Why Joe Lycett Might Kill Us All
…and what he’s got to do to stop himself.
If you don’t know about Joe Lycett or his #BendersLikeBeckham stunt then please read this brief summary first.
Dear Joe,
This is an open letter to you from the High Priest of Church of Burn. It has been approved for public dissemination by a majority vote at the Emergency Ecumenical Council of 23rd February 2023.
My communications with the Office of the Archbishop of Canterbury have taught me the importance of using first names. They allow us to connect with the person behind the title. ‘Archbishop’ or ‘High Priest’, ‘Sir’ or ‘Madam’, or simply ‘Mummy’ or ‘Daddy’ can be a barrier to honest exchange.
I hope, then, you don’t mind me calling you ‘Joe’, Joe.
What I want to discuss with you here is of the gravest consequence to all living creatures and to your own eternal soul. It’s very heavy stuff. And it demands that I speak from my heart directly to yours.
It all has to do with your #BendersLikeBeckham stunt.
Church of Burn (CoB) believes that money is the oxygen on which the fires of global warming burn. And that our current relationship to it is the main driver to social injustice. Our sacred mission is to change money by changing our relationship to money.
My counterpart at the Church of England (CoE) likes to preach a watered-down version of what we — at CoB — practice as our religious rite.
“Mammon..” says Justin Welby, “..gains strength through our obedience.” [ i. ]
Justin’s got to do what he can to get bums on pews. The CoE has been struggling in recent times. CoB is on the up. We’re a growing religion. So we’ve no hard feelings about them trying to steal our moves. We take it as a compliment.
Trouble is, being a nice, middle-class-friendly, church-cum-state institution the CoE lacks the minerals to do what needs to be done.
At CoB we disobey money, directly. We burn it. Followers take part in a ritual sacrifice that we take very seriously, indeed. We make it as intense as possible. Individuals usually burn between £20 and £50 each. Anything from a few hundred pounds up to £1500 has been burned at a single event.
We don’t offer our congregation a remembrance or representation of something that happened long ago. Rather, they experience the immediacy of a real ritual sacrifice.
So Joe, everyone in CoB was watching your #BendersLikeBeckham stunt with great anticipation. Up until Tuesday 22nd November 2022, we’d offered praise to our Goddess Melusine and hailed The Staff [ All Hail, The Staff! ] because we believed that in you we’d found our new Apostle.
Your reveal video swept away that hope. There was a great wailing and gnashing of teeth. Ordinary, hard-working, money burners everywhere demanded action. Our Archbishops called an Emergency Ecumenical Council for 23rd December 2022 . They listened and gave the matters at hand their serious consideration. Their findings were presented at a second Emergency Ecumenical Council on 23rd January 2023.
It is now my solemn duty to inform you of the Archbishops’ Determination;
“By not destroying £10k Joe Lycett might have committed the most terrible crime in the history of humankind”.
It continues with the reasoning…
“Joe told us he’d pour water into the cracks at the base of the Dark Towers of Capital. The Dark Towers exist in every thought and every exchange, and they’ve come to dominate humankind’s relations with one another and with nature. Water can seep deep into the fissures. As it freezes and thaws the foundations are weakened and so Capital’s hold over us is diminished. But Joe hasn’t poured in water. He’s poured in mortar. He’s sealed up the cracks and made the Dark Towers stronger”.
Don’t worry about the mythological stuff, Joe. It’s the way the Archbishops roll.
I realise all this may come as a terrible shock to you.
I understand that being told you might be the worst person ever to have lived is a lot to take on board. As the High Priest of CoB I’ve no choice but to faithfully relay the Archbishops’ words. But please be assured, my purpose in this open letter is not to admonish or shame you.
We all make mistakes, Joe. Maybe not civilisation-ending ones like yours, but mistakes none-the-less. So I’m writing to you as an act of pastoral care. Care for you and for every living creature on earth. I want to help you understand what the Archbishops are saying. I want to offer you my support. And ultimately, I want this letter to empower you.
Now, your immediate response may be to claim — as you have elsewhere — that your stunt was “not about the money”. Faced with such a serious charge it’ll be tempting for you to double down on that. I beg you. Please don’t do that, Joe.
You made the shredding of £10k the centrepiece of your stunt because you believed it would provoke outrage. With David Beckham as both a target and a conduit you hoped to turn that outrage into pressure. If David was made to feel uncomfortable this would impact on his Qatari hosts. And perhaps make life a little easier, or at least provide some hope, for LGBTQ+ people in Qatar.
You undoubtedly succeeded in bringing attention to the LGBTQ+ cause. But by threatening the shredding and by targeting David Beckham, you made the context money and morality. Sometimes it’s the obvious things that elude us, Joe. I mean isn’t money and morality the subtext to much of Got Your Back? Even in the brilliant, hilarious and heart-warming More, More, More! you couldn’t escape. Your starting point was money. You added sexuality and then reached out for the highest ideals of freedom, community and love. (It was beautiful, Joe.)
