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September 8, 2020 1:13 AM Subscribe
Divinity consultants are designing sacred rituals for corporations and their spiritually depleted employees (NYT). Previously: Disrupting ritual.
soul-centered advertisers
muffled shrieking
posted by inire at 4:00 AM on September 8, 2020 [15 favorites]
muffled shrieking
posted by inire at 4:00 AM on September 8, 2020 [15 favorites]
“Bishop Lee said he was happy to find the religious impulse at play, even if it was in places where the ultimate calling was profit.”
Those of us who were abused in ritualized contexts, I.e. in the name of God, can recognize how spirituality in this context is a means of control, not support.
Just as the Power of Positive Thinking has gotten us into a terrible place when confronted with a virus that doesn’t give two shits what you were thinking when you breathed it in — because arrogant leaders decided if they said it would go away it would — so does this consultancy miss the point.
The rituals that are needed in the workplace are:
Pay your workers well, including insurance according to your country’s gaps.
Resource the work properly so that it can and is accomplished in a 40 hour work week. This may mean not wasting time on meaningless rituals and corporate boosterism.
Give workers breaks and holidays, as per above.
Accommodate their needs and differences.
Set clear goals and expectations. Have strong policies and apply them.
Don’t allow your CEO or anyone else to make more than say 25 times the salary of your least-paid worker. Profit share across the entire company.
Go back to defined benefit pensions over defined contribution pensions.
posted by warriorqueen at 4:12 AM on September 8, 2020 [46 favorites]
Those of us who were abused in ritualized contexts, I.e. in the name of God, can recognize how spirituality in this context is a means of control, not support.
Just as the Power of Positive Thinking has gotten us into a terrible place when confronted with a virus that doesn’t give two shits what you were thinking when you breathed it in — because arrogant leaders decided if they said it would go away it would — so does this consultancy miss the point.
The rituals that are needed in the workplace are:
Pay your workers well, including insurance according to your country’s gaps.
Resource the work properly so that it can and is accomplished in a 40 hour work week. This may mean not wasting time on meaningless rituals and corporate boosterism.
Give workers breaks and holidays, as per above.
Accommodate their needs and differences.
Set clear goals and expectations. Have strong policies and apply them.
Don’t allow your CEO or anyone else to make more than say 25 times the salary of your least-paid worker. Profit share across the entire company.
Go back to defined benefit pensions over defined contribution pensions.
posted by warriorqueen at 4:12 AM on September 8, 2020 [46 favorites]
I think it's fair to say, given the etemology of "corporation," we could call this actual necromancy?
posted by glonous keming at 4:30 AM on September 8, 2020 [11 favorites]
posted by glonous keming at 4:30 AM on September 8, 2020 [11 favorites]
Nos mortui eramus te salutamus I guess, glonous keming?
(“We who will have died salute you.”)
posted by warriorqueen at 4:36 AM on September 8, 2020 [2 favorites]
(“We who will have died salute you.”)
posted by warriorqueen at 4:36 AM on September 8, 2020 [2 favorites]
For Those About to Rock (We Salute You).
A google search on 'about to die salute you' is a deep hole.
posted by zengargoyle at 4:49 AM on September 8, 2020 [1 favorite]
A google search on 'about to die salute you' is a deep hole.
posted by zengargoyle at 4:49 AM on September 8, 2020 [1 favorite]
They go by different names: ritual consultants, sacred designers, soul-centered advertisers. They have degrees from divinity schools. Their business is borrowing from religious tradition to bring spiritual richness to corporate America.I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.
posted by flabdablet at 4:50 AM on September 8, 2020 [6 favorites]
“We’ve seen brands enter the political space,” said Casper ter Kuile, a co-founder of Sacred Design Lab. Citing a Vice report, he added: “The next white space in advertising and brands is spirituality.”
The spiritual dollar! Good dollar, big dollar. Casper's very smart to be going after the spiritual dollar.
posted by flabdablet at 4:53 AM on September 8, 2020 [4 favorites]
The spiritual dollar! Good dollar, big dollar. Casper's very smart to be going after the spiritual dollar.
posted by flabdablet at 4:53 AM on September 8, 2020 [4 favorites]
I think it's fair to say, given the etemology of "corporation," we could call this actual necromancy?
satire isn't only dead but we reanimated its corpse and made it join a healing circle for institutional shareholders
posted by lalochezia at 5:00 AM on September 8, 2020 [7 favorites]
satire isn't only dead but we reanimated its corpse and made it join a healing circle for institutional shareholders
posted by lalochezia at 5:00 AM on September 8, 2020 [7 favorites]
someone find the chalk and summon those teen tiktok witches who hexed the moon, we have urgent need of their services.
