I believe that worship is a fundamental part of human nature. The only question is what one worships. Anything can be: ideology, God, woman, the institution of family, atheism, political party, technology, climate change, etc. In practice, worship typically leads to rejection of any arguments against the Object. This happens as the Object of worship gets tied to one’s identity. Once that Object is threatened, the identity is as well, so friendships are broken, loved ones turn against each other, wars begin.
Worship brings us together but also divides us. Communities are formed around the same worship. Yet, once the tensions get too large, we get wars that go under various banners: religious, ideological, cultural and political.
Throughout human history, the most followed Object of worship has been Jesus Christ. By and large, we still follow Christian values that even became day-to-day laws like:
But we’ve deviated from other values. During communism in Soviet Russia, bearing witness against the neighbour and even parents was praised even if it was false. The Party realised the power of worship and made it its goal to become the Object of it, as we can see on the famous propaganda banners.
In 1882 Nietzsche proclaimed: "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him." The fact that people take this quote as a celebration nowadays proves his sorrow even more. God brought us together. Faith in God instilled shared values that humanity followed over generations and some are still followed to this day. But without God, we’re left to come up with our own meaning.
Many realised that the Object of worship is up for grabs. Famously, Peter Thiel claims "The best startups might be considered slightly less extreme kinds of cults". I wonder how he feels as his ideas were worshipped so much by Silicon Valley that everyone tries to become a cult leader; see Don’t Die or e/acc. It’s no wonder that the most powerful companies in the world like Google and Facebook are at their core platforms that facilitate worship.
The last 25 years have seen a range of Objects of worship: Internet, Climate Change, Diversity & Inclusion, Wokeness, Effective Altruism and most lately Elon Musk, e/acc and AGI.
Each Object of worship has a set of values and depending on how well they’re aligned with each other and human nature, they either prevail like Christianity or evaporate like Wokeness.
So if the worship is a fundamental part of human nature what is the optimal action then? The Lindy effect is a concept that suggests the future life expectancy of certain non-perishable things, like ideas or technologies, is proportional to their current age. Then it makes sense to worship the Objects that have prevailed the longest time like Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Hinduism. Or worship the underlying values of these movements.