If you prefer to listen rather than read here’s my reading of this essay.
Norman O Brown opened the final chapter of Life Against Death (1959) thus;
THE PATH of sublimation, which mankind has religiously followed at least since the foundation of the first cities, is no way out of the human neurosis, but, on the contrary, leads to its aggravation. Psychoanalytical theory and the bitter facts of contemporary history suggest that mankind is reaching the end of this road. Psychoanalytical theory declares that the end of the road is the dominion of death-in-life. History has brought mankind to that pinnacle on which the total obliteration of mankind is at least a practical possibility. At this moment of history the friends of the life instinct must warn that the victory of death is by no means impossible; the malignant death instinct can unleash those hydrogen bombs. For if we discard our fond illusion that the human race has a privileged or providential status in the life of the universe, it seems plain that the malignant death instinct is a built-in guarantee that the human experiment, if it fails to attain its possible perfection, will cancel itself out. But jeremiads are useless unless we can point to a better way. Therefore the question confronting mankind is the abolition of repression — in traditional Christian language, the resurrection of the body.
Our Sex Map
The boundaries we draw between what's acceptable, and what's not, are arbitrary.
Nipples, genitals, pubes, women's faces, hair, heavy petting, heterosexual intercourse, same-sex intercourse, female ejaculation, anal sex and flaunting your ankles are okay or not okay depending on where and when you live.
In the early 1980s when I was a teenager, a couple of my teachers had affairs with seventeen old pupils. Back then, there were no consequences for the teachers or their careers. Now it might well result in prison.
Today, the legal age of consent in Nigeria is eleven. Whereas the legal age of consent in Bahrain is twenty-one. From 1275 to 1875 the UK’s age of consent was twelve. In 1875 it was raised to thirteen. And finally in 1885 it was set at sixteen.
It’s undeniable that our collective sexual boundaries vary over time and space. Even so, something in us wants to push back against the idea that these boundaries are arbitrary. Does any reader believe that eleven is the right age for legal consent? Or that twenty-one is?
Viewed from our present place. And our present moment. Our collective sexual boundaries don’t feel as if they’re set by a capricious power. To the ‘right-minded’ they feel universally appropriate and healthy.
I say ‘arbitrary’ then, as a provocation.
As a way to dig into the feelings of revulsion that mark transgression. And - of at least equal importance - as a way to empathise with the Discontents. With those of us whose private sexual boundaries do not match the collective ones.
Our Money Map
In a similar vein, I want to suggest our collective moral boundaries around money are arbitrary, too.
In a sense it seems prosaic to consider how we are with money. What insights could it possibly offer? Money is so deeply embedded with everyday life that our behaviour around it can seem as natural as breathing. Its boundaries as real as the physical limitations of our bodies.
But it's useful to take stock. To map out those behaviours and boundaries. To maybe think of them as vectors through which we - as nodes - transmit our needs and desires into the world. And to remind ourselves that those vectors are formative of money as it exists in social reality.
Most obviously then, we earn money. Of course, not every way of earning money is legal and many more are considered 'immoral'. We can spend money. Although again there are legal limits to this. And moral censure often awaits signs of profligacy. As ridicule awaits the miser.
Our two most virtuous money behaviours are saving it and giving it away. There is a strange twist in how each is judged, though. Moral approval for saving is proportional to income. The less we have the more worthy our efforts. Whereas moral approval for a donation is based on its absolute value. The billionaire who gives a million is lauded above the poor man who gives a much greater proportion of his wealth.
We can also invest money hoping for a return. Historically the idea of earning interest has been problematic, though. Theologians declared that ‘money begetting money’ was unnatural. And so they forbade it. Nowadays that’s changed. In fact, investment commands a moral cachet. Politicians love to talk about it.
We can gamble too. Albeit with restrictions. There are some troublemakers - like me - who insist that investment and gambling are fundamentally the same game. This is discomforting. Because it suggests that the legal, moral and cultural boundaries that distinguish investment from gambling are indeed arbitrary.
