Everybody Worships
How we orient our lives matters, and it seems likely that some ways of directing our focus and energy are better in the long run than others. What follows isn’t necessarily a reflection on religion or theism or atheism, but it is a meditation as it were about worship.
On May 21, 2005, the writer David Foster Wallace delivered an address at the commencement ceremony of Kenyon College. That speech, later crafted into an essay titled, “This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life,” is perhaps one of the very best examples of the commencement-address form, outlining to graduates and their families a number of compelling ideas without trite nonsense.
At the core of the ideas Wallace articulated on that day in May 2005 is the deeper, more fundamental message that we have the power to choose our reactions, to change our “default settings,” and thereby live our lives with more care and intentionality. And about 18 minutes into the speech (which you can find in many forms on YouTube), he says the following:
Because here’s something else that’s weird but true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.
And a compelling reason—maybe—for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some inviolable set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things—if they are where you tap real meaning in life—then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you.
On one level, we all know this stuff already—it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power—you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart—you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.
Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing. And the so-called “real world” will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called “real world” of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation.
What is worship?
In a religious or spiritual context, worship involves the expression of devotion, adoration, or praise toward God. Yet worship writ large comprises a vast array of human thinking and activity. As Wallace seems to imply in the quote above, we worship when we direct our focus and energy toward something and when we prioritize the value of that something above other things.
For example, one might worship power—taking actions to influence the behavior of other people and being in positions that enable such authority. If power becomes the object of one’s worship, it necessarily drives that person’s priorities and decisions. Obtaining power often requires the acquisition of certain types of knowledge and skill. With regard to gaining power associated with a specific job or position, it requires one to navigate complex social and political dynamics in such a way that one achieves that specific job or position. It also requires sacrificing other aspects of life.
Regardless of the object of one’s worship, it seems that worshipping involves tradeoffs. Namely, we only have so much attention and time and energy in a given day. When we worship something or someone, we necessarily don’t devote attention and time and energy to something or someone else.
For myriad reasons, we humans seem to be creatures who worship. I think Wallace is correct in that observation. Across millennia one can find countless examples of how humans have worshipped both in a spiritual sense and in the broader sense of directing our attention and adoration at something. I think Wallace is also correct in his observation that worshipping the fleeting aspects of life will “eat you alive.” Our success, our abilities, and our physical bodies are all temporary. A better existence appears to come from worship of that which does not fade.
Common Forms of Worship
Wallace highlighted several examples of that which many people worship: power, intellect, beauty, and money. In addition to those, it seems that many in today’s culture worship a handful of other objects, things that in my mind don’t do a whole lot as objects of worship for our individual or collective good.
Sports
The National Football League estimated that 200 million people—that’s 60% of Americans—watched the Super Bowl in 2023. It’s a cultural event of such prominence that doing something to observe it seems expected. And at some level, that’s innocuous enough: It’s fun to watch a football game. And sports can bring people together in a memorable, positive way.
And yet it’s hard to argue that we don’t worship sports in the United States. Many parents treat their children like future professional athletes, yelling at coaches from the sidelines and going to great lengths to provide them with extraordinary sports-related opportunities. I’m not at all against youth sports—I and my children have benefited from them—but where does or should it fall in the hierarchy of important things?
Celebrities
First of all, my opinion of Taylor Swift and her music has become much more positive in recent years. Her ability to connect with audiences and the strength of her fan base likely surpasses that of even the Beatles. She’s truly remarkable. The last thing I need is a bunch of Swifties (including the two young ones in my house) getting mad at me.
But celebrity worship is quite a robust religion for some people, taking up an enormous block of our collective attention. I’m focusing here not on Swift but rather upon the whole of celebrity culture. Consider the headlines of any news outlet that wants people to click on its content—people want to know what celebrities are doing, what they’re wearing, and what they think about things that are far beyond their areas of expertise. I don’t understand it fully—or at all—but it’s real.
Science
As a social scientist, I have great respect for the scientific method and for using science to understand the world around us. Science has driven extraordinary progress for humanity. And yet I’ve also had a front-row seat to its limitations. There’s plenty that science does a poor job of explaining, describing, or predicting—particularly in my domain of human behavior. Our processes for doing science and reporting scientific findings aren’t perfect. That doesn’t mean we should throw our hands up and distrust science, but it does mean that we should be careful to not fall into the trap of scientism.
Scientism involves placing unreasonable trust in what science “shows” as the truth; simply put, it’s the worship of science. A central problem here is that science can’t tell us everything. Although science generally works because the universe is intelligible, science itself isn’t very good, for example, at telling us why the universe is intelligible. It’s also not that good at explaining some big, important ideas like “What is beautiful?” “What is good?” “What does it mean to live a good life?”
In addition to worshipping sports, celebrities, and science; it seems to me that we also tend to worship hyper-individualism and various forms of politics or political affiliation, but those might be topics best suited for another time. Until then, perhaps, my main thought of the day is that we should indeed examine, honestly, what we worship.
As a practicing Catholic, I have a distinct perspective regarding what we should worship. But like Wallace, I think the first distinction worth making is between the sacred and the profane: Are we worshipping that which transcends ordinary life? Or are we worshipping the mundane and ultimately ephemeral aspects of our existence?
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