If you’re unconvinced by my argument just check out the google trending stats for searches on ‘destroy money’. Whatever your original intentions, Joe, #BendersLikeBeckham ended up very much about the money. Accepting this is your first step on the road to redemption.
Next step is drugs!
Matrix-style. A red pill, blue pill moment for you.
Take the blue pill and you’ll continue to believe that redemption can be ‘earned’. You will structure your entire existence and mould all your actions in support of this conviction. Good deeds will be credits in a ledger, bad deeds will be debits. You will suppose — or more likely you will invent a God to suppose on your behalf — that even against the infinity of time and space the balance of your deeds can be measured and a final tally determined.
Take the red pill and you’ll understand the truth; redemption can only be sought and never bought. You’ll realise you cannot bargain for it, demand it or work in lieu of it. You’ll still feel the desire for it as keenly as ever. But you’ll know that seeking it is all that we may do. Ultimately, true redemption is — and must be — a gift of Divine Grace. Your oneness with the Absolute is not an emergent property conjured up from the material world. It exists eternally. All thoughts and deeds are merely the means to its discovery.
Ok. This isn’t actually a choice, Joe.
Just take the fucking red pill and lets see if we can get you off the hook and save the world.
Harsh words were spoken at the Emergency Ecumenical Council last December. The unanimous feeling was that you’d ‘wilfully broken a public promise’. A vocal minority [ ii. ] claimed you were deliberately mocking our community, our Goddess and all we hold sacred. You showed no contrition over misleading us or the public. You seemed to regard destroying money as inherently immoral. So there can be no affront to it. All actions against it become permissible because destroying money is irredeemably wrong. I hope you appreciate the offence this caused. It holds our religious rite in contempt. Members of the Council were outraged.
All this is in stark contrast to the feelings of our community prior to the reveal video. As I’ve said, we thought you were our new Apostle. Parish leaders readied outreach teams. Youths (18+ obvs) were recruited to be ‘community’ dealers. They’d hand out red pills (metaphorically speaking, of course) to get their friends hooked on the Truth. Would-be street preachers delivered the Word of the Burn to their bedroom mirrors in anticipation of The Great Rebalancing.
We’d all felt it. The deliverance of sacrifice and loss through the body of money would restore the ancient powers. The modern-day dominance of exchange and gain would be challenged. On 21st of November, you were odds-on for a Sainthood within the decade.
The Archbishops must acknowledge the feelings of the Ecumenical Council. But equally we rely on them not to get carried away by the ebb and flow of emotional tides. When called upon to issue a Determination their duty is to give a considered view.
They noted how careful you were with your language throughout the stunt. You avoided making precise statements about destroying the £10k. It was clear that you’d set boundaries for what you would and wouldn’t say. On the charge that you’d ‘wilfully broken a public promise’ the Archbishops determined that, in technical, contractual and legal terms, no promise had been made. Therefore, under those same terms none had been broken. If the Archbishops were Chancery Judges, Joe, you’d get off scot-free.
But unfortunately for you, they’re not. The Archbishops are concerned with the enactment of the Divine on Earth. They do not apply profane and arbitrary rules to the Heavenly Powers.
In the end, their Determination about whether you made and subsequently broke a promise is actually quite a simple one. It relies on just two things.
Firstly, there is the idea of sacrifice.
Hopefully your red pill will be kicking in now so you’ll already be halfway there with this. But just to be totally clear. Sacrifice is not an exchange with the Gods. They’ve no need for dead chickens, goats or bulls. They are not traders to be bargained with. Sacrifice is about our experience of loss. A pure form of sacrifice produces nothing. No meat to be shared. No material benefit. No guarantee of a good harvest. Loss redeems us. ‘Nothing’ makes us worthy of the Gods.
Secondly, there’s belief.
Belief is a tricky thing. The Money Burner’s Manual (2nd Ed.) says; “The terrible beauty of truth is that it does not need to be true, it only needs to be believed in”, (p.28). It’s easy to tie yourself in knots over the relationship between truth and belief. Some people refuse to admit to any beliefs. Others treat beliefs as if they were shopping for clothes. What often gets forgotten as people struggle to assimilate faith and fact into their lives is the sheer history-writing, world-shaping, and future-forming power of belief. It literally creates Gods. And money.
Joe, you proffered a significant and pure loss. And you made people believe it would happen. If you put that out into the universe you can hardly blame the Gods for taking you at your word.
That’s why, in the end, the Archbishops’ Determination must be that a promise was indeed made and wilfully broken.
The Gods haunt us whether we believe in them or not.
As I said earlier, our Oneness with the Absolute exists eternally. So breaking a promise isn’t a fatal mistake in itself. You, Joe, have (potentially) murdered all life on earth but even you can still find forgiveness.
