If not religion, as Marx famously claimed, then what? Rosie Blau ponders the question:
Myriad alternative religions flourish. Football fans flock to stadiums in rain or snow and spend thousands on season tickets. Celebrity-gossip magazines thrive while other forms of print struggle to survive. Money must be another contender—so many lives are filled with dreams of it, pursuit of it, spending it. It’s a faith with many faces: credit cards that let us buy more than we can afford; houses for which we borrow and borrow; lottery tickets that we know make little sense. Perhaps this is Marx’s ultimate defeat: is capitalism now the opium of the people?
There is also the ever-expanding realm of mass distraction. In 1957 Edward R. Murrow, an American journalist who helped to fell McCarthy, labelled television the opiate of the people, in despair at its passive audience and poor programmes. Americans still watch more than four hours a day, despite being equally addicted to other screens. More than a billion people use Facebook, and mass communication by phone, text and e-mail means we are never alone, always “in touch”—or perhaps, as Marx might see it, forever out of touch with our true selves.
Lottie Moggach suggests that the “new opium” is the Internet. Rory Stewart offers “our children” as a response.
The Dish 