Mammon, Inc

The Winter 2004 Wilson Quarterly duplicates a full-page magazine ad that appeared in Adbusters. At the top of the ad, a yuppy guy in a suit is holding his hands out expressively. It looks like a financial services advertisement. He's saying: "I need a belief system that serves my needs right away."

Then this text under it:

Dean Sachs has a mortgage, a family and an extremely demanding job. What he doesn't need is a religion that complicates his life with unreasonable ethical demands.

Spiritual providers in the past have required a huge amount of commitment—single-deity clauses, compulsory goodness, and a litany of mystifying mumbo-jumbo. It's no wonder people are switching to Mammon.

Mammon isn't the biggest player in the spiritual race. But our ability to deliver on our promises is unique. And our moral flexibility is unmatchable.

MAMMON: Because you deserve to enjoy life—guilt free.

Now, that's not such a nice treatment of Mammon, although the WQ observes "Americans seem to embrace withering critiques of the consumerist ethos, but they're not deterred by them from heading out to the mall." The Bible isn't too nice to Mammon either. And John Milton hardly helped—here he is in Paradise Lost, Book I, describing one part of hell:

There stood a Hill not far whose griesly top
Belch'd fire and rowling smoak; the rest entire
Shon with a glossie scurff, undoubted sign
That in his womb was hid metallic Ore,
The work of Sulphur. Thither wing'd with speed
A numerous Brigad hasten'd. As when bands
Of Pioners with Spade and Pickaxe arm'd
Forerun the Royal Camp, to trench a Field,
Or cast a Rampart. MAMMON led them on,
MAMMON, the least erected Spirit that fell
From heav'n, for ev'n in heav'n his looks & thoughts
Were always downward bent, admiring more
The riches of Heav'ns pavement, trod'n Gold,
Then aught divine or holy else enjoy'd
In vision beatific: by him first
Men also, and by his suggestion taught,
Ransack'd the Center, and with impious hands
Rifl'd the bowels of thir mother Earth
For Treasures better hid. Soon had his crew
Op'nd into the Hill a spacious wound
And dig'd out ribs of Gold. Let none admire
That riches grow in Hell; that soyle may best
Deserve the pretious bane.

An anagram:

DEAN SACHS = SCANS HADES