What breaking a promise does is cause offence to the Gods. It discourages them from leaving any clues as to where and how to look for your redemption. Sometimes a mischievous God may even lay a false trail. They’ll create a golden path leading you away from where you need to be looking.
Clues usually appear in the form of conjunctions of meaning. The most commanding ones exhibit both intimacy and universality. They seem to know how our secret world aligns with the movements of the stars. Some people refer to these clues as ‘coincidence’. Some as ‘synchronicity’. Most of us refuse to commit either to a material or a magical interpretation.
The difficulty for you, Joe, is that the promise you wilfully broke was made about money. Promises and money are entwined. Every banknote you said you’d shred contains its own promise to ‘pay the bearer’. It’s inscribed right by the Sovereign’s head. Like promises about love, promises about money are special.
As love is not simply a function of sexual attraction, money is not simply a tool of secular life. Both are imbued with a Divine Spirit. And so promises about them have an exponential power. Breaking them is a serious matter. Moreso, when someone chooses to abandon their promise despite maintaining the capacity to deliver on it.
Any sins you may, or may not, have committed against David Beckham are outside the purview of both the Ecumenical Council and the Archbishops’ Determination. I mention them here — very briefly — only for the sake of completeness.
A criticism levelled at you on social media was that you were engaged in a type of blackmail. You even said as much yourself on Got Your Back at Xmas. Personally though, I’m not sure what you did constitutes blackmail. Not the sort that you’d do time for, anyway. But certainly, your stunt did rely on a ‘buy this or the dog dies’ set-up. It attempted to manipulate its target by issuing a threat against a third party. Albeit in your case it was a threat ‘not to do good’ rather than ‘to do harm’.
Anyway, that’s more than enough time spent on Mr Beckham.
If you’ve made it this far into the letter you are already well on the path to redemption. My best priestly advice at this stage is to keep going. You understand that I’m not going to be able to take you all the way there? If the Gods leave clues I can’t know their intimate meaning. They’re for you, not me. The best I can do is get you to a place where you’ll have a choice to make. A fork in the road, so to speak. Then you make your choice. And the rest of us just have to hope, for the sake of all living creatures on Earth, that you have the courage and wisdom to choose well.
There’ll be a slight change of tone in the Theological section that follows. I’ll talk a lot about sex and money. And we’ll get even more Personal in the final section.
Before we move on though, Joe, I must issue a stern warning.
DO NOT ATTEMPT TO JUSTIFY YOUR SINS!
Please just acknowledge them. Or at least recognise that others consider your actions to be sins. And then carry that with you. There’s no need to self-flagellate as we go. (Unless that’s what you’re into for good, healthy reasons of sexual deviance.) Once you have the full picture you can make your own assessment of the virtues and vices of your stunt. And decide for yourself how you feel about the Archbishops’ Determination.
AGAIN. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO JUSTIFY YOUR SINS!
I’ve said it twice because it is so very important.
If you were to say “I had to make everyone believe I’d shred the money because it would help get out an important message about LGBTQ+ rights’’ that would be a serious mistake. Anytime your internal monologue moves toward “It was for a greater cause” — that’s the quicksand. It pulls you down because it’s saying that redemption is a gift that you can bestow upon yourself. A sure way to really piss off the Gods.
Let’s keep hubris off your charge sheet. That’s a really bad one and I don’t think I could get you off. If you find yourself thinking like that, take another red pill.
In fact, have a cheeky half now just in case. It’ll help keep you going for the next section.
I speak on behalf of myself and CoB when I say that we’re with you on the issues of LGBTQ+ rights. The home nations let us down when they chickened out of wearing the One Love armband. They let down the folks in Qatar, too.
Everyone at CoB was super-excited that you might be our new Apostle. Standing up for sexual freedom is something dear to our hearts. We love that you declare yourself as pansexual. Part of our doctrine is that there’s a deep and direct link between sex and money.
My greatest contribution to knowledge has been this aphorism. It got four likes and one retweet confirming my position in the academic pantheon.
‘Libidinal Economy’ is the name given to the study of the relationship between sex and money. Much like sexual desire itself, the discipline bubbles under the surface of academia. It’s not mainstream for sure. But it is persistent and it’s had its moments. And actually it’s doing okay right now.
Psychoanalysis is a key ingredient. But there are a whole bunch of other theories in the mix too. It makes a bold offer; a universal theory of economic and social life. I love its revolutionary potential. And I love its mythology. The book that lends its title to the discipline is Économie Libidinale by Jean-François Lyotard. He was inspired to write it as a direct result of the Paris protests of May 1968. And then later, he renounced the text calling it his ‘evil book’ and he expressed gratitude that so few read it. That’s how you market an impenetrable revolutionary academic text, Joe!
May ’68 was ideologically seismic. People began to believe that a new world was possible. So scary was it for the incumbent powers that President De Gaulle secretly fled to Germany. Famously, the radicalism of the moment was captured in the graffiti that adorned the streets of Paris that month. Revolutionary slogans were everywhere. This one hints at the contradiction that’s at the heart of Libidinal Economics.
