The New "God"?

I've been reading some history lately and have reached the conclusion that money has replaced religion as the new social adhesive. 

Historically, the question of how societies cohered through the ages appears to have been answered by religion. The standard view of religion's origins tended to be one in which "unanswerable" questions were left to the supernatural. But this has now been rectified to introduce us to the concept that, rather than merely being the response to the mysteries of life, it was a powerful tool to keep large groups of people from simply destroying each other in the quest for survival. 

As populations increased from small hunter-gatherer tribes to agricultural communities, and then on to vast trading societies, it became increasingly difficult to maintain some degree of order. One sure way was to instill in people a belief in an all-powerful, omniscient, unseen being which could monitor everyone from some ethereal realm. The vast majority of the world's biggest religions rely on subjective 'guilt' to encourage the faithful to keep in line.

We are now, however, becoming an increasingly secular society. The 'faithful' are diminishing in number. How then are we to maintain order from afar? Enter money. In the very secular West, we have become obsessed with wealth. Our reverence for the wealthy in our society has led us to be easily manipulated to fight resource wars in order to gain more of the filthy lucre which we then hand over to the already rich in the hope that they may bless us with further investments to secure our own futures. 

My feelings are based on the attitudes most people seem to have regarding wealthy individuals. They appear to enjoy a mystique only reserved for the priesthood. A wealthy person gets hurt and we all, collectively, gasp in horror. The fact that it happens to the underclasses all the time doesn't affect us with the  same intensity. There may be some empathic response from some people, but, by and large, it shouldn't happen to the rich!

Coupled with the view that one day; "I could be rich", we seem to be living in the new hope of a better life - here and now. Heaven is our first million. We revere the rich because we believe that, given the right opportunities, it could be us one day. How many people do the lottery every week? I don't know the full figure, but it must be enough enable Camelot to pay multimillion pound jackpots, plus have enough left over to pay huge salaries to the governing bodies AND to offer philanthropic funding opportunities for 'worthy causes'! 

Placing the 'glory' of wealth into the minds of individuals was also the church, which has over the centuries, been the repository of wealth for the 'chosen few'. Indeed the story of Job reveals how the 'righteous', favoured by god, were those whose wealth exceeded that of the lesser tribes. We've now reached the stage where we can dispose of the supernatural and just revere money! 

Max Weber's views on capitalism shows how the ethics of wealth stems from religious ideology but in today's greed culture, religion is sidelined. However, the reverence remains. We still laud the wealthy in a very unhealthy way. How sad we are.