Fallen man worships creatures, and all worship denotes certain types of dependence. Man sinned by desiring to be self-sufficient as God is self-sufficient, but as a creature he cannot and will never be so. He must depend upon someone or something. This dependence is the root of religion, the search for and interaction with the object(s) man wants to rely upon. Not everything man relies on is considered by him as god, but among all those things he relies on, there must be a god or some gods with higher or ultimate power. A religious affection is this higher or ultimate form of dependence. Things man worships have either a rational power or mystic power: the former being those things demonstrably powerful, such as the sun, moon, thunder, sea, lion, etc.; the latter being those things regarded to have some secrete power or more subtle power, such as trees, insects, rodents, goats, etc. Besides these impersonal creatures which man attributes a personality to, there is an obvious candidate to be worshipped, that is powerful man/men. Since immemorable past, man has been worshipping “super”-man: kings, warriors, sages, and anyone extraordinary. King-worship can be found in almost every ancient civilization, from Egypt’s Pharaoh, Babylon’s Nebuchadnezzar, Greek’s Alexander, Rome’s Augustus, to the Son of Heaven in China. Naturally the king is the most powerful man in the nation, and king-worship is always power-worship. Man worships the king not because the king has power, as many people have power, but because the king’s power is despotic and overwhelming, both of which makes him to bear a resemblance of divinity. The king is the lord, he looks like a god, and he claims a divinity.
The king-worship is also connected to state-worship or nation-worship. The king is the glory of the nation, as Alexander gloried the Greek, and Augustus glorified the Romans. The king is the personification of the state, as a result of the fact that the people identify with the object they worship. Through state-worship, the king-worship binds the people together and binds the people to the king through a mystic religious union. The people are part of the sacredness epitomized by the king. They would not allow their king to be dishonored because they would not tolerate themselves be dishonored. They would celebrate the achievement of the king because they consider themselves as participating in this achievement. King-worship is the foundation of national solidarity, the sinew of social coherence, and the convergence of personal inspiration. People celebrate despotism and enjoy despotism, for a reason that is deep in human heart. People enjoy being enslaved by the lords and kings, as they see this slavery is nothing but a glorious union.
Totalitarianism is the norm and the happy norm. This is particularly so in a social-cultural barren land when there is no social or cultural counterweight to at least restrain king-worship. That is why in modern times, king-worship shows up in every country advocating atheism, and the more consistent is their atheism, the more grotesque is their king-worship. Although they appear to be the most vocal opponents of religion, their king-worship is a religion in everything but in name. An atheistic society has a vacuum inside that must be filled up by a king-worship, as all other objects of worship have been demolished. The fact that Mao was worshipped was because Mao must be worshipped, or more precisely, people must worship Mao. If not Mao, it would be someone else in his position. People may love ideology but they cannot worship ideology, and they cannot have personal interactions with ideology. They must look for a personal being. The atheistic-communistic ideology must incarnate in the person of the supreme leader.
These societies also foster a strong current of radical nationalism. Nationalism is the identity of citizens, but radical nationalism is the religion of losers, just as king-worship is the religion of slaves. Radical nationalism differs from nationalism in that the people find their value ultimately in the nation or first and foremost in the nation. In nationalism, the nation is one of the identities a person has. But in radical nationalism, the nation is the highest identity a person has, so high that he is willing to endure all sufferings in order to maintain the dignity of this identity. He is willing to be sacrificed, his possessions and his life, in order to glorify the nation, even though he may be humiliated or forgotten by the nation. He is a martyr of the nation-worship, though he is a consumable in the nation-warship. As long as it is in the name of the nation, the state could do anything while he submits with faith and patience. Radical nationalism is the banner of all the atheistic-communistic countries, to the extent that it leads to unceasing conflicts within their camp. They must always remind the people on the one hand the nation is facing an existential crisis, and on the other the nation is achieving unrivaled successes. the former highlights the necessity to sacrifice, and the latter the meaning of sacrifice; in the former, man is humiliated, and in the latter he is glorified; in the former he is enslaved, and in the latter immortalized; in the former, the dignity of man is taken away, and in the latter bestowed. In nation-worship, the dignity of man is converted to the dignity of the nation. Man as an individual has little value, all his values are tied to this great nation under this great leader. He is dissolved into the nation in a pantheistic manner. He has no true “ego” in the sense of an inherent value of himself, thus he is naturally a defeatist and fatalist. He may have hope, but that is a fatalistic hope. At the same time, he is highly egoistic in the sense that he will not allow any real or fictitious attack on his collective identity, from which he derives his only value.
The ghost of Hegel is hovering on the body of Marx, as atheism and pantheism join hands underneath.