Plus je fais l’amour, plus j’ai envie de faire la révolution.
Plus je fais la révolution, plus j’ai envie de faire l’amour.
The more I make love, the more I want to make revolution.
The more I make revolution, the more I want to make love.
So, the contradiction is this. Does the expression of sexual energies exhaust or intensify them? Libidinal Economy connects that question to an economic one. Is an increase in our willingness or capacity to spend, the product or the cause of economic growth?
Religious and historical attitudes to sex mirror our conceptual relationship to money. Discipline and self-denial are regarded as the basis of a healthy and moral attitude to both. Waste is a sin. Unproductive sexual ‘expenditure’ dishonours God’s gift of sexuality.
But a conscious liberation in attitudes to sex does not diminish society, at all. Quite the opposite. We’re enriched. If we can accept sexual differences. If we can allow the free expression of sexual energies within wider boundaries. If we can extend our conception of what a sexual life can be beyond heterosexual monogamy. Then culture, economy and spirit flourish.
Many religious folks will be spitting chips at that last paragraph, Joe. But I’m pretty sure you’d agree with it. At CoB we think it’s true for both sex and money.
Bear with me for a few paragraphs here, Joe. There’s a very important point coming.
I’d been trying to persuade David Graeber to come along to CoB for a couple years [ iii. ]. David was an amazing and brilliant man; an instigator of Occupy and one of the most important and influential Anthropologists of his generation. His book ‘Debt — the First 5000 Years’ literally changed the way many people think about money.
Things were proceeding as they’d done before with him. He’d said he’d come if he was in town, but I couldn’t get a firm commitment. Then a few weeks before our event, he published a piece — Against Economics — in the New York Review of Books.
In it David noted that Economics has two broad theoretical perspectives — for simplicity let’s call them Capitalism and Socialism — and that an endless war exists between them. But, despite there being no clear advantage to either in terms of their theoretical sophistication or predictive power, the same side always seems to win. “The crux of the argument”, David wrote “always seems to turn on the nature of money”.
The moment I read those words, I emailed David and said, “You can’t say that and then not come!” He agreed.
Money may seem like a monolithic, unchanging, ‘thing’ out there in the material world. But it’s evolved alongside our imaginations, social relations and institutions [ iv. ]. Our conception and experience of money underpins a vast, interrelated, system-of-systems.
Capitalism asserts a limited set of logics and affects around money. It marshals our thoughts and feelings about money very effectively. It reinforces the illusion that money exists independently of humanity. It is this abstraction from our social body that gives Capitalism the advantage. It’s how the same side always wins.
The ideological schism we must bridge is that society is ours. But money is only ever yours or mine.
Our Service explores the nature of money and disrupts our relationship to it using Sermons, Hymns, and other forms of magical and religious practice. Here’s a few words from the sharp end.
Money burning is a material change
in your relation to money.
Do not underestimate the immense power
of this simple and literal truth.
The ones and zeros in banks’ computers
are a representation of money,
not its essence.
It’s not out there in the numbers,
it’s in here with you and me.
The very important point, Joe, is that how we conceive of money, and how we experience it, really matters. Not only to us humans, but to every living thing on Earth.
A few comments on social media made the point that shredding £10k is actually deflationary and so technically a good thing. If you believe any one of the mainstream accounts of economics and their various conceptions of money, then yes. Destroying any money in circulation is deflationary. Is deflation good? Well, our Prime Minister seems to think so. He’s prepared to sacrifice our nurses, doctors and many others on the Altar of austerity in order to ‘face down’ the ‘enemy’ of inflation. In other words, he wants to invoke deflation through rituals of deprivation.
Even though this technical point supports CoB’s position 100%, I’m not going to labour it. It can get very dull, very fast. If on the other hand you do have the stomach for it, here are 20k words I wrote on the excruciating details of the technical arguments.
Entrapment has played a big role in the policing of desire.
UK folks tend to see 1967 as the key year of liberation for LGBTQ+ people. But this doesn’t tell the whole story. Anal sex, gross indecency (blow jobs, hand jobs etc), and a host of other sexual activities remained criminal offences. In England and Wales, same-sex intimacy was only fully legitimated with the 1994 and 2003 Acts.
Fun facts. Anal sex remained a criminal act until 1994 — married heterosexual couples included. And, it wasn’t until 2013 that anal sex between two men became legal in Scotland.
During this period of gradual liberalisation, entrapment was employed as a tactic by police forces across the UK. As agent provocateurs, police officers encouraged flirtation, sexual advances and raunchy behaviour. They’d then arrest and charge those they targeted. Campaigner Peter Tatchell estimates that 15,000-plus gay men were convicted after 1967.
Historically, tactics of entrapment have been employed around the world. In 1919, as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, future President Franklin D. Roosevelt established his own covert entrapment operation. And, of course, these tactics are still in use today. Probably more so than ever.