i don't know what definition of 'sacred' these people have constructed in the fevered mallscapes of their minds, but it's both wildly at odds with any definition i'm willing to acknowledge and the ingredient that gives that special 2020 flavour to what would otherwise be just another symptom of late capitalist exhaustion.
developing ersatz rituals to plaster over the cracks of meaninglessness in your audience's corporate office jobs / lives / sources of meaninglessness? fine, whatever, there are worse ways to surrender. draping your horrible little creations in the language that people use to talk about what matters most, about their sense of a truer meaning beyond the drudgery and indignities of daily life? that's either active mockery or spectacular naivety.
like, modernity killed and ate god, corporations are modernity's slavering maw, and you think that force-feeding the remaining scraps of people's sense of the divine into said maw is going to help?!
"Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces, even the dung of your solemn feasts; and one shall take you away with it."
posted by inire at 5:17 AM on September 8, 2020 [5 favorites]
i don't know what definition of 'sacred' these people have constructed in the fevered mallscapes of their minds, but it's both wildly at odds with any definition i'm willing to acknowledge and the ingredient that gives that special 2020 flavour to what would otherwise be just another symptom of late capitalist exhaustion.
developing ersatz rituals to plaster over the cracks of meaninglessness in your audience's corporate office jobs / lives / sources of meaninglessness? fine, whatever, there are worse ways to surrender. draping your horrible little creations in the language that people use to talk about what matters most, about their sense of a truer meaning beyond the drudgery and indignities of daily life? that's either active mockery or spectacular naivety.
like, modernity killed and ate god, corporations are modernity's slavering maw, and you think that force-feeding the remaining scraps of people's sense of the divine into said maw is going to help?!
"Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces, even the dung of your solemn feasts; and one shall take you away with it."
posted by inire at 5:17 AM on September 8, 2020 [5 favorites]
flabdablet: "The spiritual dollar! Good dollar, big dollar"
It says "In God We Trust" right there on the bill.
posted by chavenet at 5:44 AM on September 8, 2020 [2 favorites]
It says "In God We Trust" right there on the bill.
posted by chavenet at 5:44 AM on September 8, 2020 [2 favorites]
Pay your workers well, including insurance according to your country’s gaps.
Resource the work properly so that it can and is accomplished in a 40 hour work week. This may mean not wasting time on meaningless rituals and corporate boosterism.
Give workers breaks and holidays, as per above.
Accommodate their needs and differences.
Set clear goals and expectations. Have strong policies and apply them.
Don’t allow your CEO or anyone else to make more than say 25 times the salary of your least-paid worker. Profit share across the entire company.
Go back to defined benefit pensions over defined contribution pensions.
Not sure how relevant this list is. There's always something. The breaks are wrong. The accommodations are not tailored well enough. The goals and expectations are too clear, and policies too strong. etc.
If your employer does all these things already, and wants to inject some quasi religious ritual for good measure? That's the crux of the issue for me.
If your organization thrives with such additional rituals, so be it. I prefer to retain a level of professional detachment.
posted by 2N2222 at 5:50 AM on September 8, 2020 [1 favorite]
Resource the work properly so that it can and is accomplished in a 40 hour work week. This may mean not wasting time on meaningless rituals and corporate boosterism.
Give workers breaks and holidays, as per above.
Accommodate their needs and differences.
Set clear goals and expectations. Have strong policies and apply them.
Don’t allow your CEO or anyone else to make more than say 25 times the salary of your least-paid worker. Profit share across the entire company.
Go back to defined benefit pensions over defined contribution pensions.
Not sure how relevant this list is. There's always something. The breaks are wrong. The accommodations are not tailored well enough. The goals and expectations are too clear, and policies too strong. etc.
If your employer does all these things already, and wants to inject some quasi religious ritual for good measure? That's the crux of the issue for me.
If your organization thrives with such additional rituals, so be it. I prefer to retain a level of professional detachment.
posted by 2N2222 at 5:50 AM on September 8, 2020 [1 favorite]
My first thought on reading the link text at the beginning of OP was "someone has a seriously perverted notion of the meaning of the word sacred." Then I started reading the thing linked, abandoning my rule of never giving the NYT a click, and saw the next iteration of our grim meathook future spelled out thusly:
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 6:22 AM on September 8, 2020 [2 favorites]
“The next white space in advertising and brands is spirituality.”I don't think I can take anymore. Too late, I remember that there are good reasons why I hate the NYT.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 6:22 AM on September 8, 2020 [2 favorites]
The next white space in advertising and brands is spirituality
plantin' seeds
posted by flabdablet at 8:10 AM on September 8, 2020 [2 favorites]
plantin' seeds
posted by flabdablet at 8:10 AM on September 8, 2020 [2 favorites]
So we are now explicitly putting the cult into cargo cult management.