A clear cut moral boundary does exist, though. We must do all we can to avoid wasting money. Reckless losses in pursuit of gain can be redeemed only through an ongoing commitment to prudence. The value of money must be demonstrably enacted and revered.
So the Point Zero boundary from which all other sins against money can be measured. Which provokes disgust and revulsion upon its transgression. Is the destruction of money. Is its conscious, deliberate, pure and purposeless waste. So unconscionable is the spectre of this that no laws exist in the UK forbidding it. And even where such laws do exist they have rarely if ever been tested.
This, of course, is precisely the territory of Church of Burn. We are a node by which a desire for the active renunciation of money is transmitted through the vector of its destruction.
Praxis is the Primary Site of Revelation
If you’ve come to this essay cold. Or, if you're here not knowing much about Church of Burn. The previous section's last sentences and the photographs will demand some explanation. This essay as a whole should provide context. What you need to know for now is that Church of Burn is based around a Ritual Sacrifice. Members of our congregation burn some of their money at our Altar. The most burned at any single event is just under £1000. Immediately preceding the Ritual we hold a Service. This concludes with a piece of performance art that is sexually explicit. I use the words ‘Service’ and ‘Ritual’ in earnest. But Church of Burn is neither Christian nor based in any traditional religion.
I was once asked at an academic conference, ‘What does it feel like to burn money?’ This is a question easily answered. But in action, not words.
Our starting point then, is this. The value and meaning of action is accessible primarily through our experience of it. Or, put more succinctly. Praxis is the primary site of revelation.
The power of praxis underpins Church of Burn’s mission. We want ‘to change money by changing our relationship to money’. Our belief is that transgressive action is necessary. And it will be axiomatic to any change in our consciousness of money.
Before we talk money though, let’s talk sex.
Praxis is the primary point of mediation for sex. What we do with our bodies, hearts and minds defines the real territory of our sexual lives. This is uncontroversial.
It doesn't deny the role of religious prohibitions, cultural taboos, and legal restrictions. They are the preconditions of sex. And certainly the praxis of sex and its preconditions exist in a reflexive relation. Additionally, the praxis of sex - like all human action - contends with the dynamic power of our socio-economic systems. Sex is a process within processes.
My claim is simply that when push comes to shove the praxis of sex is the dominant member of the trinity of precondition, praxis and process.
The praxis of sex carries infinite possibilities. It can be a site both for good and for bad. At its best it is a touchstone for revelation and liberation. It can contain the opposition between sovereignty and mutuality.
So if this is true of sex, then what of money? My belief is that praxis is the primary point of mediation for money too. To say this though is controversial to the point of heresy.
Our general experience is that the way we are with money is prescribed by money itself. Money appears to us as an object. It has certain logics inscribed in it. And those logics dictate how we must be with it. One reason burning money is so unsettling is because it contradicts those logics. And so it’s dissonant to our daily praxis.
Church of Burn’s detractors often express revulsion, incredulity and horror. Sometimes at levels similar to those reserved for acts of sexual perversion. ‘Shame on you!’ is their cry. But just as there's been variance in the setting of the boundaries for sex. The same is true for money. Our collective map has been redrawn over time and space.
When we look at buried coin hoards with modern eyes we see people hiding their money from marauders. But experts cast doubt on this view. Especially for the earliest hoards, evidence suggests that coins weren’t being ‘saved’. But rather ‘given up’. Offered as sacrifice. Likewise what we see today as a tax-efficient, reputationally-positive, value-focused investment in charitable outcomes. Was once in theory at least a pure gift to help manifest God’s Will on Earth.
Our once moist and malleable praxis of money has become ever more dry and rigid. This granular level sclerosis persists. But at a systemic level our conception of money oscillates. In the abstract it swings between two opposing poles. In our theories and inquiries into the nature of it, money is either a thing or a relation. However, once money is enacted. Once it becomes concrete and subject to political and socio-economic processes. It resolves itself to only one of those poles. Invariably money becomes a thing.
