By Reese Deller

What Idolatry Reflects

Every society produces idols, but to speak of idolatry is not only to describe devotion. It is to describe projection: the act of inscribing a community’s fears, aspirations, and obligations onto a figure that can carry them. In antiquity, these took the form of gods who structured fate, justice, and duty. Today, they appear as celebrities, influencers, or even algorithms that decide what rises to visibility. The form has changed, but the function persists: idols organize authority and fix abstract values in recognizable figures.

Research clarifies how this operates in the present. A study in Psychological Studies shows that heavy social media use fosters parasocial interaction, one-sided bonds with celebrities that encourage fans to imitate their idols (Yen and Lee). In East Asia, fandoms organize like religious congregations, creating rituals and collective identity around entertainers (Zhao). These patterns echo the role of ancient gods, who embodied and reinforced traits such as strength, cunning, and duty that their societies elevated as defining.

The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Odyssey, and The Aeneid reveal how three civilizations did this work, and in turn, they offer a framework for recognizing how contemporary cultures continue to fashion and rely on icons as symbols.

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Fate and the Gods of Babylon

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the gods wield direct control over human destiny. Jeffrey Tigay shows how the Old Babylonian version reflects a worldview in which divine beings preserved cosmic order through sheer authority. Ishtar’s wrath, the creation and destruction of Enkidu, and the flood narrative all underscore a society where order was dictated by divine will.

This logic finds an analogue in algorithms. Recommendation engines on platforms like TikTok determine what goes viral, often with consequences as unpredictable as floods or plagues in ancient myth. A creator can gain millions of followers overnight or vanish after an opaque system adjustment. Algorithms are not idols in themselves, but they wield mysterious, godlike force because people grant them authority, deciding what is visible, silenced, or empowered—often without transparency.

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The Cunning of Homeric Heroes

By the 8th century BCE, Homeric Greece had embraced a competitive worldview. Gregory Nagy argues that Greek heroes and their divine patrons embodied cultural ideals such as kleos (glory) and cunning. In The Odyssey, gods intervene not as impartial judges but as partisans. Athena supports Odysseus while Poseidon obstructs him.

These gods resembled their worshippers: powerful, ambitious, and vulnerable. Odysseus thrived on intelligence and deception rather than sheer strength. Greek idolatry celebrated figures who triumphed through wit and resilience.

Modern celebrity culture reflects the same dynamic. Devotion to idols depends on a balance of charisma and relatability. Celebrities who curate glimpses of their personal lives alongside their achievements cultivate loyalty that extends beyond entertainment into activism and collective action. Taylor Swift occupies this position with unusual force: her fans treat her as both artist and cultural symbol, her lyrics narrate intimate experiences, and her public life becomes a shared event—album releases, political statements, personal milestones.

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Rome and the Politics of Duty

Virgil’s Aeneid, written under Augustus, reframes divine influence to serve political ends. Karl Galinsky shows how the poem projects Augustan values, especially pietas—devotion to duty, family, and destiny—onto Aeneas. The gods remain quarrelsome, but the hero embodies Rome’s moral order.

This shift parallels modern expectations that public figures serve as moral exemplars. Leaders are compelled to symbolize civic duty, often at the cost of individual complexity.

Ancient heroes like Cúchulainn illustrate how the ideal of duty has deep roots in mythology—linking power, sacrifice, and service to the community.

Pope Francis exemplifies this dynamic: beyond his personal theology, he has been elevated as a global emblem of humility, reform, and moral responsibility. His symbolic acts—riding in modest vehicles, washing prisoners’ feet, and advocating for the poor—have made him an icon of duty and conscience well beyond Catholicism. Yet, like Aeneas, this symbolic role compresses his complexity; his contradictions are often overlooked as he is invoked as a universal emblem of moral obligation.

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Attention and Power Today

Across civilizations, idols have variously embodied fate, cunning, or duty—always structuring how societies imagined authority. The same dynamics operate today, whether in fandom rituals that echo religion or algorithms that determine visibility with unpredictable force.

To call these figures ‘idols’ neither exalts nor dismisses them; it points instead to the cultural roles they play—distributing authority, shaping aspirations, and mediating how communities relate to power. The epics demonstrate that iconic figures, real or imagined, have never been neutral objects of devotion. They are instruments through which societies negotiate their values, and their influence, whether cast in myth, song, or code, continues to structure how communities imagine power and obligation today. The question that remains is whether we can learn to engage idols critically—recognizing the authority we grant them without surrendering to it.

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Sources and Further Reading

Galinsky, Karl. Augustan Culture: An Interpretive Introduction. Princeton University Press, 1996. Princeton University Press, https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691001608/augustan-culture.

George, Andrew. The Epic of Gilgamesh: A New Translation. Penguin Classics, 2003. Penguin Random House, https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/291147/the-epic-of-gilgamesh-by-translated-with-an-introduction-by-andrew-george/.

Nagy, Gregory. The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry. Rev. ed., Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Johns Hopkins University Press, https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/best-achaeans.

Tigay, Jeffrey H. The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic. Bolchazy-Carducci, 2002. Bolchazy-Carducci, https://www.bolchazy.com/Evolution-of-the-Gilgamesh-Epic-P279.aspx.

Yen, Kwan Ke, and Soon Li Lee. “Social Network Sites Usage and Idol Emulation: Indirect Effect of Parasocial Interaction.” Psychological Studies, vol. 66, no. 4, 2021, pp. 463–470. SpringerLink, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12646-021-00630-x.

Zhao, Yangqingge. “Analysis of the Social Impact of Fandom Culture in ‘Idol’ Context.” Advances in Journalism and Communication, vol. 10, no. 4, 2022, pp. 377–386. Scientific Research Publishing, https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation?paperid=121597.