Joe, I realise that by giving you this little history lesson I’m teaching my grandmother to suck eggs. The point I want to make is about entrapment itself.
I don’t think it’s universally adopted simply because it’s an efficient way to enforce the law. Rather, it’s a common response because it sends out the clear message that the State can reach into the most intimate areas of our lives. Ultimately, entrapment is a powerful and pernicious tool of oppression.
You might hate me for the following, Joe. But if I were running an entrapment operation on behalf of financial Capitalism I’d do exactly what you did with your stunt. It was the perfect bait and switch. All the exploratory thoughts, mixed feelings and new questions you provoked about money were smothered by your reveal video. It’s what the Archbishops mean when they talk about you “pouring in mortar”.
Now we need to talk about the elephant in the room. The ‘c’ word.
It’s always a temptation to present charity as a means to absolution. Give to save. But that makes a transaction out of what should be a sacrifice. The sense of loss that was the spiritual core of charity has been forgotten.
Politicians on the left used to feel able to express a different view on charity than they do today. The following quote (that’s often misattributed to Clement Attlee) vividly expresses this alternate view.
“Charity is a cold grey loveless thing. If a rich man wants to help the poor, he should pay his taxes gladly, not dole out money at a whim.”
Nowadays, charitable actions seem to have become a substitute — perhaps the only substitute? — for a moral and spiritual life. The belief that charity sits at the pinnacle of our moral order has solidified in the public mind.
Perhaps it’s the marketing expertise and powerful PR techniques adopted by modern charities that have done this? Or, perhaps it’s the decline in the influence of our rivals at the CoE and the wider Christian Church? At least they subjugated charitable work to the Big Guy. They’d say that charity is a means to bring about God’s Will on Earth. Not an end in itself. Not an Absolute good.
Charity serves to maintain hierarchy rather than undermine it. If the goal of charity is ‘distributive justice’ then this is a profound contradiction. It means that Charity can never properly answer the inequities of Capitalism. Charity can offer a reaction to particular issues, but not a solution to universal, ongoing and systemic problems. As much as they appear to oppose each other, Charity and Capitalism exist in symbiosis.
As if to illustrate this co-dependency, on the same day you tweeted your support for Crisis, Joe, workers at another homelessness charity, Shelter, began an unprecedented two weeks of strike action. Bosses extracting ever more from workers seems to have become the guiding principle for all forms of human cooperation.
None of the above means CoB is anti-Charity. Or anti-Capitalist for that matter. Individuals should be at liberty to do as they please with their money. CoB’s events are usually accompanied by an art sale the profits of which are donated to Charity. We also have some gorgeous, high quality merchandise available at very competitive prices!
However, CoB believes that there is no more spiritual, moral or transformative use for money, than destroying it.
Together Capitalism and Charity set a boundary. They define a restricted reality within which we’re able to sin and then instantly redeem ourselves [ v. ]. Self-interest can be justified and generosity made prudent. This Earthly mimicry of Divine absolution is granted through the body of money. But it depends upon us remaining obedient to their greatest and first commandment; “Value for money at all costs”.
An active renunciation of money serves to disobey this. Momentarily, we’re no longer bound by our bargain. We no longer exist within their restricted reality. The body of money is transformed. Capitalism and Charity become contained within an expanded universe.
Thank you for staying with me this far, Joe. The theological stuff can really drain the cerebral juices after a while. A can of pop and that last half a pill will get you through.
I want to start this final section with an apology. I said at the outset I want to speak from my heart, directly to yours. But knowing our own hearts can be hard enough at times. Knowing someone else’s can be impossible. To foster the intimacy this letter demanded I’ve had to create a ‘Joe Lycett’ in my head. And that’s the fella I’ve been writing to.
Obviously, that ‘Joe Lycett’ is never going to be the same as the flesh and blood Joe Lycett who’s reading these words. It’s inevitable that I’ll have made many false assumptions about you. For my mistakes, I am truly sorry.
On the other hand you did park your rainbow coloured tank on our money burning lawn. So fuck you, Joe Lycett!
Sorry. Again.
Of course, as you read this letter you’ll be creating an image of me in your mind, too.
And I haven’t given you too much to go on. So how about this? You forgive me for my very imperfect facsimile of you. And I’ll come out from behind the Ecclesiastical and Theological stuff?
No doubt there’ll be a few more expletives and emotional outbursts. That comes with the territory. But I will try to speak more from my heart than my mind.
You recorded Richard Herring’s podcast right in the middle of your stunt. You say you were inspired by the KLF’s burning of a million quid (from around 1:06)? I’m not sure CoB would exist without Bill and Jimmy’s sacrifice.
Also, the KLF’s Burn was one of the things that prompted me to do my degree at the London School of Economics. It asked such enormous philosophical questions about money and value. I get a bit defensive when people refer to it as ‘a stunt’. That box is way too small for it. The best book on what it actually might be is John Higgs’ KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band that Burned a Million Quid. John suggests that one way to think about it is as a magical act that brought the C21st into being.
