Gods and goddesses against the gods.

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I was in a used bookstore and there was a book on the table. I didn’t buy it and still haven’t read it. It was called God Against the Gods. It was a history book about how monotheism eradicated pantheism, and flipping through it I had this moment of almost epiphany, thinking this is really the entirety of the problem summed up in one short title. The idea that there is only one way to do things: that capitalism, communism or democracy is the only way and all other approaches must be left in the dust. But life is nothing if it is not the energizing possibility that there are completely different ways of seeing the world, co-existing, conflicting and contributing to one another. Even as I write this I fear I am falling into the enervating hole of tepid democratic pluralism: anyone can believe whatever they please as long as nothing changes. Therefore different points of view must be alive within each of us, which is not the same as believing everything (or not believing anything) equally. In some sense, everything that exists in the world is also inside of each of us. Many gods and goddesses, many impulses, are in dialog and in conflict. The idea that there is only one god is a denial of this basic reality and therefore deadening...

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