This morning, I saw clips from the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. The imagery was, let’s say, astonishing. It presented, among other things, a grotesque parody of Da Vinci’s Last Supper. In the place of Christ sat a stout woman with half-exposed breasts; one of the apostles was a homosexual man with testicles hanging out of a tight latex outfit; the rest of the apostles were replaced by transgender individuals and other figures who have surgically or otherwise rejected the task of being a man or a woman. Among this group, there was also a young girl – a sign of childlike innocence and purity.

There was some debate about the interpretation of the hotly discussed scene. Was it indeed a parody of The Last Supper? The artistic director explained that the spectacle represented Dionysus at a pagan feast. That Dionysus was represented – no doubt about that. But that the formal presentation of the group evoked direct associations with Da Vinci’s composition, an artistic director’s explanation doesn’t change much about that. And the fact that the Paris 2024 producers contradicted the artistic director explicitly and confirmed that the scene was inspired by the last supper, also doesn’t add to the credibility of the director’s claims (see Link).

The parody of The Last Supper was certainly not the only striking element in the ceremony. Among other things, a cloaked rider on a white horse was brought forward, which was interpreted by quite a few critical observers as the fourth rider of the apocalypse – Death on a pale horse. Here, too, it was difficult to be certain. Was it truly an apocalyptic figure? Or did the winged horse rather represent Pegasus, a symbol of strength and courage?

One can debate the interpretation of the symbolic language used, but the style of the ceremony had a deeply macabre and decadent undertone that cannot be denied. The ceremony was brimming with heavy symbolism, the connection of which to the Olympic Games – a sporting event – was hard to see. The question was difficult to suppress: what message is that heavy symbolism pregnant with?

A large part of the population found the ceremony impressive – the pinnacle of spectacle, a celebration of freedom, triumph of humanism, inclusivity, and ‘equity.’ At least, that’s what mainstream reporting suggests. They see it as a good thing: no more prejudices against people with a sexuality that doesn’t follow the norm. And that mockery of Christianity – can’t Christians handle it perhaps? Are they becoming as sensitive as Muslims? Is there no longer any place for Charlie Hebdo in our culture for them either? Anyone who criticizes the woke culture is easily labeled as a new kind of extremist who falls back on ultra-conservative values in difficult cultural times.

It shows cultural maturity when there is openness and room for peculiarities regarding sexuality, a space where a person can realize themselves as a singular sexual being. But the woke spectacle we saw at the opening ceremony has little to do with that. In its intrusive display and anchorless drifting into increasingly grotesque forms of sexuality, it does not show the merging of sexual drive with love and tenderness that is the hallmark of human and cultural maturity; in its fanaticism, it is no longer a liberator, but a tyrant, a militant and extremist ideology that leads sexuality not to its pinnacle but to its complete decline.

It thrives on the illusion of a malleable human, the person who does not submit to God or commandment, who creates and realizes themselves, who tries to erase the task of being a man or a woman that our body imposes on us with surgery and hormone treatments from the text of their life.

The opening ceremony also had nothing to do with cultural maturity that can relativize itself on all levels – including religiously. The opening ceremony of the Olympic Games is not a discourse presented in a satirical newspaper like Charlie Hebdo. An opening ceremony is a ritual, in this case, the ritual of the largest and most significant event of our globalist new world order. And even more: such a ceremony shows what a society identifies with, such a ceremony represents the essence of the societal model that organises it. What is problematic, in other words, is not that a society is tolerant towards exotic and in some cases perverse types of sexuality and morality; what is problematic is that this kind of morality represents is essence. That is why the displayed bad taste is not something to simply turn a blind eye to and shrug off; it is indeed something significant.

What we saw was nothing less than a ritualized mockery of the sacred and the ethical, something that, from an ethical-religious perspective, is a ritual of evil. Our culture is tending toward an end.

The triumphantly proclaimed reign of Reason was accompanied by the pollution of nature with microplastics and toxic chemicals, with industrial fishing methods and forestry and agricultural practices that ruthlessly exploit nature, with the deadliest wars in history, and with the industrial destruction of populations and races that did not fit into rationalist ideologies. William Blake devoted his entire oeuvre to this in the earliest stage of rationalization and mechanization of the world, during the French Revolution, the historical event that represents the moment when the rationalist worldview seized control. He saw it as a manifestation and unleashing of the forces of Evil and testified to this view in his entire oeuvre.

The entire UN ideology with its Sustainable Development Goals claims to halt the destructive drive, but it is essentially a continuation of the rationalist ideology, which, through its ecomodernist program, aims for the ultimate subjugation of nature (think of projects to influence the climate) and with its woke humanism tries to install a radically dehumanizing transhumanist technocracy.

Remarkably, the idealization of Reason also cost Truth its head. The duty to speak honestly was thrown overboard within the rationalist worldview. The reasoning was quickly made. Speaking the Truth is always risky; those who speak the Truth weaken themselves; they have fewer chances in the struggle to survive; only a fool speaks the Truth.

Humans have always been deceptive and lying beings who often confuse Appearance with Reality, but the rise of the Enlightenment tradition was accompanied by the reign of a new kind of lie, a lie that is theoretically founded (based on scientific theories about mass psychology), ideologically justified, and industrially produced: propaganda. The contemporary (globalist) order stands and imposes itself through propaganda – the art of manipulating the human being; the practice of depriving the human being of spiritual freedom.

Under the pseudo-rational surface of our Enlightenment culture, therefore, a destructive, deceitful, and dehumanizing force steadily grew. It grew in the unseen, but like any spiritual Greatness, it wants to manifest itself and be publicly recognized. Our culture has reached a point where that force increasingly shows its face openly. Witness the grotesque theater of the most recent Eurovision Song Contest and the dark symbolism of the Olympic opening ceremony.

Our culture is approaching its apotheosis, the moment when the masks are taken off and the forces that determine it reveal themselves. The moment also when humans see their true condition. The rationalist human is not about to become God. They are also not about to conquer their absolute freedom, sexually and otherwise. On the contrary, they are on the verge of being completely enslaved. And the Olympic opening ceremony shows us more clearly than ever who their Master will be.

Edit note: Click the link for more of this post on Mattias Desmet’s Substack site. Desmet is recognized as the world’s leading expert on the theory of mass formation as it applies to the COVOID-19 pandemic. He is a professor of clinical psychology at Ghent University (Belgium) and a practicing psychoanalytic psychotherapist. He is known worldwide for his 2022 book, “The Psychology of Totalitarianism.“