Ulmer: Uno

" You can't worship two gods at once. Loving one god, you'll end up hating the other. Adoration of one feeds contempt for the other. You can't worship God and Money both." - Matthew 6:24

While finishing up my reading on Monday, I was very struck by a line on page 8:

"The digital ear is beginning in the same way as the era of print, with a religious war in which the status of icons is a central issue."

Lets take a few minutes to run down the early history of print.

• Gutenberg invented movable type to allow the first mass print production. (laying down the foundation for what I am currently earning my masters)
• First book to be printed: the Bible
• Protestant Reformation: made possible by mass producing the 95 theses-which was a confrontation against the Catholic Church and their use of icons within the cathedrals (I am watering this down to a minimum, I know, but bare with me)

This is very well documented. Everyone studies this in world history class in middle school. But what is the religious war now? I continued reading hoping some great gem would bloom from the pages, but I was sorely disappointed. So I took the next logical step and googled religious wars. According to the UN, there are currently 56 religious conflicts, but not a single one of the descriptions mentioned a holy war about images.

Maybe this sentence jumped out to me because I was recently studying this very issue, but what is America's new god? I believe it's ultimately money, because it's not the God of our country's forefathers, and it's certainly not the same God that was the center of the Protestant Reformation. When a building falls, not only is it a blow to the ego of the country, but it also is a large loss of capital. Would a god-like obsession of materialism actually make it onto the UN's list of holy wars?