posted by each day we work at 8:17 AM on September 8, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by each day we work at 8:17 AM on September 8, 2020 [4 favorites]
God, what a weird thing to read an article about! I have a masters in theology, focusing on liturgy, and my master's thesis was right next door to this kind of thing. Liturgy is a really important way of marking life transitions and liminal states, and I was particularly interested in the ways that religion fails to mark many of our important life passages in modern life, and how society rushes in to fill that void, often in very bizarre or actively harmful ways, because if we don't have a religious or cultural ritual to mark something important, we'll come up with something. So you have people doing 21 shots on their 21st birthday and ending up in the ER, since basically no religions mark our society's actual transitions to adulthood (18 and 21), instead marking adulthood typically in the 13 to 16 range with bar and bat mitzvahs, confirmations, or adult baptisms. Or you have the increasingly baroque and showy parties around "gender reveals" for pregnancies (that have now started two wildfires!), because Judeo-Christian religions are markedly thin on the theology of pregnancy and rituals marking it in a celebratory fashion. (That's what my thesis was actually on, the lack of religious rites around pregnancy and what a more complete theology of pregnancy would look like and how that would work out in liturgical rites in Christianity.)
But this .... this seems very unethical. This seems like offering the levers of religion to corporations to better control and make docile their workers. This seems like a way to make workers more attached to and dependent upon their job, finding meaning and connection in it as if it were a healthy relationship, when it's clearly not -- if corporations are families, they're extremely abusive ones, who can exile you from the family at will (and destroy your life by removing your income stream) for any reason or none, at any time at all. That is a TERRIBLE place to try to find meaning or connection. These "divinity consultants" are actively encouraging people to engage more deeply in an abusive relationship. If they were encouraging people to become more dependent upon an abusive spouse or an abusive cult, to let those people define and dictate their spiritual lives, we'd be throwing up ALL the red flags. What they're asking you to do with a corporation is no different!
It's also pretty meaningless to have rituals for zoom meetings when your corporation is dodging dealing with racism and is actively contributing to global warming. And it's actively offensive to be using the language and ritual of Christianity in the service of a profit-seeking corporation, because Jesus would flip those fuckin' tables SO FAST. (Yes, yes, I know the prosperity Gospel and all that other related heretical bullshit is all the fuck over American Christianity. It's still offensive.)
tl;dr: This is a deeply unethical misuse of their training in liturgical theology. It does active harm. And as we're speaking in a world of religious meanings here, I don't think we can label it as anything other than evil and sinful.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:23 AM on September 8, 2020 [27 favorites]
But this .... this seems very unethical. This seems like offering the levers of religion to corporations to better control and make docile their workers. This seems like a way to make workers more attached to and dependent upon their job, finding meaning and connection in it as if it were a healthy relationship, when it's clearly not -- if corporations are families, they're extremely abusive ones, who can exile you from the family at will (and destroy your life by removing your income stream) for any reason or none, at any time at all. That is a TERRIBLE place to try to find meaning or connection. These "divinity consultants" are actively encouraging people to engage more deeply in an abusive relationship. If they were encouraging people to become more dependent upon an abusive spouse or an abusive cult, to let those people define and dictate their spiritual lives, we'd be throwing up ALL the red flags. What they're asking you to do with a corporation is no different!
It's also pretty meaningless to have rituals for zoom meetings when your corporation is dodging dealing with racism and is actively contributing to global warming. And it's actively offensive to be using the language and ritual of Christianity in the service of a profit-seeking corporation, because Jesus would flip those fuckin' tables SO FAST. (Yes, yes, I know the prosperity Gospel and all that other related heretical bullshit is all the fuck over American Christianity. It's still offensive.)
tl;dr: This is a deeply unethical misuse of their training in liturgical theology. It does active harm. And as we're speaking in a world of religious meanings here, I don't think we can label it as anything other than evil and sinful.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:23 AM on September 8, 2020 [27 favorites]
But this .... this seems very unethical
Exactly! That white space in advertising and brands is there for a reason: those spaces are explicitly not the purview of merchants.
Ugh, why must everything begin and end with money for some people? Why can't they keep their hands off of it?
posted by wenestvedt at 10:03 AM on September 8, 2020
Exactly! That white space in advertising and brands is there for a reason: those spaces are explicitly not the purview of merchants.
Ugh, why must everything begin and end with money for some people? Why can't they keep their hands off of it?
posted by wenestvedt at 10:03 AM on September 8, 2020
I am TOTALLY stealing this idea for the redraft of the 11th Laundry novel. Just saying.
posted by cstross at 10:07 AM on September 8, 2020 [12 favorites]
posted by cstross at 10:07 AM on September 8, 2020 [12 favorites]
Now, let us give thanks for this bounteous harvest of Keurig coffee pods and bagels. In the name of the CEO, your manager, and the shareholders, amen.
posted by star gentle uterus at 10:18 AM on September 8, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by star gentle uterus at 10:18 AM on September 8, 2020 [2 favorites]
Man, this stuff is like cocaine for me right now.