Chris Atkins’ 2021 film Who Killed the KLF? was inspired by John’s book. And as happenstance would have it, the end of Chris’s film actually bears witness to the birth of CoB, itself. I conducted a series of Rituals at the Cube Cinema in Bristol in 2015. Unknown to me at the time, Chris was there filming.
Daisy Campbell has been instrumental in the evolution of CoB. She’s also who Bill and Jimmy called on in 2017 to help deliver Welcome to the Dark Ages. This three day event marked the end of their self-imposed 23 year moratorium. Each year since, on 23rd November, Daisy has directed an event for their Mumufication project. In 2021, she asked me to do some production work on it. The upshot being I had the unexpected honour of finding myself alone with Bill on a train for three hours!
I’m not going to recount the conversation we had in an open letter. But I was reminded of it when I watched you, Joe, on Got Your Back at Xmas. It was that moment when you seemed struck by the seriousness of what you were doing. You actually say of the shredding “It suddenly feels very serious. People are not going to find that funny tomorrow.”
Seriousness can sometimes seem the overwhelming aspect of all this. Not a seriousness in the sense we often use the word. It’s not a demand for a certain set of behaviours. Rather, it’s something beyond that.
It’s a profound solemnity that draws you completely into the present. It’s almost as if such extreme seriousness is a form of grief. Grief for past and futures lost as they’re expunged from our temporal experience and we’re left wholly in the now.
That definitely tallies with my best experience of Ritual Sacrifice.
A relevant secret for you, Joe.
Back in 2002 at the Sexual Freedom Awards, my now Ex was called on stage to accept a Flying Golden Cock from the Grand Jury of Conspicuous Sensuality. It was for our ‘Naturalsex’ project. It ran on the internet for seven years from the turn of the millennium. In the wild times before Facebook and Twitter. Our story appeared in a posh Sunday newspaper and our sex life became the subject of a TV documentary or two.
In truth, I did little more than confirm a stereotype. I was a virile young man back then. It was my Ex who was the brave one. Women are judged to different standards. Even more so twenty years ago than today.
All I mean to say by this revelation is that I’ve had a small taste of what it means to make the private, public. My admiration for your declaration of pansexuality isn’t solely to do with CoB’s doctrine. It’s personal.
Even though our individual sex lives are nobody’s business it’s important that the truth about sex exists in the public sphere.
When Naturalsex ended, I made a promise to myself. It’s not that, ahem, I want to continually shove it down people’s throats. But, when it’s called for, my promise demands that I stand up and say “I’m Spartacus!”.
So I guess this is me saying that right now.
I had a dream while I was writing this letter.
We’re on top of a hill. I’m the High Priest but I’m looking at myself from outside my body. You’re Mummy, of course. There’s a forthright exchange of views.
That’s all I could remember of its substance when I woke. I’d no precise memory of what was said. But the emotional arc of the dream had left its waking residue. [ Not in that way, Joe. Come on. You’re better than that! ]
The cat got told to ‘go fuck himself’ when he gave me his customary meow-morning greeting.
So what’s below is my earnest attempt to reconstruct our dream exchange from its waking ghost. The words will be wrong. But they conjure similar feelings.
MUMMY
“You’re going to tell him he needs to shred £10k, aren’t you?”
HIGH PRIEST
“No! That wouldn’t help Joe at all. It’s too ‘balance the books’. And anyway, I’ve never asked anyone to destroy any money. I’m not going to start with Joe!”
MUMMY
“Rubbish. How’ve you started a money burning “Church” without ever asking anyone?”
HIGH PRIEST
“First up, please don’t put Church in inverted commas. It’s offensive. Second, I promise you it’s absolutely true. ‘Not asking’ is one of our three golden rules.”
MUMMY
“I’ll regret this but go on then. What are the other two?”
HIGH PRIEST
“Only burn your own money and it has to hurt a bit.”
MUMMY
“Oh for goodness sake. Is that the point of this? Is it like financial masochism or something?”
HIGH PRIEST
“No. There is no point to it.”
MUMMY
“There must be a purpose.”
HIGH PRIEST
“Its purpose is purposelessness.”
MUMMY
“What? Are you trying to out-weird me, now? Anyway enough with your nonsense. If you don’t want Joe to burn £10k, what then? Are you just trying to upset him?”
HIGH PRIEST
“No. But I do need him to realise what he’s done. Unfortunately that might be a painful process. His stunt got enormous exposure, Mummy. And that’s wounded our Church. I can’t let it go without a public response. That’d be a dereliction of my duty.”
MUMMY
“But the whole thing was for charity. And to raise awareness of a cause that you support! You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.”
HIGH PRIEST
“Now you’re sounding like Sir Alan. We’ve been over this. Charity is not a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card. And sex and money are joined at the hip. You can’t repress one in the hope of liberating the other.”
