Karl Marx is reputed to have said that, 'religion is the opium of the masses.'
Was he right, is arguing that the masses of people are addicted to a drug, opium, which, as we know, can lead to various and serious mental health and functional problems?
Of course, probably Marx's main issue was not the adverse mental and physical impact which the use of Opium was and is having on the masses of the people.
But rather the fact that it was and is causing and encouraging them to adjust to the oppressive conditions in which the elites, the then bourgeoisie, was submitting them to.
The yoke of oppression, as it were. Having accepted, even if reluctantly, the deceptive message that, this world, and the pleasures it has to and can offer, is not theirs to have.
But that their pleasures are being stored and awaiting them in the 'New Israel', the 'New Jerusalem.'
In Karl Marx's time, the faithful was induced to hold strong to their faith by the rigid societal systems which were founded upon the absolutism of religious fervour.
Even when the laws of man, as it were, seemed to have predominated, it was only so because the perceived dictate of an imagined God, whether you were of the Jewish, Catholic.
To be continued!
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