How Nationalism, Consumerism, and Celebrity Capture Our Need for Religion
The lights dim in the stadium. Tens of thousands rise to their feet. A hush falls over the crowd as the anthem begins. Hands press against hearts, hats are removed, and eyes fix on a flag fluttering above. The moment is thick with reverence—more like worship than entertainment. The air vibrates with a shared recognition: this matters.
Or picture the concert arena. The superstar hasn’t yet appeared, but the crowd is already roaring, already lifted into collective ecstasy. When the spotlight strikes the stage and the figure steps out, phones rise into the air like votive candles. The tears, the chants, the trembling—these are not mere reactions to music. They are rites of devotion, practiced in temples of sound and spectacle.
Or the mall at Christmas, when shoppers flow like pilgrims beneath the glow of lights and carols, participating in a ritual as old as any church service: gathering gifts, offering wealth, and marking the season with sacrifice. Everyone says it’s “just shopping,” but it is ritual through and through; its liturgy is as scripted and familiar as any mass.
These are altars. Hidden altars.
The truth is that all these activities are sources of meaning, though they are rarely recognized as such. And the fact that they provide meaning—that they gather people into collective awe, loyalty, and sacrifice—makes them religious. Not religion in the narrow sense of doctrines and supernatural beings, but religion in the deeper sense: the human way of designating and enacting shared meaning. Religion is not optional for human beings. It never disappears. It only changes its object and form.
We tell ourselves that the modern world has left religion behind, that we are secular, free, and rational. But this is fiction. Altars never vanish; they migrate. When one collapses, another rises in its place. The impulse to designate meaning, to bind ourselves together in shared devotion, is not optional. It is woven into human life. If we do not choose our altars consciously, they will be chosen for us.
This is where the confusion often begins: people mistake transcendence for supernaturalism. But transcendence does not mean escape into a higher realm—there is nobody “up there.” Transcendence is the human capacity to rise above the immediate, to step back far enough to see ourselves truthfully, even when the view is uncomfortable. Most people avoid it because it reveals more than they want to see. And sacredness, likewise, is not a substance floating in the cosmos. It is a human designation of what we will treat with reverence and what we will refuse to trivialize. Both transcendence and sacredness are human values, not beings to be worshipped. They are lenses of perspective, not lords in the sky.
And so, the impulse to meaning slips sideways. It relocates into nationalism, consumerism, celebrity, and spectacle. Nations demand devotion and sacrifice of blood. Brands demand loyalty, wealth, and identity. Celebrities demand adoration and imitation. Even our screens demand constant attention, like jealous gods asking to be worshipped every waking moment. These altars are rarely declared as altars, but they are no less powerful for being hidden. In fact, they are more dangerous precisely because they are hidden.
The sacrifices demanded by these altars are real. Soldiers’ lives given to empire. Families broken by debt to sustain consumption. Human potential is drained in endless comparison to celebrities and influencers. Time, energy, identity—all offered up, day after day, to powers that pretend not to be religious but function with all the gravity of worship.
This is the danger of hidden altars: they siphon off the impulse to meaning without scrutiny. They capture our need for transcendence and bind it to systems of domination and profit. They feel natural, ordinary, and inevitable. And because no one names them, no one resists them.
Opthē insists that religion is not about gods in the sky but about coherence—the weaving of meaning into shared life. If that’s true, then vigilance is everything. Meaning will always be designated and enacted. If we fail to do this with care, others will do it for us, and the hidden altars of empire, market, and spectacle will continue to claim our devotion.
Opthē’s call is not to abolish altars, but to unmask them. To drag them into the daylight where they can be seen for what they are. To ask, repeatedly: What is being worshipped here? What coherence does it create or destroy?
Religion is not optional. Meaning will always be woven into the fabric of our lives. The only question is whether it serves life, coherence, and love—or whether it is captured by the idols of nation, wealth, and power.
Altars will always be with us. The choice is whether they remain hidden—or whether we will choose them with vigilance, honesty, and care.