“[There] is an endless war between two broad theoretical perspectives in which the same side always seems to win — for reasons that rarely have anything to do with either theoretical sophistication or greater predictive power. The crux of the argument always seems to turn on the nature of money. Is money best conceived of as a physical commodity, a precious substance used to facilitate exchange, or is it better to see money primarily as a credit, a bookkeeping method or circulating IOU — in any case, a social arrangement? This is an argument that has been going on in some form for thousands of years. What we call “money” is always a mixture of both, and, as I myself noted in Debt (2011), the centre of gravity between the two tends to shift back and forth over time.”
David Graeber, Against Economics, 2019
David’s book Debt - the First 5000 Years (2011) helped shift the academic consensus on the nature of money. Nigel Dodd’s The Social Life of Money (2014) is an extensive and erudite survey of theories of money. It avoids making definitive statements about money. Except for one claim. Money is “a process that is inextricably social” (p.393). Most academic thought now clusters around an idea that money is a social relation not a thing. Especially so outside of Economics. Writing on this platform
exemplifies the confidence with which this view is put forward today.Reformist organisations seek to influence policy makers. The International Movement for Monetary Reform is an umbrella organisation. Members such as the UK's Positive Money all believe a change in the financial system is vital. It must be made to better reflect the relational nature of money. Likewise for Modern Monetary Theorists and Degrowthers. For them money is constrained only by the strength and quality of our social relations. The stuff of money itself is little more than a number.
This legion of pressure groups, academics and activists gather around a single flag. Money is brought into being through political, legal and socio-economic processes. To address humankind's critical and worsening prospects we must better align those processes to the truth of money’s relational nature. Money is no thing.
And yet watch any news programme on any day. And the discourse around money will reinforce the opposing view. Rhetoric will centre on the notion that money is a thing. Coffers are either empty or full. Companies, institutions, and governments have to make ‘difficult decisions’. Belts must be tightened. The existence of the magic money tree should be denied in sober and mocking tones. The ‘common-sense’ of money’s finiteness must prevail.
Even the animating energy of the corporate news organisations themselves is born in pursuit of those determinate, finite units of socio-economic power we call money. The narratives that dominate our daily lives wholly align with our experience of money as a finite thing.
It’s no surprise then that “the same side always wins”. Why would anyone seeking political power set themselves against their electorate’s daily praxis of money? Set themselves against a media constituted by and inured to a vision of money as materially limited?
The legions could tell us that “the State is not a Household” until they go blue in the face. But between our individual experience of money as a thing and our collective imagining of it as a relation. Between the concrete and the abstract. Between the finite and the infinite. Between the praxis and the theory. Exists a distance that cannot be overcome by rhetoric alone. To change money we must change our praxis of money.
Sex, Magic and Church of Burn
Money figures BIG in Church of Burn. And obviously it is very important to the future of life on Earth. But reading about it. Or listening to people talk about it. Gets boring after a time. I think one of money’s secret powers may be a somniferous enchantment. It can cast a spell of tedium to deflect our attention.
The charge of dullness is not one that’s made against Church of Burn, though. We try to create a persuasive reality which leads people to participate in a Ritual Sacrifice. In other words, like money we also cast a spell. We try to enchant our congregation. The way we do this is through the enactment of our Church’s mythology. That is, through the praxis of magic.
The sceptical observer may complain that acting as if magic is real does not make it real. Such an observation may be an interesting point for discussion. (It may even be relevant to an analysis of money's power). But it is irrelevant to the fact that our mythology has a material impact on our praxis.
I’ve argued for a long time that we can’t talk about sex. Or rather that to talk about sex is to enact sex. This is a shame. Because most folks find sex a lot more interesting than money. So for the next couple of sections I’ll try to take advantage of the attention sex commands. Whilst skirting around the problems of not being able to talk about it directly, as best I can. I’ll resist the urge to abstract and analyse. Instead, I’ll simply tell you the story of how we’ve enacted sex within Church of Burn.
An uninvited but very welcome guest has presided over Church of Burn since our inception. The synchronicities and signs pointing to Her presence were insistent and indisputable. You will recognise Her.
