Overview: The notion that 21st-century people believe in something is self-evident. Each of us has political, religious, and social notions and beliefs - a simple given of contemporary life.

But while many have watched with horror as ordinary people in the US and around the world express ideas and beliefs that are demonstrably unsupportable, it’s apparent that the very notion of belief is in question.

Verdict: So, how is Belief explained? Well, it can be described as an acceptance that a statement is true, or that something exists, or something one accepts as true or real; a firmly held opinion or conviction, perhaps, or it is simply trust, faith, or confidence in someone or something.

Impossible to Believe focuses on several key sites of belief, such as contemporary religion, politics, and popular culture, to question and examine how these sites have been upended and supplanted. This analysis begins with Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle and extends these ideas into the twenty-first century, taking account of how things such as digital culture and contemporary debt relations continue to cause spectacular life, penetrating our deepest core and proliferating over all we see and do.

Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle is a 1967 work of philosophy and Marxist critical theory by Guy Debord where he develops and presents the concept of the Spectacle. The book is considered a seminal text for the Situationist movement. Debord published a follow-up book Comments on the Society of the Spectacle in 1988.

Debord traces the development of a modern society in which authentic social life has been replaced with its representation: All that once was directly lived has become mere representation. Debord argues that the history of social life can be understood as the decline of being into having, and having into merely appearing. This condition, according to Debord, is the historical moment at which the commodity completes its colonization of social life.

The spectacle is the inverted image of society in which relations between commodities have supplanted relations between people, in which passive identification with the spectacle supplants genuine activity. The spectacle is not a collection of images, Debord writes, rather, it is a social relation among people, mediated by images.

In his analysis of the spectacular society, Debord notes that the quality of life is impoverished, with such a lack of authenticity that human perceptions are affected; and an attendant degradation of knowledge, which in turn hinders critical thought.

Debord analyzes the use of knowledge to assuage reality: the spectacle obfuscates the past, imploding it with the future into an undifferentiated mass, a type of never-ending present. In this way, the spectacle prevents individuals from realizing that the society of spectacle is only a moment in history, one that can be overturned through revolution.

In the Situationist view, situations are actively constructed and characterized by a sense of self-consciousness of existence within a particular environment or ambience.

Debord encouraged the use of détournement, which involves using spectacular images and language to disrupt the flow of the spectacle.

Thus, The Society of the Spectacle is a critique of contemporary consumer culture and commodity fetishism, dealing with issues such as class alienation, cultural homogenization, and mass media.

But I digress, for the dominance of forms of spectacular life that were accelerated under neoliberalism and global consumer capital has obliterated things such as Habermas’s rational critical debate and Althusser’s notion of ideology, replacing them with a mode of existence that depends entirely on having over being. Even homo economicus has been replaced by homo consumptor.

For the record, Habermas’s rational critical debate is where Habermas envisioned the public sphere as a neutral zone, devoid of economic and political influence, where rational-critical debate could thrive, and where according to him, this space should be: Inclusive: Open to all citizens, regardless of class or background.

And Althusser’s notion of ideology is where, and according to Louis Althusser, ideology refers to the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence, meaning that people’s understanding of their own lives and social reality is largely shaped by a set of ideas and beliefs that are not necessarily reflective of the true power dynamics and structures around them, effectively acting as a veil that maintains the status quo; this concept is often seen as a way to explain how individuals are interpellated or positioned as subjects within a dominant ideology through institutions like education, media, and the family.

The book may only be just over 100 pages in length, but it is a notably heavy read, chock full of political, religious, and social notions and beliefs, all wrapped up within the cold, hard-faced embrace of what exactly belief is to everyone and, moreover, can bringing it into question change the embedded notion of belief with any of us - and for all the right reasons?

About the Author - Michael William Templeton is an independent scholar and writer. He completed his Ph.D. in literary studies at Miami University of Ohio in 2005. He is the author of The Chief of Birds: A Memoir published by Erratum Press. He has written creative non-fiction and critical essays on contemporary culture, which have been published in online and print magazines and journals. He lives in West Milton, Ohio.

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