How Does Religion Benefit and Harm Literature?

The counter-revolution to the printing revolution is at our doorstep - opening new religious possibilities that were locked away from literature during the printing era

The Decline of the Book: Writing and Sealing for Good (Source)

The problem with literature in the modern era is that you can easily spot mistakes, even in the writing of the greatest authors, but you cannot correct them. Because in literature, there is no substitute for perspective, even world-class talent cannot replace it. Therefore, there is no substitute for the perspective of the reader who, after several generations, becomes an editor - that reader who turned central corpora from ancient literature into perfection by correcting all the mistakes that can only be seen from afar. If indeed correct, then their version became widespread and replaced the original version, like in evolution, and thus the text improved from generation to generation. In modern literature, there are copyrights and exact copies of the original, even deification of the original, as if it were a divine and sacred text, instead of understanding that what made the divine and sacred text as such was precisely the evolution, in which only the creation of God is revealed.

Therefore, we are left with flawed texts that have greatness but also glaring defects - and this is modern literature. In its greatest works, one can identify severe mistakes that cannot be corrected, and it's so unfortunate and jarring. The very idea of the original - is the problem of modern literature. The best ancient literature has no author. Such a concept doesn't exist. And precisely because of this, the text can become canonical and sacred, unlike the modern human text. The great fortune is that in the post-human information age, we can once again create text without an origin, and therefore the possibility that has been blocked since the end of the Middle Ages is reopening before us: the opening of the gates of heaven.

The problem of modern literature worsens as time passes because organic correction in a work can only happen continuously - it's not about a single editor who suddenly comes after generations and fixes everything, but about an ongoing dynamic between authority and the openness of the source. Therefore, literature in our time, suffering from premature and immature codification (known as the invention of printing), loses the critical stage of its development as a dynamic oral tradition that gradually takes shape - and it is in the nature of a distortion that cannot be corrected in the next period.

For example, today it is no longer possible to correct the flaws of the Bible (even the most obvious ones), no matter how talented one is - the result would be catastrophic. Because the organic nature has been severed. For instance, the gaps in the Bible stories are gaps only according to a later perception. They didn't feel there were gaps but that they were telling everything necessary. Only according to the more psychological writing that developed later are there lacunae in understanding and describing character motivations. And only from theology is there a lacuna in explaining the ideology in the Bible. To us, these are gaps that cry out to heaven for completion. But they, in their perception - told everything (and did not "leave gaps"). Only according to the writing of long descriptions that developed later were they economical and concise. God was not taciturn - only in relation to man.

The invention of printing had very unexpected historical consequences. For example: The invention of printing led to secularization, because instead of one book at the center of the canon, with interpretations and literature revolving around it, there are many books. The very change in structure caused secularization, in many ways. For instance, a reasonable educated person can know only one book by heart, and then it's clear that it's worth knowing the most central one. But suddenly there's no need to know anything by heart - because many books are available. And so the invention of the codex also led to monotheism, because there is an advantage to a message spread in a book, centralizing it, and then there is an advantage to religions of one book. These are structural changes that caused religious changes. Before that, in the ancient world, there was an advantage to stories and not to books, and therefore to polytheism, because everything had to be condensed into a system of statues that are symbols. And at the beginning of writing, there was an advantage to the engraved letter, and therefore to religions that are governmental ideologies. Because only those who had a strong structure could say something continuous.

And today, the information age and post-print era are again leading to religious change (and perhaps in this case - a change in secularism) and to the end of the idea of culture, simply because structurally on the network there is inherently no center and no hierarchies, meaning institutions. Just as the abolition of the central book caused a process of secularization from religion - so the abolition of the cultural center leads to a process of secularization from culture. Therefore, the one suffering the most today is literature - that is, the product of the printing revolution - which is the written content of culture, because literature is the equivalent in culture to the spiritual canon of religion. And now it is expected that what happened to religion will happen to that culture that replaced religion in its prestige and sanctity. Culture will survive only in a secluded and defensive community, and will influence the larger society only because of the cultural capital it has accumulated as a source for further development, exactly like the situation of religion today. But outside there will be barbarism. Many vast herds of uncultured and foolish people, but wise in their own eyes, whom technology will gradually turn into one large and divinely wise brain - without having even one truly wise person in it. Post-humanity will actually be post-individual.

Today, the ideology that unites them all into one large system, like the Tower of Babel, is the ideology of economy (which has been common to all powers, including Eastern ones, since the mid-20th century) - money is their common language. But this ideology itself is already in the process of becoming the ideology of technology (and therefore today the technological firms - which are what's between economy and technology - are at the center). According to this latter ideology, the main thing to do in the world is to advance and develop technology, which will solve all our problems. At the logical end of this ideology, technology will become an end in itself, and not just a means. The problem with this ideology is that it is boring (meaning it doesn't touch the human soul and isn't narrative), and therefore open to a new religious outbreak.

And this time the outbreak will be on the network, viral, and therefore will not necessarily have an individual source. Alternatively, if technology touches the soul and fiction - this will be the solution. And still, this touch on the soul will need psychological-narrative content. In this sense, psychology was on the one hand a reaction, because it was based on narrative oral speech between two (as in pre-monotheism, hence its fondness for polytheistic myth), but on the other hand through the privatization of stories as the number of people. Therefore, it was also reactionary - and also preceded the social network, where every person is a story - and therefore man is a story.

Now we need a more advanced substitute for psychology, which will touch the soul in a literary-technological way - and will be popular among the barbarians. A likely candidate for this role is Kabbalah, but Kabbalah has not yet found its technological Paul, who might come from Chabad or perhaps from Breslov, and perhaps - and this is a pity - will not come at all. We, as Jews, must open a new religious-technological laboratory within our spiritual space, because if the new religion comes out this time from the Far East and not from us - it is our cultural end. And if the new technological religion comes out of Islam (and history sometimes has such a sense of humor) - it is our end in other senses as well.