Across the ages She’s visited every culture. Nearly 40,000 effigies to Her have been erected in towns and on busy highways around the world since 1971. She’s a movie star. The largest statue of Her is nearly half as big again as the Statue of Liberty. She remains unashamedly and overtly sexual despite humankind's attempt to tame Her.
Science and the secular age demands that we rationalise Her away. But our Church was born of synchronicities and harmonies and dissonances and vague, ungraspable, inexpressible feelings. We will not deny our Goddess Melusine.
An acknowledgement of the Gods reveals the hubris of humankind. The Gods are not our trading partners. They’ve no need of goats, chickens or trinkets. They’ve no need of burned money. Sacrifice is not an exchange. It is about the loss we experience. It is the praxis of Death in Life. The acceptance of loss through sacrifice makes us worthy of the presence of the Gods. And the magic they bring.
Given my personal history (a little more on that later). Given my belief that sex and money are the material problems of humankind (I argue all else is symptom). And given the presence of Melusine (May Her Blessings Be Upon You). It was fair to assume that a Church of Burn Service was always going to be sexier than your average Sunday offering.
Indeed, I'd dreamed of including elements of sex, physicality and movement from the start. But dreaming it is one thing. Making it happen is something else. And it’s taken many brilliant, talented and wonderful people - and a lot of luck - to help realise my vision.
In 2016 Jacqueline Haigh invoked Melusine. From between her twin-tails, she ‘ejaculated’ coins over our congregation. The coins were plastic. The ejaculation was aided by a confetti cannon. But the shower was still startling, spectacular and golden.
In 2017, thanks to Cassie Thornton we were invaded by a terrorist cell of militant feminists. They proceeded to get all the men in the congregation pregnant. And then guided them through an empathetic experience of birth pain.
Fayann Smith, Rob Burnham and Isabella Steinsdotter (who together form The Naked Grace Missionaries) have worked with CoB in 2018, 2019, 2021 & 2022. Within their CoB performances they confront sexual and spiritual themes. They do so through lyrics and music but also through their physical performance.
Harriet Waghorn, Carmine De Amicis and Gigo Koguashivili (who with others form Edifice Dance) have choreographed and performed the sensual and tragic Broken Token dance with CoB in 2021 (Harriet & Carmine) and 2022 (Harriet & Gigo). As Edifice they are known for their deeply seductive and provocative dance interpretation of Oscar Wilde’s Salome. (See video below).
Carrie Thompson has manifested Melusine in 2019, 2021 & 2022. As Melusine, Carrie has lured Carmine and Gigo away from Harriet. She seduced them to their deaths with Her siren-song rendition of ‘Exist for Love’. And She's enchanted congregants to ‘confess their money sins’ in Her confessional. And then cast Her judgement upon them.
But for this essay I want to focus on the most overtly sexual performance within CoB. Sarah Kershaw has performed with CoB in 2019, 2021 & 2022. In the next couple of sections I’m going to tell you how it was that Sarah came to perform at CoB. About the difficulties we faced and how we overcame them.
Sarah at Church of Burn - The Backstory
I first met Sarah at Castle Perilous in August 2019 at Featherstone Castle, Haltwhistle, Northumberland. This was a private gathering of 123 magickly-minded folks. The F23 crew organised it. The artists, musicians, performers, magicians and weirdos attending provided their own entertainment.
Sarah turned up with six fans, a boombox, a handmade costume and an idea she’d wanted to bring into being for a long while. At Castle Perilous she’d finally found an event where she’d be ‘allowed’ to perform her art. I found her piece brave, brilliant and beautiful. Adjectives which also describe Sarah herself.
The performance had movement, drama and striking visuals. It was climactic and sexually explicit. And it wrapped this amatory goodness in the auditory bliss of the closing movement from Stravinsky’s The Firebird. I absolutely adored it.
For me, the choice of The Firebird is significant. I’m a fan of Yes (the band).
Actually, I love the word ‘Yes’ too - “It is a word with charisma. A bright, shimmering, reflecting word. A word with brilliance jewelled within.” - as Thomas Sharp puts it in his poetic paean.
