Gerald R. Lucas

I’m thinking about starting a religion.

Seriously. It seems that only narratives about belief and faith get anywhere in this country these days. Facts are irrelevant — too pedestrian. Loud opinion is king, and my don’t we have plenty of it to go around? Not only do we like opinions, but we seem to relish uninformed, indignant, rude, and freakin’ loud! opinions even more, like pigs to the trough. Most of our current debates center around these types of beliefs, too. Yes, heath care is a very real problem, but it isn’t the fact of the problem that people care about, it’s the belief (a mystical flavor of opinion) about it that gets everyone so riled. You know, like religious belief.

My religion would be based around technology, more specifically computer technology. There’s already a Cult of Mac, but “cult” is such a pejorative term. I vote we make it into a full-fledged religion with all the concomitant benefits — and I’m not just talking about the material and economic ones. The narratives are already in place. We could make Apple the thing we worship, and Microsoft could be Satan and all his demonic horde. The particulars can be worked out later, and they’re not really that important. In fact, we could just as easily have chosen M$ as the entity most proper for our thoughtless devotion, but since I’m a Mac user, I’ve made Apple the arbitrary bestowers of goodness and light, and M$ the damned and execrable purveyors of sins most foul. Who is good is not really the point.

The Apple commercials are already allegorical. We have the Mac as the angel on your left shoulder and PC as the demon on your right. Who would you listen to? Justin Long is kind of a winy and right millennial, but John Hodgman‘s evil peecee commands my sympathy with his wry pathos. Apple’s marketing goons have done a great job with the complexity of this choice, like a medieval allegorist. Which will we choose? Well, ultimately there is no choice: we must go with the Mac if we are to achieve computing nirvana, even though its representative is as exciting as a latex-coated bible, and to me not really representative of of the holy OS.

Anyway, a new Apple religion. This is not because Apple deserves to be worshipped, but it does make sense that we’d choose a corporation to venerate in this country today. We love our stuff, and corporations know how to sell it to us. They’re like the pastor passing around the donation plate before communion, and we’re the obedient parishioners smiling while we give ten percent of our income to God before we’re rewarded with a snack. This is about right, too, if we take into consideration the computers at home, in the office, the iPods, service, upgrades, support devices, entertainment appliances, iTunes purchases. . . Ten percent might be conservative.

Still, I’m interested in the what religion signifies in this country above all of these other matters. I want to end the persecution. I want people to treat me and my choices as if they really mattered. You know, like we do for Christians. Religion is not up for debate. It’s not up for discrimination. It’s not up for rational thought. It’s about belief. I want the respect given to religion, say, by businesses and politicians. They don’t even have to understand why I have chosen to use a Mac; why I have chosen to shun Microsoft. They just need to support that decision, like they do, say, Christmas. You don’t ask questions about Xmas, do you? It’s America’s holiest corporate Christian holiday. How dare you!? You must be one of those Marxist Communists.

It’s really not so much to ask. There will be no pogroms to end Microsoft’s monopoly of the computer industry. In fact, they may still wipe us believers off the face of the digital planet. That day would be like Pope’s “universal darkness,” and I certainly hope it doesn’t come to that. Yet, the place where I work is discriminating against my religion by trying to marginalize Mac users and end their support of our platform on their network. They are not friendly toward our technological choices and would sleep much better if we would just go away. Ask them. We are just a nuisance to them, like a small band of believers were to Rome about 2000 years ago.

You don’t have to agree with me. In fact, I’m pretty sure you don’t. We are used to the discrimination of Applists, or should that be Macists? (I think I like the latter, since it sounds like Marxists, and you know that scares the shit out of people, even though they have no idea what it means.) For you non-believers, I will end with a final question: “What computer would Jesus use?”