This year the autumn equinox harvest festival is a little unusual; stretching over a full 10 days and set to the distant rhythm of war drums beating across the Pacific. The holiday begins innocently enough by exchanging boxes of spam, extra virgin olive oil, or possibly war survival kits, if you subscribe to the ominous portents of the conservative media.
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| War survival kits, now a popular alternative to traditional spam or olive oil at Chuseok |
Rapidly the vacation becomes fraught as record numbers jostle elbow-to-elbow through airports, tailgate for tedious hours along the highways and pack the trains to capacity.
For some the pressure is too much, with divorces in the weeks before and after Chuseok rising to twice the daily average.
In the western world the concept of god or divinity has undergone some major revisions over the centuries, much like we now roll out new software updates for our computers. The first humans probably huddled around camp fires, nervously asking each other how to prepare for the hereafter, desperately hoping that the answer wouldn't be more nerve-racking than preparing for a first mammoth hunt or perhaps even worse, a first date.
Seemingly the first holy men recognised an opportunity to improve their social status and quickly launched to market Divinity 1.0, based on visible, mortal, tangible god-kings like the pharaohs of ancient Egypt. The pharaohs evidently believed the afterlife to be rather empty and ill-furnished; they therefore spent a lifetime arranging to store plenty of food, luxuries and concubines to take with them when they passed over. Meanwhile the peasants could only take the rags they stood up in. All in all, this was not a very equitable belief system for the great unwashed.
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| Egyptian Pharaohs - leaving no creature comfort behind in their journey to the Afterlife |
The next roll-out, Divinity 2.0, featured a whole host of new, improved, more ethereal gods; this time invisible and immortal, with dominion over each aspect of earthly life. Greek, Roman and Norse priests gave us a god for everything from love to harvests and from war to volcanoes.
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| Greek gods; one available for every occasion, all sacrifices gratefully received |
As before, each god required devotion and sacrifices in return for delivery from evil. It all sounded wonderful but as the centuries ticked by we slowly realised that protection from war, famine, pestilence, etc could not be bought with any amount of prayer or sacrifice.
The wisest holy men foresaw their high social status being utterly ruined by unsatisfied customers and so, analysing the flaws in their model, they rushed out Divinity 3.0 even before Divinity 2.0 was abandoned. This time just one single Great Omnipotent Deity requiring devotion and sacrifice. Cleverly, our devotion this time would not earn us tangible rewards in this lifetime but virtual rewards in the next life - which we would need to take on faith, of course. Finally a bullet-proof deity concept which could survive the most intense customer scrutiny !
The wisest holy men foresaw their high social status being utterly ruined by unsatisfied customers and so, analysing the flaws in their model, they rushed out Divinity 3.0 even before Divinity 2.0 was abandoned. This time just one single Great Omnipotent Deity requiring devotion and sacrifice. Cleverly, our devotion this time would not earn us tangible rewards in this lifetime but virtual rewards in the next life - which we would need to take on faith, of course. Finally a bullet-proof deity concept which could survive the most intense customer scrutiny !
Local variations of Divinity 3.0 were rolled out around the Mediterranean in quick succession including Judaism, Christianity and Islam - although in some parts of the world the latter is still arguably considered even less user friendly than Windows Vista ever was.
Meanwhile Korea was surviving happily on a simple diet of shamanism, or the worship of nature spirits, until Buddhism was introduced in the late 4th century. Since Buddhist and shamanistic teachings were not contradictory and since Buddhism tended more towards philosophy than deity worship, Koreans found it possible to integrate the two and follow both doctrines together.
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| The spirits of the trees, mountains and animals are highly revered in shamanism |
Korean Buddhism largely went unchallenged for a full millennium until the late 14th century when neo-Confucians supported a military coup, winning themselves the opportunity to try to displace Buddhist mysticism with a traditional and deeply hierarchical Confucian rationalism which included ancestor worship. Therefore the modern Chuseok vacation reflects an ancient fusion of Buddhist and Shamanistic concepts overlaid by more recent Confucian reverence for one's ancestors.
Although Korea undoubtedly had its own versions of Divinity 1.0 and 2.0, little was known about western divinity until books by Portuguese Jesuit Matteo Ricci were brought over from Beijing in the early 1600s. However even then the Chinese translations limited the Christian doctrine to a relatively small, wealthy, educated overclass. It was not until the 1780s, when the literature was re-printed in simplified Korean Hangul script, that Christianity became accessible to the masses.
After centuries of Buddhism and Confucianism which both reinforce rigid social hierarchies, with little upward mobility within the system, Christianity eventually started to win followers through its message that all men are equal under god and reward is ultimately based on effort and merit not birthright. Current figures suggest that among Koreans, 20% identify as Protestant, 8% as Catholic and 15% as Buddhist, leaving about 55% following non-organised worship including shamanistic or Confucian rituals.
For those with faith, the stairway to heaven is, somewhat predictably, earned by putting in long and regular hours. Gentle inquiries show it is not unusual for a family to dedicate their entire Sunday to promoting church business. Given the lack of family time available during the week, this means that a devoted Christian family can regularly spend half the weekend (or half of its entire weekly family time) serving the church. This ardent presenteeism suggests that entry to the Afterlife may be controlled by a celestial Human Resources Dept. which values time-keeping over productivity in the same way that we see here in this life every day.
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| Robert De Niro as Louis Cyphre in Angel Heart: "They say there's enough religion in the world to make men hate each other, but not enough to make them love. The future isn't what it used to be, Mr Angel." |
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