There are a few pieces of music from Yes that have embedded themselves deep in my soul. Especially so their masterpiece Awaken. It’s a magical future-making sound ritual. I’ve sprinkled light echoes of it through Church of Burn's Service. And within my wider magical actions. I do the same with Dylan Thomas’s poetic enchantments. ArtMagic like this has created me. And by hiding a few jewels here and there. I'm lacing my work with my most intimate being.
Anyway, The Firebird has been Yes’s entrance music since 1971. It features as the opener on their classic live album Yessongs (1973). I’ve seen them live about a half a dozen times. In my mind and body The Firebird associates itself with anticipation and arrival. Even with access to my Spotify history and my unconscious, Sarah could not have chosen better. It was a laser-focus synchronicity. Which would unsettle even the most ardent materialist.
Later at Castle Perilous, I approached Sarah to ask if she’d be interested in performing at Church of Burn 2019. She was. Three months later Sarah performed with us for the first time.
Sarah at Church of Burn - The Performances
We titled Sarah’s performance The Union of Oppositions in Ecstasy. In 2019 it took its place as the final act of our Service. It unleashed an energy that was at once powerful and intimate. The Ritual that followed fed on this energy and flourished.
Sacrifice is the foundational act of civilisation. We offer it not as tradition, nostalgia or ceremony. But as praxis. The deliverance of Death-in-Life directed through the body of money. A living communion between the Absolute and the present moment.
As 2019 turned into 2020, all I knew was that I wanted to do it all again. And again. Frustratingly, of course, Covid had other ideas. When we finally set some dates in July 2021 Sarah was to repeat her performance across three days. It was a big ask. And it brought home the unique and singular nature of her performance.
The Cockpit in Marylebone have been incredible partners. We’ve been blessed to find a venue who's supported Church of Burn to the hilt. For example, we’d been threatened with a protest outside the Theatre as we ramped up our publicity prior to 2019. The Cockpit stood by us. But staging an explicit performance puts any Producer/Venue relationship under some strain.
After 2019, The Cockpit could no longer reasonably claim ignorance. They couldn't say they weren't aware of what Sarah’s performance entailed. So prior to 2021 Sarah and I had to sit down and talk things through with them. It's important to understand our discussions weren’t about ‘asking permission’ per se. Although, if we failed to justify and explain the context of the sexual content. The Cockpit could pull our three events.
The battle over nudity in UK theatrical performances has pretty much been fought and won. Flesh is fine. But the legal position on sexually explicit performances is not clear cut. There are no firm rules about what particular sexual acts are or are not regarded as obscene. What was clear was that as the producer, I’d be in the firing line should a court decide a boundary had been crossed. A guilty verdict would mean a criminal conviction and fine, at least.
After the discussions, Sarah and I produced three statements. Sarah’s unedited personal statement. A second version of Sarah’s statement edited by me at her request. And a producer’s statement which I prepared for Church of Burn.
Here are three key paragraphs from the second version;
The stigma attached to sex and sexuality has presented significant difficulties for my artistic practice, especially in respect of live performance. As with music and dance, live performance can often be the most impactful and rewarding form of expression for both the artist and their audience. My belief in what I’m doing helps allay the many frustrations; I feel like I’m working on the cutting edge of a positive change in attitudes to sex.
I have also learnt much through my artistic practice about how my own connection to sex has been governed and prescribed throughout my life. I hope that audiences are able to share in the sense of agency that my work has instilled in me. I feel experiencing a sense of sovereignty over one’s sexuality - even vicariously - is very important, especially for women.
It is for all these reasons that within my artistic practice my genuine intent must be to orgasm. If I merely pretend to masturbate without wanting to orgasm, the performance becomes about the ‘gaze’ and so shifts it toward being experienced as titillation. To pretend would determine that my sexuality exists only to arouse others and that a sexual act, especially from a woman, can only properly exist to be ‘consumed’. I reject this. I think that sexual energy exists beyond the categories of production and consumption and that when seen as a form of power in itself, sex can be regarded as sacred.
