that the New Testament condemns, but only a spiritually unhealthy preoccupation with it — the idolatry of riches, wealth misused, wealth immorally gained; riches in and of themselves, surely, are neither good nor bad. But in fact, one thing in startlingly short supply in the New Testament is common sense, and the commonsensical view of the early church is invariably the wrong one. In point of fact, the New Testament, alarmingly enough, condemns personal wealth not merely as a moral danger, but as an intrinsic evil. Actually, the texts are so unambiguous on this matter that it requires an almost heroic defiance of the obvious to fail to grasp their import. Admittedly, many translations down the centuries have had an emollient effect on a few of the New Testament’s severer pronouncements. But this is an old story.

https://jacobin.com/2024/03/christianity-poor-debt-jesus-moses-wealth/

A third modern deity is that of the automobile. America here more or less continues a particular ritual found towards the end of the "The Great Gatsby" (1925). The ritual may remind some of the death by random lot in the Star Trek episode "A Taste of Armageddon" (1967). Simulated nuclear wars aside, how many random, accidental deaths have been caused by those who sit in cars? However, some countries make real efforts to curb their cars. Sweden for example has "Vision Zero" or zero road-accident fatalities, so at least there is some hope.