The religious character of economics and finance has been apparent to me from childhood simply from the finance industry's choices of architecture, which has often tended to borrow the same classical themes used by states and for the same reasons; using the typology of sacred spaces to create impressions of power, authority, permanence, and reverence;

New York Stock Exchange - https://timsanchezdotnet.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/new-york-stock-exchange-nyse-nyc-ratti.jpg

Royal Stock Exchange London - http://www.bugbog.com/images/galleries/london-pictures/City-of-London/royal-exchange.jpg

Early 20th century banks of Chicago - http://www.heyhochicago.com/2013/10/why-do-old-chicago-banks-look-like.html

Even our stereotypes or iconographic representations follow this form, the more contemporary type of bank being too indefinite in stereotype;

stock graphic bank - http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/bank-building-isolated-white-d-render-35678339.jpg

Sacred design has very specific psychological impact such use clearly seems intended to exploit. Unable to directly use the symbols and architecture of established religions for state use, America and Europe appropriated the sacred design of obsolete yet still western culture to symbolize their modern governments' roots in Greek and Roman Republicanism. Banks and others in finance seemed to borrow this in order to relate themselves to the state and its authority while also cultivating a religious reverence for their activity. The bank became a place of holy communion where everyone speaks in hushed tones and cues up in lines like supplicants. This manipulation seemed quite blatant to me, after the fashion of fascist architecture or the similarly scary architecture of the Mormon church. An attempt to craft a kind of mystical Neoplatonism built on capitalism and the state as godhead or divine source of order. As a young nerd, I knew just how one should deal with such divine pretenders;

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y28/Sir_Lance/Ad28.jpg


On 11/16/15 5:08 AM, p2p-foundation-request@lists.ourproject.org wrote:
Subject:
Re: [P2P-F] Fwd: The Church of Economism and Its Discontents (GTN Discussion)
From:
Denis Postle <denis.postle@gmail.com>
Date:
11/16/15, 5:07 AM
To:
p2p-foundation@lists.ourproject.org

A Must Read and the Norgaard essay referred to as well.

All very welcome not least because some decades ago I tried to get 'capitalism as a religion' on the agenda of science and society media series but the Marxist scholar we were working with dismissed the notion, 'back to the drawing board' I was told. It shut down that line of inquiry for a long time.

I'd offer a caveat re the Noorgard article, he writes as though he believes we can somehow get outside nature. Might it also be sacreligious to try to insist that along with us capitalism and all its artefacts are intrinsicly a part of nature? An essential perspective I now find personally. But has it perhaps become an orthodoxy I haven't noticed?
Denis Postle

-- 
Eric Hunting
erichunting@gmail.com