Here is a paragraph from my producer’s statement;
As the climax to the Service element of CoB, the Orgasmic Invocation works to both create and draw the audience into an intimate space, which exists apart from the world of exchange relations. The modern ideal of sex and sexual relations is of a sovereign space unmeasured by money and not subjugated to the economic. In this sense then, what is created by the Orgasmic Invocation is a ‘purified’ or ‘sacred’ space for the Ritual that follows it.
I wasn’t entirely happy with the phrase ‘Orgasmic Invocation’. It subsumes an action to a purpose. Ideally, I’d have resisted giving it any narrative function. For me it was enough that Sarah’s performance was part of the Service. And that the Service exists to serve the Ritual. My contextualization then was a concession to the practical. It made it much harder to argue that the intent and purpose of our event was ‘solely or principally for the purpose of sexually stimulating any member of an audience’ - or in our case ‘congregation.
There is an aphorism from Walter Benjamin that comes in very handy at moments like this. ‘At the centre of all creation is not purity but purification’. It's a bit like ‘don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good’. But Benjamin’s is wiser because it emphasises praxis rather than result.
Looking back at it now, issuing the statements and then going ahead with the performance feels to me - and I hope to Sarah, too - like a small victory for sexual freedom. Like we were working, as Sarah put it, on the cutting edge of a positive change in attitudes to sex.
Church of Burn’s appearance at The Secret Garden Party in 2022 is the last time we performed together as a company. Sarah’s performance of The Union of Oppositions in Ecstasy was an absolute triumph. We’d added a reading of Arthur Gregor’s Gift of the Firebird which was beautifully delivered by Isabella Steinsdotter in a scandi-soft, sex-magic whisper. The cheer Sarah received built from within the tent and extended outside to where a crowd had gathered. It was a very very special moment.
I’ve no words to express the depth of my gratitude to Sarah. Nor to the fates who conspired to bring her performance and Church of Burn together. I’ve a clear and ambitious vision for Church of Burn. I hope with all my heart that we can bring it into being. But if my journey is not as I imagined it. If Church of Burn was born simply to provide Sarah’s Art with a suitable canvas. Then that alone is a legacy in which I’ll take enormous pride.
The Death and Resurrection Show
“Everything I'm taught
Amounts to naught
Everything I learn
The fire shall burn”
If I’d been thinking like you when I first met Sarah. I would not have invited her to perform at Church of Burn.
The photographs would not have been taken. This essay would not have been written.
If I’d been thinking like you, there would be no Church of Burn.
The five or six or seven thousand pounds - or however much cash is now ash in our Holy Pot - would have carried on circulating. Earnt, spent, given out, saved, splashed, flashed and gambled.
But it's dead. Gone. Gloriously wasted.
Thankfully then, I don’t think like you. And I don’t act like you either.
I mean, say a random selection of ten people read this far. Say they‘d no clue about Church of Burn at the start. I reckon the only thing keeping nine of them reading would be the anticipation of purging themselves in the comments. Of giving me a piece of their limited minds.
Am I right you uptight, square-brained, consequentialist fuckers?
[ If you’re the one in ten. Welcome. This polemic will continue to be directed at those who need to hear it most. But please know that I'm very glad you're here. ]
I invited Sarah to perform because I act as if the magic is real. The magic of Sarah’s performance, the magic of the synchronicities but also the magical binding power of a solemn pledge.
Back in the noughties my Ex, Sally, and I ran ‘Naturalsex’. We had an amazing, conspicuous and joyful sexual adventure which led to an Erotic Award in 2002. When that project ended I made a promise to myself. I would never deny the sexual in my work. In my Art Magic.
I’m reminded with depressing regularity quite what prudes you can be. And how you like to cast judgement on the liberated.
“Direct action is, ultimately, the defiant insistence
on acting as if one is already free”.
David Graeber, The Democracy Project (2011)
Oh, beloved woman of liberty
Come to me
Burn away all my impurities
So let yourself be engorged with rage. Let the hot blood thrill through you. Let your revulsion be the measure of your virtue. Because this is just going to get worse. There are harsher truths to come.
Yes. You are about to get a lecture in Ethics from a man who presents an act of masturbation as the precursor to a religious rite. Wherein the sacrificial immolation of money is experienced as an act of living communion.
