Art, like religion, arises from unsatisfied desire” (Zerzan, The Case Against Art).

At present we live within symbols to a greater degree than we do within our bodily selves or directly with each other,” Zerzan concludes.  These symbols include both societal and personal structures such as the ego, one’s place within the division of labor, and cultural / religious identification and practices, leading to an identity decidedly fractured from the currents of unity with the natural cosmos.

Rituals, prayers, and devotions which may once have had practical purposes as a kind of spiritual kung-fu, as a way of making love to the world, survive only by their symbolic virtues, for the thoughts they manufacture, becoming almost insane the longer they are disconnected from the world at hand, perpetuated only by their dogmatic appeal and becoming completely devoid of the grace which inspired them.