Human sacrifice and ritual cannibalism are horrific to our 'justice-based' mindset, but they are products of 'power' culture. Eating the flesh of your vanquished foes is 'wrong' but what if you don't care? This is not a matter of individual misdeeds. In fact the individuals within a culture are not really accountable for their actions. This doesn't mean that what they are doing is right, but merely that the individual simply doesn't have a choice. It's like telling a fish to stop breathing water. It is at this point that I began to see the language of St. Paul applied: 'principalities and powers' are at work here. Culture is being distorted and twisted in demonic ways. Shame becomes a tool to subject entire peoples to suicidal resentment and homicidal revenge. Fear becomes a way of prompting people to engage in brutalities.
It was at precisely this point in the thought process that it dawned on me. Those same principalities and powers are probably at work in our culture as well... After all, it is not as though Western culture is somehow godly. Now I would certainly have offered critiques of Western culture, but I don't know that I would frame those critiques in the same light. But that, now, is my contention:
The revulsion we have at the injustices produced by fear or honor cultures (typified by honor-killing) should be directed at the evils in our own culture as well. We should feel just as repulsed by our Western unwillingness to care for the elderly. We should see demonic influence standing behind our individualism and the commodification of individuals.
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