And I do have the authority to lecture you.
I am the High Priest of Church of Burn.
Holder of the Staff [All Hail, The Staff!].
Keeper of the Stone of Thanatos.
Humble servant to Melusine.
Our Church enacts sex as a site of revelation, liberation, sovereignty and mutuality. And it unifies those oppositions in ecstasy!
Our Church enacts a Ritual of pure waste. Together we transgress that which fatally binds us to our subjugation.
So have a bit more Norman O Brown for starters. Let him explain why you’re so stupid.
“The desire for money takes the place of all genuinely human needs. Thus the apparent accumulation of wealth is really the impoverishment of human nature, and its appropriate morality is the renunciation of human nature and desires - asceticism. The effect is to substitute an abstraction Homo Economicus, for the concrete totality of human nature, and thus to dehumanize human nature. In this dehumanized human nature man loses contact with his own body, more specifically with his senses, with sensuality and with the pleasure-principle. And this dehumanized human nature produces an inhuman consciousness, whose only currency is abstractions divorced from real life - the industrious, coolly rational, economic, prosaic mind. Capitalism has made us so stupid and one-sided that objects exist for us only if we can possess them or if they have utility.”
Norman O Brown Life Against Death (1959) p.238
“Utility”. The word rankles.
“What’s the point of burning it.” That’s always the question. As if there’s no thought or action possible without some notion of its utility. It's such a dunderheaded, capitalist-lackey take on life.
You believe that your spirituality, your religiosity, your charitable giving, your asceticism-lite lifestyle, your comfortable small-c conservative I’m-no-prude-but views on sex, your concern for the countryside, for nature, for the environment, you believe in the intellectual authority of your BSc’s, your MA’s and your PhD’s - and you believe that all these things give you moral authority.
When what you’ve really done is just fall under the spell of money.
And you don’t even realise it.
“Why don’t they give it to charity?”
“Why don’t they give it to charity?”
“Why don’t they give it to charity?”
I can hear it going round and round in your head right now. It’s your last desperate bulwark. A castle-keep for the capitalist mind.
But in this virgin territory. In this mindspace carved out by our Church. All your defences, all your moral tools and intellectual weapons, all you carry to make sense of the world - is useless. This is a new space.
Like it or not, I am your guide. Our Church carries the map. And if you have any courage. If you can allow yourself to feel a vague glimmer of the newly possible. Then just lay it all down. Take off your veils. Stand naked. And listen.
Art is the Tree of Life.
Science is the Tree of Death.
We need more Blake. Less Bentham. The dominance of ends-based ethics must give way. It appropriates our promises and pledges for its own ends. Arbitrary rules harden to a felt morality. The map becomes the territory. We are robbed of our humanity. Our capacity to experience life as sacred and magical is diminished.
Utility is the religion spawned by the subjugation of our present moment to a venerated future. This temporal disjunction is so deeply embedded in our thinking and our systems that it threatens to destroy immediacy, itself.
Money is Utility’s Godhead. It is if/then. It is cause/effect. It is profit and loss. It can measure all things and divide all values. It is in our wallets. In our bank accounts. In our heads and in our hearts.
Every transaction is the affirmation of a tomorrow written by our praxis of money today. By the assimilation and enactment of a rationality that limits us to a life of scarcity, finitude and materialism.
“What’s the point of burning it?” The point is there is no point.
I say in The Money Burner’s Manual (2016) “having a purpose makes one servile to an end. Even employing the present time for the sake of the future is servile. And so too is knowledge. Only unknowing is sovereign and beyond any notion of utility. For the truly sovereign being there is only now.
So light up the fire. Put on your masks and animal skins.
Money - above all other objects - must be made sensual. It must be animated. This is the totality of our Manifesto of Resurrection. All that is written here proclaims this truth.
For everything that lives is Holy. And everything that is Holy must live.
Your careful, erudite, funny, and profound writing continues to inspire and provoke. Thank you my friend for sharing your time and thoughts.
I am a one in ten... a number o-o-nly
That was fantastic.