MUMMY
“All your sex and money stuff! I have literally no idea what you’re on about. At the end of the day, you and your friends may not think destroying money in a cost-of-living crisis is wrong, but everyone else does.”
HIGH PRIEST
“Is there a right time to destroy money, then?”
MUMMY stares blankly at the High Priest
HIGH PRIEST
“If it’s wrong to destroy money ‘in a cost of living crisis’, is there a time when it’s okay? ”
MUMMY
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re a few condoms short of an orgy, you are!”
HIGH PRIEST
“But the logical implication of saying ‘in a cost of…”
MUMMY interrupts
“It’s always wrong to destroy money. Joe would never do something that irresponsible. I’ll see to that.”
HIGH PRIEST
“Do you not think Joe should do what he wants with his own money? I mean without his career you wouldn’t even really exist, would you?”
MUMMY
“You are cruel to your very bones! Empty of empathy! Both Joe and I understand the signal it sends out. Destroying money says ‘we don’t care about the poor!’ ”
HIGH PRIEST
“Really? So empty real estate, luxury goods, designer clothes and all the rest of it. But what really concerns folk living on the streets is people burning the odd £20?”
MUMMY
“Joe has worked for Crisis at Christmas for years. He understands the concerns of homeless people better than you ever will.”
HIGH PRIEST
“Someone not having a home doesn’t grant the middle-classes permission to decide how they should think and feel.”
MUMMY
“That’s not what…”
HIGH PRIEST interrupts
“I haven’t finished. Ultimately that attitude leads directly to the disgusting spectacle of a charity hanging QR codes around people’s necks. You know about this? Passers-by scan it to read the person’s ‘story’. Then they decide whether that person is ‘worthy’ of their money. The ‘concerned’ middle-classes stealing the last shreds of sovereignty from the homeless. Cuntery dressed as care…”
MUMMY
“I don’t know what that has to do…”
HIGH PRIEST carries on regardless
“…small-minded nastiness hidden behind a self-righteous claim to superiority. The material fact of what we’re doing in Church of Burn is we’re destroying small sheets of polymer propaganda. We’re not taking the roof from over people’s heads! It’s the system that’s doing that!”
MUMMY
“Look…”
HIGH PRIEST is now fully on one.
“People like you, Mummy …you justify all that cruelty. The deprivation, the despair. The countless deaths. The free-to-starve slavery. You justify it all because you believe humanity must be sacrificed to money! To the logic of capital. And the tragedy is you don’t even realise it! You don’t even know you’re doing it! Well, fuck all that.”
MUMMY
“You’re not sounding very much like a Priest, anymore.”
HIGH PRIEST
“We need systemic change. Things can’t go on as they are. Climate change will fuck everyone of us and our children. All these bits of polymer and paper, all the entries in the banks’ computers… they’ll mean nothing.”
MUMMY
“Yes, Joe and I are worried about the future but…”
HIGH PRIEST
“That’s why your whole ‘cost-of-living-crisis’ schtick was such a fucking crock. It’s a false reassurance. It says ‘The crisis is temporary! The crisis is temporary! Oh gosh, yes we need systemic change but for now let’s just knuckle down. Let’s tighten our belts. Let’s just get through this and then we can worry about all the other stuff.’ I mean, really? Can you not see the problem, here? It’s fucking palliative care for a dying system. Well fuck all that I say. Let’s rage against the dying of the light!”
MUMMY
“Alright, Dylan. Calm down. At the end of the day all I want is what’s best for Joe.”
HIGH PRIEST
“What I want — and what I expect Joe really wants — is what’s best for him and everyone else. Oh and by the way, you’ve zero chance of out-weirding a High Priest of Church of Burn.”
MUMMY
“That may be something we can agree on.”
Joe, I think we’re approaching the fork in the road. It’s time for me to grab you by the shoulders, look you straight in the eye and say “Listen! Listen, Joe!”
[ I don’t sound Welsh, but the blood of Welsh preachers runs in my veins. So if you imagine Michael Sheen’s voice that’d work. ]
I wish you well. I pray the Gods will guide you… for all our sakes.
The red pill will wear off soon and the comedown will hit. As your first reading of this letter becomes a memory, you’ll walk back out into a world inured in blue pill propaganda.
Steel yourself, boy. You know that ‘looking bad’ is never a reliable measure of the Good! Jesus, man! Every good thing that’s ever happened has been opposed by the majority. Find out what you believe in and stand for it!
Beware the blue pill pushers. Beware of those invested in one vision of your future. The world doesn’t need another light entertainer who does ‘so much for charity!’ It needs a saviour. It needs an army of saviours.
They tell us that ecosystems will collapse within a few generations. Think about it, Joe. Just stop and think. Let that tomorrow put today into perspective.
Sometimes if you want something to exist, you have to make it yourself. Hmm, Joe? We’ve built our glorious Church from mud, spit and love. From the ground up. It is our home. It protects us. From brickbats, wagging fingers and brown-nosing denunciations. From those who would deny us the right to even exist.