I am a church pastor with advanced education in liturgics and I've been eye-balling marketplace ministry for a while, now, as a way to take a "break" from pastoral ministry.
I actually clicked through to the hiring pages on several of these groups and noodled around with the idea of corporate chaplaincy.
Thankfully, a colleague who I deeply love and respect made a post on social media (the NYT article, specifically) that said in no uncertain terms, "this is deeply demonic and completely unethical."
My religion struggles mightily with capitalism - especially in the already "corporatized" culture of most Protestant churches in the U.S. This just seems like the wholesale, public baptism of capitalism.
Then the devil whispers, "But, you know, if you were a consultant you could do so much good in the world... you're not like those proselytizers - you're one of the good ones..."
The temptation is strong with this stuff.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 10:39 AM on September 8, 2020 [11 favorites]
I am a church pastor with advanced education in liturgics and I've been eye-balling marketplace ministry for a while, now, as a way to take a "break" from pastoral ministry.
I actually clicked through to the hiring pages on several of these groups and noodled around with the idea of corporate chaplaincy.
Thankfully, a colleague who I deeply love and respect made a post on social media (the NYT article, specifically) that said in no uncertain terms, "this is deeply demonic and completely unethical."
My religion struggles mightily with capitalism - especially in the already "corporatized" culture of most Protestant churches in the U.S. This just seems like the wholesale, public baptism of capitalism.
Then the devil whispers, "But, you know, if you were a consultant you could do so much good in the world... you're not like those proselytizers - you're one of the good ones..."
The temptation is strong with this stuff.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 10:39 AM on September 8, 2020 [11 favorites]
This has had the dual effect of fully quashing the very last clinging remnants of fondness for both faith and my job. Not sure that's what they intended.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:05 AM on September 8, 2020 [8 favorites]
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:05 AM on September 8, 2020 [8 favorites]
> Their larger goal is to soften cruel capitalism...
That's been a big part of evangelical Christianity's goal for as long ascapitalism repressive power structures have existed.
posted by The Card Cheat at 3:00 PM on September 8, 2020
That's been a big part of evangelical Christianity's goal for as long as
posted by The Card Cheat at 3:00 PM on September 8, 2020
opens hood
taps on the capitalism
There's your problem.
posted by Reyturner at 3:17 PM on September 8, 2020 [3 favorites]
taps on the capitalism
There's your problem.
posted by Reyturner at 3:17 PM on September 8, 2020 [3 favorites]
It seems pathetically insufficient to point out the cultural appropriation being peddled by these people. "Divinity schools" need to start taking some responsibility for what they set loose into the world.
posted by heatherlogan at 3:17 PM on September 8, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by heatherlogan at 3:17 PM on September 8, 2020 [1 favorite]
Aw. I was hoping this article would be a satisfying Style Section hate-read but when you scrape away the layers of tangents and obfuscation that the reporter piled on top, it seems like it's really about a couple of Div School grads running a team-building/culture-building consultancy with provocactive branding. These activities are "rituals" in the same way that Friday Happy Hour or morning standup or welcoming new team members on their first day are "rituals". Dangit -- find more hateable people, NYT!!
posted by phoenixy at 1:20 AM on September 9, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by phoenixy at 1:20 AM on September 9, 2020 [1 favorite]
Yikes. This very white presenting dude Mr. ter Kuile is going to *transform* yoga into a sacred ritual.
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 7:30 AM on September 9, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 7:30 AM on September 9, 2020 [1 favorite]
I feel like the Trump administration’s recent directive to stop training federal employees in ‘critical race theory’ is relevant here. If trump wins a second term, how long until we see ‘divinity consultants’ brought in to government workplaces?
posted by soy bean at 7:52 AM on September 9, 2020
posted by soy bean at 7:52 AM on September 9, 2020
Yeah, not sure if there's a silver lining here. The more I think about this, the more I'm made almost physically ill at the notion that companies could hire consultants to level the weapons of religion and spirituality at their disaffected, disenfranchised employees or at consumers searching for meaning in a capitalist hellscape hurtling towards an unlivable Earth.
posted by wakannai at 1:53 AM on September 11, 2020
posted by wakannai at 1:53 AM on September 11, 2020
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It also isn't new. Here's Alison Green, from 2012. (She pinpoints the actual issue in her final paragraph.)
posted by Cardinal Fang at 3:12 AM on September 8, 2020 [5 favorites]