One space! One space where we can negate money in a world that affirms it with every action. Is that too much to ask?
Is it the negation of money that has brought us to the precipice of our own destruction, Joe? Is it?
You’ve blundered blindly into our little world. Our Heaven on Earth. Our Church where the delicate shoots of wild imaginations seek the sun. And you’ve cast your shadow upon us.
The scale of your affirmation! The weight of mortar you poured in! Oh, Joe…
It’s already beginning to set. 2023 was going to be our year. 23 is our magic number. It was the year we’d form as a religious charity, proper. It was the year when we’d do more Festivals, more Services, more Rituals.
But the friendly hands extended are being withdrawn. You’ve put fear in their hearts. “Too controversial”. “Too provocative”. I ask you, Joe, in the face of annihilation what’s an acceptable level of controversy or provocation?
“Put shit in the rivers by all means. But for God’s sake don’t burn £20”.
Wake up, Joe! There are clues here. The Gods are trying to guide us!
Our big break. Our first big festival [ vi. ]. Our first foray into the borderlands of the mainstream. And we arrive on site on the hottest day Albion has ever had. Coincidence? Or the Gods’ way of remaining anonymous?
Your reveal video. Released exactly seven years after the Cube Cinema Rituals. Seven years after the birth of our Church — to the very day. Are those dates going to be bookends or springboards?
We’ll just have to wait and see.
I mean we’ll keep going, whatever. But Duw it’s hard now, Joe bach.
Anyway, I need to keep my word to you.
The clickbait subtitle promised direct and specific advice. So here goes.
Find the courage to fight the war you cannot afford to lose.
And the wisdom to fight the battles you can win.
But enough of my martial stuff. Let’s part on ‘loving’ rather than ‘fighting’.
The final words of our sermons are always the same. I stole them from the lips of a dying Philosopher. [ vii. ]
“Love, loves love, into ever widening circles.”
There are no Devils here, Joe.
We just want money
to give love
a little more space
to do what love
does naturally.
That’s all.
With love,
Jon
High Priest Church of Burn
NOTES
[ i. ] Justin Welby Dethroning Mammon — Making Money Serve Grace (2017) p.1
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[ ii. ] I’m not permitted to share the full text of the Archbishops’ Determination. But they did want the following addendum made public.
Addendum xxiii to the Archbishops’ determination: Despite their public claims of rigorous disassociation we have reason to believe that members of the ‘so-called’ Burners’ Revolutionary Council (a.k.a. The BRC) were present at the Emergency Ecumenical Council of the 23rd of December 2022. CoB regard some of the pronouncements they share through the Burning Issue Twitter account as puritanical, fundamentalist and extreme. CoB does not endorse their ‘Earn to Burn’ doctrine (a fanatical commitment to asceticism) nor their aggressive anti-charity stance. And we reject the criticisms they regularly make against our High Priest and CoB itself. All destroyers of money are welcome at CoB. But we will not be dissuaded from our doctrinal commitment to public engagement.
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[ iii.] CoB is blessed to receive significant support and interest from the academic community. It would take too long for me to list the individuals who have given so freely of their wisdom and time. But I would like to specifically acknowledge the Finance and Society Network. Their Intersections conference continues to be an inspiration to me. And also David Graeber’s colleague at the L.S.E. the late Nigel Dodd. CoB simply wouldn’t exist without Nigel. He died in 2022. You can read my tribute here.
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[ iv. ] In simple terms, money has been thought of in two ways; as a commodity and as a social relation. Although, as stated, money has undeniably evolved. What is also true is that some essential aspect of it has remained unchanged. Money contains oppositions. Whatever is said definitively about its nature, a case can always reasonably be made to the contrary. I explore my own view on this more fully in my What Happens piece.
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[ v. ] This 10 minute animation from the RSA explores links between charity, capitalism and redemption. It illustrates the talk given by Slavoj Žižek in 2010 at the RSA.
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[ vi. ] The Secret Garden Party has a reputation as a posh kids’ festival. It’s held on the grounds of its founder’s family estate. SGP has used this privilege to foster its independent spirit. This has allowed it to create one of the most innovative, artistic and risk-taking festivals in the world - as CoB’s inclusion shows. After a five year hiatus, SGP returned in 2022 with an explicitly sex-positive agenda. We felt very at home with this, of course. We’ll be forever grateful to Freddie and the SGP crew for welcoming us to their beautiful site. And for giving us the opportunity to spread the Word of the Burn to the Gardeners.
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[ vii. ] The words were spoken by Roy Bhaskar in the last video he made before his death in 2014. Roy was a philosopher and a political revolutionary. You might not have heard of him but his ideas have been very influential in the academic world. Roy knew he was dying and he wanted to sum up everything about his ‘Philosophy of Meta-Reality’ in a few words.
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